Page 41 of These Immortal Truths
Her eyes scan the crowd. People continue to move around them, unaffected. “But everyone else could see them, too?”
“Yes.” The word is short and curt, holding no room for misunderstandings, but he delivers it with so much compassion it files down the harsh edges. He gives her shoulders a gentle squeeze. “I carried that magic with me for centuries, Anna. But it wasn’t until you offered a stray woman a place at your table, that I saw someone deserving of its gifts.”
The pain in her chest twists.
It should be a compliment, something that instills pride, but all she can feel is disappointment. “Centuries?” she echoes. The words taste impossible. “How could you have held it for centuries, and met no one else? I can’t be—I’m not—”
She’s not the only one with kindness in her heart. She can’t be.
Khiran sees the question in her eyes. “You aren’t,” he assures her. “There are many who know and deliver mercy, but … it is something that grows in them. It was nourished and fed by the kindness they received.”
Anna shakes her head, more questions on her lips, but he reaches for her—palms cupping her cheeks and forcing her still. “The world was cruel to you, Anna. You were stolen from your homeland, blamed and exiled for the patterns on your skin. They gave you reason after reason to be hateful, to be selfish. Instead, you saw a stranger in the woods and you brought her back to your meager home, offered up the little food you had despite the hunger lining your eyes.” His thumb brushes over her cheek, his face so close she can feel his sigh on her lips. “Do you not see how rare that is? Do you not see how wondrous you are?”
She stares at him, heart fluttering weakly in her chest. She hadn’t. Never has she considered her circumstances and the pain she’s been subjected to as something she’s risen above … it was simply something shesurvived. A flood of bad luck that nearly drowned her; had her struggling to keep her head above the water even as the temptation to stop fighting pulled at her limbs.
She thinks of Ophelia—of still pond waters and lilies tangled in her hair—and knows why she relates to her character the most.
Khiran’s eyes are deep and dark; ocean waters that have no end. Bottomless. They drown her, but this isn’t a flood she wants to escape. There is warmth there, tenderness. It envelops her, but instead of feeling trapped, she only feelssafe.
No one, not even Piers, not even Eira, has managed to give her that feeling. When everyone else leaves, when they never come back, Khirandoes. He flits in and out of her life like the seasons, but when he fades away from her life, it’s with the unwavering faith that she’ll see him again. Next spring, next fall. He’ll find her when she is falling to pieces or when she’s whole. There’s comfort in that. Comfort in knowing he’ll be there when no one else can be.
She takes his hand, presses it more fully against her cheek. “Thank you.” She speaks the words in a whisper, but she can feel the full force of her heart behind it. When his brow furrows, she licks her lips and tries again. “Thank you for the gift you’ve given me.”
It dawns on her that she doesn’t remember ever thanking him.Maybe she did, when she believed his offering to be a fruit and nothing else. Nothing more. She can’t be certain. Centuries have made some of her memories weak, and those first days after the fire were like walking through a dream that held no meaning.
His hand slips from her cheek, the friction from his palm slow and terrible in ways that make something spark inside her. Then he takes her hand, long fingers delicately curving around her own, and his smile is so sincere it makes her ache. “Thank you for accepting it.”
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
Initially, he’s happy to find she has crossed the Atlantic. She lingered so long in Europe, he had grown concerned that she may never explore further. Then he sees the company she surrounded herself with, and his feelings sour.
NEWENGLAND
1645
Her favorite chore is doing the laundry.
The other women prefer to go together—too afraid they’ll be kidnapped by the natives to dare being alone so far from the safety of the settlement’s walls. Anna holds no such fears. Mostly because she’s almost certain it’s all fear mongering, anyway. Besides, she strongly suspects living among the natives would be far more enjoyable than the current company she finds herself in.
The Puritans are unlike any other community she’s livedamong. Their rules are strict, governed entirely by the religious men in power—clergy who preach of divine rights and Eve’s sin. Sermons that encourage rooting out the evil the devil has surely planted in their midsts. In her short time among them, Anna has seen many a man and woman find themselves fastened in the pillory, their neck and wrists bound between two slabs of wood while they suffered the humiliation of being spat upon. The first week, she witnessed a man who suffered two hours merely for committing the indecency of kissing his wife in public.
The parish has been more insistent lately on her taking a husband.
She thought, when she garnered passage with the story of being widowed, it would be enough to let her practice her midwifery in peace for at least a few years. It hasn’t even been three seasons since her ship pulled into port, and yet the elders have already started dropping thinly veiled suggestions that she start considering a match.
Anna knows full well that her own wishes carry no merit in their eyes. A lone woman, with no husband and no sons to keep her from straying, is a liability at best and an invitation of sin at worst. No matter how useful she makes herself, she suspects that will never change.
She hikes up her skirts, tying them around her knees to keep the hem from soaking, and steps barefoot into the creek. The water is calm, but steady. A far cry from the rushing waters it was born from several leagues away. A shiver dances up her spine, goosebumps rising on her arms and legs as she wades in. Beneath her bare feet the stones are smooth and polished, their roughened edges worn by water and time.
Anna releases a long suppressed sigh, the tension in her body soothed by the simple sounds of the creek and whispered rustle of leaves overhead. There are no ministers to preach down to her, here. No masks of piety to wear, or suspicious eyes to spot the pale patches of skin creeping down her forearms and accuse her of being marked by the devil. Only water running between her calves and soiled linen and wool in her hands. The sound of bird call andbabbling brooks take the place of righteous accusations and promises of hellfire.
It’s no wonder why she prefers the world outside Puritan walls.
If she wasn’t so sure they’d find a reason to condemn her for it, Anna would offer to wash the entire settlement’s dirty clothing just for the chance to escape their prison more often. She feels like she’s walking on glass—every step a chance for everything to splinter and crack. One of these days, she’s certain to fall through.
Especially with Mary having chosen to walk along the warpath of the Lord as of late. For someone named after the virgin mother, she is neither merciful nor kind. Just this morning, Mary scolded her harshly just for humming a tune under her breath as she sewed. Anna was forced to sit through an hour-long lecture regarding the devil and how he uses music to sway one’s ear away from the word of God.
“Anna!” A grating, feminine voice calls to her from behind, one she needs no help recognizing. Lately it feels like she’s heard it more than her own. “Do you need help? You really ought not be alone.”
