The Life and Death Parade

by Eliza Wass

  I scanned the quiet field: the gray-haired couple huddled together over a tall white altar candle, the teenage boys with a rainbow candle like a firework clutched between them, and the people alone—most of them were—watching the horizon like they expected the sun to rise in the middle of the night. “Is that why people come here?” I said.

  “Of course. All these people”—her hand swept the field—“have lost someone. They come here to find them.”

  “I thought it was a party?” I said.

  “That’s one interpretation. You don’t know anything about this, do you?” I shook my head. “It’s all centered around midnight—the hour before and the hour after.” She checked her watch. “They should be coming over that hill soon. They’ll set up camp and then at eleven o’clock on the dot, it starts. Everyone has a different interpretation, but I think the first half is about life.”

  “And the second half?”

  “The second half is…harder to explain.” I got the feeling Joy didn’t want to explain, because if the first half was about life, the second half had to be about the other one.

  A shudder ran through the crowd. Necks craned and eyes strained over quivering candles.

  Holiday gripped my hand. “What’s happening?”

  Joy’s smile widened. “They’re coming.”

  The crowd went so silent that I could hear the tremble of the breeze through the grass. But it wasn’t the wind, I soon realized, as the sound grew heavy and defined. It was footsteps coming through the fields toward us. A boy appeared at the top of the hill, hoisting a large flag that tilted sideways as he slowed. The fabric whipped and I saw the symbol—the black snake and the white snake. It straightened flush behind him as he dove down the hill.

  He darted through the scattered crowd, like a star shooting through the candlelit sky. He pulled up three metres from Joy’s wheelchair, arched back, and plunged the flag post into the ground. The heavy flag started to fall, so Macklin and I jumped in to help him, stabbing it deep into the earth. The flag steadied, and the boy wiped his brow and smiled at us before racing off.

  “I told you this was the best spot,” Joy said.

  The flag flickered in time with the sound of approaching drums. The boats appeared first, whisked along the canal with sparklers flashing, blue bottles jangling along their roofs. Next were the horse-drawn carriages, painted bright primary colors. Then came the snakes, a black one on the left and a white one on the right, made of silky fabric and held up by a chain of over a dozen people. Still others were on foot, dressed in wild colors. They hurried through the crowd, filling in all the empty spaces, and started to set up camp.

  Tall, pointed tents and long, luxurious marquees seemed to grow from the ground. They rose up like an enchanted world bazaar, a canvas-and-clapboard film set in the middle of a field. The people who built them were all different ages, dressed in all different styles from all different places. Incense bled from every corner, filling the aisles between the tents with a mystical mist.

  “Amazing.” I smiled in spite of myself. Even Macklin looked impressed. “There are people from everywhere.”

  Joy nodded. “The It’s a Small World of death.”

  The common thread was that symbol—the two snakes—only it wasn’t always the same. Sometimes the snakes were twisted together, sometimes they were biting each other’s tails, sometimes they were lined up straight—one over the other—in a serpent “equals” sign.

  “It’s nearly eleven,” Joy said. “I can show you around, if you want.” Holiday bounced up and down. We were suddenly at the bustling center of a town, when moments before it had been a field of whispers and silence. It was the closest thing to magic I had ever seen.

  “Really? That would be awesome,” I said. I was pretty sure I had never used the word awesome in my life, but there was something awe-inspiring about watching a traveling town materialize right before your eyes. I breathed in deeply, convinced I could smell the stars, even if I couldn’t see them.

  I scanned the path. “What happened to Roan?”

  “Who?” Joy turned and her face went still.

  Roan had appeared behind Macklin. His arm slithered over Macklin’s shoulder. “You ready for this?” he said. Macklin stiffened. “Hey.” Roan extended his hand to Joy. “I’m Roan.”

  She took a long breath and said, “I know who you are.”

  “Do they have anything to drink?” Macklin broke in hotly.

  “Of course,” Roan said. “They have this drink called the Kiss of Death.”

  “Good. Let’s have that.” Macklin wriggled out from under Roan’s arm and stalked off along the narrow path between the tents.

