The Life and Death Parade

by Eliza Wass

  I let myself imagine what it would be like to wake up next to Nikki, to hide out all day in bed, under the covers, to go out and play in the sun. It would be like the world of my past and the world of my dreams combined, and wasn’t that what heaven was supposed to be? Wasn’t that the ending I deserved?

  I took the two cards from the two sides of my coat and propped them on the dashboard in front of me. Placed side by side, I could really see the differences between them: Roan active, fighting, almost frightening, and Mum serene, at peace, oddly comforting.

  I could let Roan bring Nikki back, prop up the old world before it buried me, or I could do what Nikki wanted me to do and stop them, but to do that I would have to step out into a new world, a world filled with nothing—no castle, no family, no past.

  My eyes caught on Mum’s card and I could almost hear her say, That’s not true. I didn’t have nothing. I had whatever I believed in.

  The one thing I’d learned was that there was no place to go and find faith: I couldn’t walk into a church, see it in a séance, drink it in tea, or dance it free at a party. It was always and only my choice. It only works if you believe it.

  I pulled my mobile out of my pocket. It felt strange for me to dial, strange to ask someone else for help, but it was a good sort of strange.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Joy. This is Kitty.”

  “Oh, I hoped you’d call! Do you want to come over? I got this really amazing new tea, it’s not magical or anything, but it tastes like heaven—the place, not the drink.”

  “Actually, I need your help. I need to find the Life and Death Parade.”

  EIGHTEEN

  I trudged through mud and mist toward the camp. It had taken all night and well into the morning to track down the Life and Death Parade. I tried to keep calm by reminding myself that the actual anniversary wasn’t until three o’clock tonight, but I couldn’t stop feeling that something bad might happen at any moment. I needed to get back to the castle.

  I hurried along the camp’s perimeter, toward the canal. A performer, his face smeared with the previous night’s paint, puffed a rolled cigarette from the back of a cluttered carriage. Safi stacked coffins in the bed of his coach. The smoke of dying fires carried the smell of fresh coffee and stale tobacco. The boats along the canal looked half-awake, strung like dead fish along the water.

  I spotted Anaya’s boat at the head of the lineup. The engine hummed to life, and Anaya appeared at the back. She was about to leave her mooring. I abandoned the perimeter and ran straight through the camp, dodging spirit bottles and bottles of spirits. The boat slipped out onto the water.

  “Wait!” I shouted, waving my arms as I reached the towpath. She scowled when she saw me. “I need to talk to you!” She turned away. I ran along the towpath until the boat was just beside me.

  “What do you want?” she demanded. I didn’t have the breath to answer her. I made a running start and leapt onto the front deck.

  I caught myself on the railing, held steady as the boat thrummed beneath me. Once I had gotten my bearings, I moved onto the deck and through the door. This time I remembered the step down. I heard Anaya banging through the doors at the opposite end of the boat.

  The floor rocked as the boat skidded along the side of the canal. Anaya appeared inside the door, hair wild.

  “Shouldn’t you be steering?” I gasped as we knocked against the shore. A mess of objects—stones and crystals, prescription drugs and FINAL NOTICE bills—tumbled in a waterfall from the shelves and cupboards and flooded the floor.

  Anaya threw her hands up. “Fate can take the wheel.”

  The boat pitched. I found myself sprawled across the table. “It doesn’t seem to be doing a very good job,” I said.

  “What is it you want?” She stood with her feet wide apart to steady her, placed her hands on her hips, and raised an eyebrow. “Have you come to shout at me again?”

  I forced myself up. “I want to speak to my mother.”

  The boat quaked. Anaya caught herself on the altar. “Ah. Now we’re talking.”

  Anaya moored the boat on the side of the canal as the other boats sailed past. “We don’t have much time,” she said, setting up a shrine from the pieces scattered across the floor.

  I bent down to help her.

  “Don’t touch anything!” I put both hands in the air. “Sorry,” she said. “But these things are very special to me.” She scooped up a pile of old bills and pills, and dumped them on the counter. Then she looked at me properly for the first time.

