Blood of the Fold

She wiped her palms at the hips of her green dress as Verna waited. "Yes… but you've been away for more than twenty years. You've aged that much, just like those outside the palace. It will take me near to three hundred years to age to where you are right now. Why, you look like a woman of almost.. forty."

Verna signed. "Yes, well, a journey will do that to you. At least mine did."

"I don't want to ever go on a journey and get old. Does it hurt, or something, to so suddenly be old? Do you feel… I don't know, like you're not attractive and life is no longer sweet? I like it when men view me as desirable. I don't want to get old like… It worries me."

Verna pushed away from the table and leaned back in her chair. Her strongest urge was to strangle the woman, but she took a breath and reminded herself that it was a friend's sincere question asked out of ignorance.

"I would guess that everyone views it in their own unique way, but I can tell you what it means for me. Yes, it hurts a bit, Phoebe, to know that something is gone and can never be recovered, as if I was somehow not paying attention and my youth was stolen from me while I was waiting for my life to start, but the Creator balances it with good, too."

"Good? What good could come of it?"

"Well, inside I'm still myself, but wiser. I find that I have a clearer understanding of myself and what I want. I appreciate things I never did before. I see better what's really important in doing the Creator's work. I suppose you could say I feel more content, and worry less about what others think of me.

"Even though I've aged, that doesn't diminish my longing for others. I find comfort in friends, and yes, to answer what you're thinking, I still long for men much the same as I always did, but now I have a wider appreciation for them. I find callow youth less interesting. Men need not simply be young to stir my feelings, and the simple hold less appeal."

Phoebe's eyes were wide as she leaned forward attentively. "Reeeally. Older men stir longings in you?"

Verna checked her tongue. "What I meant by older, Phoebe, was men older like me. The men that catch your interest, now? Fifty years ago you wouldn't have considered walking with a man the age you are now, but now it seems natural to you because you're that age, and men now the age you were back then seem immature to you. See what I mean?"

"Well… I guess."

Verna could read it in her eyes that she didn't. "When we first came here as young girls, like the two down in the vaults last night, novices Helen and Valery, what did you think of women who were the age you are now?"

Phoebe covered a giggle with her hand. "I thought them impossibly old. I never thought I'd be this age."

"And, now, how do you feel about your age?"

"Oh, it isn't old at all. I guess I was just foolish at that young age. I like being this age. I'm still young."

Verna shrugged. "It's much the same for me. I view myself in much the way you view yourself. I no longer see older people as simply old, because I now know that they're the same as you or I; they view themselves the same as you or I view ourselves."

The young woman wrinkled her nose. "I guess I see what you mean, but I still don't want to get old."

"Phoebe, in the outside world you would have lived nearly three lives by now. You, we, have been given a great gift by the Creator to be able to have as many years as we do, living here at the palace, in order to have the time necessary to train young wizards in their gift. Appreciate what you were given; it's a rare benevolence that touches only a handful."

Phoebe nodded slowly and behind the slight squint Verna could almost see the labor of contemplative reasoning. "That's very wise, Verna. I never knew you were so wise. I always knew you were smart, but you never seemed wise to me before."

Verna smiled. "That's one of the other advantages. Those younger than you think you wise. In a land of the blind, a one-eyed woman could be queen."

"But it seems so frightening, to have your flesh go limp and wrinkly."

"It happens gradually; you become somewhat accustomed to yourself growing older. To me, the thought of being your age again seems frightening."

"Why's that?"

Verna wanted to say that it was because she feared walking around with such an underdeveloped intellect, but she reminded herself once again that she and Phoebe had shared a good part of their lives as friends. "Oh, I guess because I've been through some of the thorn hedges you have yet to face, and I know their sting."

"What sort of thorns?"

"I think they're different for each person. Everyone has to walk her own path."

Phoebe wrung her hands as she leaned over even more. "What were the thorns on your path, Verna?"

Verna stood and pushed the stopper back into the ink bottle. She stared down at her desk, not seeing it, "I guess," she said in a distant tone, "the worst was returning to have Jedidiah look at me with eyes like yours, eyes that saw a wrinkled, dried-up, old, unattractive hag."