by L. E. Waters
“Do you feel any better since that day?”
Her eyes answer me with their incessant dullness. How used to it I’ve grown. “I’m only still here because I couldn’t leave you. But I’m dead inside, Annelie.” Her little chin quivers as she tries to hold back her tears. “You know I’ve been.”
I hold on to her again. “I don’t think I’m strong enough to finish this life, Kathrin. I think we’ve taken on too much this time.”
She snickers through her tears. “What’s wrong with us? Why can’t we ever get this right?”
We both break away to take a few more painful sips.
“It’s getting better with each swig. That one only burned halfway down.” Kathrin takes another.
“Do you think we could keep going, knowing we only have each other?”
“Lee would finish this whole war single-handedly if you returned his feelings. You could have a good life with him.”
“And any one of these soldiers would throw themselves at you, too. But we’d still be alone.”
“I know. As nice as Lee is, you can’t think of him now that Georg is gone.”
Tiny water droplets churned up from the angry water below dampen my face and hair like morning dew. I inhale them deep.
“I’m just so tired already.” Kathrin connects with me, her eyes pleading with me to finally feel her pain. “I feel like I’m done.”
“It would be nice to start all over.” I take another drink. Numbing myself, getting ready for what I’m about to offer. “This life has gone horribly wrong.”
“What do you think would happen on the other side if we ended things early?”
“I wish I’d asked that question before, but I don’t know exactly how it affects the next life.”
“Can’t be worse than this life.” She grabs the flask again. No pant this time.
We’re quiet for some time, looking off into the distance.
I peer down into the depths of the river. “Do you think we’ll feel it?”
A cold wind blows.
“I don’t feel anything right now.” She pinches her cheeks. “Nothing. With the toilet gin and the cold, I’m made of stone.”
“Everything inside of me is stone. I just don’t want to feel anything again.”
“We only have pain ahead for us.”
We stare over the bridge again. “Do you think it will do the trick quickly?” I shiver even though the alcohol has warmed me up.
Kathrin scoffs. “It would be just my luck to break my back but still float to shore to live the rest of my life without you or movement of my legs.”
“We can’t take a chance of that happening. We need to drink enough and go in headfirst. I don’t think we’ll have a chance with all the rocks below and this current.”
“Why does this black water terrify me so?”
“We’ve drowned before. It wasn’t too horrible.”
She clasps my hand. “Not if we’re together.”
We’re quiet. The whole land is quiet. Nothing else seems to exist anymore.
Kathrin breaks the strange trance. “I’ll only do this because I know that it won’t end here. That we’ll be together again soon, with Carsten and Georg. I can’t wait a whole lifetime to see him ag—” She sobs. “He’d still be alive if I didn’t let Luther touch me. You were right. I should’ve waited. Lee was about to—”
“You did it to save me, Kathrin. He’ll understand that now.”
“Will he, Annelie? Are you sure of that?”
“Things are different in heaven. People see much clearer, without the blinders we wear on earth.” I hug her again. “He will be there for you, I’m sure of it.”
“Let’s go now. I don’t want to be here another day. Another miserable day.” She dries her tears. “Maybe we should just stay in heaven. I just might have had enough of this place.”
We stare out to the ironically peaceful and happy-looking countryside. I take a few more drinks and hand it off to her, and she drains it. She throws the bottle into the river and my stomach contracts at the sound it makes when it hits the water.
“I don’t know if I can do this.” I take a step back. “What if I don’t remember in the next life? At least we know what’s happened before.”
“And how much has that helped us? I’m going, Annelie. You don’t need to come with me. We’ll be together soon enough.” She has great difficulty stepping up onto the wall. I focus any remaining capabilities to help her up.
I grab hold of the hem of her dress. “No. Wait for me.” My head spins as I try to hoist myself up. She nearly falls as she steadies me.
She laughs. “Who needs to jump when we’re both going to topple over anyway?”
“Strange, how we did everything to escape the Nazis, flee Germany, survive a world war, just to end it all.”
“I would’ve been happy to have ended it before we left Germany.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have tried so hard. Then it wouldn’t have looked like we gave up.”
“Life gave up on us.” She sighs with the exhaustion of an eighty-year-old.
“Did anything good come out of this life?”
“We saved the lives of eight women. That must have counted for something, right?”
“And I guess Luther didn’t get the satisfaction of murdering you in this life.”
“He has most definitely led me to this bridge tonight.”
Even though we’re only a few feet higher up, it appears as though we’re on top of the whole valley. We can see for miles—miles of darkness, with bits of light peeking through windows. My sight starts to blur. I take out Georg’s infinity sign and hold it tight in my hand.
“Tell me what it feels like to die,” she says.
I think about all my different deaths: poison, elephant attack, sacrificial beheading, the plague, childbirth, drowning, shot, shot, hanged, beaten, childbirth. “No matter the pain, once you’re in heaven, you’ve never felt a more wonderful feeling. If you take your most fantastic day, where you have been perfectly content and full of joy, that bliss can never compare to the euphoria you will feel in heaven. Nothing can.”
