Stealing Time by Rebecca Bowyer (acx book reading .txt) 📕

then looked away. “Because you can’t let go.”Her voice broke on the final two words.

“Get out,” said Varya, her voice dangerousand low.

“Varya, you need to think this through.There’s still time to change your mind.”

“I said, get out!”

Marisa nodded. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrowafternoon, then. I’ll be back by five to get the dinners ready.”She paused, watching Varya, whose head was now in her hands, asthough inhaling the whiskey vapours could cure her pain. “I’ll seemyself out.”

Chapter thirty-nine

Elena

It all happened so quickly; you must understand. NotKir’s illness, but what came after. The illness was slow. It hadbeen with him for many months, creeping around his body andingratiating itself like a greasy new banking executive. Once ittook a hold on my grandson it grew cocky and decided to showitself. Of course, when we became aware of its presence, we tookhim to the doctors and they did everything they could to extractthat nasty infestation. But every time we thought they’d driven itaway completely, it would rise to the surface again. Until it grewso confident in its new fiefdom that it took a dramatic stand andmade it known that it wouldn’t let go, that it was here to stay.Illnesses, they’re not too bright, you see. They don’t have abrain, just instinct. If illnesses had a brain, they’d know neverto kill us. They’d learn to live in harmony with our bodies,sharing the fleshy resources and leaving us at least enough tocontinue our everyday functions. Letting us pump ourillness-tainted blood around our veins and exhale our infectedbreath into the atmosphere. But letting us stay here nonetheless,on this earth. With our loved ones.

The infestation our Kir has is a TerminalIllness. They are the tyrant of the unwellness world and will stopat nothing. Kir’s Terminal Illness didn’t stop until it completelydominated his whole little body, no matter how hard the doctorsfought against it.

The war was lost slowly—skirmish byskirmish—but the final battle still, somehow, caught everyone bysurprise. Even though we knew it was coming.

I asked my Varya what she planned to dowhile myself and our Kir lived our suspended lives. Beat theillness, she said simply. Kill it once and for all so Kir couldcome out and grow into a bigger boy and then a man and an old man.Or as old as they’ll allow us to be these days. Not bent over andshuffling maybe, but at least creased and a little papery.

After a few months in our sunny pastures Iasked my Varya, what will you do if you cannot cure the disease? Iasked her gently, because my Varya, she is quick to anger,especially when her competency is questioned. She is like a childwhen that happens, stomping her foot as her face turns red. Butwhen I asked her after those few months, she told me quietly andcalmly that she would find a cure. All she needed was time. Inodded and told her that Kir and I would give her all the time sheneeded.

There was some hope at the two-year mark. Weall got terribly excited. But then our hopes were dashed again.Back to the beginning we went.

After three years I asked my Varya again,has there been any progress? How is the research going? She went alittle pale and started to tell me about the new picture books shewas going to bring to her little boy. I waited while she spoke ofthe one with the dinosaur on the cover, the one with the lists ofmusic on the back pages and the CDs she would bring so we couldplay the music. Then I asked her again. I pretended I assumed shehadn’t heard me.

“There have been some… unexpectedanomalies.” She spoke these words after a very long pause and alittle preparatory handwringing. My Varya always uses long wordsshe thinks I don’t understand to try to scare me away from topicsshe doesn’t wish to discuss.

I folded my hands neatly in my lap and Itold her a story that my mother used to tell me.

Once upon a time there was a king. The kingwished very much to live forever, for he was frightened of death.His advisers taught him that those who did good deeds and followedthe rules of the kingdom could expect eternal comforts. Those whodidn’t would roast in the flames of the underworld. The king knewto which eternity his bad deeds destined him. And, for that reason,he decided the solution to the problem was to live forever.

To protect his health, he built high wallsall around the palace and forbade anyone from entering beforethey’d served a period of fourteen days in isolation, to prove theycarried no illnesses. He employed royal tasters to test each morselof food to check for poison. He ate only the best foods andexercised every day. The king surrounded himself with the bestdoctors he could find and did everything to placate his neighbourswith diplomacy rather than swords.

The king lived a great many years this way,a great many more than the record-keepers could detect that anyking had lived before him.

And then one day, the king was taking hisdaily walk in the royal walled gardens when he spied a small boysitting on a small boulder. The boy was whittling away at a pieceof bark.

“What are you making, boy?” asked the king,as he sat beside him. The boy grinned at the king and placed thepiece of bark in the royal fellow’s outstretched palm. The boy hunghis head forwards and a great, deep laugh started to rumble its wayup out of his shoes, travelled through his body and shot up out ofhis small mouth. The king could not take his eyes off the piece ofbark in his hand. It was fashioned into a great wall of flames andstarted to heat up and burn into the paper-thin skin of his palm.The boy continued to laugh and laugh as the king opened his ownmouth to scream. But nothing came out. As the king was engulfed byflames and reduced to ash, he heard the boy say:

“You cannot escape the inevitable, old man.Time will pass and your time will come when it is your time. Andnow, it is