Eternity (25 page)

A throat
cleared, and I could tell that Mrs. Bainbridge wanted to say
something. I let go of Jack and we turned. “Picking a fight with
someone bigger than you does not excuse the fact that you tried to
hurt a fellow student. It may seem unfair, considering what has
happened to you already, but I’m afraid I am going to have to
punish both you and Mr. Alvarez. I’d like to see you in my office
as soon as you get cleaned up. Ms. White, I suggest that you and
your roommates get back to bed. You can talk to each other about
what happened in the morning, but I would prefer that you keep the
details of this night to yourselves.”

Jack nodded
went to get cleaned up. He didn’t think his punishment was unfair
even though he had almost died because he felt guilty about what he
had tried to do.

I went over to
Heather and Melissa, and we started walking back to the south wing.
The teachers were all heading back to bed now that the danger was
over and everything was alright again. A few of them gave me
questioning looks before they turned and went their own ways.

Once we were a
ways away from everyone else, Heather stopped and held out her
hand. In her outstretched palm were my keys, still on their
chain.

“I thought you
might want these back,” she said, and she was smiling. She
understood what had happened and she couldn’t wait to begin
questioning me. I took the keys gratefully and put them back around
my neck.

Melissa was
another story altogether. The events of the night had taken a
severe toll on her, and she didn’t understand what had happened at
all. She had watched her friend jump off a cliff, thought she was
dead, and now that friend was standing next to her as if nothing
had happened. She was shocked and confused.

“Melissa,” I
said, “everything’s fine.”

She turned her
dull eyes toward me. “Please explain to me how that’s possible.
Jack was almost dead. Then you were dead. Then you weren’t dead,
and Jack was fine. I don’t get any of it. Even by the standards of
this place, with all of the magic that goes on here, none of it
makes any sense.”

“Maybe there’s
more magic going on here than you realize,” Heather hinted, still
smiling.

“And what is
that supposed to mean?” Melissa asked. She was only getting more
frustrated, so I decided to tell her the truth. It was the only way
she would be alright that didn’t involve me removing her memories,
and I didn’t want to do that. It would be the easy way out.

“I’m not who
you think I am,” I said. “In fact, I’m not who I thought I was, and
I had to die to realize that. I am Juliet, but I’m also
Isadora.”

Melissa
laughed. “Nice one,” she said. “What’s really going on?”

“She’s telling
the truth,” Heather confirmed. “All of the teachers have known it
for a while. She has a white aura, and only the gods have white
auras. Don’t you remember in class when we talked about the gods
taking away their own memories and powers so they could live like
normal people? That’s what she did, and she had to die to get them
back so she could save Jack.”

“And you knew
this all along and didn’t say anything?” Melissa accused, though
she still didn’t really believe.

“No. Other
people told me and they believed it, but I didn’t,” I explained.
“It’s a hard thing to believe, especially when you feel so normal
and powerless.”

“Do you feel
like that now?”

I smiled. “No,
I can’t say that I do. I mostly just feel old and tired.”

“You don’t look
old,” Heather commented. “What are you going to do now that you
know? Are you going to go back to Asantis or something?”

“No. I like
this life, and I don’t want to leave it yet. I might go to Asantis
for the summer, but I’ll be back for the next school year. That’s
why I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone about me. I
don’t want people to see me differently. I know you both already
do.”

“True,” Heather
said. “But still, we don’t see it as a bad thing. It’s actually
kind of awesome. Just think of all the amazing stuff you can
do.”

“Hey, the next
time I have menstrual cramps, can you give me some pain relief?”
Melissa asked hopefully. She was starting to accept the truth,
however reluctantly.

I laughed. “I
have no problem with that. If you ever need anything, you can come
to me, just try to do it in private. I don’t even want Rhea to
know, so be careful.”

We reached the
south wing and quietly went up the stairs, trying not to wake
anyone. When we got to our room Rhea was still there and sleeping
peacefully, like nothing had happened at all. It seemed like no one
knew that anything had happened, which seemed so strange to me
because my life had changed so much over the past couple of hours.
I was almost an entirely different person.

Chapter
32

As I lay down
in bed, I couldn’t help but think of the past and all that happened
in my long life. It seemed like so much, but for me it was only the
beginning. I thought Amun, my oldest and closest friend over my
entire life, and I wondered what he was doing. I searched for him
with my mind, but he was hiding from me, so I couldn’t tell where
he was.

I thought all
the way back to the beginning, which was over five thousand years
before. In fact, I had missed my five thousandth birthday during my
life as Juliet. It had happened when I was a year into my new life.
I thought about my family, who I always missed. My father was a
king, and a good man, though generally quite stern. My mother had
been beautiful, and she was kind to me, though we had never been
close. I had been closest to my older brother, who had looked out
for me, and I had looked up to him. It was his duty to become the
king when our father died, and he took that seriously. He had
married and had children after I left, so I never met them, though
there were still a few descendents alive.

I had left when
I was only around twenty. I’d fallen in love with a servant in the
palace, and we had left together. I never went back to Greece until
years after my family had died. I had been so young then, and
everything had seemed so new. I wanted to see the world, and I did,
with my first love by my side. I had wanted to go back home
eventually, but it had been too late. My family would have been
frightened by my youthful appearance, since I should have been an
old woman. They had never known what I was.

That was all so
long ago, and it really felt that way. I no longer felt young and
curious. I mostly just felt a deep depression that constantly
threatened to consume me, but there was little I could do to
alleviate it other than staying distracted. I had felt it for
hundreds of years. Once, only forty years before, I had let it take
over, and I had ended up in a mental hospital for several months.
It had been music that had brought me back then. If it happened
again, I wasn’t sure what I would do.

