Eternity's Echo

by H. C. Southwark

  She had been wrong. In her dimming mind, spots appearing in her vision, she knew she had been wrong. God was not okay with this—why else would she be in pain? She should have just bucked up—she begged for another chance, I’ll do things right this time—but that was impossible. Her limbs were no longer moving—she would have said she had gone numb, but that was a lie for she was more on fire than ever.

  I’m sorry, she thought, one last race of neurons in a fading brain. I’m sorry I did this. I was wrong. Please forgive me—I should have taken better care of my life...

  God, please don’t hate me...

  Her vision was going. The rope was pivoting on an axis, and so she was spinning in her room, the colors and objects blurring together in one long smear. Everything diluting down to gray and then shading over into black. She became aware of nothing but the rapid thumping of her heart, trying to pump blood without oxygen to lungs that could not fill. Now the pounding was slowing. At last the pain was numbing, too—

  The last thing she was aware of was suspension, something strong but gentle wrapped around her elbows and torso. Felt like arms. Like someone was holding her aloft, trying to give her enough slack on the rope so she could breathe. But more—as the layers of her mind stripped away, she understood that those arms were embracing.

  They were the only thing that still felt real.

  Chapter Thirty-Four: The Heavens Fall.

  Words came in the darkness, a voice she knew speaking:

  “Ellie Sullivan, you are sentenced

  to the commission of a reaper of souls.

  “You are to retrieve the immortal from the mortal,

  to consign the damned to Hell,

  to bring the saved to the gate of Heaven,

  and to comfort the dead.

  “This is an eternal sentence,

  without pardon and without parole,

  and worked diligently will be the sanctification of your soul.”

  Something cleaved her in two. Like a hand, fingers straight and bladed, cutting through the air, grabbing either side of her and pulling. She was torn away from her other self.

  She was falling falling falling falling through a long dark tunnel with no light at the end.

  Her body, her shape, her form squeezed and contracted. The walls of reality closed inward, pulping her, pressing her tighter and tighter. Now she was half her size—now a quarter—she was denser with each second, in the process of being reforged into iron. How small could she go? Too small already. She would shrink into nothing.

  But then there were hands—hands, somehow, on arms she did not have—grabbing her and pulling and straining with a force that had to damage themselves, and she spun in a whirl and then felt nothing but her own lungs expanding, her head pillowed on something expanding and contracting, repeatedly, in short bursts.

  “Oh, thanks and praise to you, Holy Lord,” came a strained voice in a whisper. “I was there in time.” She knew this voice, knew who was saying her name, “Ellie, Ellie, it’s okay. You can open your eyes,” but she could not place a face until she did.

  “Niles,” she said, recognizing that she was lying with her head against his ribcage, the two of them half-sprawled half-reclined in the middle of one long sepia void that stretched endlessly in all directions. Vaguely, she recognized that this was one of the cells in reaper’s solitary, but why he had brought her here, she did not know—except that the monotone and basic colors felt soothing, now, rather than boring.

  Her mind felt like the insides of an uncracked egg that someone had spun on end like a coin—as though the yolk and white were nearly scrambled. She blinked, tried to right herself, but sank back down regardless. She had no doubt that if she could see the horizon, it would have tilted rather than her as she tried to get up.

  “Give yourself a minute,” said Niles. And for that minute, they just breathed.

  Ellie recalled him asking—Tell me what is wrong—and realized that only now did she know, want to say, the true answer. She said: “I died, but I don’t want to be dead.”

  “Nobody can escape death,” said Niles, but his voice was as if what he was saying was a relief, like a parent telling her that there was no such thing as monsters.

  The effect was jarring. Ellie’s mind honed in on that feeling of disconnection, and she remembered, then, the feeling of the sun vanishing, and Niles’s calm voice saying that it had been reaped. All her arguments came back to her in a rush, and an unwelcome conclusion reached through experimentation: The shard had not worked.

  She was still dead.

  Pushing against Niles’s body, she scrambled upright, half-falling in haste. Niles winced as he turned and pushed himself up, and she realized that his hands were injured; they looked burned and scraped, nails split and skin cracked. Like he had grabbed something hot and bristly and heavy and hauled it somewhere without gloves.

  “I have to get back,” Ellie told him. “The world—” and she was cut off by Niles sighing, exhausted. At that sound something began to pull tight within her—not long like the string of a guitar but rather knotted like a ball of yarn, curling in upon itself—

  “Do you know what it’s like?” she demanded, trying to make him see. Each word from her mouth knotted the string tighter. “To have to leave your family?”

  “Ellie,” said Niles. His voice was quiet and weary, but wary, ready for a reaction. “I saw your family enter Heaven. You are a reaper. You will never see them again.”

