It fascinated Remy to hear how Lady Panacea saw the ages.

  She did not recount them as a scholar might, arranging reigns and wars into ordered sequences, nor as a bard, polishing memory into performance. She spoke instead as one who had walked through them and found them wanting. Wonders, she said, were often small things misremembered. Catastrophes were usually pride given time. She spoke of cities that had once glittered along coasts now reduced to broken columns half-swallowed by earth. Of physicians whose methods were centuries ahead of their peers, whose names had vanished because they had offended the wrong patron. Of women who had healed villages quietly and were later accused of sorcery by men who envied competence they could not replicate.

  She spoke of truths she believed and truths she had discarded. She spoke without urgency, as though time no longer pressed her to persuade.

  But the most striking thing to Remy was not her knowledge of forgotten empires, nor her familiarity with rulers whose names survived only as faint impressions in crumbling inscriptions.

  It was how she spoke of Him.

  “I was curious,” she said at one point, seated upon a low stone near the mouth of the cave, the Aegean visible below them in fractured blue. “About the man from Galilee.”

  Remy regarded her carefully. The wind moved lightly through the scrub, carrying salt and the distant cry of gulls. “Then you saw Him?” he asked. “Does He exist?”

  “No,” she said, and there was no hesitation in the answer. “I did not see. I was far from Jerusalem when He had appeared.”

  She rested her hands upon her knees, fingers loosely intertwined.

  “You see, Sir Remy,” she continued, “I was hunted as well.”

  He did not interrupt.

  “There were too many heroes,” she said, and the faintest trace of irony entered her voice, “who wished to slay a dragon. Many who sought the wisdom of an unaging healer. It was a mistake on my part, to show my face to an old friend, and think she, with our lifetime of friendship, would dare to chain me to learn my secrets.”

  Her gaze hardened, not with anger, but with memory.

  “I had to escape,” she said. “Travel to lands in the east, and then come back. It was… quite a trip.”

  Remy imagined it without asking for detail. A woman who did not age. Rumors spreading like rot. Patrons growing curious. Priests growing suspicious. Kings growing ambitious.

  “A shame then,” he said evenly, “to have not seen the Lord and Savior.”

  “Indeed,” she replied, tilting her head slightly. “I wonder what wisdom He could have. Though I am surprised, Sir Remy, to hear that your God walked the land once, yet you are not weeping with joy knowing he might have truly existed?”

  He smiled faintly at that.

  “Then you make a mistake,” he said. “I am surprised. But I have come to quick terms with it. After all, it is not often that one witnesses a creature like Anthea.”

  “You call Anthea a dinosaur,” Panacea said, with mild reproach. “But Anthea is merely a prehistoric creature. We are speaking of a God here, Sir Remy. Your God.”

  “True,” he said. “But that is how I feel.”

  Panacea regarded him for a long moment.

  “I confess,” she said at last, “I have not seen the gods I believed in either. And truthfully, I had believed that the Christians were nothing more than another sect of charlatans that will be lost in time.”

  She said it plainly, without malice.

  “Yet I have seen how Christianity grows,” she continued. “The worship of a kind God, who preaches love and hospitality and prayer. It is… fascinating to me.”

  Remy’s gaze drifted toward the sea below. Ships moved as pale scratches along the horizon.

  “Then now?” he asked.

  “I still believe in my old ways,” she said. “Not out of faith. Out of habit.”

  She rose and began to pace slowly along the ridge, her mantle shifting with each step.

  “I have seen too many men and women with religions in their eyes,” she continued, “burning fervently with faith, to think of following one myself.”

  Her voice did not mock them. It studied them.

  “Sure, we are the long-lived ones,” she said. “But as I have walked this world, I have started to believe that we are among the loneliest creatures upon it. Diseased into having such longevity that makes us targets of greed and lust.”

  She stopped, turning toward him.

  “I have seen kings who wished to birth a legion of long-lived,” she said. “Who wished to conquer my womb. Some sought my blood, as if drinking it would be enough to grant them our endurance.”

  A faint laugh escaped her, brittle at the edges.

  “They forget that endurance is not the same as invulnerability.”

  Remy inclined his head slightly. “No,” he said. “It is not.”

  “I have not spoken much since your arrival,” she added more quietly. “Anthea is a silent companion. And though I believe her great mind is capable of understanding, perhaps as clever, unfortunately she was not given the organ that allows us to speak.”

