Alec POV
"Did they hurt you?", I ask. I've almost changed my mind wanting to hear about all this. It's terrible. She coughs and grabs a Kleenex.
"Your nose is bleeding", I say, tilting her head back for her. "I want to keep hearing this. It's like a personalized history book, but give it a second."
"I'll make more tea", she says, pushing me away. She goes into the kitchen and in seconds, I hear the kettle boiling. Using magic willy nilly these days. I hear cabinets close and she comes out with two steaming mugs.
"Voila", she says, putting them both on the table. The whole thing took about 40 seconds. I shake my head at her.
"You know it's okay to do things the long way, the human way sometimes", I tell her, "But go on. Did they hurt you?"
"No, but they killed several women I knew, all Christians. And one actual warlock in Scotland. It turned the Downworld on its head. Everything changed overnight. We were solitary creatures but witch burnings brought warlocks, vampires, werewolves, and Seelies together as nothing else did. We were terrified, truly terrified for the first time in history. The Downworld Council was born, with one council member from each species. For many like me, I had only heard of the other species, I had never met one. We became aware of each other, as I caught the eye of the Bavarian Guard. I got invited to a party at the court of the King of Bavaria, the stupidest invitation I ever accepted. I missed virtually all of the creation of the Downworld Council."
"He attacked you?", I ask.
"No. He wooed me, he promised me riches, a family, love. I have to admit I fell in love with him. My first and only marriage so far. I wished my mother could see me- an illegitimate peasant marrying a king. He gave me everything, jewels, silks, and promised I'd be happy."
I know I'm frowning when she reaches for my hand.
"On our wedding night, he admitted he knew what I was", she goes on, "He'd seen me practicing magic, I still don't know how it happened, but he sent his guards to get me. He thought I was a witch though and had no idea I couldn't reproduce. He wanted a child with magical powers he could use. I kept trying to escape but he threatened that if I didn't cooperate he would turn me over to the church for execution. When he couldn't get a son by me, I was thrown in the dungeon. Damp, rats, no food..."
"Fuck, Magda." My head crashes into my hands.
"If I were mundane I'd be dead. But...I survived Heinrich and the witch burnings. I spent the end of the 1500's in his dungeon, and when his son inherited, he just let me go. With nothing of course, not a single piece of gold to my name. I had had enough of love and enough of men. I just lived in one small town after another, moving on when people noticed I wasn't aging. I wanted to move to the New World.
Europe had been the center of the universe since Rome; by the 1600s, it was grossly overpopulated. But in America, as they called it, there was land and farming and hunting, room enough for everyone.
I was about to consider leaving, when they had their own witch burning there and I turned back. Finally society started talking about the abuses of the poor and crazy rights and privileges of the nobility and clergy. For the first time, the majority didn't really believe the King was appointed by God...anyway, I got directly involved in the French Revolution; for the first time, I was very excited about something happening to help the people. Everything changed overnight. Modern feminism was born and died in that era."
"And you met Olympe de Gouges", I prod.
"Yes", Magda says, with a broad smile, her cheeks turning a beautiful pink. "She was soooo beautiful, Alexander, like you, almost too beautiful to be believed."
I know I'm turning red.
"I'm not...", I try to interrupt, but she's still talking.
"The palest white skin with black hair and black eyes. Her mother was just as beautiful. She broke into the highest levels of society by claiming to be the illegitimate daughter of famous noble playwright. Her plays seemed funny or entertaining on the surface, but they had always made a secret point and ridiculed royalty. She was also one of France's fiercest abolitionists. We were introduced by a warlock.
Lots of warlocks flocked to pre-revolutionary France. The culture in Paris was fun, exciting, non-stop entertainment day and night for the right price. Fashion was beautiful and overtly feminine. Decadent. Magnus Bane lived there then. So did Bellamy Blaise. But the vampires always ruled Paris. It made sense. They too were decadent, self-indulgent, beautiful, romantic, and ridiculously over dramatic. I stayed away from Downworlders then as I always had. Most Downworlders stuck exclusively with their own kind, but I didn't like their company from childhood on, defying our every rule by spending all my time in the affairs of mundanes. I believed I'd found my home for the first time.