“Oh, I need to feel that way right now.”
She holds my free hand. I know she’ll never pull me in without my acceptance.
“I can’t wait to see his beautiful face. To have him hold me again. I’d give anything for that right now.”
“We are giving everything right now.”
“But we have to, Kathrin.”
“Maybe this is the way it was supposed to end?”
“Is suicide ever part of the plan?”
A crackly man’s voice rings out in my right ear, “It’s never the plan.” I nearly fall as I spin toward it.
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Kathrin stops breathing to listen.
“I heard a voice.”
“Now you’re hallucinating like Elfi. We’re doing this not a moment too soon.”
“No, really. It was as clear as day. He said, ‘It’s never the plan.’”
“We’ve finished off a large bottle of turpentine. We’re going to lose all of our faculties soon.”
“You’re right, I’m pretty tipsy.” I suddenly feel fearless. I attempt to kick my legs up in a jig and Kathrin dances with me.
She folds her arm within mine and we do the jitterbug together. Carefree of what lies above or below. Our giggles and singing can be heard for miles. Small and large dogs bark in protest off in every direction.
After a few of our favorite dances, Kathrin stops me and holds my shoulders. She says in a choked voice, “We were born together; it’s only fitting that we’ll leave this life together.”
Tears burn from my eyes. I know she’s right. I nod, and all we need is one last look. Her eyes speak to me—our whole story from Egypt to this dreary life. “To the next life, Kathrin.”
“The next life.”
Kathri
n clasps my hand like a desperate child and I hold her just as tight. We both take a breath and bend down into the night. I shut my eyes. The air gives way and rushes around us until a huge force wrenches Kathrin’s hand from mine.
Epilogue
“Kathrin!” I flounder in the thick darkness around me until I realize I’m not in the water. I think I’ve opened my eyes, but I only catch outlines of shapes in the dark. “Kathrin?” I call out to the night.
An old voice answers, “Kathrin is not here, Lazrina. You are here with me.” He lights a small beeswax candle.
“Zachariah?”
“Yes,” he quietly answers.
I only now see we’re back on the porch. Weren’t we just on the pier? The candle’s flickering light flashes on his ancient face and exposes remnants of tears. I’ve never seen him cry before, not after any of my other terrible deaths. I can tell something’s different, but I’m afraid of what the reason may be. He makes no attempt to brighten any more lights on the porch, so we sit in mostly darkness. I wait for him to talk, but he doesn’t. Nothing makes any sound. No crickets or tree frogs. Nothing is out tonight, only a new moon in a starless sky. The wind is still, and I don’t hear the furious sound of the ocean on the other side of the dunes. The landscape takes on a paused feeling. For the first time, this heaven doesn’t seem real.
The silence is choking. I finally ask, “What’s wrong?”
He swallows before he answers. “You gave up.”
“I just wanted to start over.”
“No, you didn’t. If you had wanted to start over, you would have made it part of your plan before you incarnated. Your full lesson wasn’t completed.”
I tuck my knees up to my chest. “This life was too hard.”
“You chose this life.”
“I chose wrong. I couldn’t keep going. I made it farther than I ever thought I could, but it was impossible at the end. We couldn’t keep going.” I think about Kathrin and wish she were here. It’s the first time I feel so alone with Zachariah.
“Yes, it was a challenging life, but you didn’t leave because it was too difficult, you left because you wanted to be with Georg.”
“And is that so wrong?”
“Yes, when you have more to experience.” He flaps his hand in the air. “Not to mention the fact that you’re only delaying reuniting with him here.”
“But I thought I’d start a new life with him, which is better than finishing so much life without him.”
“It’s not as easy as that.” He finally lights another candle near me, with just a touch of his finger. “Now things have been complicated.”
“What does that mean?”
“You didn’t get to learn the lesson. You can’t just move on.”
“What’s the lesson? Loss? I’ve already been through that and I’ve had too much of it.”
“Faith. You need to have faith.”
“I had faith until Georg was murdered. It took all my faith.”
“All of it? Well you mustn’t have had much to start with.”
“It’s easy for you to say. Here, sitting on a porch while I go through hell. Earth is hell. We go there to face horrible things just to come back and chat with you about our take-home message. It’s not that easy, Zachariah. You don’t know how hard it is. You can’t even do it yourself.”
“You think I don’t know anything about it?” His voice sharpens like I’ve never heard it before. “You think I don’t have any sympathies for what you must endure? I know all too well what you have just gone through.” He draws back while shaking his head. He brings the candle to his face. “You still don’t remember me, do you?”
I can’t imagine what he’s talking about. I shake my head.
“These tears you see come from thinking of my life so long ago. When you and I both knew Nun back in Egypt. To you, he was your disposable slave, but to me, he was my world.”
Something about the way the candle flickers causes his face to morph to a darker, feminine face.