  She moved toward me quickly, slid her hand along the back of my neck. “Where did you get this coat?”

  “Nikki. Nikki used to wear it all the time. Why?”

  “It’s…” Her hands shook as she turned out the back collar, then ran her fingers along the lapel, down the skull-imprinted buttons. “This is my son’s.”

  “Your son?”

  She stepped back fast. “Emmanuel.” She glared at me, eyebrows descending.

  “Emmanuel is your son?”

  Her eyebrows dipped. “What do you know about Emmanuel?”

  “Nothing. I know Roan.”

  She shrank away from me. “He sent you.”

  “No, of course not. Why would he send me? Here, I’m sorry about the coat.” I slipped it from my shoulders. “Take it.” I held it out to her and then pulled it back, remembering. “Wait.” I tried to remove the cards from either pocket so she wouldn’t see, but she snatched them both from my fingers.

  Her eyebrows darted up her forehead. “Why do you have this card?” She lifted the picture of Roan like it was an indictment. She backed away from me.

  “I bought it.”

  She flung the cards at me. “You need to leave.” She snatched the coat from my hands. “He sent you here, didn’t he? Tell me.” She backed through the boat, wading through the junk on the floor.

  I slid the cards into my back pockets and held up my hands. “No, no. He doesn’t even know that I’m here!”

  “I had a feeling. You have a dark shadow over you,” she said.

  I moved toward her. “Anaya, listen to me. I’m here to stop him—that’s why I’m here.”

  She glanced down at her shaking hands, discordant, like she had been given someone else’s hands by mistake. “That monster killed my son.”

  “He did?” He’d never mentioned that.

  Her eyes found mine. They were wide, rimmed with wet. “He thought he was invincible.” She grabbed and squeezed my hand, suddenly, like I had to understand. “The snake. It was his idea to start using a poisonous snake, like they did in the real rituals. He wore antivenom in a vial around his neck.” She clutched at her throat. “It had to be real, he said. It had to be as close to real as possible.” She laughed once abruptly. “I sometimes think that irony is the most powerful force in the universe.”

  “The snake bit Emmanuel?”

  “It bit them both.” He eyebrows twitched. “Who do you think got the antivenom?” She stumbled toward her altar, laid the coat beside it like a body, ran her fingers down the fabric. “That boy. He condemned my son to hell. Every day, I try to contact Emmanuel. Even your mother can’t bring him to me. He’s lost, forever.” She poured water from the tap into a filmy crystal bowl and set in on the altar. “Come, then.” She flicked at her eyes. “Enough of this, let’s get started.”

  I felt sick for her. Was there really a place you could go where even the dead couldn’t contact you? And what if the same thing happened to Nikki? What if he ended up trapped in some sort of hell?

  I put my hand on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  She put her hand over mine, eyes still on the altar, and squeezed my fingers. “I have faith.”

  I went to sit at the table of snakes. I traced them with my finger; I wondered what they meant; good or evil, life or death, nothing or everything. They seemed to twist on the table as my finger ran round and round. Anaya prayed. The air grew thick and then thin. The cand
les quivered in time. The ground dropped and lifted. My fingers and toes and lips went numb.

  “She’s here,” Anaya intoned. “She’s very unhappy about your hair.”

  I laughed in spite of myself. “Does she like the piercing?”

  “She’s telling you to watch it.” I heard Mum’s tone in Anaya’s voice. Like it was just another day, in another world, and all of us were sitting down to tea. I felt the love that still ran between us fully, for the first time since she died.

  Anaya went quiet, bent forward as if she was straining to hear. “She wanted to tell you that she’s sorry. She left the Life and Death Parade for you. She saw death in your future and wanted to save you from it. What she learned is that you can’t fight fate. Or your fight becomes fate. What is meant to happen will happen.”

  All that was well and good, but I was after something more specific. I stopped tracing the snakes. “Tell her I need her help.”

  “She knows what you need,” Anaya scolded.

  “I need to stop Roan.” I crouched forward in my seat, fists on the table. “Ask her how I can stop Roan.”

