The Tor - 20. Chapter 20

### Chapter twenty

Christopher met Marco that evening in a cafe on the promenade.

The western sky still held the last pale gold of sunset, though the sea below remained dark, its long swells folding steadily against the rocks. Fishing boats drifted gently at their moorings, their mast lights beginning to appear one by one across the bay.

Marco leaned upon the rail, watching the water. He turned as Christopher approached.

"You've been to see Vale." It was a statement.

Christopher nodded. "I have."

Marco studied his face. "I wondered whether you would."

"You aren't angry?"

Marco smiled faintly. "I've never been angry with him."

Christopher rested his forearms upon the weathered timber beside him. "I thought perhaps you should be."

"That would require me to believe he wanted this." He looked out across the sea again. "He didn't."

The silence that followed felt comfortable in a way it never had before. Christopher realised they no longer needed to fill every pause with explanations. The sea had become enough.

After a while he spoke. "He said something today." Marco waited. "He told me you remember everything."

Marco's expression altered almost imperceptibly. "So he finally told you."

"Is it true?"

Marco answered without hesitation. "Yes."

Christopher had expected qualification, some limit, some admission that centuries eventually blurred together.

Instead there was only that single, quiet word.

"Everything?"

"As much as memory permits."

Christopher frowned. "That's impossible."

Marco laughed softly. "I've often thought so."

Christopher looked at him. "You remember Celyn."

"Yes."

"The monastery."

"Certainly."

"The brig."

"Very well."

"The naturalist."

"Clearly."

"The schoolmaster."

Marco's smile faded. "Yes."

Christopher fell silent. He found himself searching for some boundary, some place where memory finally surrendered.

"There must be things you've forgotten."

Marco considered the question. "I forget what I ate on particular mornings." Christopher almost smiled. "I forget the names of kings whose reigns mattered to no one." His eyes remained upon the water. "I forget where I left books."

Christopher waited.

"I never forget you."

The words settled quietly between them. Christopher found himself unable to answer. The simplicity of the statement carried a weight no declaration of love could have matched. He looked towards the harbour, where lights had begun to appear in the windows overlooking the water.

"When I remembered the monastery," he said at last, "it felt as though it had happened yesterday."

Marco nodded. "To me it often does."

Christopher turned to him. "How?"

Marco rested both hands upon the rail. "Memory doesn't arrange itself politely." He smiled without amusement. "I can stand here and smell the sea." His gaze drifted across the darkening bay. "Then someone says a single word and suddenly I'm walking through Roman Londinium." He paused. "Or sitting beside your bed during the influenza epidemic." Another pause. "Or watching a ship sink."

Christopher felt a chill despite the mild evening. "So they're all..."

"Present." Marco searched briefly for the right word. "They never entirely become the past."

Christopher thought of his own recent memories. They had come in waves, violent and overwhelming. Yet afterwards they had receded. For Marco there was no receding. Everything remained, always.

He looked at the man beside him with new understanding. "That's why you look so tired sometimes."

Marco gave a small shrug. "I expect I do."

"No." Christopher shook his head slowly. "I used to think you looked older."

Marco smiled. "I am older."

"I don't mean your face." Christopher struggled to explain. "Sometimes you look..." He hesitated. "As though you're looking through several centuries before you see what's in front of you."

Marco did not answer immediately. When he finally spoke his voice had become very quiet. "That is sometimes exactly what happens."

Christopher closed his eyes briefly. He remembered catching Marco staring across the harbour, standing motionless upon the cliffs, pausing beside old buildings with an expression Christopher had never understood. He had thought it melancholy. Now he wondered how many other streets lay superimposed upon the ones Marco saw. How many vanished churches. How many lost harbours. How many faces.

"Does it ever stop?" Christopher asked. "The remembering."

"No." Marco's answer carried no bitterness. Some memories grow quieter."

"But they're still there."

"Yes."

Christopher found himself imagining shelves stretching beyond sight, every year carefully preserved, every conversation, every farewell.

Every death.

A terrible thought entered his mind. "You remember every time I died."

Marco closed his eyes. For several seconds he said nothing.

"Yes." Marco looked towards the sea. "I remember the expressions on your face." He smiled sadly. "They were never quite the same."

The sea rolled steadily against the rocks below. Christopher looked down at his hands. "When I remembered dying aboard the brig, it felt unbearable." Marco remained silent. "I carried that for days." He looked towards Marco. "You've carried it for centuries."

Marco gave a faint nod. Christopher felt his chest tighten. He had remembered only the dying. Marco remembered the whole life, the ordinary conversations, the small disagreements, the moments that history never recorded because they mattered only to two people. Christopher suddenly understood why Marco's memories differed from his own.

Christopher remembered dying.

Marco remembered living with him.

The distinction broke something open inside him. Christopher thought of all the lives he had recovered.

There were only fragments, five, perhaps six.

Marco had lived through all of them, and countless others still hidden beyond Christopher's reach.

"You watched me grow old."

"Sometimes."

"You watched me die young."

"Often."

Christopher swallowed. "You buried me."

Marco's hands tightened almost imperceptibly upon the rail. "When there was someone left to bury."

The evening seemed suddenly very quiet. Gulls drifted above the harbour mouth, their cries fading into the wind. Christopher realised that he had spent weeks fearing the dreams. The confusion. The deaths.

Marco had carried the memory of every version of Christopher that had ever existed. Every laugh. Every argument. Every ordinary morning. Every final farewell.

Christopher turned towards him. "How have you survived it?"

Marco looked at him with gentle surprise. "I don't know. At first because I believed you would return." A pause. "Later because I no longer knew how to stop waiting." Marco shook his head. "I wake each morning." His smile was faint. "I make coffee. I go to work. I watch the sea." He looked towards the dark outline of the Tor. "And eventually I begin looking for you again."

Christopher heard no heroism in the words. Only habit. Only perseverance. It struck him then that survival itself had become Marco's vocation. He had continued because the next morning had arrived.

Then another. Then another. Century after century.

Christopher reached out and took Marco's hand. Marco looked down, almost startled by the gesture. Christopher closed his fingers around his. For a long time neither of them spoke. The lighthouse beam swept slowly across the water, touching the harbour for a brief instant before turning once more towards the open sea.

Christopher looked at the man beside him. He still appeared no older than thirty. His face remained familiar, his smile gentle.

Yet, for the first time, Christopher caught a glimpse of the immense weight concealed beneath that ordinary appearance. It was there in the patience with which Marco listened. In the quiet care of every word he chose, the sadness that sometimes entered his eyes without warning and vanished before anyone else could notice.

Christopher understood at last that those moments had never belonged to the present alone.

They belonged to every life Marco still carried within him.

The centuries had left no mark upon his face.

They had settled somewhere no mirror could show.