Cross started a fire and boiled pieces of the barbot in the cauldron using left-over devil’s water. He used the spoon that the Raven gave him to stir a pile of Nothings into rice. While the food cooked, he peeled the scabs off his legs from where the fiery spirits of Hell grabbed him about a week ago.
The draggles leaned toward the pink skin revealed underneath as if they wanted to treat his injury, but didn’t know how. He poured each one of them a bowl of barbot soup when it was ready.
“Don’t eat just yet,” he said to the draggles. “Take my hand.” He held out his palms. Two of the draggles rested their cold, three-clawed hands in his. The third joined hands with the other two and they formed a circle.
“Close your eyes and bow your head.” He demonstrated as he had instructed them to do, and he gave thanks to the Great Goddess.
During breakfast the next morning, he decided to recruit the draggles to help him break into paradise. Maybe that’s what Mama had sent them to help him do.
“The world is divided into two parts,” he said to them. “Those who have friends and those that are lonely. Like me.”
The draggles sat still and listened attentively, as if the fate of their world rested on his every word.
“You see,” said Cross. “I used to have a lot of friends. They all left. My last friend was Sinuhe. I did what I always do, and now I’m all alone, like you. See, this place—the underworld—does things to us. Changes us. You probably didn’t always look the way you look. You might have even been able to talk once. And I wasn’t always like this, you know, such a hard case. The underworld takes everything away from us. It sets us up to fail. It wants us to be alone. It’s easier for it to manipulate us and torture us that way because we’re so vulnerable.”
He stirred a Nothing into rice and poured it into the leaky cauldron. “You want more food? Eat. Eat. Help yourself.” He spooned them more soup. “You have your mission and I have mine. And any friends that would help me would be my friends forever. We all need friends in this lonely place. You’re out here all alone with no one to look out for you. I promise, if you take care of me, I’ll take care of you. We can take care of each other. I can’t promise the road won’t be bumpy, but if we join forces, we can’t lose.”
The draggles bounced up and down and squeaked like mice. Goddess knows why they liked him so much. Several times they turned to face him, scurried a few feet away and raced back. They tugged his arm, and he followed their lead out of the steamship.
A few miles away they showed him cornurus tracks in the dust. He prayed that it was Gimlet and that he would find the Raven on her back. Even if not, the tracks lead east toward the A’raf, his destination, so he wouldn’t have to go out of his way. But if those tracks did belong to Gimlet, he could kill two birds with one stone—or one raven with a single bullet—and dance right into paradise.
Well, not really dance. He still had to break in somehow. But having everything in one location reduced the possibility of a wild detour. He should have teamed up with the draggles a long time ago.
He leaned down and patted each of the draggles on their brainy heads. “Good. Good. You did a great thing my friends.”
Even with their vicious claws, they seemed more like friendly creatures than fighting beasts. It had taken them many months to even break out of their shyness and finally step out of the shadows to approach him. They had fought the hellhound, but it never wanted to kill them. They weren’t ready to face the Raven.
The cornurus tracks ended at the edge of the realm of Limbo. The realm resembled the towns he recalled from his previous life. Of course none of the cities of the underworld matched his memory in exact detail. The cities of the damned were constructed as if by word of mouth. A guy who knew a guy, who knew a guy, who overheard what a town should look like, built one without ever seeing an actual town first hand.
Limbo got things mostly right where it counted. Roofs, windows and doors adorned the buildings, but the distinct wrongness of the underworld sullied those expected details. Windows became looming eye sockets, entrances were gaping mouths which lead into the beastly buildings, webs of bone and teeth were substituted for conventional building materials, and the great wall of paradise towered above the town, mockingly.
Still, more than any place he had ever been in the underworld, he almost felt at home among the meat markets, the saloons, and the dry goods merchants. In many respects, Limbo placed him back on the frontier. Spurs jingled, carriages crunched across the dirt, and souls bustled along in the crowded main street.
