Authors: Eva García Sáenz
"That's what I thought, but I haven't been able to make any progress." "Go on."
"The truth is that I used my brother Nagorno for a dual purpose: I injected him without knowing what the outcome would be, but I wanted to see what would happen to a body like ours when we inhibit the telomerase. I needed a guinea pig, and he had won the right to be it."
"You must really hate your brother to use him like that," she said, sitting on a bench in front of the board.
"One day I'll tell you our sweet story," I replied, with no intention of giving away any more details. "What we need to do now is reverse that effect."
I left out all the details of my discovery, that longevos actually have genetic mutations: firstly, the gene that maintains the telomerase active, and secondly, the gene that inhibits any type of cancer.
"And is that as far as you got after going through our studies with a fine toothed comb?" she asked, crossing her arms.
"Well it's a good start! Right now I know that the telomerase is the reason, otherwise this wouldn't have happened to his heart and he wouldn't have aged a hundred years in one year."
"And do you know where you're going to go from here?"
"I'm hoping that you'll help me with that," I said, holding out a marker.
Marion stood up and began to write on the board.
"We have an organ, which is your brother's heart, artificially aged. Let's say that you had to clean out this telomerase inhibitor from every cell in his heart."
"And reactivate it, as if nothing had ever happened."
"Yes.”
"The only thing I can think of is to do tests on these mice, injecting them with a genetically modified virus. You see, this year at the Kronon Corporation, we discovered that when the oncolytic virus is injected into the body of a cancer patient, it replicates within the tumor cells and kills them off. Right now your brother doesn't have any telomerase, so we can work at modifying one of these viruses, although rather than cleaning the tumor cells, we eliminate the telomerase inhibitor you injected him with."
"Are you suggesting that we treat my brother with a viral therapy?" I asked, frowning. It wasn't an option that I'd ever considered, it was risky and it was a field that hadn't really been explored.
"I know, it sounds like a rather desperate measure," she agreed, "and the side effects will be totally unpredictable, given the exceptional case."
"So you're saying that we get hold of a virus that replicates within Nagorno's heart cells and kills of the telomerase inhibitor, turning everything back to how it was before," I thought out loud.
She nodded. We were just about to start an improbable and disastrous research, and we both knew it, although we both pretended that everything was fine.
"Ok, so we've got just the right amount of time to work with the mice and do a maximum of one or two tests before sending Nagorno his damn cure." I said.
"Don't get ahead of yourself, Iago. First we have to extract cells from your brother, cultivate them for ten days and then do a blood transfusion."
"I've got his samples, I asked him for them as soon as he called to tell me about the conditions of my wife's kidnapping."
Marion nodded, although I saw a sad shine in her eyes, as if my last words had really hurt her. But she hid it like a trooper and we spent the next ten hours lost in complicated calculations, only taking a break to go down to the Paseo Perda and eat some tapas at noon.
Late afternoon, with our heads full of information, I invited her down to the third floor and we sat on Lyra's sofa. I barely noticed, but after a while Marion was lying down, looking at the ceiling, as my daughter had done so many times before. And we talked for hours about other times, and we laughed with nostalgia like two old people. I was on the verge of stroking her cheek, as I used to do to Lyra, when I realized what I was about to do and stopped myself.
"It was difficult for me to bring you out of mourning in New England, I'm glad that you've finally managed to shed your black clothes," I said, pointing at her white lab coat.
She smiled, accepting the compliment.
"You're not a widow, are you? There was never a Mr. Adams."
"No, he never existed. Over the last few millennia, especially in Europe, it was much easier to pretend that I was a widow. Being a single woman, a virgin, always brought complications. But being a widow gave me a certain sense of worth, certain experience, and above all, enough freedom to not have to take a husband over and over again, with the obligation of motherhood, with the risk that every pregnancy brought with it."
"What did you do afterwards, when you left our farm in Duxbury?"
"I roamed the area, and decades later I ended up in Salem," was all she said.
"Are you telling me...?"
"I don't want to talk about that right now."
I understood perfectly, what was the point in bringing up old memories? Lyra also suffered in 1610 and I never made her tell me how she escaped from that horror. I felt too guilty for not having looked after her, for being lost in County Cork because of alcohol.
"Part of my family had to live through the trials of Zugarramurdi, in Navarre. Allegations from farmers and maids led to an infamous
auto-de-fe
, in Logroño. Forty people were accused and twelve were burned alive on the stake," she said.
"Could Adriana ever understand that, Iago?" she asked me, suddenly sitting up. "The terror of being accused by your neighbors. Weren't you ever afraid of being involved in a witch hunt? Didn't you ever get scared when the Inquisition got a little too close?"
"I've been scared many times, Marion."
"And you know that she'll never be able to understand that."
"I think that she can understand it, at least intellectually. She can process it, empathize with me. But obviously, she was never there." I looked out the window, the sun was setting over the bay and the clouds were blocking out what was left of the day.
I was in no hurry to get off that couch, I just needed to rest my brain for a while.
"Before, we weren't allowed to have post traumatic stress, there were no psychologists we could go to, or therapies to help us get over the horrors that we have seen," Marion continued, as if she was talking to herself. "I only listened to what I knew. Just keep going, grind your teeth, keep going and start a new life. Forget the faces of the bad people who tormented us and wait a few decades for death and old age to take care of them."
"I know, I've also rejoiced many times with that secret triumph: all our enemies grow old and die, while we remain young and alive."
"Can't I go back to calling you Ely? It's really weird calling you Iago."
