Our Infinite Fates

by Laura Steven

“My love for you could fill an ocean, Evelyn.” There was an awful resignation to her tone. “But it can’t stop the tide of time.”

We died right as the sun fell below the edge of the world.

“‘The Poetry of earth is never dead.’” “See? A poet’s soul.” He frowned disparagingly. “That’s Keats, you heathen.”

“Sometimes I fantasize about growing old together in a little cottage by the sea. You could spend your days tending the garden, and I could embroider elaborate patchwork blankets and knit cardigans for our children, or tailor expensive suits for the upper echelons of high society, and then we could come together over bowls of soup, and you could share your poignant observations about the ocean.”

“You have faith in all of humanity. You have faith in love. Please, have faith in me. I do this to protect you. Do you understand that? That I would lay my body over yours, war after war after war, life after life after life?”

When he spoke again, it was so softly into my ear that I shivered. “I love you, and I have loved you, and I will love you.”

“I love you.” Another kiss, so tender I thought I might unravel. “And I have loved you.” The third kiss was deeper, richer, shaking loose a sigh from Arden. “And I will love you.”

A forest witch, a bog demon, some ancient god we had angered long ago. Someone with whom we had made a dreadful bargain.

“Because of a deal made long ago.”

I turned around. Dylan. Leaning against the stable door in his mucky overalls, watching my every move. “This is a bit much, Evelyn. Even for you.”

“You can’t be you. You’re twenty. You were always two years above me in school.”

“Every conversation felt like Russian roulette. I haven’t relaxed in two years.”

I hadn’t figured it out in El Salvador either, yet this time … he had woven himself so seamlessly into my family. Flower petals pressed into the shape of a clumsy violin, wrapped in brown paper, and handed to my sister with a brotherly smile.

I should have hated him. I should have hated the person in front of me. I should have wanted to cross the room and punch him in the face. I should have wanted to hang him from the rafters with the very rope I’d used to restrain Ceri. I should have wanted to devour the world with my rage. But I didn’t. I ached for him. I ached to go to him, to feel his heart beat against mine, to press my face into his neck and just sob and sob and sob.

It was Arden. Arden was here, with me. He had been here for years. Watching, caring. It made me feel vulnerable, but also comforted. I had not suffered alone.

The hold Arden had over me, snipped by the hand of time.

The tether was not snipped. Instead it grew a thousand times stronger.

An invisible lasso tightened around my middle. There was a ferocious burning at the back of my neck, as though a puppeteer had hooked me on a string and hauled me backward.

yuánfèn, from Mandarin—a tragic fate between two people.

Ya’aburnee was a favourite. It means ‘may you bury me.’ It’s the idea that one person in a pairing longs to die before the other, because living without them would be too excruciating.

“If a hero is someone who will give up love to save the world, then a villain is the reverse. Someone who will give up the world to save love.”

“There’s no line I wouldn’t cross to keep a loved one safe.”

“By design, you don’t have any loved ones.”

“I have you.”

“It’s impossible to have bravery without fear. Bravery is picking up the fear and carrying it alongside you, rather than allowing it to block the path.”

No matter how many lives I lost, no matter how many families moved on without me, I would always be known by Arden. Perhaps he was my true homeland; our existence a language only we could speak.

“I missed you,” he whispered, so quietly I almost didn’t hear it. My voice choked. “I missed you too.”

“Sometimes it feels like my heart breaks when yours does,”

“Dylan snores.” He bristled next to me. “And Bran sleep-talks.”

“So you’re coming to hold down the fort at the bookshop with me?” He nodded. “Remember when you actually held down the fort during the siege of Tenochtitlan? Took the Spanish days to break through.” “To be honest, no. I don’t remember.”

“Siege of Jerusalem.” Something dark and grief-shaped flashed over his face. “I was so young, but I remember so much. We poisoned the wells and cut down the trees surrounding the city, but nothing we did could hold back the tide of Crusaders. Seeing so many of my people slaughtered—so many of the children I played with…”

How much of ourselves we had lost to this cruel fate, interests and passions gradually taking back seats to the driving force of our existence—imminent death.

A barb of jealousy spiked my heart. Mehmed famously had a taste for young noblemen.

“Back then you said, ‘I love you, and I have loved you, and I will love you.’ What happened to the future tense? What changed? Why have you closed yourself off to me?”

“You were right. Siberia hurt too much.”

“‘My heart is a haunted house surrounded by a moat of my own digging, kept empty of warmth so that I will not miss it come winter.’ It’s beautiful, Arden. All of it. But that part broke me. You don’t have to do this to yourself. You are allowed to feel warmth.”

“We got married, once. Do you remember?”

“Something went wrong, and I had to kill you in front of all our loved ones. I have never felt so monstrous in all my days. I still see your throat opening like a bleeding mouth whenever I try to fall asleep. I am haunted, Evelyn. I am haunted.”

“To you, I’m always changing—changing faces, bodies, strategies. But I’m always just me. And it breaks me to see the change on your face when you realise the truth … even when some part of you knows already. There’s always the tipping point. The moment we can’t come back from. When you know, and I know, and it has to happen. But it ruins me. The second your joyful face changes ruins me.”

“I love you,” he moaned, as though it was the most painful thing he had ever said, and it was.

“And I will always be yours. But I gave up the right to call you mine a long time ago.”

“Gods, Thiyya, I love you. I love the bones of you. I cannot fathom how I will bring a blade to your throat after all that we have shared.”

if people are songs written in the major or the minor key, then you, my dear, are major. a climb, a crescendo, a thousand trumpets, a clashing of cymbals, joy and awe, rousing, reaching, always to the stars. and I am but a dirge, a requiem, a lamentation, a melancholic harp in D minor, forever wondering why you chose me. —AUTHOR UNKNOWN

I will always be yours. But I gave up the right to call you mine a long time ago.

“Everything I do, everything I have ever done, is to protect you. Shielding you from my emotions is to protect you, because they’re so fucking overwhelming that I can barely deal with them myself.”

“I would do anything to protect you,” he went on, as though I hadn’t spoken. “And it will torture me forever to know that I can’t protect you from me. I have to cuff you to a bed, have to threaten you in a bookshop like a fucking psychopath. I have to kill you in … god, in hours. Because if I don’t—”

“God, if I’d just said no, back in Lundenburg. If I’d just … but then there wouldn’t be us. And which is worse, really?”

I wanted, more than anything, the impossible thing: Arden there with me. If only want were enough.

“God, I can’t believe this is Dylan we’re talking about. Finish the job, like he’s some kind of … psychopath. It doesn’t make sense. He’s never shown a single sign of aggression in his life. He rescues bumblebees with broken wings. He carries a vial of sugar water, for god’s sake.” “Yeah, well. Hitler was a vegetarian.”

life gives us grief like mounds of wet clay, ripe and heavy beneath our reluctant hands, and with it we can do one of three things.