Limbo's Child

by Jonah Hewitt

  He looked up at the front of the vast scriptorium. At the front he could barely see Falco, but it did look like he was looking towards Nephys. Falco gave a tiny little wave in Nephys’ direction as if to say, “Do you like them?” Nephys looked behind himself to make sure Falco was waving at him and not someone else, then nervously returned the friendly wave. This was very odd indeed. The blond schoolgirl in the uncomfortable shoes at the high desk was glaring at him menacingly, stabbing the iron nib of her dip pen repeatedly into the wooden desk. On the other side, the print boy was looking at him almost murderously. He was setting type for a set of 1950 phonebooks, Des Moines, Iowa. Nephys decided not to question his good fortune and started in on the work by Bertrand Russell. He wrote the author’s name in tall, elegant letters and was certain to use the red ink.

  By mid-morning, Nephys had managed to work through half of the first text when he noticed someone near the entrance of the scriptorium. Rather he noticed someone blocking the entrance with his enormous form. It was the gargantuan soldier from the previous day, the one in chain mail that was missing the top of his head. Nephys froze mid-stroke on his copy work. The massive soldier was leaning down to let Falco whisper something into his non-existent ear. They were discussing some matter intently when they both suddenly looked in Nephys’ direction. Nephys looked down immediately. He didn’t want them to know he was watching.

  The gigantic warrior with the face missing above the mustache was even more terrifying to Nephys than Falco, though he wasn’t entirely sure why, besides the obvious. He was certain he was a servant to the Great Master. The scribes were servants too, but strictly low-level peons who never spoke to the high lord personally except through the massive labyrinthine bureaucracy of the underworld. The Great Master, Death himself, had many servants but spoke to few directly. As far as Nephys knew, absolutely no one except perhaps the High Lord Chamberlain spoke to Death in person and even then the higher echelons of servants were rarely seen, content to communicate through lesser heralds and messengers like Falco. Everyone knew they were there of course. They lived in the Halls of Death, The Great Master’s own private court, somewhere deep beneath the now-abandoned acropolis of Elysium in walls of stone rumored to be deathless and indestructible.

  What they did there was something of a mystery. Every scribe knew their job, so did the “greeters” who catalogued and recorded the names and lives of souls arriving through the gates of Erebus. They were record-keepers. No one ever questioned why they kept the records, they only knew it was the will of The Great Master, but few knew what the higher functionaries were up to, though Nephys assumed it was important.

  Every once in a rare while, in the past, there would be a flurry of activity, and pages and servants of the dark court would be seen in the city in their distinctive, long, black and silver robes. This was usually a bad sign. It meant that some great plague, or war, or catastrophe was about to befall the living world and that the land of the dead would soon be inundated with new recruits. It was above Nephys’ station to ask how or why these events occurred or what hand the courtiers and civil servants of Death had in them. Did they cause these events? Or were they only informed in advance? And if so, then by whom? None of those questions really mattered to a child of Limbo. He just assumed that like any large event, a wedding or a funeral, it took lots of planning and preparation. Now however, the streams of souls pouring in through the gates of the dead on a daily basis were so numerous, he doubted if the greater numbers of even a terrible catastrophe would be noticed.

  Nephys had been in Limbo long enough to see more than a few of the higher courtiers, but rarely had he seen one this close and never twice in as many days. As Nephys thought this, he realized he wasn’t actually transcribing anymore. His reed pen was frozen in the same place it had been since he had first looked up to see the warrior. The blond schoolgirl in pigtails and the boy in the paper hat were both staring at him. There were no lunch breaks in Limbo. Scribes didn’t stop working ever until Falco clapped his hands at the end of the day. Nephys realized he had become lost in thought and nearly blushed. He had been so distracted that he had to find his place all over again. Once he found it, he kept his head down and began copying again in earnest.

  Sideward glances confirmed that the other scribes had indeed returned to their work. Good. He had spent most of the last thousand years avoiding notice. All this attention he was unintentionally attracting, from Maggie, the other children and even Falco, was unraveling him like a dream where you were inexplicably naked in public.