  I raised an eyebrow at Roan. “What’s with him? He’s been in a mood all day.” Roan bit his lip. I excused us and led him up the path to speak privately. “Tell me.”

  He rubbed his arm. “I may have already given him the kiss of death.”

  “What? When?”

  “Last night, when you were burning the house down.”

  “You kissed? Then why is he upset?”

  Roan blew out his cheeks. “He said he loved me.”

  “Loved you? That’s a bit fast.”

  “Exactly. And it’s not like I’m going to say it back; I’m never going to love anyone else ever again.” There was an innocence to his expression that I’d never seen.

  “Did you mention that to him?” Macklin had queued up for something—probably something lethal—but I knew he was also staying in sight because he wanted to be followed.

  “I might have.” Roan watched him with a wistful expression.

  My first urge was to tell him to leave Macklin alone, but maybe I hadn’t been entirely fair with Roan. He had kept his promise to bring me to the LDP, and while his methods were slightly unsettling, he had helped everyone in the family. And in spite of myself, I thought I understood how he felt—his hot insistence that nothing should ever change, especially not himself. “You like him, don’t you?”

  “There is something sweet and wicked about him,” he allowed, then he scowled like he was angry at his own betrayal. “But it always has to be less. First love is the purest. I don’t want less.”

  “Can’t it just be different?” I said, trying out a phrase I had heard elsewhere.

  He blinked, doll-like, at me. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head. “But if I’m meant to try to have fun, you could try, too.” I checked on Holiday, who was watching a woman blow an angel out of glass. Joy was watching us. “Well. Someone has to keep an eye on him. Do you want me to?” It would interfere with my plans, but I couldn’t just leave Macklin in a state.

  “No.” Roan smiled thinly. “It’s all right. I’ll make sure he doesn’t get into trouble. You have fun.” He winked. “Different, right?” He squared his shoulders, then strode toward Macklin.

  I moved to rejoin the others. Holiday raced to catch me partway. “We have to go this way!” She pointed down a twisted alley. “Joy says there’s a River Styx ride and a Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride and another ride I can’t remember.”

  “The Flaming Wheel of Death,” Joy supplemented.

  “We’ll skip that one,” I said, although all of them sounded a bit dodgy. “Shall we?”

  We started down the path, which was laid with white plastic tiles. “I got them to put these in. The ramps and things too,” Joy said. “I used to come out with my carer, but I’ve met so many people now, I can always get help when I need it.”

  “Is that how you know Roan?”

  “I don’t know Roan. I know of him. He’s pretty notorious here.”

  “Oh yeah? Why is that?” I took Holiday’s hand as the path grew more crowded.

  “Well, first of all, he and his boyfriend used to run a pretty…controversial performance,” she explained. “But that’s not what makes him notorious. It’s pretty much accepted that all of this is for show.” She spread her hands over the scene. There were musician
s performing on stages pulled from the back of horse-drawn carriages, the heavy elixir of food with strange names—God’s Chicken and Curse Reversal Curry. There was a huddle of telescopes promising Star maps to your future! Yoga tents where people practiced Ashtanga and kundalini. There was even a Catholic chapel, erected from wood, with pews and an altar and walls painted with stained-glass windows.

  “For the tourists,” I said. There were dozens of signs advertising psychics and mediums and tarot workers. I peered into every tent we passed, keeping my eyes out for Nikki’s psychic, getting glimpses of candlelit altars and dangling herbs. My eyes burned from incense.

  “Exactly. But along the fringes, there are people who practice real rituals. Allegedly. And allegedly, Roan’s the real deal. When he dies, he’ll become a saint in the LDP, as crazy as that sounds.” She indicated stalls selling saint cards. I recognized names from Mum’s book, but they were all done in each artist’s unique style.

  “How do you become a saint?”

  “Faith.”

  “But Roan doesn’t believe in anything. You should hear him talk about God.”

  “He must believe in something. The LDP believe faith is a power, even if it’s faith in the ‘wrong’ thing. They have saints for everything, from flower arranging to getting away with murder. How do you know him?”