  At that, Ellie knew that the ball was not yarn or string, but rather barbed wire—and exploded outward into shrapnel. She fell on Niles like a wild thing—

  Beating with her fists, clawing, kicking, gouging—he felt refreshingly perfect to hit—solid enough for an impact, soft enough that she was not hurting herself—she battered and hammered and struck against his chest, shoulders, arms, stomach, and yet somehow she avoided his face, somehow she could not bring herself to strike there—

  She would have bitten if her mouth was not busy—

  “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you so much! This is all your fault—I could have just died, I could have just falled asleep—I hate you—I hate you! Why did you make the world like this? You made me to die and you let me die and I hate you! I hate you! I hate—”

  Niles reached an arm around her fury and tried to touch her shoulder as if trying to enfold her, but she lashed out and pushed it away with a feral scream, as if that was the worst of all. And so he just stood there and let her beat and gouge him, for how long she did not know. She lowered her head, unable to look him in the eyes anymore, and just struck and struck and struck—

  After what seemed like a long time, all at once she became aware that her arms were numb, her own hands bruised by the blows, and that she was sobbing each gasp of air, her throat like a brand of hot metal, no strength left. She would have collapsed, but then finally Niles’s arms came up and held her upright while she tried to to breathe.

  “There is no way to stop it, is there,” she whispered, hoarse. She did not know what ‘it’ was—the end of the world, or her own death, or perhaps what she was feeling now.

  “The day of death is better than the day of birth, and it is better to go to a house of mourning than feasting, for everyone’s destiny is death, and the living should take this to heart,” Niles said. He, too, sounded hoarse. “King Solomon, Ecclesiastes.”

  She would have said something sharp, but the gears in her mind were out of joint. Instead she said, “I knew what I was doing. That’s the worst. I knew, and still I did it.”

  And she thought: It’s all pointless. All of it. Living, dying, the world. It all ends here. Maybe God saw nothing in it all but some dark humored joke. Hell if I know. We reapers—we must be in the highest circle of Hell, mere existence is enough of a punishment for us—

  “You never really went through it, did you?” Niles asked, softly. “The grapple with death. Everyone must come to terms with it before they can
grow. But you skipped over that step—avoided facing what had happened. Denial is a self-inflicted wound.”

  Ellie did not know what to say to that. So she said nothing.

  From Niles’s breast pocket, just under Ellie’s forehead, there came a soft chime. She startled, was surprised that she could still be surprised at something. She kept her eyes closed. Then she blinked, vision blurry, was surprised again when Niles lifted her scarf and patted her face dry.

  And Niles said, “Ellie. We must go. The stars are here.”

  * * *

  Ellie stumbled as she walked, unsteady like a blind thing, only Niles’s hand on her shoulder keeping her moving in something resembling a straight line. They moved through a door Niles called up with his astrolabe and were in the golden hall of upstairs.

  Susan stood just outside, and was flurrying them with her worry, Niles calmly reassuring her. Ellie did not follow the conversation. She felt drained. Every fibre of her being had been plucked and strummed and now she was empty of everything. She could not look up from the floor, uncertainty and shame burning through her.

  Let the world end, she thought, I haven’t even the strength to protest anymore.

  The upstairs hall was silent. There were no more souls milling about; no reapers weighing hearts; except for herself, Niles, and Susan, upstairs was empty. The doors to the Hells were shut tight. The bloody cloth to Heaven was torn into fine shreds, like many people had passed through and worn it into almost nothingness.

  Then Niles had her by the hand, and clicked his astrolabe.

  They appeared in the darkness.

  No. Not quite darkness. Her eyes took longer to adjust, but then she could see shapes well enough under the starlight. They were still overhead, still looked fixed into place, and Ellie half believed that Niles was wrong and they would remain so.

  The surface she stood upon was not rock or stone; instead, it was a smooth unglossy black plain that stretched in all directions, without dips or rises, and at every corner she could see the dark curve of the horizon. If she had to guess what she would say was that this was the frame upon which the Earth had been stretched.

  A brief flash of memory: herself, wondering, Will reapers even reap gravity?

  Were the laws of physics still in effect? She would have wondered, because the curve of the horizon was not normal to see. This was the sort of thing that Jude would ponder. Ellie realized that she had no strength for these ideas. Jude was not here—he had been reaped, perhaps was with his mother. Ellie had not even said goodbye.

  Her mind felt like a battery drained beyond the ability to recharge. Thinking hurt.

  So she just stood by Niles with her eyes low. His hand around her shoulder alone kept her upright. They gazed together out at the people with them; reapers, Ellie saw, milling about and whispering to each other. Soft noises of human voices, but not loud enough to pick up on any words. She wondered if this was to be their afterlife—

  Reapers could not get past the gate of Heaven. Were they to stand in this void forever, waiting for stars that never fell? Or would the stars fall on them, burn them to cinders, always and always, bright in the forge that was once reality?

  After all, they were suicides, and outside the bounds of Heaven—they had to be in Hell somehow, at the end of time. Void or burning, void or burning...

  She was not certain which idea was more horrible. Closing her eyes, Ellie wished that she could sleep. She had not slept for three years. Maybe, in this darkness, she could pretend. If she was going to burn, then she did not want to know—not until she had to.

  Then a hushed collective gasp, and the voices fell silent.

  “Ellie,” whispered Niles. “You don’t want to miss this. It’s our gift.”

  Opening her eyes, Ellie glanced at Niles, saw the silhoutte of his face in the dark, looking upwards. Turning her gaze on the other reapers, she saw every head was craned back to see, and having no other choice herself, she also looked up.