Olympe and I met and she pointed out my yellow silk gown clashed with my hair. I hated her for 5 whole minutes before she insisted on swapping gowns and I wore her pink, which still smelled of her perfume. By the end of the week, we were lovers. We wrote, we drank violet champagne all night, a thoroughly French concoction of champagne and Crème de Violette. Everyone was breaking all the rules then, and so did we."
"So you were two 20-somethings having fun", I say.
"If you could call someone 600 years old a 20-something, then yes. We sure acted like it. I never told her who and what I was. We were never about permanence, just joy in the moment. There are times in history where everything is so damn slow, it's like watching ice melt, and then there are times when everything goes so fast you barely have time to taste it and this was one of those times, everything was about the joy in the moment. And then she published a pamphlet. I told her, I TOLD her, I made her promise she wouldn't. Criticizing Robespierre. I hated that man. I hate him still."
She blows her nose again and stuffs the red tissue in her pocket.
"The Terror was...I hope you never see anything like it, Alexander There was so much blood caked and dried under the guillotine, the streets of Paris ran red during a rainstorm. I tried to free her from prison so many times, but she was so stubborn. I was in the crowd that day and I ran toward her. She screamed out "no", and everyone laughed they thought she was trying to stop it. But I knew whom she was talking to—me. We'd have both been dead.
So I patted my heart and blew her a kiss. Tears were streaming down both our cheeks. Then they dropped the razor. There was a bloody stump where her gorgeous face used to be. I left Paris, I cursed France, and I hid. I started aging again but stopped, looking somewhere around 30. I stayed alive, but stayed away from mundanes and Downworlders alike.
I went into isolation at the same time that most Downworlders were coming out of it. The world was changing again, evolving. London was the center of the civilized world, and many Downworlders were mixing, sometimes well, sometimes not so well, with Shadowhunters. Magnus Bane knows everything about all the old families. You should ask him about the Lightwoods sometime."
"I'd love to, but I'm more about the future. I know all I need to know about Tatianna Blackthorn, and all of them. Most of the time people come out fine, sometimes they don't. She was mad as a hatter, and her husband was worse. Look at what my parents did. I'm my own man", I say firmly.
She nods and takes my hand. "You're so young, my love, so young. Someday you'll realize the past is all you have left", she says sadly.
"Hey, Magda, we're together now! This is beginning of our life, not the end", I insist. She leans forward and kisses me. She seems so down, so "off."
"Did you know the Lightwoods then?", I ask. I doubt she'd have an open mind about me if she did.
"No, when a lot of warlocks were trying to help forge The Accords with Shadowhunters, I left Europe. It had nothing left to offer me. I'd wanted to leave for centuries and actually did in the 1800s. 70 years after Olympe's death, I felt ready for a new adventure. I sailed, and entered the country through the Port of New Orleans. I needed a last name suddenly to get in. So Lena no name became Magda Deus, taking the last part of my father's name as a last name. A new person for a new life.
I enjoyed New Orleans, but got wind of a large group of warlocks and the safety that promised near Richmond, Virginia, so I headed north and lived in Richmond for a few decades."
"And then?", I ask.
"Alexander, I..."
"I'm only going to presume the worst if you won't tell me."
"First of all, the clothes sucked. I'd worn whatever clothing was appropriate for women among mundanes at the time. I started off in a sackcloth dress, a bag of potatoes my mother cut holes out of for my head and arms, and it got more expensive, more sophisticated, more ridiculous, and more painful with every century. But nothing was worse than that tightly cinched waist and enormous hoop skirt. The American South in the Victorian era was a catastrophe for women."
"What happened next?", I ask.
"Well, as I said I don't like spending a lot of time with my own kind, so I didn't stay long. I moved to the Chesapeake, thinking some sea air might be nice. I got invited to a party. The party was at a huge house, simply huge, palatial, big white columns out front..."
"Are we talking Gone with the Wind here?", I ask, laughing, "Now that doesn't seem like you at all." She rolls her eyes at me.
"All the young men were very sweet, they all had good manners, better manners than anywhere I'd ever been. When you've been treated like a monster most of your life, good manners become pretty important. At the party, all anyone was talking about was "secession." I didn't know what the word meant. I was dancing when I saw...George", she spits out.
"What did he look like?", I ask and she clears her throat.
