by Jonah Hewitt
Chapter Seventeen
Soup
Maggie Miller explained to Nephys that “Soup’s on” was just an expression that meant “dinner was ready,” but in this case it actually was soup. Anything to eat was unusual in Limbo. You didn’t really need to eat, and even when you did, it didn’t provide the least bit of satisfaction. Still, Nephys didn’t want to be rude.
Maggie had straightened up the small tomb, placing two small stools next to a tiny table. It looked odd to Nephys, but he carefully took a seat.
“I had to simmer this thing for hours – or maybe days, who knows really? – over one of the those fires, but it never ever really got hot enough to boil. What is it with this place, neither hot nor cold, but always...I dunno…just blah?”
Nephys said nothing. It wasn’t really a question anyway, she was just thinking out loud. She had used his stone bowl to cook it. He didn’t like that at all. It was one of his few possessions and had the rare quality of being unbreakable. He usually only used it as a mirror to see himself. He wanted, as long as he could, to see his face with the last traces of his eyesight. Seeing it full of limp, blue-black leaves and lumpy, gray, non-descript vegetables was very disconcerting. None of the other souls they had recovered had ever been this much trouble.
“Your garden had a lot of what looked like kale, only thornier, and some potato-like tubers, so I started with that. Seasoning was a bit of trouble. Your garden was absolutely chock full of stuff that looked deadly poisonous…nightshade and wormwood and worse, but then I realized…we’re dead…It can’t possibly kill us again, right? So, I went for broke and threw it all in.”
Somewhere, she had managed to scrounge up a couple of bowls and spoons, but Nephys had no idea where. She sat a bowl down before Nephys and then sat down herself behind the other. She sat there silently staring at Nephys who said nothing. Finally, she spoke.
“Usually my daughter and I would say grace…but…” she trailed off and Nephys had to endure another long silence. “Well let’s just say ‘bon apetit,’ okay?” She looked uncertainly at Nephys and then at the unappealing concoction in the rough bowl in front of her. She picked up a spoon, cautiously drew up a spoonful, leaned over, paused just before putting it to her lips, then rushed ahead and slurped it all down. Her face froze.
Nephys searched the table for his own spoon, found it, languidly put it in the bowl and drew up a spoonful himself but didn’t eat it. He couldn’t remember the last time he had tried to eat something here. He looked down at the gray lumpy mass and then looked up at Maggie. Maggie was slowly rolling the soup around her mouth and pursing her lips as if trying to get up the courage to swallow. When she finally did swallow, she took a long time before she spoke.
“Wow. That is really…bland.” She put the spoon down slowly and pushed the bowl away. Whatever she had expected, it wasn’t that.
“I mean, it’s as close to eating nothing as I’ve ever come. I mean, I could tell I was eating something, but…there was no flavor whatsoever. Water tastes like nothing – this wasn’t nothing; it was worse than nothing – it was like…I dunno…anti-flavor. Not even school paste is that flat-tasting…wow. I can’t even taste the roof of my mouth anymore.”
She shook her head slowly from side to side with a look of utter frustrated despair. Nephys knew the look well.
“You don’t need to try it just to make me feel better, Neppy. It really is awful.”
Nephys’ eyes widened. He wasn’t going to eat it, but now that she had mentioned it, it seemed rude not to. He eyeballed the spoon and then quickly shoved it in his mouth and closed his eyes.
“Froontooot?” Hiero tooted in surprise.
Nephys rolled it around his mouth and the back of his tongue. The thing had mass, but no real substance or texture and a flavor even less noticeable than the inside of his own mouth. As he continued to move it over and over his tongue he started to sense something. He opened his eyes. What was it? Clinging to the farthest reaches of his tongue…it was…bitter. Yes. It was definitely…extremely faintly…almost imperceptibly…bitter. He took another spoonful. The bitterness was infinitesimally, slightly more than before. He took another and another, savoring each time the almost impossibly small sensation of incremental bitterness.
