Until I Die

energy? And same for Arthur with Georgia?”
Vincent nodded.
“And what about the girl who almost got run over by the truck the other day? I saw her afterward, sitting in shock by the side of the road.”
“Which is why I was able to stand up and walk away from the accident scene,” he confirmed. “That transfer of energy makes us physically stronger. Our muscles, hair, nails, everything goes into overdrive. It’s a rush—like a hit of power for us.” He watched for my reaction.
“So, basically what you’re saying is that I’m going out with a druggie zombie with a death wish. Who used me for my energy. Well”—I gave him as serious a look as I could muster—“I guess I could do worse.”
Vincent’s laugh turned several heads, and we stood to leave before we drew any more attention to ourselves.
“So Arthur’s going to be okay?” I asked as we passed the gigantic tableau showing Napoleon’s coronation.
“Yep, thanks to Georgia loaning him her strength, among other reasons”—and at this, Vincent turned his eyes from mine in an incredibly suspicious gesture—“he’s actually not in any pain and has his full strength.”
What was that about? I thought, my curiosity piqued. But I had to drop the thought to refocus on what he was saying.
“But his wound won’t heal completely until he’s dormant. And since it’s pretty serious, he’ll probably be laid up in bed a whole day after he awakes.”
“Why?”
“The more severely wounded you are before dormancy, the longer it takes you to recover,” he stated, shrugging as if it were mere logic. “If a severed limb is reconnected during dormancy, we could need another day or two of recovery after awaking. Regenerating body parts lays us up for weeks.”
Eww . Although I wanted to know everything about the revenants, sometimes the details Vincent gave me fell into the TMI category. Like now. I tried not to visualize what he had just said, and thought instead about the repercussions. As we walked out of the museum and headed toward the bridge crossing the Seine to our neighborhood, I mulled it over.
The revenant-human relationship was symbiotic—to say the least. Humans relied on revenants (however unknowingly) as we would on doctors or emergency workers: to save our lives. Revenants needed humans not only to keep them existent, but to ease the emotional and physical pain imposed by their particular lifestyle. Or deathstyle, rather , I thought in a flash of morbidity.
Without revenants, humans would still exist … many would just die a lot earlier. Without humans, revenants would cease to exist. Not to mention that they started out human in the first place.
The system had been working for a long time. Problems only arose when something out of the ordinary happened. Like a human and a revenant falling in love. And, once again, my mind returned to our plight. If I was going to see the guérisseur —that is, if I ever showed up when she happened to be there—I needed to know what to ask. Since Vincent was in an explaining mood, I decided to dig a bit deeper.
“So, how does it work? Can a revenant ever die—of natural causes—and just … stop existing?”
“Strictly speaking, it’s possible,” he said. “But no one can withstand the temptation to sacrifice themselves at the end.”
“Wait, I thought the older you get, the less you suffer,” I said, confused.
“Up to a point, and then when the time for a regular human death approaches, it’s like the pendulum suddenly swings back and the suffering is greater than ever.” I shivered, and noticing, Vincent put his arm around me and pulled me close as we continued to walk.
“Gaspard told me once about this Italian revenant he knew—Lorenzo something. The guy was centuries old and barely felt the pull of dying anymore. At one point, all the deaths and rescues he had experienced in his existence got to be too much and he decided to sequester himself. He went and lived like a hermit in this isolated hilltop retreat. And it wasn’t until decades later that he had a message brought to his kindred that he needed help.
“They came and got him—he was in his eighties by then—and had to help him find someone to save. He said that his physical and mental suffering had come on like a tidal wave—within the space of a few days. The craving to sacrifice himself for someone was too great to let him just lie down and die, which was all he wanted.”
We were both silent for a long time as the