Arianna opened her eyes as her ship landed on the shores near the castle in Wisseria where she had last seen Imaginos. The castle was no longer there, and she wondered if it had been destroyed during the wars that she had been told about. She wondered briefly if Imaginos had escaped the destruction unharmed. Or had his body been damaged during the wars? Was he trapped forever in a chair somewhere, his immortality now a curse rather than a gift? Had he seen such a fate for them both and was that the reason he had sent her away?

She decided to visit the village and find out what she could learn about what had happened to Imaginos. Walking several miles, she found the library and went inside.

Alice Cromwell, the local librarian, wasn't sure of what to make of the young woman who walked in. She reminded her of Zack Pinsent, a young Brit who dressed in the style of the nineteenth century English gentry. Alice wondered if this woman had been impressed by Mr Pinsent and had decided to copy his style. She hoped it would start a fad since it looked far nicer than the ripped jeans she saw on a daily basis.

"May I help you?" she asked.

Arianna smiled gratefully.

"Thank you, yes," she replied. She decided that revealing her immortality would not be a good idea. "I'm a bit of a history buff. I was curious about the castle on the hillside."

"Castle Frankenstein," the librarian recalled. "The legend says the townsfolk burned it down nearly two hundred years ago when the baron performed some diabolical experiment."

"Didn't he have an assistant?" Arianna asked. "Some gentleman with an unusual name?"

"There were rumours of such a man," Alice agreed. "His name was never written down so I don't know if he truly existed. His body, if there was one, was never found in the remains of the castle. Though the baron's was, as was the creature he made."

Arianna's heart soared with hope. Imaginos was alive.

"Any ideas on where the survivor, assuming he did survive, might have gone?" she asked.

"A ship was said to have sailed from the port that same night," the librarian told her. "He may have sought passage aboard it. It was called the Silverfish. A passenger liner." Alice wrote down a date and handed it to Arianna. "This is the night it all happened. You might be able to find a passenger manifest."

"Thank you," Arianna said, gratefully accepting the scrap of paper and then staring at the row of computers in front of her. Glad that the aliens she had spent time with had kept her up to date with human technology, she took a seat in front of one and entered the information into the search engine.

After several futile searches, she finally found what she was looking for. Scanning the manifest's list of over seventy passengers, she finally found the name she was looking for.

Imaginos.

"Got you," she said in a triumphant whisper. "Now where did you go?"

She noticed that the ship had landed in several ports and that Imaginos had disembarked in Cornwall. She would travel there next, then. But first she would have to hock some of her jewellery and get money. Most of what she owned were pearls, not fancy diamonds or gems, and she hoped they were innocuous enough for the pawn shop owner not to ask too many questions.

Taking off the old necklace, she put it in her clutch purse and made her way to the pawn shop.

As he lay in bed with Desdinova in his arms, Imaginos's mind was drawn back to the days before the Magna of Illusion had split the universe. He loved Desdinova. There was no doubt about that. So why was his mind suddenly focusing on a woman he had not seen in over two hundred years. A woman who surely must be dead by now.

No. She wouldn't be! His mind suddenly recalled the last night they had danced together. How they had waltzed to the sounds of the musician's violins and soft piano music. At the astrologer's ball when she had agreed to help him with his experiment. And she had kissed him for the very first time with a light in her eyes that spoke of a shared eternity, though she had no idea that it was never meant to be. The future he foresaw was too dark, and she had no part in that darkness, being a creature of pure light and love.

Desdinova sensed that something was troubling her husband and asked. "What's wrong?"

"Just dwelling on the past," Imaginos confessed.

"People, places, or events?"

"People," Imaginos admitted. "A person."

"Anyone I should be worried about?" Desdinova raised an eyebrow.

"Probably not," Imaginos assured her. "She's far away now. Just someone who loved me many years ago."

"And you've just started thinking about her again?" Desdinova asked, concernedly.

"The memory is a very odd thing," Imaginos said, dismissively. "Don't worry about it. Even if she did return, I doubt she would still love me after I shot her into outer space."

"Love is also a very odd thing," Desdinova told him.