  There was a small light falling.

  No—floating down, not falling. Like a snowflake, but without curling and dipping, just a straight unhurried line. It glittered white like a Christmas tree light. It landed somewhere in the crowd of the assembled reapers, and Ellie lost track of it in the forest of heads.

  “What?” she whispered. A low murmur came through the crowd.

  And then there was another, further off—a small light like the flicker of sunlight through a glass of water, dropping slowly like it was swimming. And another, to her right, the descent of a miniature lens flare. A murmur behind, and Ellie turned around to see another, this one glimmering, tumbling over itself, seemingly lopsided.

  Like the first few snow flurries before a storm.

  “See,” said Niles. His voice was gentle. “There’s no reason to be afraid.”

  “What are they?” Ellie whispered back, cold with bewilderment.

  “You know what they are,” said Niles, some gentle chiding.

  More of them came, one by one, until there were dozens in the sky, fluttering down, in straight lines, billowing curves, little jagged dances—more and more they fell, handfuls of them now, shy and strong and lazy and bold, scattering over their heads—

  Niles stepped forward, and since he was the only thing holding her upright, Ellie followed. The crowds of reapers were not static either, people moving, hands reaching.

  Ellie saw a reaper’s cupped palms waiting for a glittery light like it was a hummingbird coming to nest—

  And then she was remembering being very small, a moment she thought she had forgotten, sitting in her grandmother’s lap and watching the hummingbird feeder. She had been told to be quiet but she shrieked, and the birds scattered—

  Blinking, she kept walking with Niles, her feet not dragging so much anymore, her head upright and staring. She heard someone to her left laugh, quiet, and hushed quickly, as if ashamed to break this beautiful silence.

  And there were reapers she recognized—John, beside Yellows, Sven, and Marcus—reaching and grabbing floating embers like snagging falling leaves from autumn—

  And she was remembering plucking a leaf from a bush outside her home, twirling it in her fingers as she walked, feeling it pull against the wind like a miniature sail—

  They moved deeper into the crowd, Niles leading and shielding her from the bustle of the others, and Ellie looked out among them and saw so many faces she knew, people she had met in assignments and in passing, people who knew her.

  Cookie was there. Her grin was back on her face, as if nothing at all had bothered her recently, as if watching a man be shot and another die by a train was long ago, and she had let these terrible things slide off her like water, they had dried up and gone.

  But she was not dry—her eyes were moist, and she stood with Carson, her mentor, who balanced a light on the tip of his finger the way he used to balance his cigar on end.

  “Niles,” said Carson, nodding. “What happened to your face?”

  Cookie, who had a light pinched in her fingers like a coin, said, “Look, Ellie!”

  Ellie’s mouth opened, but she could find nothing to say. Cookie seemed to understand, and patted her on the shoulder as she and Niles passed, strolling her own way with Carson by her side, the two of them leaning in to speak to each other like old friends.

  People were talking now, still hushed, but there was more soft laughter, as if some could no longer contain themselves. Ellie and Niles passed reapers tossing a flickering light back and forth together, reapers with lights that fell into their hair, reapers powdered like glitter, the surface of the world patterned over with embers...

  They paused briefly at the side of Josephina and Shawn, Niles speaking to the other mentor softly. Shawn looked like a wild, haunted thing, stunned by what was around him, the way that lights above were falling now like fresh snow, the sky emptying.

  Ellie wondered if she looked like him right now. She wondered a lot of things
that she could not quite put into words.

  “I see you found your lost lamb,” said Josephina, “I never got the chance to thank you.”

  And Niles said, “There’s no need. I told you it would be worth it.”

  As he and Ellie moved away, she looked back and saw Josephina holding a light up to Shawn, who shied away from it like an animal, but she lifted his hand and placed the shine into his palm. He gazed at what he held, then closed his hand over, and the last thing Ellie saw before merging into the rest of the crowd was Shawn holding his hand to his mouth as though to whisper something to what was contained inside.

  They walked and walked, Niles nodding and speaking to those around them, and everyone seemed to know enough to leave Ellie alone. She was grateful for that, for the way Niles would distract people from her if they became too curious.

  Ellie might wonder why they were walking, but she had only to look and understand: they were just strolling. Taking a walk for the sake of walking, because there was joy to be had in the movement, in the feel of their feet lifting and falling, in the sight of their fellow reapers reveling, dancing, smiling, hugging, soft songs fluttering with the lights billowing around them.

  They finally came to a stop after what seemed like hours—but there was no time to keep track of, not anymore. Ellie would have happily spent eternity here, like this.

  What was I so upset about? She wondered, tried to remember. The world is ending, she reminded herself. And the new feeling inside her cut sharper, bitter, but in a way like salt added to chocolate, throwing the taste into relief. Is this truly the end of all things?

  Unable to stop herself, she asked Niles, “If the world is ended, then what was the point of everything?”

  “Everything was the point,” Niles answered. Ellie stared at his shoes, the lights underfoot.

  “But the Earth is dead and gone,” said Ellie. “Even if all the souls are reaped and in their afterlives, why did they live in the first place? Nothing mattered.”