Heka, Nun’s mother. The old woman I threatened to throw out into the streets. I should have remembered those sea-glass eyes.
“Finally.” He wags a stern finger at me. “You do remember.” He wraps his arms around himself.
I sadly can’t remember her much.
He reads my thought and sighs. “Nun was the youngest of four children. Seven, if you count the miscarriages I lost due to unprovoked beatings. Each child the product of vile attacks by my master—your dear father.”
Nun was my half-brother.
“And yet I saw each birth as a gift. I foolishly thought something finally belonged to me.” He gazes off to the empty night sky. “But three of my children, one after the other, succumbed to a plague that swept through our slave quarters. Each one died in my arms. No one was there to help me. No doctor, no husband, no friend.” He looks back at me. “So you see, Nun was my treasure. Death overlooked him, and I held my breath that death wouldn’t return. No matter how hard I was forced to work, no matter how mistreated I was, no matter how much I lacked in my life, I woke up every morning so grateful that I still had Nun. As long I had him, I was as prosperous as the king.” I could truly see it in his eyes.
“My life was full of every kind of hardship, but Nun—” His voice cracks. “Nun was my star in a very dark sky. Even when I went blind, Nun took such wonderful care of me, although I was practically useless.” He swallows. “When you executed him…” He pauses.
All the shame I felt after viewing my first life comes back. I try to search his eyes for hatred toward me, but I only see pain. I want to say I’m sorry, but it seems so useless and meager now.
“I wailed so loud that your slave dropped the basket carrying Sehket.” He chuckles a bit, which gives breath to the somber moment. “Talk about karma.”
I shake my head at how messed up this all is.
“Once Nun was gone, I wouldn’t eat another crumb, swallow another drop, or take another deep breath. I just walked out into the desert, and it wasn’t long before I was free of all of that pain.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, even though it feels so feeble.
“I know.” His eyes connect with mine. “So I do know the lure of suicide, of wanting to be back with someone dear, firsthand.”
I feel so stupid for all that I said. I had no idea he’d been through so much.
He crosses his arms. “But I couldn’t find the courage to go back again. I couldn’t bear having to live that lesson again. So that’s how I ended up here with you.”
I say, “But I threatened to throw you out into the streets…caused the death of your only son. How could you want to help me?”
“Oh, believe me, it was hard to guide you at first, especially after I found out that you used me to coerce Nun to assist you with Bastet. I hated you. Nevertheless, I started to see the light in you. I knew it existed, and learned to love you just like you have learned to forgive those you felt have betrayed you.”
“I’m so sorry.” I could say it a thousand times and it would never be enough. I didn’t notice that the sky was paling as dawn emerged. Still empty without the sun.
“You have come to love Nun as much as I have, and I only feel love for you now. You have taught me so much.”
“But why don’t you look like Heka, Nun’s mother? That was your last life.”
“I had a much more enjoyable life before Egypt. I was a merchant in Atlantis. This is what I looked like then.” He fixes his robe. “Oh, it was a beautiful place. To be a part of that time was something.”
The sky changes from periwinkle to an apricot glow in the east.
“But didn’t it fall into the sea?”
“Not when I was there, thankfully. I died a nice, peaceful death in my bed, surrounded by my wife and many mistresses. Sure, I lived a life of opulence, superficiality, and greed, but I tried to make up for that too quickly. I took on much too much being Heka. I really wasn’t ready fo
r such tragedy. But that is all behind me, and now here I am with you.” He gives my knee a comforting squeeze. “And what was that you just said? That I would never know how hard life can be or how much you might want to give up?” I look down into my empty hands, unable to find a reply. “Well, now you know I understand. And that is why I was chosen for you.”
A shy sun peeps over the horizon.
“I won’t let you give up. I will help you live this lesson over.”
“I really don’t think I can, Zachariah. What will happen if I can’t?”
“You would have to guide someone who will have trouble learning faith as well.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“As much as I enjoy guiding you and watching you grow, I do miss my group and the thrill of living from time to time.”
“You don’t get to be with your group?”
“Not very long. I see them occasionally between lives, but most of them have become part of the light.” He looks up to the sun. “I envy what you have with the others. Life’s challenges have only made you all closer.”
I think of Nun and all we’ve been through, which Zachariah didn’t get to be a part of. I don’t want someone else to become that important to Nun. Everything will be far too easy for Fish-face.
“It’s best to overcome what you quit.”
“Does this mean that I have to live the exact same life over again?”
“Now that would be pure torture. This is heaven, not hell.” He laughs. “You have to learn the same lesson again. So you should expect to be challenged enough that you will want to give up again, and hopefully this time you will keep faith of something greater and carry on.”
“But I will be another person?”
“Yes, just like you have incarnated before.” Zachariah joins his ancient hands together as if in prayer to his lips. “I think things were made much more difficult for you by the fact you remembered so much. That was a bit of a glitch, and a good example of how remembering too much can destroy a life and interfere with the lessons you must learn. This next life, you will have growing abilities, but not to that extent.”