I nodded.
“Well, it all sounded like a great deal of work. I came into my powers late, after my children were grown and gone to homes of their own. My husband had passed away when they were young and by the time I had learned just how much strength I had, the idea of ruling over anything seemed extremely dull. Besides, even my powers could not hold against the might of Rome. They have their own magic users.”
She paused to pick up the cat, which had followed us out and was rubbing against her legs. It settled into her lap and blinked slowly in pleasure.
“No doubt had I been younger when I found my magic I would have got myself into the sort of trouble you talk of, but at my age I knew that happiness for me was living in anonymous peace. And having the wherewithal to protect those dear to me: my children, a handful of the local villages, the wild places of these woods. I’m a fundamentally selfish and lazy person. If you don’t interest me, why should I bother myself with you?”
I pondered that. It seemed eminently sensible to me, so much so that I was surprised a human had come up with it.
“Maybe Belis can do the same thing,” I said. “Her familyhasn’t done very well at conquest so far. Maybe she should try something else. She could go north and build her own treehouse.” I paused. “But she’s not very patient and she’s rather angry with the Romans. I think she’s quite set on fighting them again.”
“She’s got a way to go. She only knows a handful of spells and most of them are not particularly useful. Perhaps you could suggest that she come back to study here.”
“I doubt she’ll listen to me. We don’t get on very well. She thinks I complain too much. But I am a goddess, I don’t do anything too much.”
Vatta grinned.
“And now we come to the things you should have done differently,” she said. I frowned at her, but she kept going. “Before Belis, when was the last time you spoke to a human?”
I considered the question, leafing back through my memories.
“I will assume that you do not include the dead or dying? I do occasionally buy food or goods from them if I can’t find a pedlar.”
Vatta raised her eyebrows.
“And when was the last time you spoke directly to a human for more than a moment? About something other than a jug of goat’s milk.”
I turned it over in my head. Nothing came to mind. Surely there must have been something.
“May I take it from your silence that you can’t remember such a time?” Vatta asked. “Then I think we have identified the source of the tension between you and Belis. Every human you interact with is either dead or about to be. You are too accustomed to human suffering, it is all you see. Belis is alive and whole but what you cannot see is that for her the pain is within.”
I shook my head.
“I understand that she’s upset, but that doesn’t excuse her lack of respect.”
“Upset!” cried Vatta so loudly that the cat in her lap stopped purring and stretched out his claws in displeasure. “She’sdevastated! She’s lost every person she ever loved. Her people have been wiped out. And you might think that you understand that, but deep down you feel that she’s overreacting.”
I went over the last week in my head, thinking about what Vatta had said. I had seen so much human grief and death throughout my life that I no longer considered it much to worry about. Belis had had a hard few months, to be sure, but I had encountered many humans with worse luck over the long years of my existence.
What I had perhaps forgotten was that Belis almost certainly hadn’t seen worse. Her being alive and unhurt might seem like good fortune to me after spending night after night fishing souls out of twisted and broken bodies on the battlefield, but Belis had lost everything in the course of one day. I should perhaps have tried a little harder to understand that. It still rankled with me, though.
“Haven’t I lost everything, too? My immortality, my power, my hounds, my connections with the other immortals?”
“Of course you have,” said Vatta. “Don’t you grieve for it?”
Vatta’s words were gentle but I felt them like a knife in my ribs. I did mourn my lost life: every moment in this human body was a reminder of what I had lost. Each morning I reached out for my dogs and felt their absence; each night I shivered in the cold, remembering when I had run through the darkness barefoot and free. I was doing everything to regain my old life. So was Belis. Perhaps we were not as dissimilar as I had thought.
“I think I am… sorry? I’m sorry,” I said, tasting the unfamiliar sentiment on my tongue. Vatta let the words hang in the night air for a moment before she sighed.
“My lady, I am not the one who deserves your apologies. I am sure Belis bears a proportion of the blame for this coolness between you. Were you still in possession of your powers then I would not presume to offer you advice. In the body of a human, though, with all the strange and unfamiliar feelings that must be coursing through you, I dare share a little of my observations.”
“It is a very strange thing,” I said, “full of aches and pains.Do you know that when I walk uphill my thighs hurt but when I walk downhill my calves hurt. Oh, and whenever Belis is angry, I get this feeling like indigestion in my chest. It’s terrible: no wonder you humans don’t live long. Who could bear such a whirlpool of emotions for more than a few decades. I’m already exhausted from it.”
Vatta smiled at me and stood up.
“It may not be a long life but there’s a sweetness to it. I think you may discover that as you continue to travel west.”
I nodded and followed her back into the cottage, turning at the door to take a last look up at the stars.
