The Everlasting

Over years of running, Una and Owen learn to read the pulse that tells them when to move. They travel by every means across changing centuries, sleep anywhere, and learn which parts of the world shift quickly and which endure. Most importantly, they learn to understand each other completely. Owen knows every mark on Una’s body except a small silver circle between her breasts from childhood.

There are close calls when anachronisms or prolonged stays nearly expose them to the queen’s agents. They discover a fourth rule: No matter where they begin, using the book always returns them to the yew tree. Owen theorizes why; Una simply trusts it, since the queen has never found them there.

Gradually they linger in the woods longer, burying caches of supplies and repairing the woodcutter’s cottage. They begin to think of it as home, breaking the first rule.

The first time Una misses her period, she visits a brothel and obtains an herbal tea to end the pregnancy. Owen is shaken but cares for her through the illness. The second time, he briefly time travels to retrieve modern supplies, including pills. Una hesitates before swallowing one, though she cannot say why.

The third time, Una sees Owen’s trembling hands and realizes he wants the child. He admits it but says they cannot raise a baby while running. Una surprises them both by saying they could. Realizing the queen never intended her to have a future, Una crushes the pill and suggests traveling to before the queen ever existed. Owen protests, arguing that they might forget again or the book may not work that way, but relents seeing Una’s desire. They break the second rule.

They arrive when the yew is young and Dominion does not exist. A sword hilt embedded in the tree panics Owen until Una sees it bears no maker’s mark. He speculates it may be the original Valiance of older legends, predating the queen’s copies. They are safe.

They build a cottage, taking small time jumps and using tools from the early modern era. When Una catches her pregnant reflection in a mirror Owen brought back, remarking on her womanhood but upset that her child will never see her wear armor. When Owen sees her upset, he removes the mirror without comment.

They travel forward to spring, and their son is born beneath the yew. He has pale, curling hair and a red birthmark on his left foot. Owen feels his son is something for which he would die, while Una feels he is something for which she would kill. The narrator refuses to write his name.

Feeling clumsy with infants, Una leaves most care to Owen. When the baby fusses at night, Owen tends him, thinking of his own father’s struggles and wishing he could ask for advice. Una watches them and thinks of the sword waiting in the yew to defend her family.

Several months after their son’s birth, a local crofter’s son arrives at their door in a panic. Raiders have attacked his family, and his brother is in danger. Owen demands to know why he came to them, but it is clear he recognized Una as a warrior. Una and Owen argue silently: She wants to help; he fears for their family. Sick with guilt, Owen signals his willingness to break the third rule.

Una walks to the yew and grips Valiance’s hilt. She imagines slaughtering the raiders and saving the farm, and also the queen discovering them as a result. She releases the sword and returns empty-handed. Kneeling before the crofter’s son, she tells him they cannot help. That night, she tends her baby with hands she knows will never hold a sword again, confirming for the scholar that Una Everlasting has died another death at his hands.

The narrative turns to their idyllic years and the book gathers dust. Their son learns to talk and declares he will be a knight, but Owen forbids it and stops telling stories—becoming, he thinks, his own opposite, destroying stories rather than preserving them as the price of peace. Their daughter is born with black hair and brown eyes. Owen wishes guiltily he could share small stories about his children with someone like Professor Sawbridge or even his father, then remembers their necessary isolation. Their children have no extended family, no lineage, only the present.

Years pass. On a summer day, their children play in the woods while Una and Owen share berries among white flowers. Owen says they are called dragonscales or ulla flowers. Hearing a name so close to her own, Una laughs, as if finding a lost part of herself. Owen wipes berry juice from her throat and tastes it, feeling he has reached heaven and accepting the moral cost.

At that instant of perfect happiness, footsteps approach. A voice he has not heard in nine years speaks, in a language from a millennium hence, addressing him as a corporal. The narrator concludes that “heaven is only a fairy tale,” but “the devil is real” (227).