A deep silence spread inside the room, only interrupted by the occasional drone of a car passing by. Eiea looked at Mom and I with a calm gaze and a neutral expression. I don’t know if she was trying to calm me by doing that, but frankly I didn’t think it was helping. My mind was twisting around violently. What do you mean, witches live eternally? No, asking that was just a way to express frustration, I knew perfectly what she meant. Soon, I would stop aging. My appearance after that would never change. People around me that aren’t witches, like Mom, would slowly wither and die while I stay completely unchanged.
I cannot say that this was a scenario I had never contemplated. It is a popular subject within the fantasy stories I loved to read. But being told I was in this situation was not something I could process immediately. Before drowning in a mire of dark thoughts, I pushed them temporarily to the back of my head to look at Mom. She was pale, blocking her mouth from view with a hand, but the shock in her expression could be seen nonetheless. Her gaze was steady, looking at Eiea’s face but avoiding her eyes. It seemed like she had stopped thinking for a while.
Ok, Maria, time to think about what this means. I grabbed back the questions I had shoved away moments early. Today’s exhibit: I will live eternally unless I am killed. What are the repercussions? For one, it means I won’t have to worry about dying of old age or other effects of aging. Put that in the basket of good things. Wait, will I still get sick and whatnot? Question for later.
Next, It means that I will see Mom die for certain. That is a revolting thought, but since she is older than me, odds are it would’ve happened anyway. Can’t put the blame for that on being a witch, so I can drop that case. Similarly, it also means I will experience the death of everyone I know that aren’t witches. That is undoubtedly very bad. I’m not the most social of persons, but I still do have friends. And I plan to make more in the future. I started feeling nauseous, but I ignored it and continued.
Next, it is generally thought that eternal life is a bad thing that may lead to existential boredom, depression, etc. However, in most cases where that hypothetical is discussed, the affected person is either completely unable to die or extremely difficult to kill. That isn’t the case here, so if I ever want to stop living, doing so would be fairly simple in theory. That is good, I can avoid the worst-case scenario.
Finally, humans don’t usually live for eternity, nor are they unageing (duh). Which means I will have to trick anyone who doesn’t know of witches, including the government. And the witch hunters since that would be a sure way to know that I am a witch. That is also bad. Situationally worse than the other bad consequences of this. But witches have been living like this for god knows how long, so logically they must have a way to do this. I can ask Eiea later. Also, wouldn’t scientists want to examine my body to find out how it is possible for me to be unageing? Assuming it’s something comprehensible by science, which it probably isn’t. And the witch hunters would kill me before I can be examined anyway. I should also ask Eiea how that immortality works.
I don’t know how long I was thinking, but when I lifted my head, Eiea and Mom were looking at me with an expression of worry. For now, this kind of immortality didn’t seem to be that bad of a deal, but I still had questions that needed answering.
“I’ve got some questions.”
Eiea smiled at me, seeming pleased that I wasn’t taking it too hard.
“Ask away”
“First of all, how does this immortality work with disease?”
“You can still get poisoned and catch ailments that come from external factors such as virus or bacterial infections. However, it invalidates most diseases that come from internal factors such as aging or genetics. In other words, you won’t get Parkinson's or cancer, but the flu will still put you to bed once each year.”
That wasn’t a bad deal at all. I don’t know if my biological parents had family histories of this kind of disease, but avoiding them altogether is great, definitely a plus.
“How do you trick the wider world if you always stay the same age?”
“Ah...”
Eiea looked awkward for a bit.
“We mostly don’t. A lot of witches end up as missing people for years and presumed dead. We have ways to create fake IDs afterwards if we need to mingle with society.”
“Wouldn’t the witch hunters get alerted by that many missing people?”
“It’s really not that many you know? Just in the US, the number of missing persons every year is higher than 600k, and the global population of witches is pretty much always 15k. We are a drop in the bucket. Hiding like this is fairly easy.”
600k every year ?! I was not aware it was that much… but it does explain how they can disappear so easily. But wait, didn’t Eiea give her real name to that police officer yesterday? Isn’t that bad?! Or is Eiea not her real name? That would explain why her name is so… unusual.
“You gave the name Eiea Canton to the police officer yesterday… Is that not your real name?”
“No, it is my real name. Well, not my birth name, but definitely the one most people called me in the last half of my life. It’s also what I consider to be my real name.”
“But… is it fine to give that to a police officer and the government?!”
“It’s fine. I told you that the witch hunters already know I'm here, right? I didn’t care about using my real name there since I wanted them to come to me, but they never did. So, I just asked an acquaintance to modify my age within the system periodically, as well as doctor different records. I will have to do something about that now that I think about it...”
Eiea started grumbling to herself about different things. I felt relieved that she had given us her real name. Or at least what came closest to it. It would’ve felt crushing not to have at least that kind of trust. Giving to the authorities trying to kill her is a different matter, however.
“And what are you going to do about it now? What if they decide to kill you tomorrow?”
Mom voiced her concerns with a mix of exasperation and distress on her face.
“I’ll send them packing and move out I guess. There isn’t much else I can do at this point; they are already well aware of my position. We just have to hope they keep being scaredy cats and leave us alone.”
“That’s some wishful thinking, we need a real backup plan!”
Mom seems angry now, though my own sense of danger was not really reacting. Eiea’s presence felt like an almighty protection to me, even more now than before. I couldn’t imagine her having trouble with anything, I was sure she had a solid plan for that eventuality.
“Don’t worry too much about it, Veronica. The worst thing that could happen is me being forced to come out of retirement. I have ways to run away that no ordinary person would be able to follow, even the witch hunters.”
