Samantha followed Esther deep into the grassy fields. Esther picked up speed as she moved further into the fields. Even at a fast jog, Samantha was having trouble keeping up with her. Samantha’s size was part of it. Although she was surprisingly quick for her size, she knew that over distance, the size weighed down heavily on her and slowed her down. She was barely able to keep Esther in view. It was not until Esther stopped that Samantha caught up to her.

Esther was standing by a large old tree. It was the only tree that could be seen in the field. It towered over the tall grass. Its trunk was knobby and covered with dead vines. Even this late in the season, brightly colored green leaves covered the tree. The branches were high enough for Esther to stand comfortably underneath without hitting her head on the leaves. Esther stood against the tree looking calmly at Samantha as she approached.

Some of the fog seemed to clear from Samantha’s head. She realized the danger she was in as she approached Esther. She realized it wasn’t rationale for her to be following her deep into the trees without her case. She remembered what was in her case and the game she played. She did not understand who Esther was. She thought she knew her. She had dug deep into her psyche when she touched her. She understood her, understood her background and motivations. This was not in character. Nothing that she did now could be explained by her actions.

“It’s good we’re alone now,” Esther said, echoing what Samantha had planned to say under different circumstances.

“I don’t understand. Why am I here? Who are you?”

“All good questions, Samantha. I wish you had listened to me earlier. There could be three of us around this tree having a conversation instead of only two—well, two and a half.” Esther gave Samantha a crooked smile. “Give me the vial, Samantha.”

Samantha grabbed the vial that hung around her neck. She took a step back.

“Do you even know what the guild does with those vials? Do you understand what this ‘essence’ really is?”

Samantha wanted to run. She wanted to get away from the situation. The dice were rolling in her head and she knew where the odds lay. She did not understand the situation, and without that understanding, she knew the dice were stacked against her. She looked back where she had run through the fields, but could not see the car or the way back to it. She knew the general direction, but also knew if she took off through the fields more likely than not she would end up going nowhere.

“No, I don’t know what the guild does with the vials. I don’t even understand the two incantations I know.”

“The incantations chant themselves, don’t they?” Esther said, nodding.

“What do you know about the incantations?”

“Well, Esther knew nothing. You were going to teach her that tiny amount that you knew. It’s regrettably too late for that. You made sure of that when you threw that sword of yours. Very clever, by the way. I did not expect it. The odds were definitely rolling a different way earlier in the evening. I would have preferred if the three of us were standing around the tree learning the truth of matters. But that’s okay. I’m used to swaying with changes. The universe has a strange sense of humor. You’re going to find out all about it soon enough.”

The truth came crashing into Samantha. Esther did not stand before her. Somehow, Henry McDougal stood before her. She must have looked shocked because Esther reached long arm toward Samantha. Samantha unconsciously took another step backwards moving closer to the edge of the clearing around the tree. She still had an opportunity to make a run for it. But she looked into Esther’s eyes and knew there was something more than Henry in there. She needed to know what had happened.

Esther sat down cross legged against the trunk of the tree. She closed her eyes and placed her hands palms up over her knees. “Sit with me.”

Samantha sat close to the edge of the clearing. She awkwardly crossed her oversized legs and sat staring at Esther as her breath came slowly in and out.

Esther’s eyes opened and she looked across from Samantha. “The vial that you’re wearing around your neck is the essence of Douglas Tries. He was a nice elderly man that was my neighbor some eighty years back. He too wanted to live forever. The thing about being immortal is that we’re a chosen bunch. Not everyone can succeed in the incantations. I explained it to him, but he persevered. There’s another incantation, of course. One that you unfortunately forced me to use on Esther when you threw that sword.”

“Is she gone?” Samantha asked.

“No more gone than Douglas Tries or the others before him. No more gone than you are when you first cast the incantation.”

“I don’t understand. What did you transfer if not your essence?”

“Ah, now you’re getting to the crux of the situation. I’m glad you got there without me having to explain it. You’ve seen what the essence of the body looks like. If it’s not the body, what do you think?”

“That’s all there is. You gave up your soul over a hundred years ago.”

“So they told you. They told you a lot of things. What if turns out that most of what they told you—most of those truths—were not true. They told you stuff because they wanted you to act a certain way.”

Samantha could not believe what she was hearing. She had worked the past fifty years to perfect her skills and the hunts. What she was hunting was not human. She would never hunt humans, only monsters.”

“The truth is not always painless,” Esther said. She closed her eyes. “There is much you are going to learn.” And with that Esther was silent. Samantha stared at her, horrified at the truths that she was hearing. She held the vial around her neck. It was physical evidence of the crime she committed, one of many. The guilt washed over her. That she didn’t know or that she was tricked didn’t make a difference. She was a murderer.

James Pleasant swung the sword for the thousandth time that day. They were in the basement of Tomlin’s home. It was not so much a home as a mansion. James could not understand how she could keep this place as clean as it was. She did not hire any help, and each day he would wake up expecting to see the mess from the previous day. But it was always clean.

