The Search for the Red Dragon - James A. Owen [102]
Something else was coming through one of the rifts in Time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Shadows and Light
The old man had become fevered, and with the fever came delirium. So he began to speak, to tell stories, for it seemed as if no help would be coming after all, and all that remained for him was to tell stories and, finally, to die.
“This is a story,” he began, his voice weak but clear, “about the secret of Perpetual Youth. Not Eternal Life, for there is an ending to all things. But to live one’s span with the energy and vigor for life that one has as a child is a treasure worth seeking. And seek it I did. But when I found it, I realized it was not so much a secret as a terrible, terrible truth—and truths, once learned, can seldom be unlearned.
“The secret is a great lie. For there is no such thing as Perpetual Youth. It is only an illusion.
“Illusions can be kept. Illusions can be cherished. But they can never become real. And to choose to see oneself as a child forever is only that—illusion.
“All things grow. All things change. And eventually, all things must pass. It is the way of life. To stay young is to remove oneself from the motion of the world. But to grow up is to take hold of that motion, and use it, and shape the world for those who come after. It is not a choice. It is a responsibility.”
“You’re ill, Peter,” said the woman in the mirror, “and that’s merely a collection of useless platitudes, not a story. You should be quiet, and rest.”
“A story?” the old man said. “I know a story. Once there were two children, a brother and sister named Phrixus and Helle, whose stepmother was a witch. She was a great beauty and had seduced their father into marriage.
“She hated her husband’s children, and often wished there were some way to rid herself of them. And so on the anniversary of her marriage, she had an idea: She constructed a house deep in an ancient forest. Its walls were made of sugared bread, and sweet wine flowed across its floors. Its roof was made of almond cakes, the windows were framed in boiled licorice root, and inside, cooking over the fire, was a cauldron of a confection she called Turkish delight, which smelled of winter, spring, and summer all at once.
“Children were drawn to the house, as all children would be, and one day, so were Phrixus and Helle. But they saw her for what she was, and saw what she was trying to do to them, and they forced her into the oven she intended for them and burned her to a crisp. Then they escaped by flying away on the back of a magical golden ram, and they lived happily ever after.”
“You have it all wrong,” the woman in the mirror said. “They escaped on the ram long before I ever built the cottage on Centrum Terrae, and it wasn’t for them that I built it. It was for my own children. And I never meant to harm them.”
The old man chuckled, then coughed. “I’m getting my stories confused again, aren’t I? I was confusing that tale with the story of Medea.”
The woman in the mirror seemed to withdraw, then the image clarified again. “They’re the same story,” she said, her voice subdued. “You just have the details wrong, Peter.”
“How could I have forgotten how Jason betrayed Medea?” the old man said. “Or how she followed him to the ends of the Earth, and beyond, and then farther still. And finally she took upon him the revenge she had so long sought.”
“She paid the price for her choices,” the woman said. “A far greater price than she ever expected, and so did her husband. He is but a shade, and she a reflection. So why, after all this time, can they not be forgiven?”
“Because,” replied the old man, “it is her sons who paid an even greater price than that. A price they continue to pay. A price they will always be compelled to pay, until the day they forgive themselves.”
“But they did nothing wrong!” the woman in the mirror exclaimed. “Nothing!”
“And never telling them that, Medea, is the sin you cannot repent of.”
It was difficult to count the number of children the companions freed from Asterius’s labyrinth, because they wouldn’t stand still long enough