Iðunn's Apples

Rusalka

† but she didn't ask to be beautiful, or to live forever, or to not know how men breathe until they stop doing so †

"What if you could live forever?"

Serena turned her attention from the clothes she was washing to the man stating, perched on the branches of a low tree, which reached out over the crystal clear water of the lake.

Her blonde hair was braided, but the rough winds had pulled some strands free and colored her cheeks red. She was wearing a thin wool dress, which she had tried, and failed, to keep out of the water as she stepped out into it to do her washing. Her swollen feet had long since gotten used to the near-freezing temperature surrounding them.

After a moment of standing still in thought, she scoffed and went back to washing. "Forever. It's not possible."

"You know better than to question me by now," the man said. He looked young, with skin too dark to belong in northern Scandinavia. His dark eyes shone with a mix of mirth and intelligence.

Serena glanced up at him, then pulled up the shirt she was washing and hung it over one of the low were branches of the tree. Seeing that she had finished, he reached out a hand to assist her back onto the land. She ignored it and stepped out of the water herself. "How do you live forever, then?" she asked.

"It's simple," he said, turning to face her where she was standing now, twisting the water out of her skirts. "What ages you are rays from the universe."

She frowned. "Universe?"

"Where the stars are," he explained. "They send out... rays, it's like light or warmth, and it ages you."

"I don't see how warmth or light can age me," she said, beginning to fill her basket with the now-clean clothing.

The man smiled. "You will."

She returned his smile with a smirk and stepped up to him. "How do you know I'll take up your offer?"

"Because you won't be able not to," he said.

But in the end, it was not her choice.

The raiders came just after midsummer. They pillaged her town, raped the women and killed the men. In her last seconds alive, her hand fell out of her sister's as she fled with their family. The last time her hear beat her blood around, she fell to the ground and the blood spilled from the wound in her back, where the arrow had hit. The last time her ragged, hissing breath was needed, she drew in smoke and death, and her eyes watched her childhood home be burned down.

There was peace in that moment. Peace and light around the edges of her vision. There was no pain, and no fear. But she did not want to die. She did not want peace and light and painlessness. Not yet.

When her eyes opened again, there was no light except the moon hiding between the dark branches of pine trees. At first, she thought she had been called to her afterlife in Valhöl, but there were no one in sight. No warriors or gods or castles. There was only the earthly smell that came after heavy rain and drops of water from the leaves.

"Welcome back," Stilio's voice said, drifting from somewhere to her left.

She turned her head and found him, leaned against a tree, a book in his hands. She didn't ask any questions. She knew what had happened, what he had done. When he told her he would take her to Rome, she did not need to ask questions; he told her of his own accord.

At first, he talked about the city and how grand and magnificent it was, like no other city on earth. It was the center of the Roman Republic, the greatest nation that there ever was, a power to bend the world at its knees. He spoke of its golden streets and marble buildings. There, men and women dressed in flowing, light fabrics, as if to symbolize their enlightenment and surge to the skies of knowledge. He spoke of the theaters and the street vendors, the smells and the noises. He explained to her what a gladiator was, and taught her Latin and Greek.