I have made three catastrophic mistakes in my life. They all happened after Passover in 67 B.C. within the same hour

Years ago, I owned a bakery with my husband. We baked breads and some sweets for the children who came by with their parents every morning. That morning I had decided to start baking early, get ahead of the day. Where's the harm in that?

My first mistake was giving a loaf of bread to a young man with more skin than meat on his arms. I could never refuse big, teary eyes back then. He'd only asked for the bits of stale or burnt bread nobody wanted. At the time I considered it a great act of charity to give him a whole loaf. It wasn't until many years later I regretted it.

I let him stay inside by the ovens and eat his bread. Minutes later some men came by, dressed in everyday garb, asking if I had seen a boy with a serpent tattoo on the inside of his wrist.

"I haven't seen anyone this morning," I lied; my second mistake. They accepted my answer and left without further questions. The young man cam out, still chewing noisily. On his wrist was a black serpent tattoo twisted into what would become the modern symbol for infinite.

"There are people looking for you," I said.

"You didn't tell them where I was?"

"No." I wish I had. "Why are they looking for you?"

The young man grinned and held up his wrist. The tattoo that had looked so simple from a distance had more details the closer I looked. Individual blue and green scales shimmered against the black ink with the slightest movement of flesh. To tiny fangs dripped a purple liquid onto its twisted body.

"They want this, but I won't give it to them."

"Why not? What is that?"

"They are not right for this gift."

"What gift?"

"This gift," the boy said touching the head of the serpent which seemed to move under his touch.

"Uh huh," I said with a step backward. "And what is this gift?"

"It is for people who help me. Like you."

"Me? What?" The young touched my hand. His fingers were cool and dry against my skin which flared hot and red. My pulse pounded in my head, making my ears swell up with blood and my throat constrict. I wanted to pull my hand away, but I was stuck. I was anchored to the world by his touch, but something tried to pull me away from my body into the great gaping space beyond my little bakery.

When it stopped, I had a tattoo identical to his.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"I am Aksar. I am giving you this gift for your kindness, Khali."

"My name isn't-"

"As long as I live, you will not die." Aksar slipped past me and disappeared into the street where the morning crowd already grew thick. I shouldn't have let him go, but by that point I was certain I was dreaming. Any moment I would wake up in my bed beside my husband with our three children in the next room, go to my bakery and not let any boys with serpent tattoos inside ever again.

Letting him go was my third mistake.

My husband noticed my new tattoo as soon as he arrived.

"What is this?" he asked taking my arm and touching the iridescent serpent. I told him about Aksar. Neither of us knew what to think. We had never been superstitious or believed in magic, but this went beyond any explanation we could come up with. We went to priests, wise men, spiritual healers but none, if they believed us, could explain what had happened. My husband never left me. It would have been so easy for him to call me cursed and have me put to death, but he didn't.

After seven years we quit searching for answers and lived quietly, raising our children into adulthood. I learned to accept the strange serpent mark and even to like it. Perhaps this was simply the gift Aksar had meant, I thought.

"You are beautiful," my husband said coming inside one cool morning. I had already prepared a bowl of warm water for him to put his arthritic hands in. He studied me more closely. "You haven't changed a bit."

"You're sweet," I said paying no attention to the disbelief in his voice. It wasn't until years later, after we moved to be closer to our children, that I realized I really hadn't changed a bit. Three times in the span of a week I was mistaken for my husband's daughter.

"Do you think Aksar meant I won't age?" I asked my husband after he complained about his back being sore. He took my hand in his own hands crooked with age and scarred with oven burns. "I feel as if I haven't aged since that day. I'm sixty-three. My own children look older than I do." He let me rant myself into silence. I stared at the bruise-colored tattoo on my arm.

"I don't know."

"Will I die?"

He hugged me and covered up the tattoo. The scent of freshly baked bread and warm yeast covered me. "Someday, I promise. I will wait for you in the Middle-Life even if I must wait millennia to see your face again."

