Worlds War One

xlii [Quest]

"Do you sleep?" Quest asked Penina.

"I would call it meditation," Nina answered. "The neeeeed for sleeeeep is inherentlyyyy biological, and minerals make up my bodyyyy. Yet I find regular meditation helpful for my peeeeace of mind."

"Then you don't eat, either?"

"No," Nina admitted. "Golems are rather self-sustaining."

"It would make for a unique date," Quest said. "I suppose you don't go to restaurants."

"You want to take meeee on a date?"

"You do date, don't you?" Penina's gaze flittered nervously away. "Did I say the wrong thing?"

"There are rules in the Wider World, Quest. Rules against a Human going on a date with a Golem."

"There are always rules against love, Nina. I've never paid much attention to following them."

"Well, breaking theeeese rules can get us killed."

Quest sighed. "Maybe you haven't paid much attention to history. In any era, breaking the rules could get someone killed."

Everything changed. Nothing changed. The world got big, and the world was still so small. The opportunities now seemed endless, nothing out of reach except what has eternally been out of reach—loving without hatred.

"Intertribal romance is strictlyyyy prohibited," Nina informed Quest. "Reeeeproduction betweeeeen members of different tribes would beeee devastating to the Way Things Reeeeally Are."

"Someone telling my heart what it can feel and what it can't is devastating," Quest replied. "It's the same old story. I thought this was supposed to be something new."

When Quest was seventeen, he'd gone to pick up his date for junior prom. This occasion was during what was supposed to be the age of enlightenment. Gay marriage was legal. Massachusetts is supposed to be a progressive place. Yet when Quest had shown up to pick up his date, a large man had greeted him. He'd filled the doorway side-to-side. It hadn't been the butler—it had been the father. "You can't take my son to this dance," the father had said, and that was that. Quest had turned and walked away. He'd gone to the dance alone. It hadn't been the first time, and it wouldn't be the last. Ignorance was more stubborn than enlightenment. And the Wider World was no different.

"Quest," Nina whispered, her white marble eyes gazing at him, looking into him, and he was sure he had never felt this way about anyone, ever. "It is impossible."

"Yesterday, I thought flirting with a beautiful woman made of marble while sitting in the Garden of Eden before attacking a bunch of zombies was impossible," Quest said. "I think impossible is only what we accept as the rules we don't want to break."

"I can't," she said.

"There's no such thing as can't," Quest countered. "You won't."

She set her porcelain lips. Her face appeared torn between a smile and fear. Her hand was inches from the tips of Quest's fingers. He longed to touch her. But it was her move. She moved. Nina stood up and left without a word. She might not have to sleep. She might not have to eat. But a small crystal tear dropped as she walked away, and she left it behind on the loamy ground. Quest bent down and retrieved it. Clear and perfect, like a petrified dewdrop, still warm to the touch. Quest put it in his jacket pocket right next to his heart, right next to the obol that contained Callie's soul.

Autumn appeared from nowhere.

"I suppose you heard all that?" Quest asked.

"I didn't mean to eavesdrop," Autumn said. "I didn't know I was invisible at first. Then things started to get tense, and I stayed unseen. I'm sorry."

"It's okay. Maybe it's better if Nina thinks no one else knows how I feel about her."

"I think everyone knows how you feel about her, Quest."

"Look at this place," Quest sighed, gazing around at exotic plant life, surrounded by creatures that defied imagination, in a world where time doesn't exist. "It's supposed to be something new and exciting. But it's only more of the same, isn't it?"

"Isis said we live in a binary system, Quest. Where there is love, there will forever be its opposite."

"If the Forsaken Land works on a trinary system, maybe there's a chance for love if Nina and I stay here," Quest mused. Maybe Penina didn't want to stay here. Maybe there was another choice than only here or there in a trinary system—a third option.

"There's a chance for something else, Quest," Autumn agreed. "I'm staying."

Quest turned and looked at the Ghost. She flickered away, then came back. Was the Nowhere different in the First World than it was back home?

"Why?" Quest asked.

"I started on this path to avenge the death of my sister," Autumn confessed. "But I understand now that she isn't dead. She's transformed. Something else. So am I. My purpose is no longer something as simple as revenge. We lived where the scales of justice had to tilt one way or another, but there's a different option here in the Forsaken Land. Sacrifice can temper violence. The Ghosts of the First World sublimate their spirits to balance the extremes. My place in this story needs to be something other than retribution."

"An eye for an eye is Old Testament nonsense, Autumn Loloma," Isis said, approaching. "You are welcome to stay here with us in the Garden."

"Autumn is the sister of Spring. Those seasons have passed," the Ghost replied. "Call me Pept of the A'aninin."

Isis nodded, flashing a smile that suggested neither bemusement nor pleasure. Something else.

"And you, Quest Ramírez? Will you be staying as well?"

How much had Isis heard? Were there rules against certain expressions of love here in the Forsaken Land as well? How old were these rules that prevented a Human from loving someone else? Could someone from Isis's tribe partner with a Changeling? Or a giant Leviathan? Or a Ghosted kéntron?

Quest couldn't stay. He had a mission, and his duty superseded his feelings for Nina. Besides, why did he think she would give up her world to stay here with him? She hadn't even said she liked him back. She had run off, but Quest wasn't going to run away, too. He would stand and fight. He owed that to Ji, who'd sacrificed a lot already. And to Callie, soul stuck in an Obol. And Lieutenant Robinson, who was determined to see this through.

"I can't stay," Quest answered. "I have a duty."

"How noble," Isis said. She tilted her large head, listening to something that Quest couldn't hear. Pept of the A'aninin surveyed the distance with a Ghostly gaze. The expression on Autumn's face previewed the words out of Isis's mouth—"Johnny Rotten is here. Mot has entered the Forsaken Land."