Our Infinite Fates

For the first time, Evelyn is reborn close enough to where she lived in a previous life that she can return to visit her loved ones. Not realizing that her old town is in the throes of a witch trial, she steals a horse to get there. When she arrives, she learns that her father died and that her mother does not believe that Evelyn was her daughter in a past life. When Evelyn tries to prove it, citing details of their time together, her mother calls her a witch and begins screaming for help. As neighbors begin to chase her, she suddenly sees Arden running toward her. They get into his boat, and he rows them from the shore. It was his horse she stole, and she realizes that he will always find her and that his soul is her true home. She wonders if she is a witch—or if they both are. She asks him if they made “a deal with the devil” (180), sacrificing their adulthood and future. His noncommittal answer seems like a lie.

Arden accompanies Evelyn to work at the bookstore. Evelyn asks Arden if he has ever killed anyone, and he says he has. She never has—not even during the war, at least that she can remember. Arden is amazed by this. Suddenly, Ceri walks in.

Evelyn apologizes to Ceri, and he asks to speak to her alone. Arden says that he cannot let Evelyn out of his sight. Evelyn wants to tell Ceri the whole truth, but Arden tells her not to, and his attempt to “order her” makes her angry. She covertly begins recording on her phone. She gives Ceri a general outline of the situation, and though he doesn’t believe her, he believes that she believes her story. He thinks that Arden is abusing Evelyn in some way, and he threatens to involve the police. Arden promises that if the police ever come close to Evelyn, he will kill her on the spot. After this, Evelyn stops recording. Then, Dr. Chiang calls. She explained the situation to her wife, who has agreed to perform the procedure the day before Evelyn turns 18. Evelyn is elated that she’ll get to save Gracie, and she plans to survive her birthday as well.

Evelyn—a boy in this life—bathes in the hammam after a day of translating Ptolemy into Turkish at the behest of the sultan. Another young man, who claims to be nearly blind, joins her. When Evelyn sees the boy’s notebook, however, she realizes that he’s Arden because Arden always carries one. Arden confirms his identity and says that he believes the sultan summoned him to join his seraglio. Evelyn asks if Arden has ever made love, and Arden says that he has had sex for money. Evelyn never has, in any life, and she suddenly feels foolish. They discuss religion and whether any faith can accommodate their experiences; Arden says that aspects of their situation can be found in various faiths but that no one faith wholly accounts for what happens to them. Evelyn is dismayed to learn that, theologically, they should not exist, and this desperation causes her to reach for Arden. They kiss, tentatively at first and then passionately. Suddenly, they hear someone approach and see the livid sultan.

Evelyn believes that Arden’s hostile silence is rooted in shame. She is infuriated that she cannot remember how their story began and wonders if he is insulted by her failure to recall this important information. She sends the recording to Ceri with a message that the police cannot arrest Arden until after the completion of her procedure. 

That night, she hears Arden crying. She tries to comfort him, but he tells her that their closeness in Siberia hurt “too much.” Evelyn says that he’s allowed to feel warmth, and he climbs into bed with her. He recalls the one time they got married and how haunted he feels by his actions in that life. He is “ruined,” he says, by having to watch her joyful face change every time he kills her. Arden wants her to live each life as fully as possible without the complication of loving him, though he says he does love her. He will always be hers, he claims, though he has no right to call her his.

Evelyn and Arden are children in a caravan transporting gold and ivory into the west from Timbuktu. They are called Thiyya and Lalla, respectively, and have been inseparable since birth. One day, Lalla accidentally calls Thiyya “Evelyn,” which fills Thiyya with dread. She suddenly remembers that they have met before and that Lalla—Arden—has killed her in other lives. Arden says that the memory of what Evelyn did for him in Bianjing haunts him, and Evelyn feels a deep sense of betrayal. She thinks, “It stood out as a kind of axis point, a place where things between the hunter and me had tilted. Northern Song was a blur of gray, but there was a general sense of sharpness, of rawness, in my final hours [there]” (220). Evelyn accuses Arden of being a hunter, and Arden assures her that he only carries out their “true destiny.” Evelyn cannot fathom how Arden could ever kill her after all they’ve been through in this life. 

The chapter ends with a poem in which the speaker compares their beloved to a song written in a major key while they are written in a minor. The speaker wonders why the lover chooses them.

Evelyn is filled with unease on the day of her procedure, and the fear she feels when she considers what will happen if she survives her birthday is extreme. She says, “A blurred storm of images broke over my mind’s eye. Sheets of white hair, and black fingernails curling into grotesque helixes. A bone world raining ash. Pain larger than me, larger than anything. Arden, begging, pleading” (225). Arden drives Evelyn to the hospital and maintains a steely silence. Dr. Schneider, the surgeon, explains what will happen and that Evelyn will feel pain since she can’t be sedated. During the procedure, Evelyn cries in pain while Arden holds her hands. He distracts her with conversation and notes that she’s rubbed off on him in some ways. He assures her that it will all be okay, but she knows it’s a lie.

In the recovery room, Evelyn taunts Arden to elicit some emotion that might prompt him to let her live. He argues that everything he does is to protect her, including shielding her from his agonizing feelings. It tortures him, he says, that he cannot protect her from himself, implying that something worse will happen if he doesn’t kill her before they turn 18. He says, “God, if I’d just said no, back in Lundenburg. If I’d just…but then there wouldn’t be us. And which is worse, really?” (235). She realizes that London of 1,000 years ago must be where this all began. He goes to find a bathroom, and Evelyn hears a distant siren. Four officers arrive, and while two search for Arden, Evelyn tells another the whole truth. The detective says that they might bring charges against Evelyn for assaulting Ceri and wants Dr. Chiang involved because Evelyn’s mental state seems confused. Meanwhile, Arden escapes.

The police mount a search for Arden, but Evelyn declines a police presence at the farm because she plans to run away. She will turn 18 in just under 11 hours. The police tell Mrs. Blythe about Arden’s threats to Evelyn’s life, and she is shocked. Evelyn tells her mother that she’s going to bed, pondering how she can continue loving, lifetime after lifetime, knowing how it will devastate her to lose her loved ones. She also considers her “unhealthy attachment to objects […] touchstones of the lives [she] loved” (247). Once she’s certain that her mother is asleep, she leaps from her bedroom window and runs away.