Prologue — Once, I Was

It takes me three breaths for my hair to fade from black to pale gold.

That day, I thought no one was behind the playground.

Except for the three children hiding under the slide.

“Did you see that?”

“His eyes turned blue too.”

“Mister, you look Russian.”

I checked my reflection in a window. Blond hair and blue eyes. I could see why the children thought so.

“If you guess someone’s nationality from their hair and eyes, you’ll often be wrong.”

I repeated the same thing in Russian.

All three mouths fell open at once.

“Are you really Russian?”

“I was, once.”

“How long did you live there?”

“From 1812 to 1917.”

For a moment, no one spoke.

“You’re lying.”

The voice came from behind the children. A girl in a school uniform strode toward us. She had the same eyes as the smallest child.

“Big sis!”

“No one lives that long. Your hair is dyed, and you’re wearing contacts.”

“I’m not wearing contacts.”

My irises shifted from blue to green. Red spread through my hair.

“Before Russia, I was Norse.”

This time, my skin darkened a little, and my hair and eyes turned black.

“Before that, I was Roman.”

The youngest child ducked behind his sister.

“He’s a monster.”

“I’m not a monster.”

I thought for a moment, then added,

“Or a god.”

I had said that many times before.

Those who did not believe me threw stones and called me a liar. Those who believed me dropped to their knees and asked me to cure the sick, bring back the dead, or tell them who would win a war.

I could do none of those things.

“There has to be a trick.”

The sister still looked suspicious. She had been pointing her phone at me, but now she lowered it a little.

That little slab could capture the scene before it in an instant. Once, to preserve a single face, you had to sit perfectly still for minutes. Before that, it took paint and a skilled hand. Long before that, it took a wall and charcoal.

Even now, the world still found ways to become so convenient that I could hardly believe it.

I liked that.

“You don’t have to be scared. Want to see an old game?”

I picked five small stones from the edge of the flower bed. I tossed one into the air, scooped up the stones on the ground, and caught the falling stone.

Once.

Twice.

On the third toss, I caught all five on the back of my hand.

“Whoa!”

The children immediately crouched around me. The youngest forgot he had called me a monster and reached for the stones. His sister lowered her phone completely.

The game was very old. Some children had played it with sheep’s anklebones instead of stones.

One of them used to tap a stone twice against his forehead before every throw. When I first met him, he did not even reach my waist.

Later, his hands shook too badly to catch a single stone.

But the habit of tapping his forehead twice stayed with him until the end.

I rolled a stone in my palm.

“So how old are you, mister?”

The children looked up at me.

“I don’t know exactly.”

“Are you more than a hundred?”

“Much more.”

“A thousand?”

“Much more than that.”

I picked up one of the stones. It was perfectly ordinary, except that one side had broken into a sharp edge.

“I’m older than three million three hundred thousand years, at least.”

This time, even the sister did not laugh.

“I was alive before there were words or countries, before people even had proper names. Back then, breaking a stone in a different way could change the whole world.”

“Was breaking a rock really that big a deal?”

“I didn’t know at first, either.”

I slowly ran my thumb along the edge.

That day, I was hungry.

There was a wound on my hand, and in front of me was something tough that would not tear.

Then one stone broke differently than it had before.

“What happened?”

I looked at the children.

This time, no one called me a liar. No one knelt. They simply waited for me to continue.

So I thought it might be all right to tell them a little more.

“It’s a long story.”

I smiled.

“Want to hear it?”