EPILOGUE

My Spirit Is Crying for Leaving

JUNE 2073—THE FLOWER MOON

Yes, thinks Eric Seven. Our journeys began, lifetimes ago.

I have lived this before, but I will not live it again.

He knows that this is his last life. Somehow, as he lies on the stone table, the moment before the violence of the knife-fall, he knows it all.

The sun shines and the lizards crawl and the clover scents the sea air and the knife gleams and Merle’s face hangs over him, blotting out the ever-present sun like an eclipse.

Maybe he knows nothing. Maybe it’s that he feels it all, but whatever is happening to him, he understands that he lived before. He lived other lives, in different times. And why not? It’s something he has often wondered about, sitting on the train in the morning, looking from the corner of his eye at the other commuters, wondering why.

Why am I not living that person’s life? That man, there, with the sharp suit and the slightly stupid tie? Or that scruffy guy with his headphones? Or that woman, a little pregnant?

Often, as he sat fiddling with OneDegree, he has wondered why this life is the one he’s had, and not one of the thousands of contacts passing through the device, or one of the countless others that could have been his.

Now he knows. He has been others.

*   *   *

A blood sacrifice.

A blessing, so that his blood might bring children back to the island.

Tor nods, and Henrik’s hand rises.

Then.

“Wait,” says Merle, quietly.

Henrik hesitates, and Tor turns to Merle. “What is it, child?”

Merle turns slowly to Tor, smiling. “Let me do it. I am the child of the island. Let me bring the children back.”

Tor smiles, and nods.

“Yes. Yes, that is the right thing,” he says.

Henrik hands the long ritual knife to Merle.

Eric wriggles in their hands, and yet he does not fight so very hard.

He cannot believe it will end like this.

Merle swings the knife, but not down at Eric, she swings it sideways, and with a stroke, she has slashed the hands holding him down.

With another stroke, she slices at the faces of Tor and Henrik.

The hands tumble away and Merle looks at Eric.

Dropping the knife, she shouts, “Run!”

People rush to help the wounded islanders. For a moment everyone is too stunned to grasp what has happened.

Tor tries to shout. He tries to speak. He tries to tell the others to stop Merle and Eric, but he cannot, for she has sliced his throat, not deeply, but enough to stop him from doing anything but writhing on the table, and now it is his blood that washes from the spout.

“There!” shouts Merle, as they scramble down toward the shore, to the rocks. “I have a boat!”

Eric is shocked, too, too shocked to speak, or to question.

Merle cries out, “I knew it was you!” she shouts, triumphantly. “I knew it was you.”

“But you…?” Eric cries. “The tea?”

“Stopped drinking it months ago. Just let them think I still was.”

They round the rocks as the pursuit finally closes in on them, and there is the boat, hidden in a small cove.

But there, too, are more islanders.

Eric and Merle stop dead.

Between them and the boat are a dozen strong men at least.

They falter, and as they falter, they are seized, with fierce hands and strong words.

They fight, wordlessly, but it is hopeless. Grimly and silently, they are dragged back to the table, where Henrik stands, clutching his face.

Tor lies on the hot summer earth, bleeding into it.

More hands push them roughly to the table.

“No!” screams Merle now, as she sees Henrik lift the knife from the ground, and approach them, but Eric calls to her, “Merle! Merle!”

She turns, looking into his eyes.

“Merle. My spirit is crying for leaving.”

She shakes her head, tears flowing freely.

“Merle. Understand. Remember the sea…”

She does understand, she senses it, too. Her tears and her trembling cease, and calm enters her blood.

She knows that they both believe the same thing, that if a life can be ruined in a single moment, a moment of betrayal, or violence, or ill luck, then why can a life not also be saved, be worth living, be made, by just a few pure moments of perfection?

She shuts her eyes, and dreams of swimming with him.

Immediately, the rest of the world drops away.

*   *   *

The sounds of the angry islanders.

The blue of the sky.

The smell of the sea and the clover.

The knife, descending.

*   *   *

There is nothing now but the two of them, and their love, which has waited for centuries to be made again, and as their blood flows, first from Merle, and then from Eric, as their blood mingles on the table and in the soil of Blessed Island, they are no longer in love, they have become love itself.

*   *   *

And their journey begins.

So, it is.