Page 22 of These Immortal Truths
“Then I would see that too. I would take your honesty over your pretty lies.”
His stare is weighted. “How I see myself isn’t nearly as appealing.”
Anna squares her shoulders and tips her chin—a weak impersonation of his confidence. “It is to me.”
There’s a thread of laughter in his sigh; a hint of a smile flirting at the corners of his mouth. “As you wish.”
He changes. Not in the slow, shifting way she imagined, but a ripple—the gentle dips and crests of a still pond disturbed—until she’s looking at someone different but the same.
There is nothing monstrous about the face he shows her. His eyes are pale, green teetering on the edge of blue. Against his tan skin and the dark hair curling at his shoulders, they look vivid. Her eyes trace the soft line of his jaw, lingering on his full lips.
It lacks the intense, devastating beauty of his other forms. The face beneath her probing gaze feels real. A blend of masculine and feminine. Anna finds that she prefers it over all the others.
When she wakes, their baskets are overflowing with food they haven’t harvested. Cured meats and wheels of cheeses, bags of flour and jars of honey. A feast in which she hasn’t seen in decades andwhat she’s certain the child rifling through the baskets has never seen at all. Piers’ laughter fills the room, bouncing off the walls.
When he finds the pouch of gold coins nestled between a jar of hawthorn berries, Anna’s knees go weak.
“God listened!” he exclaims, tugging on her hand. His smile is wide enough to break her heart. “I prayed, and I prayed as hard as I could, and he heard me!”
Anna doesn’t correct him.
A god has answered, but she knows it wasn’t the one Piers prayed to.
The first time Piers calls her mother, is the same day they pack their things. The snow has melted, leaving only thin patches that shrink by the day. As they close their cabin door for the last time, Piers takes her by the hand and points out a patch of crocus that have bloomed at the corner. “Maman, look! Flowers!”
There’s a tightness in her throat, a vice over her chest, but she manages a smile through the heartache. She squeezes his hand. “Yes, aren’t they beautiful?”
It can’t last—her immortality has given them the gift of meeting even as it has robbed her of the ability to stay—but she can be the mother he wants for now. She can help him grow, keep him safe, until he has the years and strength to care for himself.
When they find a merchant on the road, Anna inquires how much it would cost for him to take them to the Italian border. The amount he asks is higher than it should be, but there is gold in Anna’s pockets and the promise of more hard times to come should she stay.
She offers double on the condition that they leave immediately and he deliver them safely.
Genoa hasn’t suffered the losses the North has—hasn’t seen famine carving away at their neighbors and children. Anna decides the first day they step into the city square, sees the roundness of the local’s faces and the color in their cheeks, that they’ll stay.
It takes time to learn and teach Piers the language, but they manage to get by—picking up and collecting new words and sharing them with each other. Perhaps it is his youth, or maybe it is because the local children are more accepting than their parents, but Piers picks it up faster than she does. Often times, he comes home wearing scrapes and bruises paired with a grin as he regales her with the day’s adventures.
They’ve settled in a moderate cottage just outside the city—close enough to walk to the markets but far enough to keep to themselves. She grows a small garden in the back to stretch their coins and set food on their table. It’s enough to give her enough time to learn enough Genoese to begin offering her services as a midwife again with another experienced local.
They are not afforded many of the luxuries the wealthy merchant families have, but their bellies are always full and their shoes without holes. It is a comfortable life. One that brings Anna more contentment than any of her previous ones.
There is only one cloud that hangs, ever present, on her horizons. It’s there when Piers loses his last baby tooth. There when his voice cracks and deepens. There when he hits a growth spurt that sets his height a full head over her own.
Then, in their thirteenth summer together, he falls in love with the baker’s daughter and all Anna can see are goodbyes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
He knew it would come—the tears, the pain. He knew it would hurt her in ways that left a mark. What he didn’t expect was to feel his heart ache in response.
Genoa
1329
The vows are said, the marriage blessed, and the wine has been generously poured. There is an abundant number of guests that have come to give their well wishes. The bride’s family is particularly well connected and well liked. They’ve been very successful in their business, selling their baked goods from commoner to noble and everyone in between.
It is a good family for Piers to marry into.
She’s already had several guests congratulate her on sucha good match. Anna smiles and nods, but the truth is there was never a match for her to make. Piers’ love for Maria was all his own.
