Mortal Ties

EPILOGUE

IN a place that was not quite a place as we think of them, two people were doing what, here, people often do in a bed.

No, not that. Though their reunion had been joyous and prolonged and had included plenty of sex—or something as like to sex as makes no difference, even though they did not have bodies as we know bodies—just now they were sleeping. Or enjoying something very like sleep, but enough of the circumlocutions. We have no way of truly understanding that place, so we’ll continue from this point on as if they were here and use the terms we know…

He woke first. That was habit and normal and familiar and quite wonderful. It gave him the chance to watch her sleep when he had thought he’d never have such a moment again.

A restless man most of the time, this morning—and it was morning, in all the ways that matter—he was at peace. At least until she woke and smiled at him. She touched his cheek, tracing furrows put there by a life lived hard and mostly right, though when he’d gone wrong, he’d done so spectacularly. As she’d told him tartly at one point, for they’d talked as well as making love. “When are you leaving?” she asked.

He scowled. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, please. When have you ever been able to relax and enjoy a vacation?”

He blinked. “Vacation? They, uh, said this was a place of rest. I thought…it’s beautiful here.”

“It is. Very beautiful.” She was laughing at him now. “Rest, vacation—whatever we call it, this isn’t a place to stay forever. Though some people enjoy resting, or so I’ve heard.”

He didn’t relax at her teasing. “I, uh, I’ve been offered a job.”

“I felt sure you would be. Come on, let’s get up. I’m hungry.”

They fixed breakfast together, just as they had for most of their lives. Those other lives, that is, but that’s a distinction without a difference. He told her a bit about the job.

He’d been offered it by…an angel, he supposed, the same one who had spent time with him when he lost himself in the gray, then had forgotten almost completely. Of course angel was the wrong word. He knew that. The wrong word, the wrong everything, for whatever had offered this work to him, it so far surpassed his understanding of beings and boundaries that it made words meaningless. So he thought of it as the angel, and left it at that.

“Whatever it was Friar took out of there with him, it was nasty. And tied to this side of the line in a way I don’t like at all. Neither did the, uh…whoever offered me the job.”

She nodded seriously. “I heard something about that.” When he looked surprised she laughed again. She’d always laughed easily, but the happiness seemed to bubble up even more freely now. “Come on, I told you I’d been meeting people. Looking around a bit while I decide what I’m going to do now.”

“Yeah, but I never see anyone around for you to talk to.”

“Because you don’t want to. If you’d been interested…but never mind.” She reached across and took his hand. “Al, it’s okay. When did I ever kick up a fuss because of your job? I don’t want or expect you to spend a few eons sunbathing on the beach with me.”

Now he smiled. “You hate sunbathing.”

“True. So. When are you leaving?”

His hand tightened on hers. “Not yet. I need more time with you, more time to…but when I do take the job I won’t be gone constantly. I’ll be able to take…not weekends, but time here, now and then. Time with you. I won’t remember things here when I’m back there, not very well, but I’ll know I’ve been with you.” He felt sure of that now.

“Memory works differently there than it does here,” she agreed. “But the good things stay with us.”

“Yeah.” He looked at their joined hands, at the rings that glowed on each of their hands. “Yeah, the good things stay.” He grinned suddenly and looked exactly like the wicked twenty-nine-year-old man she’d first fallen in love with. Exactly—because memory did indeed work differently here. “And I’ve got to admit, I’m really looking forward to seeing Yu’s face when I show up again.”