  Anaya went still. With her head bowed, her back was like a tower of scarves. It heaved as she breathed in deeply. “She says you can’t.”

  The chair toppled over behind me as I sprung to my feet. “What?”

  “She says you can’t stop Roan. You can’t stop evil from entering your life. It is part of your destiny. It is part of your life, yours and everyone’s.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” I dug my fingernails into my palms, ready to fight. “I need to stop him.”

  “She says no. You can’t stop him. His powers will go on and on. Powers like his are eternal.”

  I shook my head. “So I’m supposed to do nothing?”

  “She says have faith.”

  I stomped my foot like a child. “That’s not enough.”

  “That’s all there is.”

  The last of the carriages were pulling out of camp as I stormed through the field, going nowhere, to do nothing. I paused to let them pass, a string of cheap tricks and broken dreams. Have faith? I did have faith, and it was definitely not enough.

  I couldn’t help being slightly dubious of Anaya, hoarding all that junk, letting the debris of her past bury her alive. Even though she blamed Roan for her son’s death, she’d never thought to confront him; she’d never even tried to stop him. She’d looked relieved to see me go, so she could close herself inside her boat, door shutting like the lid of a coffin.

  I stopped in my tracks. Coffin. I scanned the fields as the last of the carriages rattled off. I spotted the flat back of Safi’s carriage, the coffins rollicking together beneath their ties. I gathered myself and ran again. I called out to him, but that only seemed to make him move faster. I raced across the emptying fields until I reached his carriage. I grabbed a coffin by the handle and swung myself on board.

  “Oi!” Safi shouted back at me. “What you doing?” He flicked his whip and the horses went faster. The carriage jounced, and I caught myself around a casket. Determined, I slithered up the coffins until I reached the seat beside him. “Look, mate, show’s over.” He tilted up his black top hat. “Ah, wait a tick. You’re a mate of Roan’s, innit?”

  “How do you stop a resurrection?”

  “Yep.” His teeth glimmered. “Definitely a mate of Roan’s.” He pulled at the reins so the carriage slowed, but not by much. “It’s not real, eh? It’s all a show. What he does is—”

  “I know it’s real. He brought back a friend of mine.”

  Safi shook his head wearily, like I wasn’t the first person to be taken in by Roan. “Never happened.”

  “Yes. It did.”

  Safi was unmoved. “No. He wouldn’t do it. He doesn’t do things for other people; it’s not in his nature.”

  “He is doing it. He’s doing it for Macklin. He’s in love with him.”

  “What, that posh boy from the party?” He snorted. “No chance. Roan is not in love with that boy. I’ve known Roan a long time. He’ll never stop loving Emmanuel; he can’t. They don’t make saints out of people who change their minds.”

  “But they—” The words soured on my tongue. If Roan didn’t love Macklin, none of this made sense. Why would he bring Nikki back? Why had he told me he wouldn’t? Why would he try to teach me some grand lesson about moving on, if he were planning to bring Nikki back anyway? And the whole setup was unnerving: just him and Macklin bringing Nikki back, alone.

  But Roan had brought Nikki back before. I’d seen the aftereffects. Macklin had confessed to killing him. Why would Roan have done that? He didn’t seem the type to pass out random acts of resurrection.

  Anaya had said, Every day, I try to contact Emmanuel. But if Emmanuel was dead, why couldn’t Anaya speak to him?

  And why had Nikki worn that coat every single day, when it didn’t even belong to him?

  I groped for the seat as the carriage lurched beneath me. “Could he use another body?”

  “What?” Safi steadied the horses.

  “Roan, to bring Emmanuel back. Does it have to be Emmanuel’s body?”

  He laughed. “It doesn’t even have to be a human body. Why do you think he carts that snake around?”

  NINETEEN

  My excursion to the Life and Death Parade had taken me hours away from the castle. On the way back, in between planning my attack, I tried to get my head around Emmanuel-as-Nikki. There were little things that made sense now—the way he smelled, the way he said things like Love is a scary thing and If I told you, you’d make me leave and the journals he had studied to play the part. But it was too much to comprehend—Nikki being someone else as himself—and anyway it was in the past. My future was in danger.