  He threw himself back into his work. His penmanship suffered a bit, but the relief of being absorbed fully in his work was worth it. He was nearly back into his old rhythm when Falco shook him out of it.

  “Nephys?”

  “Aah!” Nephys nearly jumped out of his cross-legged position and dropped his reed pen. The clatter on the stone floor drew the attention of thousands of scribes whose pens now fell silent. Somehow the blue-tinged little Roman had snuck up on him, but Falco didn’t look mad or upset at all, instead he was smiling.

  “Y-Yes master?” Nephys stammered as he stood up and bowed quickly.

  “Gather your things, please,” Falco said plainly. It was the “please” part that scared Nephys the most. Falco turned and started walking away. Nephys knew by experience that this was the little tyrant’s way of telling you to follow him. He quickly gathered his pens and ink palette, tidied his station and jumped up to follow. Usually Falco just stormed off and you had to chase after him. Even with his tiny legs he had a purposeful stride that could outpace Nephys every time. Yet this time, Falco slowed to a leisurely pace so that instead of having to chase after him, Nephys could walk nearly beside him with no difficulty. A few paces on, Falco stunned him again.

  “How are you enjoying the Russell?”

  Falco was asking his opinion on a text? This was so out of character for Falco that it took a while for Nephys to recover.

  “Um…um…very much, Sir,”

  Falco smiled. “I thought you would like him. The 20th C. humanists are so rational, so certain of themselves, it’s all very…reassuring.” He paused here to let Nephys give his opinion. Nephys could only nod in mute agreement. He had no precise idea what Falco was talking about, but he liked the way Falco was talking to him, as if he were a colleague and not an underling. Falco continued, “Pity they were all wrong about there being no afterlife.” Nephys had to admit, he had had that thought himself more than once. He thought to say something intelligent just to prove he could, but Falco spoke again.

  “I have recently come into the possession of a first edition of Petrarch’s translations of Virgil’s eclogues illustrated by Simone Martini. I was wondering if you would be willing to work on it for me?”

  Nephys was stunned. “Me?! Sir, you want me to work on it?!” Nephys had never in more than a thousand years seen any indication that Falco appreciated his work or any scribe’s work for that matter.

  “Yes, of course,” Falco said apparently earnestly. “You don’t think I’d trust my native Latin to some pigtail schoolgirl that couldn’t conjugate vedere, do you?”

  Nephys shrugged. Now that he thought of it that did make sense.

  Falco continued, “After all, you’re a proper scribe, not some ink-stained print monkey tending an errant machine.”

  “Really?” Nephys was a bit incredulous at this new praise from Falco, but he liked it.

  “Yes, of course,” Falco stated as if the fact were self-evident.

  Nephys felt a small swelling of pride and satisfaction inside himself. Perhaps Nephys had been wrong about Falco. Maybe he wasn’t an imperious little social-climbing tyrant. Perhaps Falco had only pushed Nephys to be his best…through nearly a millennium of abuse…and feigned contempt. Nephys looked carefully at Falco. Falco looked sideways at Nephys and smiled a satisfied smile himself.

  “Nephys,” Falco began again, “I have been the master of the Scriptorium for a very long time, but eternity i
s always longer. Someday I hope to move on to other tasks for the Great Master.” Falco paused, he didn’t specify what other tasks these might be, but Falco’s ambition was hardly a secret. Falco continued, “I will have to find my own replacement. Someone will have to become the new master, someone who has been here longer than all the others, someone who is a proper scribe.”

  “A proper scribe?” thought Nephys, “A proper scribe like me?”

  Nephys’ doubt grew. What was Falco driving at?

  Falco looked at Nephys like a cat eyeing a mouse.

  Nephys wasn’t quite certain anymore, but he liked the new Falco far better than the old one, and even this faint praise made him feel more confident in spite of his doubts.

  Nephys’ new confidence evaporated when they reached the front of the scriptorium. The massive soldier was like a wall of chain mail with tree-trunk legs all hung in bloody, black armor, and above it all, that horrifying, truncated head staring down at you with the empty space where his scalp, eyes and nose used to be.

  “Ah yes, here we are,” Falco said indifferently as if introducing Nephys to a new stack of copy work. “This is the Sergeant-at-Arms to the Courts of Death, Chief Herald to the Great Master Himself and Grandmaster of all his Knights and Soldiers.”