Townspeople performed their mundane duties, crossing the roads, entering and exiting shops, speaking to one another like a close-knit family. The spirits seemed to have made an afterlife for themselves there. It was almost as if they had forgotten that they lived in the underworld at all.
Upon closer inspection, he noticed that the people wandered more aimlessly. It was all an elaborate illusion trying to suck him in, but he refused to fall for it. Although it must’ve been nice to forget.
“Could you hand me a nail out of that bucket?” asked a man adjusting plywood on a half-built structure.
Cross reached into the pail and pulled out teeth instead of nails. He dropped the teeth in disgust. The man wasn’t tacking wood to the building. It was bone. The building was made of bone and teeth like the rest of the town.
“You mind?” asked the man. A hole in one side of the man’s jaw exposed the smiling black gums and yellow teeth.
“I’m not sticking my hand back in there,” said Cross.
The man dropped his bone and reached into the pail himself. “Now watch me. What you want to do is you line these up to form a T like this.”
“Very informative,” said Cross. “I’ll remember that. Do you like objects? Of course you do. There’s a nice shiny object for you if you can help me find someone.” He held out the Latin cross with no intention of giving it up.
The soul’s sunken eyes widened. The dark rings around them stretched at the sight of the glowing brass. “Who are you looking for, mister?”
“A woman with black wings. She was riding a cornurus.”
The spirit went back to adjusting the bone. “Could you hand me a nail out of that bucket?”
“They’re not nails,” said Cross. “They’re teeth.”
“Teeth?”
Cross kicked the pail over, spilling all the teeth out.
“Now that wasn’t very kind, Mister.” The man took a tooth from the ground. “Now watch me. What you want to do is you line these up to form a T like this.”
“You already said that,” said Cross.
“Did I?” The man scratched the back of his head, shrugged and went back to readjusting the T-bone on his house of bone and teeth.
“So have you seen her or not?” asked Cross.
“I’m sorry, mister. Seen who?”
“The woman.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.”
“The woman with black wings, riding a cornurus. She has dark hair. Very beautiful, but pale. You can’t miss her.”
The man and adjusted the T bone on his house. “Could you hand me nail out of that bucket?”
He grabbed the man by his shirt. “If you know where she’s hiding you better tell me!”
“Mister, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I just want to finish my work. I have to get this done.”
Cross shoved the man to the ground. The man glanced around wide-eyed. Black spirit’s blood leaked from his nose.
“Where am I?” The man darted his head around. “Is this place real? Are you real?”
“Of course, I’m real,” said Cross.
The man’s expression slacked and grew serious. He stood up and adjusted the bone. “Could you hand me a nail out of that bucket?”
Cross backed away from the man and collided with a woman who had no face—at least not on her head, which was a blank canvas with makeup crudely drawn where her face should have been. An image
of her actual face appeared inside the mirror she carried.
“So sorry,” said the woman in the mirror. “I didn’t see you there.”
He was glad he couldn’t see his own refection in her mirror. It only showed her image and nothing else in the background. She seemed to be drawn to his pink parasol hooked to his waist.
“You like this umbrella, huh?” he asked her.
“Oh, it’s lovely.” Her arm let the mirror down so that her face could get a better look.
“Would you like to have it?” he said, with zero intention of giving it to Miss Blankface.
The face in the mirror nodded, eyes fixed upon the parasol.
“Well, I’m looking for someone,” said Cross. “And if you can tell me which one of these buildings she’s hiding in, I’ll give it to you.”
Her arm raised the mirror, and the woman blinked repeatedly. “I don’t think I can help you, sir. Where did you come from?”
“Look lady, I’m a Marshall. She’s a fugitive, and you’d be doing your country a great service if you help me.”
“I believe I might be lost.” The woman gazed around. “I don’t know how I got here. Where exactly is here?”
“I’ll tell you. But you have to help me first.”
