The Watchtower

women ignored me.
    “Clearly he loves her. Why else would he send her a sign to join him on the road to the Summer Country? Perhaps he only wished to spare her the difficulty of the initial stages of the journey.”
    Madame Weiss made an exasperated sound. “Typical of you immortals—always thinking you know what’s best for us poor weak humans.…”
    As Adele continued, complaining about the high-handed approach of supernatural beings to mortals, I realized that the women weren’t really talking about me and Will anymore—they were enacting some old conflict in their own relationship. I could see the women’s love for each other beneath the anger in the way Madame Weiss looked into Madame La Pieuvre’s eyes and in the way Madame La Pieuvre’s hands roved restlessly over her lover’s hair and arms, trying to soothe her. Clearly, that one of them had two arms and the other had eight was not the problem. The problem was that one of them, Adele Weiss, would age and die and the other, Octavia La Pieuvre, would live forever. At first I thought that perhaps Madame Weiss had begged Octavia to make her immortal—as Will had told me he had begged Marguerite—but as I listened I realized it was the opposite. Madame La Pieuvre was offering to end her life with her Adele.
    “I could go with Garet to the Summer Country and ask her to make me mortal. Then we could age and die together. It’s what I’ve always wanted,” Madame La Pieuvre said, turning to me, her black eyes glistening with unshed tears, “to end my long life with the person I love the most.”
    Adele opened her mouth to say something but Octavia placed a long finger on her lips. “It might be our only chance, darling. I’m sure that Garet is meant to make the journey. I could go with her … let me go with her, please !” Then, turning to me: “That is, if you don’t mind, my dear. I promise that I can be of help to you along the way as guide and interpreter.”
    “I suppose…,” I began, but stopped when I saw Adele’s tear-streaked face. She shook her head, the droop of her shoulders expressing a resignation that seemed habitual.
    “I see there’s nothing I can say to stop you,” Adele said to Octavia. “And you…” Adele turned to me. “I just hope that the creature you find at the end of the road is worth it.”
    Then Adele got up, smoothed her skirt, and walked out of the room.
    “Mon petit Edelweiss!” Octavia murmured. Several of her arms drifted in Adele’s direction as she left, but didn’t touch her. One drifted to her own hair and patted her already immaculate chignon, another plucked a white blossom from the bouquet that I’d brought her from Monsieur Lutin earlier today. She brought it to her snub nose, closed her eyes, inhaled the sweet scent, then put the blossom back into the bouquet.
    “Please don’t mind Adele. It pains her to think of me giving up a second of my life for her sake, but she simply doesn’t know how very wearing immortality is. It isn’t for her sake alone that I seek a release from it, but it would give me great pleasure to end my life with hers.”
    “Can’t you just…” I faltered, unsure how to delicately suggest suicide.
    “Even if I destroyed this fleshly body, the bit of myself that is fey would linger in bodiless form for all eternity.” Octavia leaned closer to me, her black eyes glittering and all her arms floating in the air around her like the ethereal spirits she spoke of. “I once encountered a bodiless fey spirit in the forest of Brocéliande—a poor tortured creature who had killed herself for love of a mortal. Her cries were enough to tear your heart in two. No, what I crave is the release of mortal death while holding the hand of my beloved.”
    Octavia held out the hand that had held the white edelweiss blossom, her fingers cupped as if she still held the flower, then held out another, and another, until eight empty hands were before me, each one begging for one thing.
    “Of course,” I said, unable to resist such an entreaty. “I’d be honored to have your company on the journey.”

10
    Lightning
    The next few weeks were the most glorious of Will’s life. He saw Marguerite nearly every day, and her insistence that their relationship was to be viewed as “spiritual,” not “romantic,” seemed to be honored more in the breach than the observance. Or, as Marguerite would occasionally concede, amorousness could have spirituality at its core, and so could