by H. D. Gordon
My head is on a swivel, but I see no threat. I even glance upward, as if I expect an anvil or piano to fall from the sky.
The sky is a darkening blue as the last of the grains fall through and settle in the lower half of Rose’s hourglass.
Rose is walking back up the driveway to the porch looking through the mail she collected when she stops in her tracks, and gasps.
I move forward helplessly as the letters in her hands flutter to the ground. She drops with a thud two heartbeats after.
I move closer, crouching over her as she gasps for air, fingers clutching at her chest, eyes wide in confusion and terror.
I am no doctor, but I have seen enough in my seven years of reaping to know that Rose is having a heart attack. She is going to die, and the baby in her belly will die along with her.
Unless I act. Now.
I uncork the life potion and tip it toward Rose’s open mouth. The liquid moves over her tongue and down her throat as though it is alive, and knows exactly where it is going. The skin of her neck and chest glow green as the magic works its way toward her heart.
Her heart, which has just stopped beating.
I am still not breathing. I am not blinking or thinking or anything. Time stands still as I wait to see what happens next.
Rose’s eyes slip closed. Fear steals over me in a wave of frozen ocean water. I am about to issue a curse that will be heard in the heavens.
Then Rose inhales, sucking in air in a sharp gasp. Her eyelids flutter, and I slump down onto my bottom on the walkway beside her, watching as the magic works, bringing her back to life. The beam of her aura brightens, and my eyes fill with tears as I lean forward and place a hand she cannot feel over her belly, where I can still sense the presence of a new life.
Rose pulls herself up slowly, glancing around her as though waking from a dream. I should leave right now, but I cannot even make myself stand. I can only stare at her.
Until a voice says from behind me, “What in the name of the Father is going on here?”
I am on my feet in an instant.
I turn and find myself face-to-face with another reaper.
No doubt the one who had been tasked with collecting Rose’s soul.
Well, shit.
“What is going on?” he asks again when I do not say anything.
I don’t know how much he saw, don’t know what to do at all.
Knox. I’ve come across him before, and our interactions have not been pleasant. Most of the people who end up becoming reapers do so because they were bad enough in their mortal lives to warrant the punishment. My own backstory is a bit of an anomaly. Most reapers are paying a penance, not making a trade, as had I.
Knox goes to move around me, trying to get a look at Rose, who is now climbing the steps of the porch.
I block his path. His eyes narrow.
“What did you do, Cecilia?” he asks.
I feel the aggression coming off him, and it reminds me of when I was a human girl, and a man would make me uncomfortable with his presence and attention.
But I am not a human girl anymore, and I am too mentally exhausted from the events of the day to feel anything but defensive anger.
I adjust my grip on my scythe. “Leave, Knox. Just go.”
This is the wrong thing to say. I see immediately that it only further piques his curiosity.
His head tilts, dirty blond hair falling into his eyes. He flips his head so that it flicks out of the way. “I don’t think I will,” he says. “I have a quota to fill. You know that.”
I spread my free hand, lift my shoulders. “Well, as you can see, there is no soul here to be collected, so you can just be on your way.”
He slips his hand into the pocket of his black slacks, the other casually holding his scythe, which is larger than mine, because he is larger than me.
“What I’m wondering is why, though,” he says. He looks over my shoulder, where Rose has retreated into the house. “What were you doing when I walked up? Why were you kneeling over my query like that?” He touches his chin, as if in thought. “She was dead. And then she just got up and walked away. Very curious.”
I brace myself. The situation feels like it’s running along a lit fuse, bound to explode at any moment.
“As I said, there’s no soul to collect here.”
He holds up his list. I know the parchment well. I receive a fresh one myself every morning. The scroll unrolls as he pinches the top of it. Scrawled among the others, I see my niece’s name written there.
Knox runs his tongue out over his lips, flashing teeth long rotted in another lifetime, and making my insides cringe.
“I could maybe be convinced to keep quiet about this,” he says as his eyes scan the length of me. “But I’m going to need something in return… It’s been a long time since I touched a female who I could actually feel, and could feel me back.”
My stomach turns. He disgusts me. I get the feeling he uses a good amount of his free time spying on unsuspecting women and touching himself. The world of the reapers is small, and composed mostly of males. The very fact that I walk the same plane as them and am halfway decent-looking makes me a target.
“Fuck off,” I say.
His expression is equal parts excitement and rage. In my mind all I can see is the fuse reaching the powders, the silent bang that is about to happen.
My scythe is swinging before I can think twice. It cuts through Knox the same as it always has—like a warm knife through butter. There is only time for me to catch a glimpse of surprise on his face before he dissipates entirely, bursting out of existence as though he had never been.
I am dumbstruck as I stand there in the quiet neighborhood, under the warm, fading sun, birds and bugs chirping.
From inside the house, music is playing, old records that my parents had played as a kid, songs passed down through the family. Rose’s sweet voice rises with it, singing along.