  There was no complaint in her tone. Only observation.

  Her words began to come more freely then, like a river that had been dammed too long.

  She spoke of eras when men had tried to classify her. Alchemist. Witch. Prophetess. Demon. She spoke of physicians who had begged to dissect her in the name of knowledge. Of monks who had offered sanctuary, only to test her blood in secret. Of rulers who had promised protection in exchange for heirs.

  Remy listened.

  He did not attempt to reassure her. He did not offer solutions to wounds centuries old. He understood that the act of speaking was the purpose.

  He came to realize, as she spoke, that like every person who suffered the same affliction, they tended toward solitude. Not because they despised the company. But because their company would leave them standing in their graves

  “I see,” he said when she paused.

  She looked at him strangely then, as though expecting more.

  “Why ask such a thing?” she said. “If I believe in your God.”

  “I wanted to know,” he replied.

  She smiled lightly at that.

  “Ah,” she said. “Were you going to catch me as a heretic?”

  “Maybe,” he answered.

  It was dry. She recognized the humor in it.

  They stood together in silence for a time, the wind pressing against their garments, the sea breathing steadily below.

  “You believe He walked the earth,” she said at last. It was not a question.

  “I believe it is plausible,” Remy replied. “I have seen enough to no longer dismiss what I cannot replicate.”

  “And if He did?” she asked.

  “Then it changes less than most think,” he said.

  She arched a brow.

  “A God walking among men,” she said. “And you claim it changes little?”

  “It confirms what was already claimed,” Remy answered. “But confirmation is not transformation. Men will still be men. They will still desire power. They will still misunderstand.”

  “And you?” she asked.

  “I am not weeping with joy,” he said quietly, “because if He walked once, He also left.”

  Panacea regarded him more closely at that.

  “You sound disappointed,” she said.

  “I am practical,” he replied. “A God who walks the earth and then withdraws does not remove suffering.”

  She considered that.

  “My old gods,” she said slowly, “were rarely kind. They demanded. They punished. They bargained. A God who preaches love…” She trailed off.

  “Is unusual,” Remy supplied.

  “Yes.”

  She folded her arms loosely. “It is strange to me that you accept Him without fervor.”

  “I do not accept without scrutiny,” he said. “But I no longer dismiss.”

  “Because of Anthea?”

  “Because of Anthea,” he agreed. “Because of you. Because of the Perennials. Because the world is more different than I thought.”

  She watched him for signs of irony and found none.

  “And yet,” she said, “you do not devote yourself.”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  He turned his gaze again toward the Aegean Sea surrounding Kos. The water was restless in small ways, never fully still.

  “Devotion,” he said, “draws attention. Attention distorts. I prefer to observe.”

  “You fear becoming a zealot?” she asked.

  “I fear becoming certain,” he said.

  That seemed to satisfy her more than any proclamation might have.

  “My father once said,” she began again, softer now, “that gods are often explanations that survive longer than their usefulness.”

  “And do you agree?” Remy asked.

  She shook her head slightly.

  “I think,” she said, “that men create explanations to survive their ignorance. Sometimes those explanations outlive the ignorance. Sometimes they do not.”

  “And Christianity?” he prompted.

  “It has endured,” she said. “It has adapted. It absorbs. It softens some. Hardens others.”

  She glanced at him sidelong.

  “You are softer than most of its adherents.”

  “I am less invested in winning,” he said.

  She smiled faintly at that.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “You are an odd man, Remy.”

  “I have been told.”

  The wind shifted, carrying with it the scent of thyme and distant smoke from the town below.

  “For what it is worth,” she said after a moment, “if your God exists, I do not think He would despise us.”

  “Why?” Remy asked.

  “Because we did not ask for this,” she said simply. “Longevity. Isolation. The burden of memory.”

  He considered that carefully.

  “If He is as described,” Remy said, “then perhaps not.”

  “And if He is not?” she pressed.

  “Then we remain as we are,” he replied. “Long-lived. Misunderstood. Quiet.”

  Panacea studied him again, as though weighing whether his quiet was armor or conviction.

  “You asked if I believed,” she said. “Now I ask you. Do you pray?”

  He did not answer immediately.

  “Sometimes,” he said at last.

  “To what end?”

  “Not to change events,” he replied. “Only to endure them.”

  She nodded slowly.

  “That,” she said, “I understand.”

  They fell into silence again, not strained, but contemplative.