"No, Marion, that part of my life is over."
Don't let yourself get caught up in the past
, I repeated to myself.
"There's something I have to ask you, which I haven't been able to get out of my head since the day I saw you in Paris. Why do you say that we are longevos, but not immortal? Have you ever actually seen any of your family die? Your son, Gunnarr, who you thought was dead was actually alive. In Plymouth you saw that scurvy didn't affect us. We've both lived through epidemics and famines, a thousand accidents, wars and natural disasters. We have been exposed to pathogens from other continents, to rotten food, and here we are, still in one piece. The twist to the story is, how do I know if I'm immortal? I can only know that I'm not moments before my death, when I understand the inevitability of time."
"We're not immortal, Marion," I said, cutting her off.
"How can you be so sure?"
"I had a sister, Boudicca."
"Boudicca, the British leader? She was one of you?" she asked, as if she had a special interest in her that I wasn't able to work out.
"Yes, she died."
"Are you sure? Did you see her die?"
"We saw her body, she stole the poison that I kept on me for suicides, and we found her body, eaten by the beasts of the forest."
"Are you sure that it was her body, and not a lookalike?"
"Marion, I saw her body, or what was left of it. Her hair, her long braids..."
"Is that all? Could you put your hand in the fire and swear that it was her and not remains of other bodies?"
And the scar on the back of my hand began to burn again. It was them, Boudicca and Lyra again, warning me of the danger. Something very powerful was threatening the Ancient Family, otherwise they wouldn't be turning in their graves like that.
"I had a longeva daughter. Her name was Lyra. Her first identity was Celtic. She died last year, in my arms, after I spent the longest twenty-two minutes of my life trying to resuscitate. I saw her lifeless body. It was connected to a cardiac monitoring machine. There's no doubt about it, Marion. My daughter died, her heart stopped beating and her remains are resting in a cemetery just a few kilometers from here."
"Are you sure? Have you checked to see whether there is actually a body in that grave?"
I stood up, tired of the interrogation that did nothing more than hit painful nerves, the most painful ones I had.
"No, I haven't checked. What's the point? I've visited it almost every day. Believe me the tombstone has not moved."
"Have you checked, Iago del Castillo?" she insisted.
I clenched my jaw. Lyra's scar was sending shock waves of pain through my body and I tensed. Marion looked at me, scared, not knowing what was wrong.
"It's nothing," I said. "I just got a cramp."
"Sure.”
How many more half-truths are we going to tell each other? Was it always going to be that way between us, if we had have both pretended to be ephemerals or if we had lived together as the longevos that we really are? Could we never have talked without filters?
I think it's best if I go, Iago. I didn't want to cause you any pain with my questions."
"Don't worry about it, it's fine," I lied again, and let her leave.
She left the soft smell of her perfume in my apartment and the memory of Lyra in my head.
Once I was alone, I looked at my scar again. I wasn't sure if it was Lyra or if it was my way of expressing grief and the sense of danger that was surrounding me ever since Gunnarr had returned.
I allowed myself to think about my daughter once more, about the last few years, in my desperate attempts to keep her alive against her will, just like that winter following the deaths of Fenix, Syrio and Vega. Her family, her constellation, as she had liked to call them.
I remembered her midnight walks along the Las Catedrales beach in Ribadeo.
And suddenly it all seemed so clear: Las Catedrales - The Cathedrals.
How did I not think of it before? I pulled my phone from my pocket and nervously called my father.
"Hector, we never considered the Las Catedrales beach, in Lugo. It could be one of the clues that Gunnarr left me."
My father didn't say anything for a few seconds.
"I must admit that I was looking slightly further. Ribadeo is barely..."
"Three hours away by car, about three hundred kilometers," I cut in.
How many times had I made that journey over the last few decades? I knew the area well, and I'd owned a beach house there that I had later sold. I was unable to walk along that beach without remembering Lyra's desolation. For me, it had become an unpleasant place that I didn't wish to return to.
"Are you at home?" I asked him.
"Yes."
"Wait for me there, I'm on my way."
Minutes later I had parked on Widow's Hill and I ran to my father's recently recovered house. He was standing next to the chimney, waiting for me. He had stuck a huge world map to a wall which he had covered in colored pushpins.
I gave him a puzzled look.
"The red ones are probable because they meet several conditions: you will arrive by air or sea, they won't be large, you will find massacres and cathedrals, will there be thousands, will they be beautiful. The green ones only meet one or two conditions, but I'm not ruling them out just in case Gunnarr is trying to push your patience."
"Let's start with the Cathedrals beach clue. How many islands are close to it?"
My father walked over to his laptop and turned it toward me.
"There are only a few islets in the province of Lugo, almost all too small to have a building big enough to hide Adriana. I've ruled them all out. Although we do have Panch island in Ribadeo. There's a lighthouse built in 1857, although I think it's too close to the village. There's a bridge that joins it to the mainland and it's teaming of tourists at the weekend. Adriana could be in the lighthouse but it's not the most suitable place for a kidnapping."
"No, I agree. Thinking back, I remember Area island in Viveiro. It was inhabited until the middle of the 20th century and decades later it was just used as a campsite. We should go and check out the land, it won't take us long."
"I'll go, you should focus on your research, the days are rushing by and Nagorno could die at any time."
I frowned. My father would help me with anything if I asked him to, he'd always been that way. He never denied me anything, although it didn't escape me that we were helping Nagorno to stay alive, and that was a relief for my father.