The Watchtower

bare twigs scraping against one another.
    “That would be … nice. All I’ve ever wanted was an apology.”
    “Then you’ll get one,” I promised.
    Then she whispered in my ear what I needed to do to find the path to the Summer Country.

12
    Atomsight
    Back in their room, back in their bed, Marguerite turned toward Will, took his face in her cupped hands, and told him the truth about herself. She told him even as the last flashes of lightning from a now diminishing storm illumined her face and its uncanny, ethereal beauty.
    Marguerite told Will that she was of the fey and immortal, and that was why she’d been able to shrug off the lightning bolt as if it were a moonbeam. She could be physically killed, nowhere near as easily as a mortal but in a few specific ways, but not by lightning because it came from the light as she did. The bolt’s effect on her had been that of pouring a few drops of water into a half-full glass. None. They were of the same element. He had been accurate in his observation.
    “The fey,” Will reflected wonderingly, even as he thought to ask if the poet had known this. But Marguerite was so exhausted now that the instant they fell into each other’s arms in a relieved embrace, she fell into the deepest sleep.
    Will was fatigued as well, but he lingered awake a few minutes experiencing the most unbounded sort of joy any lover could experience. His beloved, the most precious person in the world to him, could live forever! As long as she took precautions against the small list of dangers she’d alluded to. Her own flesh and blood would not betray her with age as his would, with this symptom and then that, and then some crushing new weakness or annihilatory event, the sad way of mortal flesh.
    No greater revelation than this was possible for a lover!
    Will joined Marguerite in her deep, tender sleep, the rest of the blessed: a serene glow seeping into the cells of his brain and blood, the atoms of his flesh, even into his poetic and mathematical soul.
    Second to sleep, he was first to awake, before the sun had poked above the horizon. Though nothing regarding immortality had changed overnight, or could have, Will awoke with a vague dread suffusing his mind and blood, the same mind and blood so gifted with serenity in sleep. Unable to remain still, he got up quietly so as not to wake Marguerite and went out into the still morning. He walked in the direction of the pond where they’d been the previous day, as if the black and white swans they’d seen there made it a reassuring place, despite her dismayed reaction to the story of betrayal and wounding with an arrow.
    The storm had passed, leaving a rose and gold dawn promising a beautiful clear day. Why, then, did he feel this apprehension? After a few inchoate moments, he identified the source of his dark sensation. If Marguerite was going to live forever and he was going to die, he could never be to her what she was to him.…
    Yes, as mortals they might be separated by death but not for long, and each could still be the central love of the other’s life. But with Marguerite immortal, no matter how much she loved him or came to love him, time would fade all their memories for her, stretching them out like ocean crests vanishing at the horizon, and she would always find another “great love of her life.” That was natural, not immoral. She’d always be young. He could ask her to wait for him while he was in prison, or away in war, or while captaining a ship, but not forever . No lover could ask another to wait forever . That was a true life sentence for the heart.
    Will saw himself, grimly, as one love of multitudes stretching out toward infinity, eventually a pathetic point coming when Marguerite could not recall him or his name. The image cut him searingly, to the bone, in a way no other thought in his life ever had. This was jealousy akin to terror!
    Will could not help but cry out, as if echoing the wailing creature the night before, and as he did, he saw where those cries had come from. There at the shore of the pond lay the black swan they’d seen earlier—dead, its beautiful long neck lying limp in the tall reeds. Will let out a moan, only this one was answered by a soft hand on his arm and an even softer voice speaking close to his ear.
    “Poor thing. I tried to save him last night, but it was too late. Listen. His mate is pining for him still.”
    Will became aware then of a plaintive mewling coming from the reeds. The