Before he knew it, he began wolfing down the entire bowl. He only stopped, embarrassed, when he noticed that Maggie Miller was staring at him, smiling.
“Sorry, it’s only just…I haven’t eaten anything in a very long time.”
Maggie laughed, “Don’t be. I’m just glad somebody likes it.”
Nephys smiled for the third time that day.
“Fwhork! PAFAAARNT!” Hiero was lurking around under the table like a hungry dog, impatient.
“All right, if you want some you can have mine.”
She put her bowl on the floor and Hiero didn’t eat it as much as he rooted around in it and spread it everywhere, but he seemed to enjoy that all the same. Nephys finished his quickly and looked expectantly back at Maggie.
“More?”
“Yes, please,” he said, wiping his mouth on a sleeve.
She smiled and dished up some more and Nephys went back to gulping the soup. It was bitter enough now it almost had an aftertaste. Maggie didn’t take any more herself but just watched Nephys intently with an air of affection. It suddenly made Nephys nervous and he stopped eating.
“What?” he asked at last.
“Oh…nothing,” she said, but started again, “It’s just that this place is so…odd, but you and Hiero are the oddest.”
Hiero paused from his rooting around in the mess he’d made to make a sound not unlike purring, as if he took what she said as a compliment. Nephys wasn’t so sure.
“What do you mean?”
“Well…the kids here, they are so odd. Just before you got back a bunch of them starting filing through the streets. I called to some of them but no one answered. Not one of them looked at me. Instead, they went to their individual houses…tombs I guess and sat down or stood in open windows and just stared. I’m not used to kids, especially young kids, just sitting and staring like that. It’s downright creepy. They don’t run or talk or play games or roughhouse or anything. They make a classroom full of kids on Ritalin look like a cage of monkeys by comparison.”
Nephys continued to eat the soup. He had no idea what Ritalin was but he understood monkeys. It was true. The children of Limbo were only children in the strictest sense. They were small and young, but other than that there was no resemblance. Falco was as stern as any adult he knew in life.
“And then there’s you.”
“Me?!” Nephys said in surprise.
“Yes, you. You’re different.”
“How so?” Nephys went back to nervously eating his soup. The bitterness was delicately clinging to his tongue now.
“Well…for one, you hang out with that thing.” She gestured to Hiero who snooted a flatulent, indignant toot her way.
“I…don’t actually hang out with him; he more kind of hangs out with me.”
“Well you don’t have to follow him out into the swamps, do you?”
Nephys shrugged. That was true he guessed.
“And nobody else goes around rescuing stranded lost souls, do they?”
Nephys looked down and shook his head slightly from side to side as if he were ashamed. It was true, he wasn’t a proper child of Limbo, but he had resolved to change that…hadn’t he?
“See?” Maggie continued, and with that word, Nephys looked back up. “You’re different. You care about more than just getting by. You’re…” she paused and seemed to be looking for the right word, “Compassionate.”
Nephys raised his eyebrows.
“Oh, no…I’m not compassionate,” he stammered. Maggie looked sideways at him. Nephys continued, “I don’t know why I let Hiero drag me out there, but it isn’t because of compassion.”
“What is it then?”
Nephys shrugged, “Curiosity I guess.”
Maggie looked right at him in a way that made him think of the grandmother he could barely remember, “Well then…thank you for being curious.”
She looked at him in a way he couldn’t quite understand and he almost smiled again before she interrupted him.
“Finished?” Maggie started clearing up the dishes. Nephys was surprised. Aside from the contents of the bowl Hiero had splashed around the floor, he had eaten the whole thing. Still, when Maggie reached for his bowl, he had to grab back the spoon and lick the last faint traces of bitterness off it.
As she tidied up, she asked Nephys a few more questions about Limbo. Had he saved many souls? If so, where were they now? Nephys told her that he and Hiero had only saved a few overall and that most simply wouldn’t see reality. In fact, he was pretty amazed Maggie had not been lost too. Generally, souls would hang around his house for a few hours but then they would begin to wander, and within a week or two they had wandered so far Nephys usually never saw them again. Whether they turned into shades or not, Nephys didn’t know. Some found a place to haunt in the city and stayed there, diminishing slowly, while others crossed the swamps to the wastelands and beyond, but none had ever stayed very long, and certainly none had ever made him soup before.
