Descending Star

PILGRIMAGE

Edythe and Alice had passed many city airports on their race east, the better to be moving toward Italy, even on foot, than to be pacing in departure terminals, waiting for boarding calls. They ran from Washington all the way to Indianapolis before nailing the timing perfectly, and there they passed easily through Customs, straight to the boarding queue for a direct flight to Lisbon.

On the run to Indianapolis, Edythe had begged for candid news on Ben's peril.

Alice did not know how much she had to explain, so she first sought confirmation that Edythe had once been to Volterra and had witnessed its jaded decadence, its casual debauchery, for herself.

"Just once," Edythe provided, "dragged there by Carlisle on some errand or other, and this was a long time ago, not many years after Rex found Emelia."

"I doubt it has changed all that much since then," said Alice. "I suspect we reach a point where time no longer passes for us."

The false promise of immortality and the core of its fallacy: that immortality could not be felt by one, could have no value for one, who no longer felt time passing.

"Carlisle and I were there for little more than an hour, but I was repulsed by its casual atrocities. I recall its gardens, and its audience chambers, each room more grisly than the last. Carlisle ushered me out of the place for my safety. Jane hated me on sight."

"Why?"

"No idea. Her mind was a complete mask. I could not see her, at all."

This intrigued Alice, because they had often debated the unlikelihood that only one mind, Ben Swan's would be closed to her. "Is her mind shrouded to your vision, like Ben's mind?"

"Nothing like Ben. I could read her easily enough, but her only thought seemed to be her perpetual agony. I didn't know what it meant, only that it was both real and terribly acute. She comported herself with an outward calm, but within, just below her skin, she burned in an interminable hell. I think it likely that she also regressed cognitively, as a result of whatever was done to her. She and Alec are true twins, and they first perished as young adults, yet she acts like a child perpetually on the verge of a tantrum. Alice, I can't imagine Ben in such a place. Spare me nothing. In what manner and to what degree is my Benjamin suffering?" Her speech caught and faltered on his full name. As they raced across the Midwest for a suitable flight, she held herself to the earth only with her obsessive industry, and she knew that within, a terrible wrath yearned for expression. "Tell me he is not in the topiary garden, Alice. Or worse... God... that infernal Tasting Room."

She shuddered with fright. Benjamin tasted more delicious than all the prized vintages in that room combined.

The next words from Alice were so shocking that Edythe found herself incapable of believing them. "They are treating him well."

"Please don't lie to me, Alice!"

"It is true. That is what I see, and I trust it. I have never met any of them, but I know Ben cold. I can't be sure, but I think it might be possible that Jane and Alec are protecting him. I see Ben plotting to ensure that chocolate is an ingredient in every one of his meals. I don't understand that part. Maybe it's possible that Jane has a sweet tooth."

Edythe skeptically pressed, "For chocolate?"

Alice shrugged. "Outlandish, I admit, but if you think about it, no more weird than the slop Carlisle's been having us eat these past decades. Maybe chocolate is a palliative. It might somehow ease Jane's pain. Anyway, he started by placating her with it, but now they seem to have become fast friends, as unlikely as it would seem. An odd variation on The Arabian Nights. Keeping the horror at bay not with stories, but with sweets."