Love, Eternal Read online

blissfully happy for exactly ten years.

  And then they died a very painful death.

  But that, as you know , is far from the end of the story. Nine months from the day the two died, a pair of babies – one boy and one girl – was born. Their names were Logan and Jacqueline.

  True to the curse, they were never far from one another. Jacqueline was born into an affluent family, and Logan was part of their household staff. They never saw one another. From time to time, they would come close, but it was not to be.

  Neither fell in love. Neither married. Bother were miserable until their thirty-third birthday, when they both died.

  And so it went, just as evil Elna had cursed. Day by day, life by life, they were never far from one another. Just out of reach, they never noticed, save a slight tickle in the pits of their bellies.

  Three times, they came close. Thrice, they nearly broke the spell And that, my friends, is the crux of this sad story.

  The first of those close calls was over a thousand years, and quite a few more miles from their initial deaths. It was a time of great advances in industry. Black smoke rose into the sky, belched by monstrous factories, and the world grew.

  Logan, as was the pattern, was born into a modest family; Jacqueline was born into privilege. She set out to become a perfect lady, and Logan became a cobbler’s apprentice.

  Suitor after suitor vied for Jacqueline’s hand, but to no avail. Her father, you see, eschewed custom, and actually cared what his daughter thought of the potential husbands. She was less than enthusiastic about them all.

  But this is not the story of one young woman’s search for a husband. It is the story of a near miss which occurred when Jacqueline and Logan were seventeen.

  Jacqueline’s family, while holding relatively high status, was not exactly rich. And so, if a show became worn, they went to the cobbler to get it fixed. So it happened that Jacqueline found herself outside of the same cobbler’s shop in which Logan was apprenticed.

  Her stomach fluttered as she opened the door. It was a familiar feeling, and she thought little of it. Logan, working in the back, felt it too, but he dismissed it just as readily.

  Jacqueline and her mother did their business with the cobbler. Just as they were leaving, Logan came to the front of the store, having barely missed them. The door was still swinging, and Logan could not help but stare. He knew, beyond a shadow of any doubt, that he had just missed something important. The cobbler spoke, but Logan ignored him. He was dazed, confused, and immeasurably sad.

  As for Jacqueline, she started to walk away, but stopped, mid-stride. Turning towards the door, she stared almost lovingly. She reached for the knob. Her hand grasped it, turning it ever so slightly. She pulled, and the door opened just a crack before Jacqueline released it. She shook her head, frowning at her inexplicable actions, and walked away. A few scant inches, and she would have broken the curse. But it was not to be. They lived that life, and died, never knowing how close they had come to true happiness.

  The second close call occurred over a hundred years later during a great and horrific war. They were born into a time of sadness characterized by drought, economic hardship, and starvation. Their lives mirrored the melancholic state of the world.

  Logan was born into a poor farming family. Before the great drought, they rarely had a surplus of crops, but neither did they starve. The rains ceased, and the dusts rose, blowing across the country. Their lives were torn asunder as, all around them, their neighbors’ farms were foreclosed upon. Logan’s family’s farm was no different.

  Jacqueline’s family felt the depression as well, but in a different way. She was the daughter of the governor – a corrupt and loathsome man – who capitalized on the misfortune of others for his own gain. Jacqueline hated him, and for good reason.

  As it happened, the foreclosure on Logan’s family’s farm was the catalyst for an angry confrontation between Jacqueline and her father. After the argument, Jacqueline ran away from home, leaving her evil father behind.

  One might suspect that this is where their paths would cross, but it was not so. They did come close, but not so close as to be noteworthy in the midst of their long, sad story.

  No, she ran far away, and joined the war as a nurse. Jacqueline, by nature, was a kind and gentle woman. She felt others’ suffering as if it was her own, and could not bear to stand by and do nothing. Having nowhere else to go, she chose the path where she thought she would be most useful. And she was. Many a soldier owed his life to her kind ministrations.

