I visited everyone, spoke with everyone in De León those first few days, and if I had questions before, I had even more now. This time, though, everyone was much freer with their answers . . . although they all acted as if the answers should be obvious.
"If it's the Fountain of Youth and Beauty, why isn't everyone young?" I asked Aaron as I helped him prepare for a treasure hunt that would take the citizens of De León most of Sunday to complete.
"Nearest I can figure is that the water doesn't move time backward, it just stops it where it is. Whatever state you were when you drank, that's where you stay."
"So I'll always be sixteen?" I asked.
He laughed. "It doesn't stop you from growing, silly―just from growing old."
I didn't quite get it, until I remembered something I had learned in science―that there's a point for everyone where they stop growing up, and start growing old. "I think girls are supposed to keep growing until they're about eighteen," I said. "But boys grow until they're about twenty."
"So there you go," said Aaron. "We'll be eighteen and twenty forever. Once we get there, of course."
I laughed. Even the sound of my laugh had changed, filtered through a much more shapely mouth. Aaron looked at me and shook his head. "What is it?" I asked.
"Nothing. It's just that for all those weeks, I tried to imagine what you'd look like after visiting the fountain. I never even came close to imagining you the way you look now."
"What if it hadn't worked?" I asked him. "What if I had stayed ugly?"
"Why would you want to think about something like that?"
He grabbed me and tickled me in the ribs until I laughed, and forgot the question.
During one of my weaving sessions with Harmony and her friends, I asked about children again. I wanted to find out for myself whether the women of De León truly didn't mind being barren.
"Nature gives life in many ways," she said. "There can't be birth without death."
Gertrude nodded. "It would be unnatural."
It seemed strange to me that she would say something like that―after all, there was nothing natural about eternal life, was there? But then, if the fountain was a natural place, perhaps it was. Perhaps it was just a hidden side of nature.
"There are times I wish I could trade postmortality for the chance to have children," said one of the younger women. "But that's not a choice we have anymore. Postmortality is forever."
"Don't you mean immortality?" I said.
Harmony strung a fresh thread of gossamer into her loom before answering. "Abuelo might talk of immortality, but none of us is truly immortal, Cara. We can live forever, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we will."
"I... don't understand."
"Flesh is still flesh," she explained. "We do not wither, but we do wear. We bruise, we bleed, we break, and if it's bad enough, we die."
"That's why we have to be careful," Gertrude said, and then went into the long tale of poor Virgil Meeks, who was gored by a mountain goat and died at the untimely age of 137.
I thought about this. "It's actually a blessing that the fountain doesn't make us truly immortal," I pointed out. "I mean, what's the value of life if you can't die? How could you ever appreciate anything? This way life is still precious."
"Postmortality", like everything else in De León, was perfect―but there was still something about it that bothered me. "Postmortality is such an ugly word for such a wonderful thing," I told them. "Shouldn't it be called something better . . . like . . . oh, I don't know . . . Eternessence."
They all chuckled and repeated the word, trying it on for size. They liked it. They liked me. Now I had not only their acceptance, but their approval as well.
I had finally stepped into that great destiny Miss Leticia had spoken of―and my destiny was perfection. But what happens once you've arrived at that final destination? What then?
I should have stayed content to be one of the beautiful people of De León, but each night, it wasn't the sense of belonging that filled me as I drifted off to sleep. More and more, my mind was filled with the faces of the people back home in Flock's Rest.
"It's natural to think about them at first," Aaron said. "Don't worry, it'll pass."
I believed him, but I had my doubts.
Abuelo called for me two weeks after my "unveiling." We met in his great ballroom. His throne room, now filled with a hundred mirrors: a grand reflectorium. Those mirrors would stay uncovered until the next poor unnaturally ugly soul found his or her way under Abuelo's wings―and I would probably be the one to lead the new arrival down the gauntlet of flowers, as Aaron had led me.
Abuelo rose from his golden sofa and gave me a powerful hug. Then he walked around me, looking me over like I was a sculpture and he was Michelangelo.
"Harmony does good work, no? That gossamer gown is the finest she's made yet."
"It's beautiful," I said.
"Much love went into it. She has a special place in her heart for you, I think. Like a mother."
That made me think of Momma. Was Harmony taking her place? Was it okay to let that happen? One thought led to another, and in an instant my head was flooded with Flock's Rest.
"You are restless," Abuelo said. "I see this. And I also know why."
"You do?"
"It is because you have not found your place here. You have not yet found a task that fits you. Am I right in thinking this?"
I nodded, because he was half-right. I still hadn't found a purpose among the people here. It seemed to me all the good jobs were taken.
"I think I know something you can do for us. Something that will fill the coming years of your splendid eternessence."
I looked at him at the sound of my made-up word, a little embarrassed. He laughed when he saw my reaction, then he opened his arms as if to hug me, but instead spun around, and in the mirrors, his many reflections spun with him. "All this," he said. "All you see in the valley, it is a world unto itself. Do you not think so?"
I nodded.
"Well," he said, "a world needs a language, don't you agree? The people here come from all over the world. We speak English now because we are here in America, but we may not always be here. What we need is a language of our own. The most beautiful language in the world, like diamonds rolling off the tips of our tongues. I would like you to create this language for us."
My breath was taken away by the request. Create an entire language? Spelling was one thing, but this? "I can't do something like that!"
"You can," Abuelo said, with absolute certainty. "Because everything about you is beauty now. Your face, your voice, and the works of your hands. You will build us this language, and then you will teach us all to speak it... and to write it." Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a fresh bottle of ink, which he put into my hand. He had asked me to leave one wall of my cottage blank―now I understood why. But even so, creating a language was more than just inventing symbols and painting them on a wall. There was grammar and structure―languages grew over eons. No one person ever created an entire language.
"But... it'll take years."
"Indeed," he said. "Hundreds, perhaps. And now that you have been cleansed by the waters of the fountain, you have all the time you need."
And I realized he was right. Any task could be completed if there was enough time! "Thank you, Abuelo," I said, genuinely grateful, and excited about the task.
Then he kissed me on the forehead and turned me loose to begin.