  Below them, a small fishing vessel angled toward harbor. A bell rang faintly from within the town, its tone carried thinly on the wind.

  Panacea drew her mantle closer around her shoulders.

  “If I ever meet your God,” she said lightly, “I shall have questions.”

  “So would I,” Remy replied.

  She laughed at that, genuinely.

  “And if He answers?” she asked.

  “Then I will reassess,” he said.

  “And if He does not?”

  He looked once more at the sea.

  “Then I will continue walking,” he said.

  Panacea regarded him with something that was not quite amusement and not quite admiration.

  “You are consistent,” she said.

  “It is a habit,” he replied.

  She inclined her head slightly, accepting that.

  The sun dipped lower, and the copper sheen began to creep across the water.

  Lady Panacea was a woman who had a way with words.

  She did not ask questions directly when she could help it. She arranged them instead, one upon another, until the shape of them forced an answer. A simple inquiry would become a corridor, and at the end of it waited another door. She would open that as well, and behind it, yet another.

  It was not manipulation in the vulgar sense. It was a habit. Sharpened by centuries of intrigue.

  Remy had noticed it since his arrival.

  “You do not have to ask me what my intentions are,” he told her at last, when one of her winding lines of curiosity had circled back upon him. “I am here because of the request of the Perennials. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  He said it plainly, without adornment.

  She found that difficult to accept. He saw it in the slight narrowing of her eyes, in the way her fingers tapped once against the wooden table between them before becoming still.

  “Nothing more?” she repeated.

  “Nothing less,” he said.

  She studied him with the same attention she might give a manuscript newly unearthed from dust.

  “You look at me,” she said slowly, “as though I were a tome full of illustrations. Fascinating, perhaps, but ultimately destined to fade.”

  He did not interrupt her.

  “Without lust,” she added, and there was neither pride nor disappointment in it. “Without hunger. As if I too would pass from your sight in time.”

  She tilted her head slightly.

  “A thousand apologies,” she continued, “but you are rather afraid. Which is common among us.”

  Remy did not immediately respond.

  “You take a side,” she went on, “and then you pretend you have not. You stand apart and observe how the world passes, but there is arrogance in that. And prejudice.”

  “Perhaps,” he said.

  He did not deny it.

  She seemed faintly surprised at the lack of resistance.

  “You have your own experiences,” he continued evenly, “leading you to what you believe. Mine led me to stand at the center and do very little.”

  He folded his hands loosely before him.

  “How many times,” he said, “have I asked myself, if I do this, will it change anything? And beyond that question, I cannot tell you more of this ‘arrogance’ you speak of.”

  She watched him closely, as though testing whether the admission concealed defensiveness. It did not.

  “Very well,” she said at last. “Let us forget this line of inquiry.”

  There was a pause.

  “It is rare to find the same affliction,” she added more quietly. “You must pardon me. I am wary of our own kind.”

  That, at least, he understood without elaboration.

  “You have your view,” she said. “It is not as terrible as theirs have been. But it has turned a part of you into a man who believes we are superior.”

  Remy’s gaze did not shift.

  “Longevity makes it easy to believe that,” she continued. “They truly believe they cannot be felled by sword or disease.”

  Her tone hardened slightly.

  “We are afflicted with a disease that counters the rotting we call age,” she said. “But that does not mean we are immortal.”

  She leaned forward then, her voice lower.

  “Do not forget that, Sir Remy. We still dance the same tune as death. For our kind, death waits longer. But it is patient enough to strike when we think not of it.”

  He nodded once.

  “I have not forgotten,” he said.

  And he had not.

  He had seen enough blood spilled from bodies and saw a world end to know that.

  The conversation settled into a quieter rhythm after that.

  Panacea rose and busied herself with the meal she had prepared. The scent had already begun to fill the cave’s mouth, mingling with the salt of the sea air.

  She set before him lagana boiled in beef broth thick with the flavor of long-simmered marrow. The meat had been cooked until tender, and onions had softened into sweetness. Grated cheese crowned the dish, melting slowly into the heat.

  He regarded it with a faint nod of appreciation.

  “You cook well,” he observed.

  “I have had time to practice,” she replied.

  They ate without haste.

  The cove below remained hidden from the main path. Jagged rock and scrub concealed the entrance well enough that a passing sailor would see only shadow. From where they sat, however, the Aegean stretched wide and indifferent.

