Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 3

yet, but we couldn't count on that to last. "I was frantic when I went back and found the temple destroyed. I thought I had lost my chance with you."
    Do you really think there still is a chance?
    "Of course," he said, surprised by my question. There was the confidence I knew, there was the man I knew. "I've been experimenting on one of my mother's castoffs, a dog that bit her. I'm getting close, I know it."
    Excellent. We'll have to look out for the horse when you get it right, then. He's been trying to trample me for a long damn time, and it would be too ironic if you brought me back to life just in time to kiss his hoof with my face.
    He laughed, and this time it was a real laugh, not angry or hurt. "The horse is still alive, then? I never really knew, except for you. None of the others has spoken."
    There's life in the horse, a real presence. Mostly one I ignore, I said. The men… their bodies live within the stone, but their minds are gone. They've been gone since the beginning. And Diomedes is truly stone, no life inside of him, thankfully.
    "Did you love him?" Eryx asked.
    Yes, but not like I love you, I replied truthfully. Tell me more about your life since I saw you last. Tell me about your son.
    He sat at my feet, so reminiscent of the past that I tried to smile, and began to tell me about the boy who had died. If the few other people who passed by thought the tableau strange, they didn't say anything. Eryx came back every day for a week, and we spoke about everything, and he read me the paper and a slender volume of ecstatic poetry from the Middle East, first written over a thousand years ago and recently translated into English. The words were simple but evocative, and even better spoken in his murmuring baritone.
    When he left at last, it was reluctantly. "I'll have it the next time I come to you," he promised me.
    I'll be here.
    "Good." His long fingertips brushed over my back and shoulders, tender even through stone. "Good." Then he left me, strong and assured once more, and he didn't look back.
    ****
    My education never stopped, for which I was grateful. I learned about man travelling to the moon. I learned about the Cold War and Monty Python and the Beatles. Sadly, I even learned about reality TV and the Kardashians, which so put me off my game that I spent a month after that convincing a graduate student in modern literature to read Infinite Jest at my feet, just so I could recover some of my intelligence. I saw the realms of the gods come to life in cinema, and felt a pang of nostalgia for the days when the only theater we had sprang from our own imaginations as we listened to epic tales recounted in court or around a campfire. This new art was in some ways a lessening evolution for the human race, but I wasn't so opposed to it that I didn't watch The Avengers movie three times. Thank the gods for iPads and suggestible minds. And for Robert Downey, Jr. Yum.
    I was so busy keeping myself that way that, at first, I didn't notice the change my body was going through. It started at my feet, a sense of numbness that was so close to normal it was easy to overlook, and soon slowly spread up my legs. By the time the numbness reached my groin, I was well aware of it, but I had a sneaking suspicion that in this case, knowledge wasn't power. Knowing just made me feel resigned. It looked like the end was coming after all. Final death, in the form of ossification. I wasn't sure why it was happening, but I was annoyed that it was happening now and hadn't occurred during one of the centuries I'd spent frozen and alone and unstimulated. I hadn't even finished the latest season of Sherlock , which a friendly museum curator had the decency to watch while sitting on the bench next to me.
    The worst of it was, I hadn't seen Eryx in over sixty years. That wasn't long for the two of us, but at the rate I was solidifying, I would be long gone by the time he came to look in on me. I hadn't forgotten what he'd said to me the last time we'd spoken, the desperation in his voice and the neediness of his soul. I was important to him, and now I was going to leave him. I wasn't sure he would survive it. I didn't know for sure how an immortal died, but I was betting the Highlander method would work. The last thing I wanted, the last thing I had ever wanted, was to cause Eryx pain. And now I would anyway, and there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn't even reach out to him to say goodbye.
    It turned out I didn't have to go