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immortality.
    ***
    Zealand sat in the upper room of the tower at Cincaguas, holding an oblong piece of shaped marble in his hand. The stone was prepared according to Grace’s instructions, as a receptacle for Zealand’s life, and he could never make another—this was one-time magic, once and forever magic. Zealand heard the distant scrape and clang of weapons on the lower floors. He’d claimed possession of the tower with the pass phrase he’d learned from Hannah, and then he’d changed the phrase to one only he knew. But the guards were old, and Hannah knew her way around, so he was not surprised to see her limp in through the arched doorway. She apparently did have some starfish in her ancestry, because her leg had grown back, though it was knotty as coral, and a bit shorter than the other leg. She wore the slashed remains of a dark blue wetsuit, and she bled water from the wounds the guards had inflicted. Her teeth had grown back, too, though they curved off at strange angles, and some of them cut her face when she closed her mouth.
    “You killed my father,” she said, her voice emerging from the air before her, a calm statement of fact.
    “He wanted me to,” Zealand said. He didn’t stand up.
    “I don’t care. Because of you, I never had a chance to talk to him, and make things right between us.”
    Zealand rolled the marble egg between his palms. “He mentioned you in his last words. He said he had a daughter, and I’ve never heard such anguish.”
    “He remembered me?”
    “He remembered everything, and I think he wanted to die even more, once he did.”
    “I came here to kill you,” Hannah said, but she didn’t come any closer.
    “I thought you might.” He held up the stone, so she could see it. “I’ve been up here for weeks, trying to decide if I should put my life in this rock. I’ve never been an indecisive person, but I’ve been balanced on the edge over this.” He glanced up at her, then away, and said, “I’m sorry for the way I hurt you.” He set the egg on the stone floor.
    Hannah sat down beside him. She smelled strongly of salt water. “My father never told me he was sorry for anything.”
    “He wasn’t capable of being sorry, not while his soul was put aside.”
    “I’m sure that made his life easier.”
    “Mmm,” Zealand said. “Are you still going to kill me?”
    “Perhaps. Did you love my father?”
    “As well as I was able. But I may as well have loved a cloud, or the stars, for all the feeling that was returned.”
    “I know how that feels.” She picked up the marble egg. “I don’t think I’ll kill you. Not just now.”
    “I almost want you to. It would take the decision out of my hands. I wish I knew where to go from here.”
    She laughed, that harsh hyena sound, and Zealand realized that her laughter, unlike her voice, came from her own throat. “No one knows that.” She put the marble egg back in Zealand’s hand. “Not even my father knew where to go next. He just knew he was going to keep going on forever. Until you helped him find forever’s end.”
    Zealand nodded. He stood and walked to the tower window, and looked down at the earth, far below. Hannah came and stood beside him.
    “It’s a long way down,” Zealand said.
    “Looked at another way,” Hannah said, “we’ve come a long way up .”
    Zealand squeezed the stone in his hand. It was cold, and hard, and didn’t yield at all under the pressure of his hand. He thought about irrevocable decisions.
    Zealand dropped the marble egg out the window, and Hannah stood beside him as they watched it fall.

Cup and Table
    Sigmund stepped over the New Doctor, dropping a subway token onto her devastated body. He stepped around the spreading shadow of his best friend, Carlsbad, who had died as he’d lived: inconclusively, and without fanfare. He stepped over the brutalized remains of Ray, up the steps, and kept his eyes focused on the shrine inside. This room in the temple at the top of the