  “He works for my family. He performed a séance.”

  “You’re joking.” She stopped in her tracks. “What was it like? Did it work?”

  We were next to a stall selling stuffed toys. I glanced at Holiday. “Why don’t you go see if there’s one you fancy?” I said, waiting until she was out of earshot to answer Joy. “I don’t know.” I ignored the way my stomach dipped. “You come here every year. Haven’t you ever seen a séance?”

  “Oh, no, they’re, like, insanely expensive. Everything here costs money. They won’t even let you watch a petitioning unless you pay.”

  “Petitioning?”

  “Petitioning a saint. There are all sorts of different practices and beliefs in the LDP, but saints are at the center of everything. There are thousands of them, from every corner of the world. Practitioners have altars where they pray to saints for blessings and curses, or to see the future. People pay to have saints petitioned on their behalf, and it’s not cheap.”

  I scanned the scene around us. Money changed hands at every stall. There were signs posted: Afterlife Elixir £320.00, Blessed Tea £77.70. “Are those prices real?” I said.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s the one thing that’s definitely real,” Joy said. “My second year I really wanted to save up to ask a saint a question—just one question: three thousand pounds. It would have taken me about forty years to save that much. I figured by then, I’d know my future anyway.”

  Holiday held up a bear with a crooked frown and Xs for eyes. “Can I get one of these?”

  I walked over to the stall and plucked up a unicorn with cracked crystal eyes. It stank of herbs. “They’re not very cute.” The stall worker watched us from her perch in the corner with the same crooked frown as the teddy bear.

  “They’re spirit dolls,” Joy said. “You buy one and the woman over there performs a ritual to fill it with the spirit of your lost loved one.” I dropped the unicorn.

  Luckily Holiday was already on to the next thing. She dragged me toward a queue streaming from an orange-and-cream tent. “I want to get my face painted!” It was only eleven pounds, which seemed wildly reasonable just then.

  “You should do it,” Joy said. “It changes after midnight; it’s pretty cool.”

  I handed Holiday some money, and she got in the queue. I searched the main thoroughfare for any sign of the psychic. “What are you looking for?” Joy said. I gave her the short version of Nikki and the psychic. She cocked her head. “Wait, this Nikki, was he carrying a cane?”

  “Yes.” I took her hand in excitement. “Did you meet him? Did you see him?” If coincidences hadn’t become so ordinary, I might not have believed her, but I had this sudden understanding that everything was linked. In a place like this, it seemed possible.

  “Yeah.” Her face shone. “I remember him. I remember he came here alone—he was surrounded by people, but he came alone. We met right before the midnight show. He bought me a cup of Heaven.” A smile spread across her lips, remembering. “It’s this drink they do that’s made out of vapors. It literally evaporates as you’re trying to drink it. It’s symbolism, I guess. Very expensive symbolism. When the first one disappeared, he bought me another one, which did the exact same thing. And then he said, I guess it’s true what they say, you can’t buy your way into heaven or something like that. He was funny.”

  “Yes.”

  Holiday was listening from her place in the queue. “I wish he were here,” she said, gazing down the aisles.

  “Maybe he is,” Joy said. “Everyone’s meant to be. That’s why people come here, to get a glimpse.”

  “A glimpse of what?” I said.

  “The afterlife.”

  “Have you had one?”

  “Maybe.” She looked down at her hands. “I don’t know.” The music seemed to quiet. She took a deep breath. “The first time I came alone, it started raining. I should have called my carer, but I’d made such a big thing about going alone; I wanted to prove that I could handle it. Then at midnight, the rain stopped, just stopped like magic, but there were still puddles everywhere. Have you ever tried to get a wheelchair through mud? I got stuck and it was dark and I wasn’t used to asking people for help yet and I just started crying. Then I looked down at the puddle I was stuck in and I saw the reflection of a rainbow in the sky. After dark. My mum used to love rainbows. I know it’s impossible. And it could have been anything, I guess. But I know what it was to me.” I nodded, and for once I didn’t try to correct the story, didn’t try to adjust it so it made sense. I just let it be. “And then these two people appeared—I’ll never forget, one was dressed as a skeleton and the other was dressed as a bumblebee—and they helped me back onto the path. There aren’t many places where you get rescued by a skeleton and a bumblebee.”