  Logan was lost without his family’s farm. It was the only world he had ever known. His family decided to move on to greener pastures, but Logan was drawn elsewhere. Whether it was the curse trying to keep them close, or if it was simply his inherent adventurous spirit, no one will ever know. But regardless of the reason, Logan went to war.

  And he was, to his surprise, quite good at it. He could almost lose himself in battle; he was almost able to push aside his sadness. In the war against an evil empire hell-bent on world domination, he saved life after life with his battle prowess. No one, however, comes through war unscathed, and Logan was no different. Eventually, the enemy caught up with him, and he was injured.

  Sent to the same hospital in which Jacqueline worked, the two former lovers lived practically side-by-side for the duration of Logan’s recovery. Eventually, they might have even met.

  But it was not to be, for the curse viciously asserted itself. Logan knew that something was wrong with the world. He felt it in the core of his soul. Something was missing, and that something, he knew, was the most wondrous thing imaginable. He wanted it. He needed it. He did not even know what it was, but he was quite certain that he would never have it.

  Day by day, he spiraled deeper and deeper into the blackness of an endless depression. He refused to eat. He rarely slept. He merely longed, never knowing what he needed. He could never have guessed that the thing he desired most was never more than a few feet away.

  After a few weeks, he gave up. He could not take it any longer. His life had lost all joy. More often than not, tears wet his cheeks.

  It was a rainy Tuesday when he took his own life. It was a Wednesday when Jacqueline was assigned that particular floor of the hospital to oversee. She did not, could not, understand it, but she stared at Logan’s empty bed for hours at a time.

  Jacqueline knew that she had missed something truly momentous. The details were unknown to her, but she knew in her heart that the empty bed had held some significance.

  The thought ate at her for years before she eventually went insane. She died at thirty-three in an asylum, completely convinced that her life had truly ended that day in the hospital with the discovery of an empty bed.

  Two lives later was the beginning of the last close call.

  It was a time of great advances in technology. The world, through wonderful new inventions, gadgets, and innovations, had shrunk. Communication between even different continents was only a few buttons away. Different cultures and nations were no longer the mysterious near-myths they once had been. East and West collided, and not always in a good way. Conflict and cultural exchange go hand-in-hand, after all.

  Logan was born to a blue-collar family. His father was a metal worker; his mother was a teacher. Jacqueline’s father was the head of a large corporation, and her mother seemed to spend money as a profession.

  Ah, but neither Logan nor Jacqueline were ever satisfied with mediocrity. Both had their faults, but laziness was not among them.

  Logan, after being exposed to a famous, fictional archeologist, set his sights on becoming one himself. He bent his entire mind towards the goal, and lo and behold, he became an archeologist.

  Books, however, were Jacqueline’s love. Growing up, she particularly enjoyed fairy tales, much to her father’s chagrin. Such frippery was beneath his daughter.

  Times had changed, and Women had asser
ted their equality. No longer were they content to simply sit back and let the men hold down jobs. No, they pursued careers just as their male counterparts. Jacqueline’s life could have taken nearly any path she chose, but her childhood love of all things literary led her to what she knew was a mundane, yet important career. She chose to become a caretaker of books.

  Logan, meanwhile, was also interested in fairy tales, though he called them myths. Old parchments and dusty, crumbling tablets were his life, and on one fateful day, in one particular moment, his life – all of his lives – took the turn which would take his story in a new direction. He discovered a series of clay tablets – thousands of years old – which detailed a grim tragedy filled with curses, lost love, and eternal punishment. He found a record of his own tale.

  It spoke to him like nothing ever had before. It filled his waking thoughts, and haunted his every dream. It told of the curse, and spoke of the longing which he so keenly felt, He knew, though he did not recognize the knowledge, that the story was his, that he was its subject.

  He tried to throw it aside, to cast the story from memory, but day after day, it crept back into his mind. It was not long before he realized that the story had awakened something deep inside. He knew that love was out there. Logan was certain that she was out there, some nameless, perfect woman for whom he