She asked him more about crossing back over as a ghost and the cats, but he wished she hadn’t.
“So if a cat can cross over unharmed then why not a human?”
“Fhunt!” Hiero seemed to take a sudden interest in what Maggie was saying.
Nephys shook his head. “The only way for a human soul to get to Limbo is by…um…the usual way,” Nephys replied nervously.
“The usual way?” Maggie asked. Hiero made a frustrated spluttering noise. Maggie shot him a cross look.
Nephys got quiet. “You have to die.”
“Oh. Of course.” Maggie rolled her eyes at her own naivety and got quiet then too. Hiero hooted out muted laughter. She shot him another dirty look. “There’s no other way? I mean, the stories…Orpheus, Tondal, Dante.”
“Not that I know of,” Nephys shrugged. Then he furrowed his brow and looked at her quizzically. For a school librarian only recently deceased, she sure seemed to know a lot about Limbo. “I’ve heard that there were once a few other doorways from the world of the living, and that a few living came here and returned through the Gates of Erebus but that’s long past. You could never do it now.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, curious.
Hiero hooted impatiently. What was he upset about?
“You could never survive the torrent these days.”
“Torrent?!”
“Oh, yes,” Nephys sighed. “Centuries ago only a few dead came through at a time, a nice steady pace. They would line up, wait for the ferry and come across. But now…there are just too many.”
“Too many?”
“Of course. Think of how many more people there are today up there. There are just that many more people dying each day – the gate is overwhelmed. They pour through like a fast-moving river. You can’t even tell they’re souls at first; it’s just a stream of ghostly, icy whiteness. Anyone living who found a way to the Gates of Erebus would find himself standing in the middle of millions of dead souls. You wouldn’t last long.”
Maggie touched the tips of her fingers where she had touched just one shade. They were still slightly numb. “I guess not,” she said quietly.
“Even if you could survive the trip down, you’d never get back,” Nephys continued, “It would be like trying to swim upstream in a rapid, glacial river. You’d be finished in seconds.”
There was a long, uncomfortable pause and then Maggie started again.
“What about ghosts in Limbo?”
“What?” Nephys looked up, confused.
“Well, when spirits go back to the land of the living they’re unsubstantial, nearly intangible…and cats who come here are like ghosts to the deceased. Could a living person find a way to come back but not through the gates of Erebus? I mean, if a cat can do it, why not a human?”
Hiero began running in circles and panting loudly like a deranged cat, but Maggie just ignored him.
Nephys had never thought of that before. “I don’t know. Why do you ask?”
“Well, earlier today…well, we saw something…and…” Maggie began, but before she got very far Hiero threw a fit and started stabbing the ground around her feet so she had to dance out of the way. “Ow! You vile little thing!!”
“Hiero!!” Nephys called out to scold him, but this really wasn’t unusual behavior for the little imp, in fact, it was the most normal he had acted all night. Hiero ran to the far corner of the room under Nephys’ bed and hooted a short, violent raspberry at them.
Nephys looked at Maggie who was narrowing her eyes at Hiero.
“Sorry, I wish I could say he isn’t like this most of the time, but the truth is, he’s usually worse.” Nephys looked down embarrassed and then spoke again, “What were we talking about?”
“Hmm?” Maggie had been distracted looking at Hiero as if she were trying to figure something out. “Oh! Oh, it’s nothing, forget it.”
“Good,” thought Nephys. He didn’t like to talk about this stuff anyway. Then after another pause he decided to offer something else.
“Look,” he blurted, “Everyone who tries to change the way things are doesn’t last too long down here. They get dragged away or lose themselves, and…” and he felt really awkward saying this, “I just wouldn’t want that to happen to you.”
