Authors: Jonah Hewitt
“So, just you?”
“Excuse me?” Nephys was having a hard time squinting and talking at the same time and he wasn’t about to use his Death Sight again today.
“Are you the only scribe?”
“Oh no, there are thousands.”
Another awkward silence filled the small boat punctuated only by the bored “pharnt” of Hiero.
“Do you like it?”
“Like?” thought Nephys. “Like” was not a word he would use to describe anything in the afterlife, but it was better than a lot of jobs. He hated greeting new souls, which made him wonder how he kept letting Hiero drag him off on these trips, but now that he came to think of it, he did like it, it was interesting.
“Well…I get to read a lot, and I learn a lot of things.”
“Like what?”
“Well, languages…”
“Which ones?”
“All of them, I guess…”
“
All
of them?”
“Well not
all
of them, there are a few dialects that have no scripts, so I guess not those, but certainly all the others.”
“Really? You know every written language there is…on earth?”
“Well, I can’t speak them all, but I can read pretty much all of them. That’s how I learned how to speak English.”
“You don’t just come by that naturally being dead?”
“Oh, no, being dead doesn’t teach you anything.”
The woman “hmmph’d” again. She was certainly coming to believe from experience that death taught you nothing. Nephys continued. “Learning is pretty much the same here as it is on, but of course, you do have more time on your hands, so there’s that.”
The woman looked at Nephys over her shoulder, then faced front again. Nephys could tell she was trying to place Nephys’ country of origin by his features and dress.
“Well you speak English very well.”
Nephys wanted to say “Thank you,” but it felt awkward.
“Where did you learn to speak it?”
“Excuse me?”
“What book? What book taught you to speak English?”
“Well, there was Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, Shakespeare of course, Heller, Salinger, Judy Bloom, all the greats, but my favorite was Huckleberry Finn.”
“Really?!” She turned around to face him and he nodded at her in confirmation.
“So there is a copy of Huck Finn in the library of Death himself?” she asked.
“In indelible ink that will still be vibrant when we are all forgotten shades.” Nephys said somewhat proudly. Then he adopted a formal air, cleared his throat and looked up at the vast, empty overhang of clouds or cavern roof.
“ ’We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.’ ”
He looked up at her and tried to smile again. It wasn’t the best recitation, but she smiled a little and turned back around. That seemed to cheer her up some.
“We had a hard enough time getting the school library to stock them,” she said, and then under her breath, “Rotten fascist censors,” before starting up again, “Maybe this place won’t be so bad after all.”
She let her knees relax and stretched her shoulders, but then held the pose as if a thought had just dawned on her mid-stretch.
“And if everyone’s here, maybe I can find…” She paused. Hiero traded nervous glances with Nephys. “Maybe I can find my
mother
.” She said it in a hushed tone.
She paused for a moment and wrapped her arms tighter around her shoulders as if to comfort herself with the possibility. Hiero turned around and uttered up a “BARNT puuuuTHANNTARF!” Hiero was right. He had to stop this.
“Um. You…you shouldn’t do that…”
“What?”
“You shouldn’t go looking for your dead relations.”
“Why?” she spat out.
“It never works out like you think…”
“Never works OUT?” she was yelling now, “What do you mean?! If they’re here I can see them, right?”
“Yes, but…”
“Does someone prevent you from looking for them?”
“No…but…”
“Then why can’t I…”
He cut her off short this time, “Because they won’t recognize you!!” he finally yelled at her. Then he got near deadly silent and whispered hoarsely as if trying not to be overheard, “No one recognizes each other down here. It’s this place…it makes you…
forget
…after a while…the only thing you can hold onto anymore is yourself… it’s the only thing you have the strength for…and when the ones who are still alive come after you…you…well you won’t recognize them either.”
She went silent and turned around slowly and drew her knees up and hugged them to her chest tightly. Nephys saw an empty dock not far ahead and pushed the bark towards it. Then she started sobbing softly.
“Fwheen! Markan FWhooooping FWHEEN!” Hiero bleated out exasperatedly.
This was going from bad to worse. The shades were not as common here near the edges of the city, but they were still not safe yet. Hiero turned around and began bleating angrily at her, but it made no difference; her crying went from low sobbing to uncontrollable heaving. Hiero brandished his butcher knife near her, but it had no effect. She ignored it and went on crying.
“Please!” Nephys implored, “you can’t…you really have to stop…not here!” He tried to interrupt her sobbing with no luck. Hiero was banging his head against the bottom of the boat, droning out a “PORNT!” with each hit. Instead of trying to stop her, Nephys decided to get the boat to the dock as soon as possible.
Just then, a mist erupted from the black water. In less than a second, it formed into a shade, an indistinct shape of a human, grasping; it reached out for the woman. It was between them and the dock, blocking their way, but Nephys decided to make a run for it.