I should run. I should get as far away from here as I can, even though no where in the worlds is far enough.
I turn to make my escape, anyway.
And run straight into Samael’s wide chest.
I do not stumble backward, because he catches me.
And slips magical chains around my wrists.
12
8:30 p.m.
I sit upon the ground, legs crossed beneath me, chains upon my wrists, and await my judgement.
I am waiting to be shredded for my crimes, for breaking the rules.
They have taken my scythe from me, and it feels like I have lost a limb. The thing has not left my side since I began this nightmare of a journey seven years ago.
The clearing in which I sit is quiet, no animal or critters crawling through the underbrush, no butterflies floating by on the breeze. Vlad sits on a branch nearby, but the bird is not speaking to me. He is as still as a statue, save for the occasional puff of his ebony chest. Will he be assigned to another reaper, the same way he’d been assigned to me?
I wonder if he will miss me. I wonder if I’ll be able to miss him.
“There is a void, Cecilia,” Sam had said. “So vast and so dark that not even light can escape it… Your soul will be dismantled into its most basic elements, stored, and repurposed into something not at all resembling what it once was. It will be millennia before it emerges from the void again. And then its evolution must begin anew.”
That was the fate I’d sentenced Knox’s soul to, and even though he might not have been the picture of kindness, it was not my job to make such choices. Perhaps I deserved the exact same fate.
I continue waiting. I do not know how much time passes. The silence is so loud that I close my eyes against it. I do not sleep, but never in the past seven years have I wished more that I could.
But there is no reprieve. Not for me.
The sun sets in this strange spot between the realms, and a moon rises, bearing a face full of accusations. I am still sitting as I was when the Father finally comes to visit me. I f
eel his presence as soon as he is near, and fear steals over me, chilling me to the bone.
He steps out of the shadows of the trees, and he is close, but I cannot see his face, cannot make out any specific features. I have only encountered Father Time once, on the day I was made into a reaper. Most reapers are lucky if that is the only time they do so.
I suppose I was never going to be like “most reapers.”
“Hello, my child,” he says.
“Hello, Father,” I reply.
“You’ve been busy.” His voice is low, a whisper, though I can feel the words as if they crawl over the coils of my brain.
“Yes.”
There is no point in lying. Not to him.
“Then I leave you to the Fates,” he says.
And then he is gone.
I stand outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the mountain of steps rising before me.
Chains still enclose my wrists.
Samael stands beside me. He does not say a word. One would think I’d personally killed his puppy or something.
Why did it matter to him what happened to me? Why should he care? What was his stake in all of this?
I supposed none of it mattered now.
Now it was left to the Fates.
Fuck. If the Father scared me, the Fates downright terrified me. I knew nothing about them, except for whatever lore I’d known in my mortal human life.
But one did not need to be a mythic scholar to determine that as far as shots went, the Fates were the bitches that called them.
Samael walks forward, ascending the staircase most famous for that montage Rocky scene. The world is gray around us, the setting familiar but the space alien. Walking between the realms these past seven years as a reaper meant that I can see both sides of the veil, but this was somewhere else entirely.
Save for Sam and me, there were no other souls present. There was no wind, no sun, no sky at all, really. I got the chilling feeling that the outside of the art gallery was being presented solely for my benefit, like I would somehow go mad if I were to be shown the true nature of this place.
As we approach the massive columns that make up the facade of the giant building, I cannot remember the last time I felt so small. I imagine myself a mouse as we enter the front doors, strolling right into the maw of a lion.
Together, we enter the museum.
Beside me, even Samael’s imposing form seems small here, with the ceilings that tower high overhead and the carefully staged lighting that draws the eye this way and that.
Another, grander staircase dominates the atrium, at the top of which sit three statues carved of the finest marble.
I damn near shit myself when I see the statues move.
Well, if reapers could have bowel movements, but you know what I mean.
They are marble, but they are no statues.
They are the Fates.
And I am the Fucked.
They sit in a row.
The one on the far left appears the youngest, a child of no more than nine. The stone from which she is carved, like the others to the right of her, is one giant mass. The artist has masterfully captured the folds of her dress and the glint in her cold, stony eyes.
The one in the middle is an adult woman, an older version of the child. With lovely, sharp features, and hair that seems to flow over her delicate shoulders even as it is hewn from pure stone.
The final Fate sits to the far right of the others, an old crone with a stone cane propped across her giant lap. All three sit silent was we approach. They do not blink, or breathe, or fidget. Only those cold gray orbs of eyes follow me, and the sight sends a chill down my spine.
Samael drops to a knee by the foot of the staircase, at the top of which they sit. No one tells me to, but I do the same, as if some ancient, internal alarm system has been switched into effect.
The child speaks first, voice precisely how one might expect it to be, but with a resonance I’ve never encountered except perhaps where the Father is concerned.
“Rise,” the child Fate says. “Let us look at you.”
