Chapter 2: Welcome to the Gods

When the youth spun around, Winnie instantly recognized him. There were those same blue eyes that had haunted her dreams for nearly a century. There was the perfect, immaculate, unblemished face. Those rosy lips she had kissed once long ago, lips that had now fallen open in utter shock.

"Winnie?" Jesse whispered, and she half-expected him to ask if she was a ghost here to torment him further. "Is it really…..?"

Winnie could not stand it any longer. She leapt into Jesse's arms and kissed him. Upon the tangible, real feeling of her lips on his, Jesse clutched her closer, before springing away and cackling in triumph.

"Ha, ha! You are real!"

Winnie smiled in amusement. "So are you. I've only been waiting for 88 years."

Jesse stared. "Here? But…. your parents…. what about…..?"

"I couldn't wait, Jesse. I drank from the spring in 1914, when I was still 15. They were going to send me to boarding school and I didn't know if I would find my way back to the wood….. After that, I ran. Stole away to Europe; I lived in France until the early '90s. Britain briefly during World War II."

"Did you say France?" Jesse asked, a twinkle alighting his eyes.

"Were you there?" Winnie inquired breathlessly. How could she have just missed seeing him?

But Jesse shook his head. "No. We went into hiding in South America after you busted us out. We were there for….. 40 years at least….." A thought struck him. "Did you climb the Eiffel Tower in France?"

Winnie beamed. "1,652 steps to the top."

"You remembered! I knew it! I just knew you would drink from it!" Jesse crowed, picking up Winnie and spinning her about. Winnie threw her arms around his neck and shrieked with laughter. Setting her down, Jesse suddenly called over his shoulder. "Everyone! Come on out! Look who it is!"

Winnie stared as the rest of her precious Tucks ambled around from out front of the house. She hadn't even seen them.

"Jesse, what's wrong?" Angus Tuck stopped dead when he saw the little girl who had stolen into their hearts all those years ago. "Winnie?"

With shouts of joy, Winnie was hugging all of them too – even Miles. "You were nearby? Why didn't I notice you….?"

"Our wagon is parked just down the road," Miles explained. "Jesse came up to investigate alone." He looked beyond to Winnie's fake grave. "I must say, this is a delightful surprise."

"She's been here since the early 90s, Tuck," Jesse said eagerly. "And was in France and Britain all those years before that. Since we got out of jail."

Tuck looked between his son and the object of his love, brow creased in thought. Finally, he spoke. "Miles, get my gun." Miles dutifully ran to fetch it from the wagon.

Jesse stared in abject horror. "NO! What do you think you're doing?! She looks like she did the day we left! Isn't that enough?!"

"We need to make absolutely certain," Tuck said somberly. Miles now returned with the gun and handed it off to his father. Jesse lunged for Tuck.

"No! Tuck, what are you doing?!"

"Stay back, Jesse!" Tuck threw the boy off him, but when he came flying back, the patriarch yelled to Miles, "Hold him!"

Tuck loaded the cartridge and rose up the rifle's barrel. Winnie stayed frozen by the grave, calm as could be.

"Somebody stop him! Let me GO! Mae! Miles!" Jesse pleaded. But Miles refused to release his brother. Mae bit her lip, but remained silent.

Winnie looked over to her paramour. "Jesse…. It's gonna be OK. I love you!"

At her soothing voice, Jesse relaxed in Miles's grip, but only slightly. Facing down Tuck, Winnie closed her eyes. Tuck now took deadly aim. He squinted, before remembering the shooting lesson his father had taught him in Scotland centuries before. "Both eyes….. open….."

BANG! Tuck fired, and Winnie collapsed in a heap on the ground immediately, the bullet finding its mark directly over her heart. Despite confidence at the outcome, Jesse screamed and ran to his beloved's side. For a moment, all was silent. Then –

Winnie opened her eyes. She shakily stood, the sound of the gunshot ringing in her ears but otherwise completely unharmed.

Jesse burst into tears of relief and took Winnie in his arms, kissing her again and again. Smiling softly, Tuck approached and enveloped Winnie into a larger embrace.

"Welcome to the family, my daughter."

Winnie sold her family's large mansion, sending in the deeds by mail. Packing the things she had gathered over the decades, she and the Tucks disappeared into what little wilderness still remained around Maryland.

The Tucks' old cottage from the 1910s had been destroyed along with the forest and spring, but that didn't faze the immortal family. They simply found another plot of land, and built a new one. Here, under the trees, Jesse and Winnie conducted a simple wedding, exchanging rings and vows to love each other for all eternity. This was an alteration from the common phrase "Till death do us part," which, of course, would never happen.

Jesse and Winnie made love in their bed every night. The couple desperately wanted to have children, but tried as they might, they could not conceive. This caused Winnie much grief. Jesse placed the blame on himself, thinking himself a failure as he took long walks by himself through the wilderness.

The 2000s faded into the 2010s. A black man, Barack Obama, was elected the 44th President of the United States. Angus Tuck was amazed, as he could recall the time when black men were mere slaves. Now, one was in the White House. In the middle of that decade, Donald Trump, a vulgar businessman who had no political experience, succeeded Obama as President. Still, throughout such history, Winnie and Jesse kept trying to have babies.

At last, it was the spring of 2017. Winnie was technically 118 years old, Jesse was technically 207, and Miles was 212. At dinner one night, Winnie called for a family meeting. She turned to her husband.

"Jesse, I don't think I can have children. And I think the reason why is the spring. Being immortal, my body can't even go through the changes of pregnancy. I am stopped right where I was over a century ago."

Jesse nodded sadly. He had suspected as much, but had dared not bring up the possibility himself, for fear of breaking his wife's heart. The couple thought of Miles' children, Anna and Bo, long since dead. The eldest Tuck brother had sired them with a mortal woman sometime in the 1830s, but she had left him upon believing his changelessness to be the result of witchcraft.

Mae now took Winnie's hand from across the table. "Don't cry, child. You are still here with us. And we can still be a family – forever. You are ours, my sweet Winnie, and that's enough."

"Hear, hear!" Miles concurred.

Tuck just nodded his agreement. "It's as I told you all those years ago, Winnie. You don't have to live forever. You just have to live. But….." and here he added a new caveat. "If you do happen to live forever….. live anyway."

So Winnie did. So all the Tucks did – until the end of time itself.