“But what if they target Maria! She won’t always be around you. I don’t know how strong you are or anything, but at least I know she’s not strong enough to protect herself from any violent group, never mind one funded by governments!”
I couldn’t exactly contradict that. I didn’t feel any stronger since I became a witch, and I couldn’t imagine myself winning a fight. I wasn’t even athletic at all. I didn’t dislike sports, but I had no particular reason to like them either.
“You’re right, Maria is not there. Yet. That is why I’m going to train her. It’s unfortunate, but as a witch it is imperative that you learn how to control and use your power to protect yourself.”
Mom fell silent, going back into deep thought.
“Do you have any other questions?”
Eiea seemed eager to change the topic.
“How does that immortality even come about?”
She blinked a few times, surprised.
“Frankly, I don’t know. A few science-minded witches in the past did research that kind of thing and we know a bit, but the overall process is still a mystery. From what I heard, the process of cell regeneration becomes a lot more efficient than in normal humans. But I’m not an expert. Ironically, the witch hunters probably know more about that than us. They don’t care much about the safety of their test subjects after all...”
A cold silence descended upon the room for a moment, before Eiea made an “ah, crap” expression. Seems like Eiea was really bad at avoiding difficult conversation topics.
“So yeah, that’s about it. You don’t have any other questions, right? Good!”
After failing to change the topic, I guess Eiea decided to completely end the conversation instead. The panic in her tone was quite noticeable. At least her frantic behaviour managed to lighten the mood a bit. Mom decided to take the job of clearing our minds, saying with determination that it was time for lunch and heading to the kitchen. Eiea promptly followed her, while I opted for retreating to my bedroom in the meantime.
For now, I more or less decided to shelve the immortality matter as mostly “mostly good thing”. I’ll think about it some more later on, breaking my mood on it now wouldn’t help me. I grabbed “A Night in Walpurgis”, opening it for the first time. Now should be as good a time as any to start it.
The book started slowly, detailing mostly the state of the life of the author before his adventure. He was a run-of-the-mill mailman it seems, delivering mail to a small, forest-side town in the US. Throughout his career, he had come to know every single person living within the small town. He knew their names, addresses, family situations, jobs, schedules, etc. But there was this one man, living at the edge of town close to the forest, that was a complete enigma. The author did not know his name, because the label on his letters did not match with the nickname the man asked to be given, nor the moniker the other people in the town would call him. The author did not know his family situation, because the man would live alone yet receive frequent visits from people not of this town, and rarely did the same person come twice. He did not know the man’s job nor schedule, as he would periodically leave his house for fixed periods of time, but never at the same time of day and always disappearing god knows where.
After a long time observing this strange man, the mailman’s curiosity eventually grew so ravenous that he could not take it anymore. He resolved himself to, at the very least, find out where the man was going every day. Since he would always leave his house at different times, the author called in sick one day and hid near the man’s house, waiting patiently for him to come out. After several hours, he left in the direction of the town. The mailman followed him discreetly. The man wandered into town, walking seemingly with no particular direction in mind as he would periodically stop, look around like he was pondering which direction to go, and then continue. After taking many detours and walking almost half the length of the entire town, the author was surprised to notice they had almost come full circle and were now facing the forest at the edge of town, not far from the man’s house. He entered the forest without hesitation this time and the mailman rushed behind him, determined not to lose sight of him.
Walking in the forest was difficult, for it was overgrown, rarely if ever maintained nor visited. They walked a deer’s trail, snaking through the rotten oaks and drooping pines. The man would sometimes do weird motions, such as waving his hands at random trees, picking up branches on the ground and planting them in nearby bushes, stopping to hum a tune or whistle for a minute before continuing. Occasionally he would circle specific trees, never even pondering which to choose, three or four times before knocking on the trunk a few times. He would find some wild fruits or berries, eat some and then pick some more just to leave them in an empty bird’s nest on a very low branch. He would flip rocks on the forest floor, disturb the ground underneath with a thick branch, before setting it back in its previous position. The mailman, following closely behind, would wonder at these seemingly random antics while being cautious not to make any noise that would betray his presence.
However, he became uncomfortable after a while. A strange feeling overcame him. He had never come to the forest before, but it started feeling unsettlingly unfamiliar. Trees, rocks, bushes, branches, puddles seemed like they didn’t belong where they were. The rustling of leaves, agitated by the wind, sounded abnormal. He swore he could hear laughter, snickering, cackling, chanting, singing, whispering, shouting, screaming. All at once, the timber, pitch, volume and echo of every sound the forest was making felt wrong, misplaced. He swore he could feel eyes on him but would only find greenery when he turned back to look. The man he was following was slowly getting further from him, despite neither of them changing their pace. And then, after a turn around a particularly large boulder, the mailman found his target completely gone.
He looked everywhere around the rock, in the trees and under bushes but did not find any evidence of the man he had been following all this time. He started panicking, thinking about how far he was in the woods with no way to get back to the town, shivering out of both his fear and the biting cold of the wind. He looked at the ground, finding only a strangely ordered, circular chain of wild mushrooms. As the feeling of incongruity became even more powerful, he felt a very slight, gentle push between his shoulder blades. The strength behind it was minuscule, but it caused him to take one step inside the circle, and a flash of light blinded his vision.
I was pulled out of the book by Mom‘s voice, shouting at me from downstairs to come down. Lunch was ready. Feeling slightly frustrated, I put down the book after placing a page marker inside and headed towards the smell coming from the stairs. Mom and Eiea had made some grilled sandwiches.