  When the castle finally appeared, it looked like something from a dream: stone-cold and fixed, so far away I could never reach it. A backhoe curled like a question mark over the cemetery. The statue at the center of the fountain seemed to move as I spun around it: Adam and Eve wrestling the snake.

  I parked the car at the bottom of the steps. As I marched up them, the castle reared away from me. I stopped to stare into the stone, like the walls of a sarcophagus, thousands of years old. And then I took another step, and another step, until I was inside it.

  The statues were under their drop cloths and the lights were out everywhere, so I thought maybe I’d missed it—not just by minutes or moments but by ten or two hundred thousand years. It was possible, in a place like this, to stop time.

  I knew exactly where I would find them. I knew because Anaya and the serpent spirit had told me my future at the LDP party. He’s showing me a church filled with books. That’s where it happens. That’s where he dies. And the last part, the part I thought was about Nikki and me: The one he loves kills him. Roan was going to kill Macklin and use his body to bring Emmanuel back.

  I had to be smart. I couldn’t let Roan read me this time. I couldn’t let him know what I knew. I also couldn’t go in empty-handed. The weapons room had been put on lockdown after Nikki, but there had to be something, somewhere.

  I remembered Nikki’s sword, now blessed and mounted over Holiday’s bedroom door. I went there first, stood on a chair, and lifted it from the wall. I had no coat to cover it, so I went to Mum’s room and found my army jacket. I strapped the sword to my side, over my shirt and under my jacket. It was partly visible from the back, and it nipped my flesh when I moved too fast, but it would have to do.

  A funny barnyard smell permeated the main hallway leading up to the library. I realized what it was when I dodged a patch of manure. Horses. Perfect for an apocalypse. I paused outside the library doors to adjust the sword. Then I took a deep breath and soldiered in.

  The chapel was awash with trembling lights, edging the shelves, down spiraled iron staircases, on ladders and along the floor. There were four harnessed horses tethered in the corner of the room—two white to purify and two black to send it back—and a rusted carriage they must have used to carry
Nikki’s coffin. The coffin rested now in nearly the exact place his body had fallen that night. Earth still clung to it, adorned with long strands of yellowing roots.

  The Bramleys had bought the most expensive coffin money could buy—painted with a painstaking replica of the mural on the chapel ceiling, down to the gold leafing. The coffin seemed to belong there beneath its origin story, the guest of honor at a second funeral.

  Macklin stood by the fireplace, which was as great and billowing as it had been that night. Roan stood beside him. He reached up with a brooding intensity and pushed a strand of black hair behind Macklin’s ear.

  “I thought you’d gone,” Roan said in a tone that told me I was on my way out.

  “I’m not staying,” I said, willing him to believe me. I kept my face a mask, like he did, affecting the coolness, the professionalism, like life was a game rigged for my amusement. Roan narrowed his eyes. A hunk of earth dropped from the coffin to the floor. “I wanted to say something to Macklin.”

  Macklin’s eyes darted up, wholly pleading. Anger coursed through me. How could I not blame him for what happened to Nikki? He was driving. And he lied, to all of us. I wanted to punish him, tear him down the way I’d torn myself down.

  But where would that blaming lead? It wasn’t about me. It wasn’t even about what I believed. It was about being able to live with something horrible, a mistake that lasted forever. And the only way to live with something that bad was to lie—no, not to lie, but to choose a truth that could transform the past and give us a new future.

  “Macklin.” I held his gaze, and I saw in his eyes the boy I grew up with—the boy we grew up with, Nikki and me. Always vaguely annoying but somehow perfect, somehow ours. “It’s not your fault. People die, everywhere and all the time. You didn’t invent the world. You aren’t the god who takes them. And Nikki forgives you. I spoke to him, and he said it was nobody’s fault. He said it couldn’t have happened any other way.” I gathered myself, struggling to keep my face a mask, to keep the sword a secret, to keep my steps even. I spread open my arms. He came toward me. I watched Roan’s hand reach out to grab him, but he moved too late and it dropped in the empty air.