The mirror panned across her blank face. The makeup had vanished. “You didn’t tell me my makeup was all wrong. This certainly will not do.” She began smearing lipstick sloppily, across her blank face.
He grabbed the woman’s shoulders and shook her. “What the hell is wrong with you people?”
“Is this real life?” The woman in the mirror breathed heavily, as if the air was thinning. Black spirit’s blood seeped out of the blank face where her nose should have been, and it smeared the lipstick drawn around her non-existent mouth. “Am I—Am I dead?”
The majority of souls in the underworld knew that they were dead; that was part of the punishment of being dead. His old friend Sinuhe once told him of a minority of souls who had no concept of their death. They believed they were still alive and couldn’t grasp their reality. Either they had been in the underworld too long and had withered away or the reality was so traumatizing for them that they escaped into whatever was left of their minds.
Dust sprinkled down the woman’s face and her head began to dissolve into debris. The rest of her body followed. It crumbled and a light wind swept her away in sprinkles.
Someone bumped into him from behind. It was Ms. Blankface. She had vanished and reappeared similar to the way Mama had done, but in a less divine way and more creepy.
“So sorry,” said Ms. Blankface. “I didn’t see you there.” The mirror panned in front of her blank, which no longer had any makeup smeared across it. “You didn’t tell me my makeup was all wrong. This certainly will not do.” She scribbled lipstick all over her face again.
Cross gave up his search. The spirits of Limbo could have encountered the Raven, but they wouldn’t have remembered it. The Raven could have been anywhere. She may not have been in Limbo at all. She could have been long gone by now, and he was so close to the River Lethe he could taste the waters.
He sat on a porch and gazed up at the A’raf, right at the edge of town. It was now within a few feet of walking distance, barely a two minute stroll away.
What did he want more? Revenge? Or to forget? If he gave up his search for the Raven, he still couldn’t just blast his way into paradise. That would get him and the draggles annihilated. But after meeting that blockhead bone builder and that ninny Ms. Blankface, erasing his memory didn’t look like the ignorant bliss that he imagined. What made those two numbskulls so different from the other spirits who had forgotten their past, but who still led functional afterlives?
The ground rumbled. Deep in the Southwest, the Inferno awoke with a terrible wrath. The sky dimmed furious blue, hellish and dark. The underworld shook and threw all souls off their feet. The bone buildings swayed. Lobs of molten lava splashed down onto the town.
He crouched on the porch, covering his head. The draggles cuddled up next to him. He sheltered them with his body until the ruckus stopped several minutes later.
Ash flurries fell like gray snow, and the entire town dissolved until nothing was left but more dust, and the impenetrable A’raf dominating the land. Then the ground bulged and bubbled. Buildings and people sprouted from the earth. The town reset itself. The wandering souls returned to their loop as if nothing had happened.
But the A’raf changed. Its sheen was now beaten as though dynamite had exploded in it. Black stains and dents covered a large area of the great wall. Smoke sizzled out of the horrible smudge. It was a hole.
“Wait here,” he told the draggles.
They obeyed, and he eased up to the wall to investigate. He held up his hands to show the guards he had no weapons. No one shot at him yet or even called out to him. He was able to get close enough to touch the wall without any interference. It was smooth and glossy as glass. He peeked inside the hole. It was pitch black inside, and no guards were present inside the dark tunnel.
“Blessed be to the Great Goddess.” She always looked out for him in his most desperate times. She knew he wouldn’t have been able to blast his way through the wall so did it for him. Her power was beyond everything. She could make anything happen. He waved for the draggles to follow him.
Cross and the draggles followed the black tunnel for an hour before they encountered any light, but at the end of the tunnel, they found blinding light. It came from every angle and touched everything. The draggles bounced ahead, leaping through the air and flipping about. They had finally escaped the gloomy haze of the underworld.
They passed under plateaus covered in an endless emerald green, and between mountain ranges that reached above the glorious trees. For hours they strolled through the peaceful pastures without happening across a soul.
