My favorite chapter in Ever is the twenty-first, a quiet chapter told by Olus, god of the winds. The first wave of disaster has struck Kezi. The second wave will descend soon. Waiting for it, Kezi, her father, Senat, her mother, Merem, and her aunt, Fedo, collect in the family eating room to chat and snack. Without their knowledge, Olus watches and listens from a distance with his powerful god’s eyes and ears. The mortals reminisce about Kezi’s childhood, her parents’ courtship, and even Merem’s childhood. Tragedy has afflicted them, but they have a happy day, expressing their love for one another, being freer about it than they would ordinarily.
Even Olus, the solitary observer, is happy, too, by entering into their joy.
It’s the saddest kind of happiness. I’ve experienced it myself when people I love have become terminally ill. It pleased me to put this loving interlude into my book. For me, it’s the novel’s truest moment.
Naturally there’s a lot more love in Ever in addition to this chapter. Ever is as much a love story as it is an exploration of faith. There would be no story if Olus and Kezi didn’t love each other.
I’ve put romance in many of my books, and each time I’ve had to make the characters fall for each other, which is always interesting. In Ever, Kezi and Olus have to love each other enough to endure horrible trials. So how did I push them into it?
I made Olus lonely. He calls himself the god of loneliness as well as of the winds. He has staved off boredom and solitude throughout his childhood by watching mortals and attempting to be like them. When he descends to earth to live, he loves them in general. When he spots Kezi dancing gracefully in her home and weaving her beautiful rugs, he is primed to love her in particular. If her personality were unpleasant, if she had tantrums and threw mud bricks at the servants, he wouldn’t. But she’s kind and has strong feelings for her family. Her appeal overwhelms him.
Kezi, when the action gets underway, has a crush on a young man named Elon, whom she doesn’t know well but hopes to marry. I can’t let her go on mooning over him, so I have him behave first brutally and then despicably, and I have Olus rescue her from him. Thus Kezi is primed to love him, too. And his god’s powers, which she misconstrues, add to his allure. Moreover, because of her death sentence, love and marriage are now out of reach and thus painfully and irresistibly attractive. (Not to mention that Olus is exactly as handsome as a god, since he is one.)
But when Kezi discovers the truth about him (his immortality, his powers), her love turns to fear. He has to entice and charm her back, which he does by inviting her to kick him! That was fun to write.