  Nephys froze. He didn’t know whether to bow or throw himself flat on the floor and beg for mercy. If his inaction was a breach of protocol neither the giant soldier without a face nor Falco gave any indication.

  “You have been summoned, Nephys, to the courts of Death to see the Great Master himself, a singular honor.”

  Frozen in terror, these words came to Nephys’ ears slowly, as if spoken underwater and from several miles away. The words wormed their way down his ear canals gradually like pouring molasses into a tiny funnel; it took forever to get through. Recognition was dawning painfully sluggishly on Nephys when finally the words gushed forth into his brain like a spurt of molten lava. The back of his neck got boiling hot.

  “Excuse me, M-Master?” Nephys weakly uttered, unbelieving.

  “Yes, Nephys,” Falco said in an almost paternal, reassuring way, “You have been called by the Great Master himself for a personal audience. His Herald is prepared to take you there…now.” Falco added the “now” with a terrifying finality.

  With that the soldier turned slowly, like a boulder grating on the bedrock, his metal-shod boots scraping the floor. Then it started walking away. Nephys gaped, jaw slack, uncertain what to do. No one ever saw the GREAT MASTER! Certainly not a lowly scribe like him!!

  Nephys thought hard. This had something to do with that stone! The other day they must have known that he could tell it was a different color. WHY HAD HE PAUSED OVER THAT STONE?! He had known at the time something was wrong. He thought he had fooled them into thinking he hadn’t seen it, but they had known. Somehow, even without eyes or a face to put them in, that bloody, horrible soldier had known. And now Nephys was on his way to see DEATH himself. He should have realized. He should have known. No one ever tricks Death–EVER! Maybe if he had just come clean earlier and admitted he could see the stone…But it was all too late now. What was he going to do?! What were they going to do with him?! He thought about running, he thought about saying “No, thank you,” but that would never do. What was he going to do?!!

  Panicking, he looked at Falco who only nodded comfortingly in the soldier’s direction and gestured towards him indicating that Nephys should follow the great brute out the door. Nephys was petrified. He tried to will a leg, a foot, a toe! to move, but none of his body parts would obey him. Finally, Falco walked towards Nephys and gave him a tiny push. Nephys stumbled forward, numb, first one leg and then the other. As he made his way out the entrance like a man half asleep, he looked back at Falco.

  Falco was giving him a tiny wave as if he were sending Nephys away on his first day of school.

  “Remember, Nephys,” Falco called after him, “That copy of Petrarch will be waiting for you when you come back.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Smoothie

  “Are you ok, Lucy? You keep looking at that smoothie like you expect a monster to jump out of it.”

  The elegant lady in black smiled a little at Lucy from behind her stylish black-framed tinted glasses and raised a cappuccino to her lips.

  “Oh, that’s good!” she said a little too indulgently to herself as if she hadn’t had one in a very long time.

  The woman was certainly enjoying her drink selection. All Lucy could do was stare at her pink, strawberry smoothie. She had hardly touched it, and it wasn’t just because she was still digesting a brick of lime Jell-O the size of her head. Lucy was expecting a monster to leap out at her, but not from her drink.

  “If you don’t like it I can get you something else.” The lady across from her leaned over gracefully – everything she did looked graceful – and recovered a stylish, black alligator clutch from an equally stylish, black calfskin briefcase. She was already unsnapping the clasp to show her willingness to purchase another beverage when Lucy protested.

  “No, no!” Lucy said a little too urgently, and then forced herself to remain calm. “That’s ok. I really like it.” Then she made an effort to take a few sips from her strawberry smoothie. It was good. She drank some more, but she didn’t drink more because she liked it, she did it to avoid suspicion or at least to avoid letting the lady know that she was suspicious. The lady smiled at her in a genuinely friendly way. Lucy could tell because the corners of her eyes moved and not just her mouth. Nothing the woman did betrayed any intentional deception, but still there was something horribly unsettling about her. Lucy suddenly became aware that she was staring at the lady again, so she quickly looked down, but almost against her will her eyes darted back up at her. The beautiful woman just leaned back and smiled knowingly at Lucy as she slowly stirred her coffee. Lucy’s eyes shot back to her smoothie.

