Free The Mysteries by Lisa Tuttle Page A

laughed. “I've never been to another country—not even to Mexico!”
    “I'm talking about the life you had before you were born into this world. You were my wife then.”
    It looks crazy, written down, but not when he said it. Then, it seemed absolutely right. It was like something I'd always known. And yet it was a shock.
    How could it be both familiar and strange? Well, I guess because it fitted in with something I'd thought about, although no one had ever said anything like it to me before. I had always thought that birth could not be the beginning. I didn't talk about it much, but I had the feeling that I'd had another life before I was born. I'd read some books and things about reincarnation, but they never told me what I really wanted to know.
    Now, looking at this familiar male stranger, I felt I had finally met someone who could explain my feelings to me.
    I stared hard into his blue, blue eyes. “How did I die?”
    “You didn't die. You are immortal, like me.” He said it like it was totally ordinary. In the same way he explained: “My first wife was a sorceress. In her jealousy, she separated us. She turned you into a fly and caused you to be blown out of our world and into this one. Here, a mortal woman swallowed you in her drink, and nine months later you were born again. Once you were called Etain; now you are known as Peregrine Alexandra Lensky.”
    That sent a shiver through me. Not many people knew my full name. It was almost like a secret. Even on official forms, my mom usually put down my name as “Peri Lensky,” or “Peri Alexandra Lensky,” and so I did the same. Only someone who'd seen my birth certificate would know my mother had once upon a time given me the hippie-ish name of Peregrine. I liked Peri for all sorts of reasons—not just because it was easier to spell—but I liked having a secret other name, too.
    A peregrine is a type of falcon, so named because it was taken not from its nest, but while in flight. To peregrinate is to travel about; to live in a foreign country; to wander or go on a pilgrimage. A peregrine is a wanderer, a stranger in a strange land.
    A peri is a Persian fairy.
    When I learned that (from the same dictionary that had given me the meaning of peregrine), I got a thrill. I looked up “Persian”—“of, from or relating to Persia (now Iran).” That was less thrilling; Iranians were not a group much loved in Texas. But the fairy part was fine; I'd always loved fairy tales.
    The handsome stranger standing in front of me in the Stahlmanns' side yard seemed to have stepped out of a fairy tale, especially when he said, “I've been searching for you throughout many mortal lifetimes. Now, finally, I've found you. Will you come with me, back to our own land, and rule beside me as my queen?”
    I shut my eyes, but when I opened them again, he was still there, right in the middle of the familiar, ordinary neighborhood where I'd lived for the past five years. I looked around at the Stahlmanns' house and, beyond it, to my own. A squirrel suddenly dashed across the lawn and up a tree; I could hear the faint scrabble of its claws on the bark, and the leaves shivered as it plunged into them, out of sight.
    The hot Texas sun beat down on me, out of a blue sky cloudless but faintly hazed by the city's pollution. Perspiration soaked my cotton shirt. I was hot and tired and hungry. Mom wouldn't be home for at least another hour, and inside the Stahlmanns' house, instead of Regina with her dolls and ice cream and freshly homemade lemonade, a naked middle-aged man was dozing on the couch.
    I felt like bursting into tears, so I got mad and yelled, “You're crazy! I live here! Why should I go anywhere with you?”
    “I can give you everything you want. In my country, you'll live and be young forever. And you'll always be safe with me. I'm very powerful, Peri. Who do you think made Ray fall asleep?”
    “I guess you mean you did.”
    He nodded.
    I shrugged. “Why?”
    “To