The basement was the size of the entire house. The ceiling was over twelve feet tall and the walls were padded on one side, and mirrored on the other. The floor was divided into sections: hardwood, carpet, concrete, and a rubbery substance. Tomlin had explained it was designed for all possible types of floor. He needed to learn to fight regardless of what was on the floor or what was around him. Large blocks of different materials were scattered throughout the gym. Tomlin set them up to represent walls or obstacles, or placed them under the flooring to give slopes to fight around or through.

Tomlin had taught James the incantation for immortality the first day. The spell was difficult to remember. He had spent hours with the words, learning to form them in his mind. The pronunciation was the most difficult part. Like Mandarin, it was a tonal language, with each syllable having its own intonation and pitch. Tomlin had wanted more than just rote memorization for the spell. She wanted James to understand the meaning of the words, how they interrelate, what they were doing in the incantation.

James had questioned Tomlin on why this was so difficult. She had told him earlier that it was easy she could teach it to anyone in an evening. She had explained that James would know it already if Tomlin had just placed it in his mind. But she wanted him to understand the incantation. There was more to spells than just casting them. Understanding the intent and how it interrelates to the world was what made the lessons difficult.

“Mind on the sword,” Tomlin said. She swung the bamboo pole across James’s back. James tried not to flinch. Unlike the class, Tomlin no longer held back on the training. She felt pain helped with the training. When he failed in his lessons, she would whack him with whatever she happened to be holding. She had lately taken hold of a long bamboo staff. She trained with it when James was busy with drills. The cured bamboo was longer than her naginata, and provided a different feel when it moved through the air. She occasionally fell back into the naginata drills as she moved with the pole.

James returned to his stance and attacked the dummy with the bamboo sword. The sword hit the head on both sides in two quick successions. James was tired and sore, but he slid backwards and then went at the dummy again, changing the angle of attack slightly so he would hit the next peg along the head.

“It’s important that you can place the sword on any point in the body without thought,” Tomlin said, pausing her drill to watch James’s next attack. “Real fighting is not a point system. You have to forget what you learned in sparring in naginata. Likely you’ll get one swing in any fight. You have to make that swing count. Now, again.”

James went through the fifteen strike drill, falling backwards between each half strike. He was dripping with sweat, his hands slick on the bamboo hilt. He felt his hair flopping across the scalp with each strike. He must look himself a fool at this point. His fatigue caused him to drop the point of the sword. He felt the strike across his back before he had even heard Tomlin move.

“Again.”

The drilling continued late into the night. When he finished, he turned on the water and fell into the hot water bath. He had never bathed before he had moved in with Tomlin. She insisted he replace his showers with bathes. She told him that the martial training was only part of it. If he didn’t learn to enjoy life, his long life would be wasted. He soaked in the bath for a long time. His muscles were tight and he wasn’t sure he would have the energy to get out of the bath.

He eventually made his way down to the kitchen, finding that his hunger was greater than his fatigue. Tomlin had prepared dinner. Two placemats and utensils were set on the table. Tomlin stood near the stove mixing something in a pan.

“That was a very long bath.”

“I’m exhausted,” James said. “I was sure I was going to fall asleep in there.”

“But then your stomach started rumbling,” Tomlin said, finishing James’s thought.

“How do you do that? Is there some sort of spell for reading my mind?”

Tomlin laughed. “You underestimate how transparent you are, James.” She walked over to the table and pushed the grayish mass into his plate.

“Mush again!” James exclaimed, exasperated.

“You know it’s not mush, James. There’s everything you need to survive in this small mass, weighed and selected for all of your growing nutritional needs.”

“How can you live with only eating this? You said being immortal meant learning to live with only the best in life. You live in the best house, have the clothing, take wonderful bathes. Why the food?”

“It’s part of the secret of immortality, James. Eating turns out to be one of the things that slowly kills us.”

“We’re immortal, Tomlin. Nothing kills us.”

“The blade still kills us,” Tomlin reminded him. James rubbed his hand along his neck again. He couldn’t believe that he would get this gift, and have to worry about something so mundane to protect the gift.

“Why are we here? Why do we have this gift?” James asked, not for the first time. It was a question that still followed him around throughout his training. It had been three months since Tomlin introduced him to his gifts, and he still did not understand to what purpose they trained. He would wake up each morning more exhausted than the last. And each evening would go to sleep and sleep like a babe because of his exhaustion. It was the moments like this, where they were sitting around almost like normal people that he began to question why they were here. To what purpose he had been introduced into the world.

“We’re here to prove ourselves, to make the right choices, to make this world a better place.” Tomlin had a very strong philosophy for their purpose. She’d been on the world for over eighty years, and in that time had studied every religion and philosophy with her martial training. She had tried to explain to him that there were truths that he could only learn himself. That her thoughts she developed over time, and whatever she said would not change who he was until he changed who he was. Still, he had to ask and understand how she lived and why.

“And you work for the government on this program?” James asked. There was so much he would not tell him.

Tomlin just smiled and spooned the gray mush into her mouth. She chewed it many times before swallowing. She did not make the bad face he made when managed to get the mush down his throat. Perhaps in time—say in fifty years—he too would be able to stomach the mush. For now, all he could think about was a rare burger with French fries. If he was immortal, he really should enjoy the finer things in life.

Daily word count: 2,353.

Words remaining: 16,991 (33,009).