  Occasionally, Remy wondered whether a wandering fisherman might glance upward and catch sight of them. Two figures seated against stone. Too still. Too separate from the bustle of the world below.

  But none did.

  It was only him and Lady Panacea.

  He found himself listening more than speaking.

  She began to recount stories again, not prompted, but as though the act of eating loosened memory.

  There had been a warrior in Iberia, she said, who had fought through three campaigns not for glory but for the simple promise of land for his siblings. He had died obscurely of fever before he could claim it. His commander had taken credit for the campaign. History remembered the commander.

  There had been a woman in Anatolia who had disguised herself as a physician’s apprentice and traveled across caravan routes, healing villages stricken by plague. When the plague ended, she had returned home quietly. No one wrote of her.

  There had been a monk in the Levant who had translated texts between Greek, Arabic, and Latin so that knowledge might survive conflict. He had been accused of heresy by all three sides at one point or another. He had died blind and beaten.

  “They passed,” Panacea said, “and because no one with influence loved them enough to write, they vanished.”

  She did not say it bitterly. Only as fact.

  Remy listened.

  “And yet,” she continued, “their actions altered lives. Entire lines of descendants exist because of a decision no one remembers.”

  She turned her gaze toward the horizon.

  “History is arrogant,” she said. “It pretends to know what matters.”

  He considered that.

  “And you?” he asked.

  “I remember,” she replied. “Sometimes.”

  There was a faint weariness in it.

  “Does it comfort you?” he asked.

  She gave a small shake of her head.

  “It burdens,” she said.

  The wind shifted again, brushing loose strands of her hair across her cheek. She did not move to adjust them.

  “You think yourself at the center,” she said after a moment, returning to their earlier thread as though it had not been set aside. “But the center of what?”

  Remy swallowed another mouthful of broth before answering.

  “Of perspective,” he said. “Not of importance.”

  She glanced at him sidelong.

  “You refuse extremes,” she observed.

  “I distrust them,” he corrected.

  “Because?”

  “Because extremes blind,” he said. “And blindness, for our kind, lasts far too long.”

  She allowed that answer to settle.

  Below them, a small vessel cut slowly across the water, its sail catching a slant of afternoon light.

  “You fear arrogance,” she said eventually.

  “I fear stagnation,” he replied.

  She gave him a faint smile.

  “You see? Another answer that is not quite an answer.”

  He inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment.

  Silence returned, but it was not uncomfortable. It was companionable in a restrained way. Two long-lived beings sharing a meal, each aware of the other’s endurance, neither demanding more than the present offered.

  After some time, she spoke again.

  “I have known others like you,” she said. “Those who chose the center. They believed neutrality preserved them.”

  “And did it?” he asked.

  “For a time,” she said. “Until the world forced a decision.”

  He did not argue.

  “The Perennials,” she continued lightly, “they take pride in their influence. In shaping events quietly.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “And you claim you are here solely because they requested it.”

  “Yes.”

  She studied him once more, as though testing the edges of that statement.

  “You do not crave their approval?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Their resources?”

  “I have my own.”

  “Their company?”

  He paused, just briefly.

  “Company,” he said, “is tolerable in measured amounts.”

  That earned the faintest laugh from her.

  “You are honest, at least.”

  “I try to be.”

  They finished their meal gradually.

  He set his bowl aside and let his gaze drift once more toward the sea.

  The surface glittered now, reflecting the lowering sun. Distance compressed ships into specks. Entire lives contained within movements barely visible from shore.

  Against time and space, he thought, they were minuscule.

  Not only the forgotten heroes she had spoken of.

  All of them.

  Panacea seemed to follow his line of sight.

  “You are thinking,” she said.

  “I usually am.”

  “Of what?”

  He did not hesitate.

  “That against time and space, we are small.”

  She nodded.

  “Yes,” she said. “Even us.”

  “Especially us,” he corrected quietly.

  She regarded him, curious.

  “Because we measure more of it,” he said. “And still cannot master it.”

  Her expression softened slightly.

  “That is not arrogance,” she said. “That is clarity.”

  He did not answer.

  The wind continued its steady course along the cliffside. Somewhere in the brush, a small animal shifted unseen.

  For a moment, there was nothing but the rhythm of the sea and the weight of shared endurance.

  Two figures perched above a world that would continue with or without them.

  Despite what Lady Panacea accused him of.

  Remy did not feel superior.