  The lady had offered to buy Lucy an iced coffee but she had refused and got the smoothie instead. Lucy had always wanted to try an iced coffee actually, but her mother always thought she was too young. Now that her mother was gone and she could have one, it seemed like a betrayal of her mother’s memory to get one. She wondered if she would ever be able to drink one even when she was an adult, but right now she had bigger concerns. There was Yo-yo of course, and her impending escape which she still didn’t have a plan for, but the biggest problem was sitting opposite her with a stylish, short bob and high-end, oblong, chunky-framed, amber-tinted glasses and black leather gloves. Lucy couldn’t explain it, but something about the woman sitting opposite her, who called herself Amanda Tipping, was just plain wrong.

  She was fine enough Lucy guessed. She hadn’t even given Lucy any reason to be suspicious, and yet, there was something about her, a presence she couldn’t describe. Her glasses obscured her eyes and who wore gloves in May anyway? The tinted glasses and fine leather gloves were one thing, but even without those the woman stood out. The coffee shop was filled with doctors, nurses and a few odd patients and visitors. They were all dressed in the usual scrubs, brightly patterned uniforms and lab-coats, but she looked more like she belonged on the cover of a fashion magazine. The hospital coffee shop was just a little past the main lobby. The woman, Amanda, had said she wanted to talk to Lucy in a more comfortable setting, but Lucy wasn’t comfortable anywhere near this woman even while sitting on a cushy leather chair in a trendy coffee house.

  And it wasn’t just that – it was her whole demeanor. Every move or gesture Amanda made was beautiful and…well…perfect, geometric and flowing. Even though she was dressed in high-end contemporary clothes and shoes that must have cost a small fortune, she seemed like something from another time. Sometimes she was stern and officious, forced and cold and humorless like a Victorian nanny. Other times she was warm and friendly, pretty and sassy or genuinely funny like a favorite aunt, or at least how Lucy imagined a favorite aunt should be. It was like she was two completely different people. At first Lucy thought this
was just a product of her being a lawyer, but now she wasn’t so sure.

  They had spent the first twenty minutes going over the same territory the social worker had gone over this morning. Lucy had given Amanda – she had insisted Lucy call her by her first name – her entire history: her name, age, address and all known relations. On this point she was far more thorough than the social worker had been. She filled up several pages of notes on a big yellow legal pad with an old-fashioned tortoise-shell fountain pen. It looked like an antique. Even her handwriting was gorgeous. She had pumped her for information about her mother, her father and her grandmother. She even asked if her grandmother had kept any records or any genealogies. Lucy didn’t know.

  Boxing up all of grandmother Holveda’s stuff and moving it up to the attic, down to the basement or out to the garage had been job number one when they had moved into the crummy old house more than a year ago. Her mother had insisted on it and it had been quite a chore. Just like the social worker that morning, she had asked specifically if Lucy knew anything about an uncle or great uncle. When Lucy said she knew nothing about any uncles, she seemed almost pleased. It was all very odd, but if she really was here to help Lucy find a new home she guessed it made sense to scout out any possible relations, but it still didn’t feel right.

  After that, Amanda tried to make small talk in an effort to get to know Lucy better. She had asked Lucy about her opinions on clothes, school and even boys, but Lucy wasn’t feeling chatty. After a while, Amanda just decided to spend the next few minutes in silence. Even that was unnerving. Most of the adults here didn’t know when to shut up, but after a while she apologized for talking so much and told Lucy she could just enjoy her smoothie in peace while she read the paper. It was like something her mother would have done. Some of the best conversations with her mother were spent in total silence over a couple of milkshakes. Usually, there was nothing Lucy would have liked better than to just sit and enjoy a natural silence over a strawberry smoothie and a coffee. It would have been comforting after a full day of forced talking, if only the company were different. Now it made Lucy feel edgy. How did this woman know Lucy so well?! Amanda had gotten her almost instinctively. Lucy tried to rationalize away her fears. True, Amanda did have a file on Lucy, but she seemed to know her right down to her soul.