Chapter 10: The Weight of Memory
I dream less than I used to.
But when I do, it's never the world-ending kind. Not war. Not death. Not even my curse.
It's always the children.
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Their faces change with time. Blonde hair. Curly brown. Missing teeth. Small hands reaching for mine. They never look older than eight in my dreams. That's how I remember them — young, full of wonder, asking questions about things I've seen a thousand times before.
"Why do stars twinkle, Papa?"
"Will the moon follow us home?"
They were never mine by blood, of course. But I raised them. Protected them. Buried them.
Every single one.
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Today, I sat on the steps of a museum in Warsaw, watching a class of children walk past, all chattering like birds after a storm. Bright jackets. Paper notebooks. Ink-smudged fingers.
One of them, a boy no older than six, turned and looked right at me.
He waved.
I waved back before I realized what I was doing.
His teacher hurried him along, unaware.
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I walked for hours that evening. No direction, just momentum. My mind wandered where my feet took me: old cities I'd seen reduced to rubble, lovers I'd left behind, graves I stopped visiting because the ache never lessened. Names I stopped writing down because I didn't need to — they never left.
I thought about Clara, a girl I rescued from a flooded village in 1232. She grew up calling me uncle. She made bracelets out of seashells. I still had one.
I thought about Miguel, a war orphan who used to fall asleep on my lap after night terrors. He wanted to be a priest. He died a soldier.
I thought about Asha, a street thief from Kolkata who pickpocketed me before I offered her a home. She learned to read and wrote poetry until the fever took her at fifteen.
I remembered all of them.
Their laughter. Their heartbreak.
The way I always outlived them.
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Later, in my hotel room, I looked in the mirror. Not at my face — that hadn't changed in centuries — but into my eyes. The wear behind them. The burden.
And I asked myself something I hadn't dared in years.
Could I do it again?
Could I take another child under my wing? Could I carry that weight again — the warmth and the eventual ache? Would it be selfish?
Or would it be redemption?
I saw so much greed in people. Every day, another favor asked for power, money, revenge. And I gave it. Because that's what I do. But children…
Children ask for stories. For comfort. For safety.
They ask because they trust. Not because they calculate.
And in a world that was increasingly cold and fractured, maybe — just maybe — raising one child would be my act of rebellion.
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I lit a candle that night. Not for a god. Not for magic. Just for memory.
And I let it burn beside the shell bracelet Clara once tied to my wrist.
If I found the right child — one who needed someone, not something — maybe I'd say yes.
Even knowing the price.
Even knowing I would one day stand over another grave.
Because maybe… love is worth repeating.
Even when it breaks you.