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Pearl meets Gem when she’s 12 years old, and Gem says she is, too. She has freckles and a gap between her teeth, and when she laughs, it sounds like a whistle. When she smiles, her freckles connect like constellations. Gem smiles like danger and races her along the beach, and they watch the trade ships coming in and out of the harbor. Pearl tells her her favorite stories, about mighty Heracles and lovely Aphrodite, about gods and men and monsters. They get into trouble and get out of it again and laugh and cry and they’re best friends, and Pearl promises to always be with Gem.
When the earthquake comes, Pearl nearly makes it to safety before she runs back to find her friend, and then she gets lost in the maze of fallen walls and collapsed homes and landmarks that have turned unfamiliar. The air is hazy with dust and smoke, people are screaming, there’s a child crying distantly. A brick gets freed of the wall it’s lodged in and comes down to hit Pearl on the head with a heavy weight, and she falls to the ground, thoughts going fuzzy and vision dark. She manages to call out for Gem, just once, before she’s pulled under, tears streaking paths in the dirt on her cheeks.
Pearl meets Gem when she’s 17. She’s a little impressionable, maybe, but nothing like she was when she was young, so she doesn’t listen quite as well as she should, perhaps, to her mother’s warnings. Gem shows her hidden spots to sit and watch, and Pearl shows her which merchants will give you something for free, and they’re inseparable. Gem tells her, in a hushed voice, about the great cities of the Underworld, and the god Pluto who rules there, and Pearl tells her about the guardian of the mountain towering over the town.
Pearl stays by Gem, and teaches her how to read and write, draws a map for her of the world according to her father. She and Gem trade stories back and forth in their hidden corners, of wood nymphs and sea spirits. Pearl smiles and swears to always watch out for her, and she smiles back, a little sad.
The mountain, when it explodes, sends fire down into Pearl’s town, and ash falls from the sky, and burning stones are raining down as well, burning where they hit her skin, but all she can think of is Gem. In the end, she doesn’t find her, curled up in one of their hiding spots as liquid fire consumes her.
Pearl meets Gem, who smiles and claims it’s fate. She spins through the streets and Pearl spins with her, dizzy and breathless. They laugh and chase after each other down endless roads, and the empire they live in is ever growing, ever expanding. Gem says she wants to one day join the army, or maybe just save the day, and Pearl pretends to fight her with a stick until they both trip and fall.
Gem says, sometimes, that she’s going to see the world beyond their cramped city, and Pearl promises she’ll see it with her.
When it happens, it’s an accident, but it happens all the same. The horse carriage is going too fast, and Pearl doesn’t have time to move, and then passersby are screaming and gasping. Pearl is taken to a nearby doctor and lain on a cot, and she feels light and drifting, somehow. She dies within the hour, the doctor and a concerned nurse the only ones to see. The last thing she thinks is that Gem will have to see the world on her own.
Pearl meets Gem when she’s little, and Gem is older than her. Her face and hands are grubby, and her parents died when she was younger than she is now. Gem finds her, somehow, and keeps her safe and protected, and she promises, with little girl stubbornness, that they’ll be a real family someday.
When the sickness strikes for her, it strikes amidst the mud and filth of the streets, and Pearl’s small body is racked with fever as she shivers, Gem watching on sadly. There’s nothing much she can do for Pearl, but she tries until one night, when Pearl wakes from tossing and turning, and knows she’s going to die. Gem holds her hand, clenched in a tight grip, tears in her green eyes, and Pearl wants to tell her not to be sad, but she’s already gone.
Pearl meets Gem by accident. She’s not supposed to be in the woods during chores, but she was bored and no one was around, so she snuck away. Gem jumps down from a tree to sit next to her and asks her for some of her cheese.
Something in Gem is sad, distantly longing, but she somehow fits herself into Pearl’s life. Their village is small, more of a cluster of farms, really, and everyone knows everyone. Gem and Pearl sit in the woods and talk, slotting against each other perfectly. Pearl feels endlessly restless, needing Gem somewhere deep inside of her. Something about her is familiar. She says that they’re soulmates, meant to be, with a teasing smile, and Pearl laughs until her cheeks hurt, swearing that if they’re soulmates, she’ll always be with her.
Pearl barely grows old before she gets kicked in the chest one afternoon by her father’s horse, and she feels the white-hot pain before she drifts off, fighting against the darkness. At the very last second, a hand slips into hers, warm and so known to her, and Gem’s tears land on her forehead as she succumbs.
Pearl meets Gem and immediately comes to the conclusion that she’s a faery. Her hair is a mess of red curls and her eyes are bright green, and her smile is familiar to Pearl in a distant way. They live in a time where rebellion is breaking out, and Gem wants to fight. Pearl does too, wants to create problems for the soldiers invading her home, but Gem tells her to be patient. She listens to Gem and promises they’ll make trouble together eventually.
It really isn’t her fault, what happens. When the soldiers come, they come with a fury unmatched, and Pearl doesn’t want to take it lying down. She shields a child from getting hit, and takes the blow herself, in the temple with a heavy fist. Pearl falls to the street and the little boy she was protecting runs off for help, and Gem comes with tears in her eyes.
She shakes her head and tries to stop crying as the world goes dim and fuzzy around Pearl, and she swears she’s lived through this before. Pearl tries to smile, one last time, before she gets drawn down into nothing.