  Holiday reached the front of the line and went into the tent to have her face painted. Joy and I stayed outside to wait, tucked into a corner away from the growing crowd.

  Joy wore a serious expression as she observed the crowd. She finally said, “You don’t believe in the afterlife, do you?”

  I checked Holiday was safely inside the tent. “I don’t know. I just think…” I shrugged. “If Nikki were out there, he would let me know. That’s the first thing he would do.”

  Joy nodded slowly but said, “If you didn’t have an arm, and someone reached out to shake your hand, what would you do? If you didn’t have a body and someone asked you to touch them…Maybe what you’re asking is impossible.”

  Across from us, four horses danced around a ring—two white and two black. The crowd was growing, and growing wilder. There were packs of people charging around with their faces painted wild colors, dancing and blowing glow-in-the-dark whistles. The air was shifting. Midnight was approaching.

  I awoke to the stench of his coat. The stiff fabric scratched my cheek. I backed up quick, banging my shoulder against the armoire.

  “Nikki.” I gasped. “What are you doing?”

  He looked skeletal in the dark, corpselike. And it was clear in the light of the moon that he was already dying someplace. The whites of his eyes were blushing pink. His lips were blue.

  He folded down in front of me. Something flashed through him, the thump of recognition. “I need your help.”

  I exhaled, pulse in a rhythm beating beneath. “Of course, Nikki. Of course I’ll help you.” He took my hand, collected it in his bone fingers. One ran along the inside of my wrist. And then he pressed something—heavy and metallic—into my hand. I gasped. “Nikki, what is this?” It was the flintlock pistol, polished like it had been prepared.

  He moved over me, so his overgrown hair tickled my neck. His voice throbbed,
rasping, in my ear. “It’s a gift.”

  “Why are you giving this to me? Where did you find it?” I thought Lord Bramley had locked it up, or got rid of it, after the incident with the tourists.

  He fell back, smiled slightly. “I thought we could do a test.”

  “What kind of test?”

  “A test of fate.” He put his hands over mine, cocked the pistol. “We each take turns. First you. Then me. Then the sky. That way we’ll know who’s supposed to die.” He laughed. “It rhymes. I didn’t even know it. Hey, don’t be sad.” He ran a finger down my cheek. “It won’t work unless it’s meant to.”

  I held the gun out—which probably wasn’t the most balanced decision—and shot it three times. Nikki leapt up, grinning madly.

  The second shot left a hole in my bedroom wall.

  “You loaded it that way on purpose,” I said.

  “No, I didn’t.” He took my hands, jumped up and down. “No, I didn’t, Kitty.” I felt the castle stir over us—how was I going to explain this? “Don’t you see?” He ran to the hole, traced it with his finger. “This just proves it.”

  Footsteps raced down the hall. I dropped the gun.

  “It’s fate!”

  THIRTEEN

  The place was packed. The music shifted to drum and bass, beats so heavy I felt them like a pulse. We had returned to the spot where we first met, under the flag that was now torn to ribbons, rippling at the center of a large ring. A man walked toward it as torches lit in a circle around him. It was Roan’s friend Safi.

  The crowd shifted uneasily, like a horse being steadied.

  “Welcome,” Safi said, spreading his arms in a flourish, “to the Life and Death Parade.” He bowed deeply, but his top hat stayed fixed to his head. “You have lived your life, but you have come here tonight to die.”

  “He’s speaking metaphorically, right?” I called to Joy over the roar of the crowd.

  “You come here to see beyond life.” He stretched his arm in an arc, wriggled his fingers in the air like he was calling us forward. “You come here to see into the afterlife. If you look closely.” He raised his hand up over his head. “We can show you. If you believe.” He raised his other hand so they met in the middle. “You can see.”