I watched my husband die of old age while I never changed a hair on my head. I saw my grandchildren and their grandchildren grow up, have kids of their own and die with wrinkles on their skin and frailty in their bones. I wanted to see the world through failing eyes, to feel the touch of a child's soft skin against weathered cheeks, to tie grey hair back in a matriarch's braid. I longed for the coolness and silence death brought. Most of all, I wanted to see my husband's face again.

After eighty years I left the village to find Aksar and make him take back his gift. My search took me beyond the deserts of my youth to lands where snow, bitter cold and harsher than the coarsest desert sands, cracked my skin and turned my toes to ice. I found places I'd only ever heard legends about; places where birds danced, flashing feathers every color I could imagine, where creatures taller than a man killed with a single kick.

I found other people like me, who bore Askar's tattoo. Some had been alive for centuries and others only a few decades. One man, Akaal, remembered being one of the men who built the Great Pyramids. He did not remember his named before Aksar called him Akaal. Few of us remembered our real names after a thousand years.

Slowly I gathered everyone I found. We grew in size as more immortals heard of the organization I'd formed and joined. We were many things over the years; a bakery, a monastery, a library, a travelling circus, a university which burned down in 1916, and now we are the largest tech company in America: ViperTech.

...

I stared at the digital calendar outlining business plans for the next year. 2067 A.D. 2,100 years since I met my fate in a bakery. An email popped up with a soft ping. Another immortal had been found and they were bringing him in from Russia.

"Khali, Khali!" Ambrosine, head of the research department and my closest friend of 2,000 years, tripped up the stairs waving a tablet wildly. She slammed it down on my desk, making me wince in sympathy for the poor thing, and pointed to a blue dot hovering over the middle of India. "We found him," she gasped. I ran my thumb over my tattoo and bit the inside of my cheek.

"Are you sure, Rosine?"

"Yes." She clenched and unclenched her hands making her own tattoo ripple.

"We don't want to repeat what happened in Tennessee." The Tennessee accident had nearly brought ViperTech to the ground after one of the immortals was accused of trying to kidnap a teenager. It took years to clear their name from government records and we still had people working to get him out of tabloids. The teenager was safely inside ViperTech. I wasn't about to risk the security of the immortals in a false alarm.

"I am absolutely certain. The survey and research teams have checked the location a dozen times. This is his source; this is where he comes from." Ambrosine's eyes flashed and she gripped my hand. I too felt excitement bubble up inside me like an opened soda. "We're finally doing it. Almost two thousand years and we're finally going to die." She hugged me.

"Hold on," I said, barely keeping my voice level, "we have to make absolutely certain. Gather the committee heads in the big conference room, but don't let anyone else know. We'll tell them what your team discovered." Ambrosine squealed and rushed off, leaving her tablet behind. I scooped it up and turned the screen off. No sense in anyone seeing where Aksar might be and rushing off to find him without taking precautions.

I sent up a quick prayer that we would find him and be forgiven for murder while I walked to the council room. Ambrosine was already there ushering in confused men and women. Some wore their business attire while others were in casual clothes. I even saw someone in their pajamas. We lived and worked in the same massive building. It made dealing with non-immortals much easier and kept us safer. There were even a few restaurants inside on the lower levels.

Akaal grabbed my arm and pulled me aside. "What is going on?" he demanded.

"Just wait," I whispered. He scowled and sat down at the long table. The high-backed black chairs made him look even smaller and more frail than normal. When everyone was seated and quiet, I invited Ambrosine up.

"Rosine, has something to share with you all." The room buzzed with anticipation. Ambrosine began rapid-fire speaking, detailing the work her team had been devoted to for the last several years since we had renewed our search after Tennessee. As she spoke, I watched the council members grow still as one by one they realized the significance of what she was telling them. Akaal was the first to look at me with tears streaming down his face.

"Is it true?" he asked. I gripped his shoulder tightly.

"Yes," I said convinced now after hearing Ambrosine's full story. Akaal wept into his hands. I fought to see through my own tears.