Never once did Cross tire or break a sweat. He never needed rest. He was consistently energized and upbeat. The air was so pure it gave him life. Drinking from crystal clear waterfalls was more of a luxury than an act of quenching his thirst. He splashed around in the pools with the draggles and frolicked in the glowing purple groves until they reached a strangely familiar town.
Every building in the town was made of earthly materials as if the town had grown out of the ground, organically. He had only been to that town once in his afterlife, many hundreds of years ago, but he recalled that the River Lethe ran through it. Sinuhe had once told him that the realm of Elysium was specifically built around the river.
The roads crawled with fallen angels with tattered wings just like the Raven’s. They mingled with the righteous while Tribulation soldiers marched through the road, hauling their trebuchets. They seemed to be preparing for a huge battle.
Cross and the draggles blended in with the crowd and found the River Lethe in all its glory. Just as he remembered it, the water was nearly invisible; he could see the smooth river bottom. Only water so clear could wash away one’s memories.
A gathering of brand new souls drank their lives away as ordered by the Ankou. The past life escaped the minds of the new spirits in the manifestation of pink orbs. The orbs resembled the dead ones he had seen in the canyons of Viņsaule, only brighter and alive. They emitted their own light. Some orbs loitered around while others soared up into the burning skies. All the orbs floated and moved with intelligence, a sense of awareness of themselves and others around them. They maneuvered around spirits, carriages, and buildings in an obvious effort to avoid collisions.
A locomotive with hundreds of boxcars lined behind it waited behind the group of new spirits. The smoke stack pumped out thick exhaust resembling a black cloak flapping on the locomotives shoulders. It was the dirtiest thing in paradise. Dingy lettering painted on the side of the locomotive read: Charon. It was named after its conductor, and could travel throughout the underworld without the need for railroad tracks.
After drinking from the river and releasing their past, the damned boarded the soiled b
ox cars, and the Charon chugged them away into the underworld to drop them off to their respective destinations. The Ankou ferried the righteous in horse-drawn boats across the shimmering ocean to the islands of paradise.
Cross stood there, a few yards away from the river, unable to bring himself any closer. It had been the only thing he had focused in achieving for so many sleep cycles, and now it was finally in his grasp. What if it made him forget his time in the underworld? He wouldn’t remember Gimlet or the draggles or Cottontail. Would he become like that bone builder and Ms. Blankface, living in a looped bliss? Their existence was nearly as bad as a Nothing’s. What if it also removed his magic touch? He’d never be able to communicate with animals in his special way.
An Ankou glided over to him, silently. Like all the ferryman, it stood at a height that would make Cross appear to be a child standing beside it. The gaunt spirit was covered in black robes, and there seemed to be nothing beneath them. Its pointy hood pulled high above its head gave it an extra devilish demeanor.
The Ankou extended a cloaked arm, and led Cross over to the waters. He paced slowly and hesitantly over to the gentle river, the Ankou guiding his every step, the draggles trickling behind.
He met the river’s edge. The Ankou dipped a wooden cup into the river, carelessly soaking the sleeve of its robe.
Cross took the cup from its skeletal hand and gazed into the pure water for seconds on end. He was afraid to lose his memories now. Erasing his past was like cutting off one of his limbs. It was a part of him. But they were also a burden.
He always wanted a clean slate. Every spirit got a chance to start fresh except him. Souls weren’t meant to undertake life and death at the same time. The same way that the living weren’t supposed to know the truth about death, the dead weren’t supposed to know about life. That was the fairest rule of the underworld.
Hanging onto his past—both the good and bad moments—prevented him from moving forward and inhibited the rest of the damned from reaching their potential because they were all chasing him for the memories they thought they could steal from him. Funny how the living can be so intrigued by mystery of death, while the dead are so intrigued by enigma of life. It might be best for everyone if he drank Lethe’s mind altering waters.
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