"I don't remember."
"What did he look like, Magda? Please, please keep going..."
"Um, tall, quite tall, broad shoulders. Black hair. He was already a loyal soldier in the army. I uh..."
"Well, when it comes to men your taste is certainly consistent", I point out.
"Blue eyes like sapphires", she continues like I hadn't spoken. "At the time, he was the most handsome man I'd ever seen. That only changed recently." Her eyes flick up at me.
"He wouldn't let anyone else dance with me all night. It was heavy-handed, but charming. After that, I got flowers every day, complimenting my eyes, my lips, my hair, my skin, my ankles even. He pretty much went through my every body part", she laughs, "Every one of them with a note signed, "Your servant, George Petersen." He was so kind and generous and pleasant. He was the sort to go out of his way to return a ball to playing children or save a hurt dog. I was smitten by the time he invited me to a ball at his own house, his father's house.
It was beautiful. He'd meant to show it off to see if I liked it there. It was then that I saw the slaves—carrying drinks on trays, scampering around to do what George's father said immediately as if they were scared, and there were more outside. I turned around and walked out the door. I'd seen that cruelty before and Olympe had been my teacher about slavery in the French Caribbean. He caught my arm on the stairs outside and I explained to him I couldn't be there. That night we talked for hours. He told me how much he hated the institution, but he couldn't convince his father. We talked about literature, art, history, and our favorite philosophers, like the French Philosophes. I talked about the Revolution like I'd lived through it, which I had. It wasn't just physical...it was a meeting of the mind, of the souls."
"You were in love with him", I state.
"I was", she answers.
"What happened next?"
"Some fools shot cannons at a fort in South Carolina. I begged him to stay with me; he didn't believe anything they believed, but he wouldn't do it. He left the U.S Army and joined the Confederate one", she sighs.
"I just can't see you dating a Confederate soldier. That's not who you are", I say, shaking my head.
"You're judging one time period by the morals of another. He was considered extreme in his beliefs. When his father died, he freed the slaves he inherited, and sold off a chunk of land to be able to afford to pay workers. His neighbors hated him for spreading his ideas. I moved into the house and ran it while he was gone."
"He didn't want to marry you?", I ask, perplexed.
"He asked many times, but I wouldn't. My first marriage made up the worst memories of my life, but I couldn't tell him that, that I'd had a bad marriage 300 years before. So I refused because I couldn't have children. He told me he didn't care but I wouldn't back down. When he came home...it was the best time of my life. We spent his entire furlough in a white lace-canopied bed. The look of him, feel of him, smell of him...it was electric. I was mad about him, mad. I wanted to climb inside his chest and never face the outside world again. We knew each other..." A tear rolls down her cheek and she starts to cry. "Like we were twins. I adored him. Then in the last year of the war, he was shot and killed."
"Oh God, by the Angel, Magda, I'm so sorry", I sigh. "I had no right to force you to talk about this."
"It's the first time I ever did", she says, pulling a button off a uniform out the box. "These are what bothered you, right?" She holds up a stack of love letters, tried with a ribbon.
"Y...yeah", I admit.
"A friend from the warlock coven found me standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean. I was about to step off...but she grabbed me. We talked all night, and she convinced me he'd be furious if I hurt myself. So I lived in that giant house as it fell down around me for 50 years. When it was claimed as museum in the early 20th century, I headed to New York. There I met all our friends. Bane owned a speakeasy going under after the fall of the stock market. Catarina was working as a nurse. The First Great Mundane War and the Second Great Mundane war terrified Downworlders, but I slept through them, lost in grief. I was...my head is pounding...I just..."
"Magna, relax. I'm sorry. I just...so if I'm lucky, one day, one of my arrow heads winds up in this box."
"Alec, stop it. I don't want to think about you being gone", she cries. She coughs hard.
"But someday I will be! The way you just lose great loves and just move on every time..."
"I'm IMMORTAL, Alexander!", she shouts. "I don't have a choice! I would have killed myself after Petyr, but I had to be strong, I had to keep going. If you think I enjoy it, think otherwise."
"I'll get more tea." She jumps up, wiping tears away, and sways.
"Magda!" She coughs up a handful of blood and falls unconscious on the floor. "Magda!"