...

Ambrosine and I sat outside a tiny bakery quietly sipping Darjeeling tea in Bari, India. Pale yellow, pink, and blue buildings with subtle geometric designs surrounded us. Over the din of early morning risers, I could hear a fountain bubbling. Ambrosine sighed as another gust of wind blew her hair into her tea.

"You should have braided it," I said earning a glare. We were dressed like the locals in bright dresses. Ambrosine's was blue and mine was some shade between orange and red. Ambrosine flicked a leaf off her sleeve and checked her phone.

"Akaal says everything is ready. ViperTech is set up to shut down without a trace in twenty-four hours if we get him." She scrolled through her phone, reading more emails. My hands shook as I traced my tattoo. For over two thousand years I'd been waiting for this moment. We didn't know what would happen when we got him. We'd only found a single written record of other immortals before Akaal's time. The last thing the record said was they had found Askar and were going to kill him. After that there was nothing. I prayed that this would work and we could finally leave this endless life.

The smell of fresh bread made me remember by own bakery millennia ago. I still remembered every detail about it from the ovens filled with baking bread to the single creaky floorboard I stepped on no matter how hard I tried to avoid it. I thought about my husband with his kind smile and quiet presence. I'd had many husbands after him, but they were always strategic. My people needed food and money, not eating for weeks on end wouldn't kill us, but the ever-present feeling of hunger would drive us mad. It had been easiest before the twenty-first century to marry a rich lord, farmer, or businessman and wait until he died. I barely remember any of them, but I could never forget my husband.

"You're thinking of him, aren't you?" Ambrosine asked.

"Yes," I said. My earpiece buzzed to life.

"Khali? Over," a thick Scottish voice cracked.

"Khali speaking. Over." I sipped my tea.

"We found him. Two hundred yards to your north. You have the greenlight. Over."

I drained the last of my cooling tea. "Well, Rosine," a savage grin split my friend's face, "here's to a long life full of adventure and a quiet afterlife. May we meet on the other side." Without another word we slipped away from the bakery and made our way north looking like two gossiping young ladies.

"I see him," Ambrosine said. I followed her gaze to Askar skipping down the street, stopping at doors to beg for food. My fingers tightened around the dagger hidden against my skirt. He would not get away from me.

We approached him until I saw the serpent tattoo. Ambrosine squeezed my hand once and moved to cut him off. I breathed in what I hoped would be one of my last breaths. Unaware of the trap about to be sprung, Askar carried on.

We came at him from behind, grabbing and lifting him so that his feet hung uselessly. He didn't fight as we dragged him into a narrow alley without people. Ambrosine wrenched his arms back.

"Hello, Ambrosine, Khali," he nodded at me, uncaring of the dagger pressed against his throat.

"We've been waiting a long time for this day."

"What are you doing, Khali?" Askar asked.

"You took my life away from me," I hissed. He frowned.

"But you are alive."

"I wanted to die! I wanted to grow old and see my children and grandchildren grow up. I didn't want to watch generations of my family die. I wanted to live one life, not hundreds. You took that away from all of us. Your gift is a curse," I spat.

"You don't want my gift?"

"I watched my husband die while I kept living. He's waiting for me and I am going to him."

"I thought humans wanted to be young forever?"

"Do you know what it is like to be crushed under a building, all your bones shattered, and not die? Have you felt fire burn your skin and smoke fill your lungs with soot until you can barely breath, yet you keep on living when you should have died? A young boy begs me every day to find you and kill you so he can pass. For three hundred years he's begged me. Akaal suffers every day in his old age. They are all trapped."

"Khali just kill him," Ambrosine begged. I pressed the dagger against Askar's side.

"Kill me and you'll die just like you want to. It's been done before. But I will return. I always do. And next time I will find people who are grateful for my gift."

"I don't care," I said slipping the dagger into his belly and twisting. The light in his eyes faded instantly. I let go and he crumpled to the dusty ground.

"Hello, Maya," my husband said.