The Binding

Chapter Eighteen

We had been driving for nearly five hours. The road to Bodrum was full of steep winding streets and rolling countryside where the asphalt would suddenly dip sharply into a steep decline and then curve without warning. The sea shimmered to the left as we dipped and swerved. It was startlingly, beautiful, and alarming. For more than an hour, a young couple on a motorcycle had sped along the meandering road inches from our back bumper. Ezra was unconcerned, but I had sighed in relief when they finally left.

"Alright," I said, my fingers drumming on the console next to my seat. "What if someone was eaten by a dinosaur?"

Ezra laughed, his whole chest shaking. "Dinosaurs... If an Avati happened to be eaten by one, then no, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't kill him."

I stared at him in horror.

"He'd still be alive inside the dinosaur." Ezra twisted the car around a sharp curve. "I imagine it would be painful and horrifying. But, his body would keep repairing itself, so he'd to wait until it either vomited him up, shit him out, or the animal died, and its body disintegrated."

I imagined clawing myself out of a decaying animal and stopped. There are no dinosaurs, so I simply wasn't going to put much thought into it.

"Besides, an Avati would never be eaten by a dinosaur... or any other animal for that matter."

"Why not?"

"For the same reason birds never peck at us or fish never bite us when our bodies are down. Animals are dominated by their instincts, and their instincts tell them we are not food... too much electricity. They always avoid us."

"And if we lose a limb?"

"Just bandage it back in place, and it will reattach."

Gross... and useful.

"So how many Avati are there?"

Ezra shook his head. "I couldn't possibly guess." That was no help.

"If everyone who is Avati crosses over when they die, no matter the circumstances, what happens to the people who die of old age?"

"They come back too, just like anyone else."

I frowned, thinking of Shauna's grandmother. She was ninety-five years old and could barely take care of herself. Each step from her chair to the kitchen table was agonizing and slow. She would often have to sit and rest after taking half a dozen steps. She couldn't dress, or bathe herself, or use the bathroom by herself. It seemed horribly cruel to subject someone to an eternity of that life.

Ezra must have read the displeasure in my face. "But, since they continue to age, they die again quickly." A wave of relief swept over me. "They don't live much longer than a few years."

"A few years?" I couldn't decide if I thought that was too long or too short.

"To everyone else, they would simply appear to have lived an exceptionally long life." Ezra turned onto another road leading into the town. Its buildings shimmered white, sparkling in the sun like summer snow.

"Eleanor of Aquitaine lived to be about eighty-two, I think." He stopped and smiled. "But, then, not really. She died twelve years before her final death, I believe." I tried to think who that was. I was familiar with all the significant Royals in European history and a few of the minor ones. Although the name was familiar, I couldn't place it.

"She was kind. Well, as kind as a queen can be anyway. Her husband, though..." he shook his head. "Ruthless and sullen. Ruthless I can understand... a hazard of life as a king. But a sullen, pouting king... It's useless giving all that power to such a bullying sulking man, despite all his ridiculous speeches about Christian charity. Leif can tell you more, but Eleanor was wasted on him... he was an idiot."