Maggie smiled very slightly and said, “Thank you, Nephys. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you either.” Hiero made a noise that sounded something like a note of approval, which was odd, but Nephys tried to ignore it.
They talked on through the night about the history of Limbo, Elysium, the gates of Erebus, and the various jobs the children did. For the most part, Hiero just droned quietly, listening to them, which was very uncharacteristic of him.
Finally, after a natural pause in the conversation, Nephys asked Maggie a question.
“Maggie?”
“Yeah, Nep?” He didn’t mind the nickname nearly so much now.
“Do you remember green?”
“Green?” she said anxiously, “Yeah, I remember green.” Maggie smiled a little as if it were a ridiculous question, but the smile faded quickly.
“What’s it like?” Nephys asked.
Maggie snorted a little. She opened her mouth to speak but then stopped. It wasn’t exactly an easy thing to answer. “Well,” she began cautiously, “Green is kind of cool, like blue, but it’s not cold like blue, it’s brilliant and bright and comforting all at once, because it bridges the gap between yellow, which is all warm and sunny, and blue, which is cold and thoughtful.” She looked up at Nephys’ puzzled face and could tell he was having just as hard a time with yellow as he was with green. She was just confusing him with abstractions. She decided to try a different tactic.
“Trees are green. Grass is green. Some apples are green. Money is green, well it is in my country. Water ponds can be green too. Frogs and lizards are green, but not always.” This was very frustrating thought Maggie. Why was this so hard? “Most leafy plants are green, well…they aren’t here, but they are back up there.”
She looked at Nep, but she could tell by his drifting glance he wasn’t quite grasping it yet, and then she remembered something she had forgotten.
“My daughter’s eyes are green.” And Maggie became very quiet and sad for a moment.
“I can’t remember it.” Nephys shook his head from side to side ever so slightly. “I know back home our fields were green, and palm trees and reeds were all green. I even remember that a few of our gods were green, like Osiris, but…try as hard as I can, I just can’t see it for myself. Knowing that something is green and knowing what green is, really are two different things…aren’t they?”
Maggie turned away a bit, but then turned back and nodded in agreement. She was trying desperately to hold on
to the memory of her daughter’s brilliant-green eyes. She could still see their verdant color now, but she knew the day would come when “green” was just a word, and the actual color would be something long forgotten. But then she thought she would hold on to the idea “My daughter’s eyes are green” forever. Even if she didn’t know what “green” was anymore, someday, somehow, she just knew she would see her daughter again. She would look into her eyes and know that that color, that was the color green. Somehow, that gave her hope.
She shook herself from thought and wiped a faint trace of a tear from her left eye with her pinkie finger. “Why do you ask, Nep?”
“No reason,” he shrugged, “Just curious…something I saw today.” And when he said that he desperately wished he could see the stone again. Hiero and Maggie exchanged worrisome looks at each other and then stared at Nephys. “Those two sure have developed a connection haven’t they?” thought Nephys.
“Well,” Maggie said suddenly, “I haven’t got the foggiest idea what time it is in this place with no sun or moon or even a clock, but I suspect you need to be getting to sleep soon.”
“No one sleeps in Limbo. Not really.”
Maggie’s shoulders just fell. “This place is just a never-ending party isn’t it, Nep?” she said sarcastically. She took her now familiar pose, hands in back pockets. “Why on earth is it impossible to sleep in Limbo?”
“Same reason you can’t do anything else with any real conviction. Anyone who tries too hard loses themselves.”
Maggie just looked down and shook her head. “All eternity with nothing to do and you can’t even take a nap!” She seemed too resigned to be surprised or disappointed anymore. Hiero came out from under the bed and began to chuckle.
“Well then why do you have a bed? What do you do with it then?”
“Well, I kind of lie down for a while, rest, at least, and try to think about what sleep used to feel like.”
“What it used to feel like?” Maggie said incredulously.
“And other things,” Nephys said flatly.
“Well let’s let you get to bed to rest and…think at least.”