I had no actual
need to sleep, and I felt like I’d been sleeping for long enough,
so I got out of bed. The other girls were all sleeping soundly
despite the trauma that they had been through. They didn’t notice a
thing when I disappeared.

I went home to
Asantis. When I stepped out from the jungle leaves onto the white
stone path that led to Luma, I felt a sense of peace. It didn’t
take long for the village to come into view, and my heart soared at
the sight of it. I had always thought it was my greatest creation.
The entire village was made of white stone that gleamed in the
bright sunlight. It was small, but it was cozy and beautiful. I
walked to the courtyard in the middle, where there was a fountain
and many flowering plants and some stone benches. The temple was on
the opposite side of the courtyard, with its stone columns and
flowering vines.

The people
there were surprised to see me, since I hadn’t been there in
seventeen years, but happy nonetheless. I recognized all of the
older faces, though there were a few young ones who had been born
since I’d left. They were excited to meet me, and I gave them all
gifts.

I visited Terra
and Morta as well. The villages were not connected by pathways
through the jungle, so the only ways to get between them were
through the passages under the castle or by boat, since there was a
small river that went by all three. Instead of just psychoporting,
I took a boat to get around. Terra looked the same as it always
did, and the people were hard at work tending to the fields of
fruits and vegetables. I stayed a while and talked to some of my
old friends there before moving on. Morta’s population had grown
the most out of the three villages, and the library there had been
added to, though the underground library in Luma that was beneath
the temple was still much bigger.

It may seem
like Terra was the only village that produced anything useful
because all of the food for the three villages came from there, but
they all traded with each other. Luma was known for making fabric
and clothing, and Morta had a blacksmith, so they all had something
to offer each other, and the people from each village tended to be
mixed with people from the others. When I was around I often threw
parties or balls for the people in the castle so they could have
fun and get to know each other better. I decided that I should try
to do that over the summer.

When I was in
Morta, which was a village of black buildings located on an almost
barren slope, I walked up the path that led through the center. It
went up the hill to what looked like a fairly simple round stone
dais that was a deep black color. There were patterns ingrained in
the stone, and it was surrounded by black columns that held up
nothing but air. It was the only place on Earth where you could
communicate with the dead.

There was no
one using the dais when I got there, so I went up the steps and
stood in the center, on top of the carving of a skull with wings. I
called upon the first person I thought of, and it didn’t take him
long to appear. All spirits take the form at which they were
healthiest, so he looked like he did the last time I saw him
alive.

“Isadora, you
look lovely as always, though I’m not sure blond hair suits you
very well,” my brother said in our native language. I was a natural
brunette, but I had changed my hair color to fit in with my new
family. It was the only thing I had changed.

I grinned.
“It’s good to see you. How are things in the spirit world?”

“As peaceful
and boring as always. I think my favourite thing to do is watch
you. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me what you were when I was
alive. It was a bit of a shock when I died and looked for you in
the spirit world, and found you still here looking exactly the same
as always.”

“You had your
own belief system, and I didn’t want to ruin that for you,” I
explained. “It’s not an easy thing to learn. How’s everyone else in
the family?”

“They’re fine,
though I don’t know why you’re asking me when you could ask them
yourself. They all like watching you too. Mother has been worrying
about you, especially after that incident forty years ago, and
father wants you to play more music because he likes listening to
it. He always has.”

“I know; I used
to play for him all the time. It was one of the few things we did
together.”

We continued to
talk and reminisce for a few minutes before saying goodbye. It was
nice to be able to talk to people from my past occasionally, though
I tried not to do it often because it could become addictive. I
usually only talked to my family members, and I tried to avoid past
loves because they could be difficult to talk to. Sometimes it was
just best to move on. That didn’t mean it never happened,
though.

It was very
close to morning by the time I finally got back to Winterwood, and
by then it felt strange to be going back to school. The girls were
still sleeping soundly, and they hadn’t noticed that I had been
gone. I snuck back into bed and stayed there until it was time to
get up.

As we were all
getting dressed and ready, Melissa came up to me. “Did I just have
a really crazy dream, or did everything really happen?” she
asked.

“It happened,”
I confirmed. “Parts of it do kind of seem like a dream though. If I
didn’t still have my memories and powers I would probably be asking
the same question.”

“It’s probably
even stranger for Jack. I mean, he almost died. That might be a
confusing thing to live with.”

“Yeah, it could
be. He seemed alright last night though. I don’t think he remembers
much about being in the infirmary.”

“Ugh,” Heather
said, coming out of the bathroom still in her pyjama top. “I just
broke the strap of my tank top. It’s my favourite one, too.”

“I can fix it
for you,” I offered.

Her face lit
up. “Hey, that’s right, you can,” she said, and she handed me the
shirt, which I handed back seconds later looking brand new.
“Thanks,” she said.

“No problem. If
you guys don’t mind I have to get going. There are a few people I
need to talk to, and I’m eager to get started,” I said.

“Sure, no
problem,” Heather said. “We’ll see you later.”

I left, and I
walked toward the north wing. When I got there I found the person I
was looking for right away. She was sitting in the common room with
a stack of books, but I knew she was waiting for me. She moved some
books out of the way so I could sit down beside her.

“Sorry about
the mess,” Anna said. “When you read as quickly as I do you need to
make sure you have lots to read. Of course, you don’t have to read
at all, do you?”

“Not anymore,
though I still enjoy it,” I said. “A lot has changed in the past 24
hours.”

“You did it,
then? How?”

“I did, and I
probably never would have thought about it if you hadn’t been
there. You saved Jack’s life, and for that I will always be
grateful.”