Samael and I rise in unison. The senior Reaper shows no emotion, no concern upon his handsome brow… But there is something in the way he is holding his barbed tail aloft, in the set of his ebony wings.
Is he afraid for me?
Is he afraid for himself just by essence of being here?
And, finally, how the fuck had I gotten myself into this?
The middle Fate speaks next. “Cecilia and Samael,” she says.
It is just my name. I have heard it countless times throughout my existence, but I have never heard it spoken this way—as thought it is a curse, or a prayer.
Or both.
“Rule breaker,” says the old crone.
That definitely sounds like a curse.
“I—I can explain,” I begin.
The child Fate chuckles, the sound like bells floating over a meadow. I blink at her, not sure how to respond, stomach twisting and turning.
“Not you, silly girl,” says the Child. Her stony gaze goes to Samael. “Him.”
13
9:00 p.m.
What in the actual fuck?
But, like, seriously, what is going on?
I blink at the three giant stone ladies and then at the senior reaper standing beside me. My mouth hangs open, brows kissing the high ass ceiling.
“Sam?” I say.
He doesn’t look at me. He looks at the Fates.
“I am at your mercy,” he says. His voice is deep and resigned, and it echos in the vast atrium chamber.
“Everything is at our mercy,” says the crone.
Sam says nothing. I’m still gaping like an idiot.
“I’m the one who broke your rules,” I say at last.
“You did,” says the child. “But so did he when he tried to stop you from doing what you were fated to do.”
What I was fated to do, as if I’d had no choice in the matter.
Perhaps I hadn’t, but what did such pondering matter now?
Beside me, Samael holds his silence. I have to resist the urge to smack some words out of him. Why try to stop me from saving Rose, why even take the risk of warning me if he’d known it would land him in hot water with these three?
“Are you in love with her?” asks the Child, following up the question with that tinkling giggle.
Finally, he speaks. “I don’t remember what love is,” says Samael.
At last, he looks at me. It is just a glance, a stolen moment immediately lost to the cosmos, but Samael looks at me, and I wonder how I had not seen it there before.
Now my stomach is twisting for another, entirely separate reason.
What in all the worlds was happening?
“But…” Samael continues on, looking at the Fates once more and ignoring me despite the fact that I am staring at him like he has grown three heads. “I do have a certain…affinity for her, yes.”
The Child giggles again. The Middle purses her lips. The Crone snorts softly.
“‘An affinity,’ he says,” mocks the Crone. “For he has forgotten what it is to love.”
“And whose fault is that?” snaps the Child.
I can’t be sure, but I think the Crone rolls her eyes.
It is the one in the middle I am watching. She seems to be the balance between the two, the sweet spot, matured by time but not yet spoiled by it.
“And you?” asks the Middle, looking down at me with those dead, probing eyes. “Are you in love with him?”
“Uh…” I say. Because I am a top-notch fuckin’ genius.
“I don’t…I…”
Much better, Cici. For the love of the Father, why don’t you give it another go?
I clear my throat. “I suppose I have developed an…affinity for him as well,” I say at last. Because honestly, what the fuck am I supposed to say? It seems pretty evident that dude has risked himself for me.
And that’s apparently because he likes me.
> Color me straight up shocked.
The Child sits up a little straighter on her stone throne. Her gray eyes reflect the lights of the massive hall. “Let’s make a deal,” she says. “I do so love deals.”
I do not know how I should feel about this, but a glance at the set of Samael’s shoulders reveals that I shouldn’t be pleased.
“For what you have done,” says the Crone, “you should be sent to the void. The both of you.”
The tone of her voice says that if she had it her way, that’s exactly what she’d do.
I decide I do not particularly like the old bitch. I also keep that thought to myself, because I’m not a complete idiot.
“Oh, please, sister,” says the Child. “Don’t be such a bore. We can make bets. It will be fun.”
The Crone snorts but looks at the Middle. The one in the center has not taken her gaze off me and Samael since we arrived here.
After a silence that seems to last a lifetime, the Middle says, “I’m inclined to play. I am also curious about the choice she’ll make.”
The Crone waves a stone hand. “Fine then. Get on with it.”
The Child claps. The sound is thunderous in the hollow hall.
“Right then,” she says. “What shall it be?”
“What is it always?” says the Crone.
Silence hangs for a handful of heartbeats, and in it, I feel as though I am counting the grains of my own hourglass as they slip through the neck and pool at the base.
Finally, the Middle says, “We have decided to offer you a choice, young one.” She looks only at me, as though Sam does not even exist beside me. “We want to offer you the thing you want most in the cosmos.”
“Your freedom!” says the Child.
The Crone rolls her stone eyes.
I stand rooted to the spot as though I have turned to marble myself.
My freedom.
Can it be that I’d heard her right?
I swallow, try not to glance over at Sam, and fail. I blink when I see that he, in fact, is no longer standing there. He has disappeared.