Pearl meets Gem in the orphanage. They become friends quickly, the only two girls their age. Gem gives her food to the littles, shares her blankets when the winter is too bitter. So Pearl gives her food to Gem, because she doesn’t need it as much, and gives her two blankets out of her three during the inter, because she’s used to the cold, whereas everything about Gem seems to be on fire, and they promise each other to take care of one another.
When Pearl lays on her bed, weak from malnourishment and fever, body unable to fight, Gem is curled up beside her, racked with sobs. She rests a hand in her red curls before she falls back into whatever’s next.
Pearl meets Gem in a church. The church offers sanctuary to all, and Pearl needs sanctuary desperately—they all do. Her parents were lost in the fighting she can still hear outside, and the priest is kneeling in front of the altar, murmuring prayers. Gem is curled against one of the walls, arms wrapped tight around her knees, and Pearl sits next to her and glances over at her; she’s smiling hesitantly. Pearl holds out her hand, both of them flinching as another shell explodes outside, and several people in the pews start to whimper or pray or both. Something about Gem reminds Pearl of someone she might’ve known as a child, or maybe she’s just scared and desperate for a friend. They huddle together and Pearl hopes beyond hope that they remain safe from the fighting, silently promises that she’ll do anything to keep them safe.
In the end, it’s not the fighting that gets her, but the lack of water. The church had stores, but Pearl gave her cups to the younger children, and now she can’t even swallow.Gem cries as she dies, and Pearl wants to reassure her that she’ll see her again, that it’ll be okay. Somehow, she knows that it will be, because she knows they’ve lived this a million times over, and it always is for a little bit.
Pearl meets Gem during a siege. Her eyes are bright blue and so painfully curious, and her voice has a tendency to lilt up at the end as if she’s asking a question, but Gem looks at her and she feels like she’s found all the answers in the world. Gem feels familiar to her in a strange, wanting-needing-loving way, and Pearl’s always been too curious for her own good, so she invites her back to the flat she shares with her mother and brother.
The siege drags on, all of them hungry, and Pearl gives half her food to her brother, and Gem does the same. They sit in Pearl’s room and talk about the invasion and what might happen, talk about what food they’ll eat again once it’s over, promise to have a feast once it’s done. Pearl almost remembers hours of conversation already gone, pasted over this one—in a forest, on a moor, in a small wooden room.
The fighting breaks out at the beginning of the year, right when spring is starting. Pearl isn’t supposed to be there, but neither are the hundreds of others caught in the crossfire. The bullet pierces her body, and her chest explodes in pain, and she feels like it’s already happened before. It was an accident, she thinks, like all the others. She wishes she could say goodbye to her mother, to her brother, to Gem.
Pearl meets Gem in London, when the fog is like a living thing and she can feel the buzz of war planes overhead. Pearl’s father died in the last World War, and her mother’s spirit died with him, so Gem keeps her company most nights. They talk and Pearl feels like something’s slotted into place deep inside of her, something she didn’t even know was missing. Gem’s eyes, whenever she looks at Pearl, hold an echo of sadness, a sadness matched in her, though she doesn’t know why. She feels like she’s known Gem forever, like she’s known Gem since before she was alive. Secretly, she swears to protect Gem, no matter what the cost.
Pearl lives like this for a bit, caring for her mother and spending almost all her time with Gem, and occasionally dreaming about other wars she’s lived through, even though that’s impossible. Gem keeps her company, tells her stories about Heracles and Aphrodite and wood nymphs and sea spirits, and they feel familiar to Pearl but she doesn't know why. Maybe the war has just stretched on for so long, she’s mixing up dates.
One night, the sirens are wailing and she can feel the dull roar of enemy planes in her bones, but she waits for Gem, and waits too long. A bomb explodes near her with a force that knocks her off her feet, and she hits the paving stones hard enough to snap something, unable to move as a wall falls on top of her.
Pearl meets Gem at a nightclub, the floor vibrating along to the music, the lights washing everything in yellow and blue. She keeps bad company, some would say, but really they’re just company, and she thinks they’re better than anything those sniffy rich people have. Gem smiles like sunshine and laughs loudly, and her eyes crinkle when she tells a joke, and she moves throughout the world without a care who’s watching, and Pearl loves her. When she finally tells her, Gem smiles bright and happy and wonderful, and says, “Took you long enough,” and Pearl thinks, for some reason, that that might go further back than she really knows..
She and Gem promise to protect each other, always, but in the end, Gem can’t protect against everything. She gets hit by a car that looks like her friend Tango’s, and she’s alone when it happens. The driver is scared and leaves quickly, and all Pearl can think as she dies is I’m so sorry, Gem . She doesn't quite know what she’s apologizing for, but she’s sorry.
Pearl meets Gem, again, again, again, and she knows .
“Gem,” she says, when she opens the door to see her Gem holding flyers. She isn’t even surprised.
“Pearl,” Gem breathes, and then her mind catches up, and her green eyes widen.
Pearl catches her hesitation and smiles—they’ve had millenia to figure each other out, after all. “I remember. All of it.”
Gem starts crying, then and there, and her flyers flutter to the floor and she jumps forward and yanks Pearl into a tight embrace, and then they’re both crying, and Pearl knows her entire past and present and everything else, all the lives she’s lived and things she’s seen, have led up to this moment.
“This time, I’ll make a promise I can keep,” she whispers. Gem laughs shakil, pulling away.
“No more promises.”