“BUUUUFFFARNT!!” bellowed Hiero.
Nephys pushed hard on the pole and aimed for the dock. The shade drifted right toward them, the woman stopped sobbing and looked out in sudden shock as the thing reached for her. Nephys managed to narrowly miss most of the shade as the little bark sped on by, but it still reached out and grazed the arm of the woman who immediately fell down in the bottom of the boat shivering in a state of shock.
Hiero was there on the edge of the boat letting out a stream of minor chord profanities that blasted most of the remaining mist away, but the second the woman fell silent the mist had lost its hold on her sorrow and began to dissipate on its own.
The bark was heading fast towards the rotten dock. “Hold on!” Nephys yelled. The bark hit the dock hard. The bow cracked and the little boat immediately began taking on icy, black water. Hiero stabbed the dock with the knife-wielding hand and its three black, spidery fingers, and used the other three limbs to hold onto the prow and keep it steady while Nephys dragged the woman out of the sinking boat onto the crumbling dock and then, finally, the shore.
It was a hard struggle, but Nephys managed. He looked around. There were no shades. The one that had lunged for them had dissipated once the sobbing stopped. Nephys looked back just in time to see the little bark slip beneath the shallow water.
“No more adventures for a while, Hiero.”
“Flubbit.” The little bagpipe uttered dejectedly, then flopped down on the ground and deflated almost entirely.
Nephys jerked the woman up to her feet and shook her. Fortunately, she wasn’t too much taller or heavier than him. Her eyes rolled back into her head and, for a moment, she looked like she had been in Limbo forever and gone blind herself, but she slowly came to and blinked.
“Ungh,” she said, agonizing, and raised her left arm gingerly to look at it. It obviously ached terribly. Nephys had been touched by a shade once. It was like plunging an arm into ice water for minutes and it felt numb and tingly for hours afterwards. Where the shade had touched her, the arm was deathly pale and the fingertips were even shiny, blue-black, like Hiero’s. Already, however, the color was starting to return.
“What happened?” she said.
“You touched a shade.”
“A shade?”
“Yes!” Nephys stated impatiently. “A walking husk of a soul that feeds on pain, misery and bitterness. It came because of YOU! It came because of your crying. You only just survived because your light is strong.”
“My light?”
“Yes…YOUR…” Nephys stopped. He was becoming angry. This was not helping things. Even though he desperately didn’t want to, he closed his eyes and gazed at the crystalline world for just a moment. He opened his dim eyes and began calmly.
“Look around you. There is no sun, no moon, no stars, only faint fire and lanterns. Most of the light you see here comes from other souls. When that light goes out, you become one of them.” Nephys gestured back towards the swamp. She looked shamefaced, like a little child, and Nephys went on.
“Emotions here are real, more real than we are sometimes. The Greeks called it the
psyche
. The Romans called it the
anima
. My people called it the
yib
, but whatever you call it, it’s the heart flame, the soul, the spark of life. It powers everything. Anger, Hate, Fear, Sadness, they all feed off the heart flame. They are
real
. More real here than in the world above. And if you don’t control them, then bad things happen.”
“Bad things?” she said flatly.
“Sadness, bitterness, misery, all of that… attracts the shades.”
“
Shades
,” she said, but it wasn’t a question, “Living shadows.” She said it like retrieving a faded memory.
“Um…yes,” Nephys said a bit surprised by her reaction. “The Greeks called it the
skia
, my people called it the
sheunt
, but whatever you call it, the shadow is whatever’s left after the heart light has gone out and they lose their
akh
.”
She looked up at him.
“You know, their higher selves?”
She said nothing. He could tell she still didn’t understand. He tried again.
“They lose their
nous
, their sense of self. Once the flame is gone, the shadow is the only thing left. It consumes them. They’ve lost their minds, their very essence. All they are is sadness and misery. Those lost souls are consumed by their final moments until that’s all they are anymore. That’s why they are attracted to sadness and despair.” Nephys looked out over the swamp and shuddered. The shades terrified him.
“What about anger?” she asked in a distant voice.
“Anger?…Well, anger attracts worse things,” Nephys replied.
“
Worse
things?”
“Yes.”
“Like what?”
“Like
him
.” Nephys pointed to Hiero who was sitting in the dust repeatedly stabbing his knife into the ground dejectedly. “Only they won’t be content just to suck you dry until you’re an empty shell. No, they’ll leave you conscious enough so that they can extract their daily full measure of pain out of you.” She looked at Hiero and he flicked his barbed little tongue at her and hissed like a cat that had been stepped on. “That thing, that crazy, bat-eared, giant-chicken-leg tree, metal death-cart monster, out in the swamps, remember that? YOU made that happen. It probably took a small part of you when it left. Your horror brought it to life, and if we hadn’t taken you away, it would have been after you for all eternity.”
She looked down like a whipped dog, but Nephys had to finish.
“So, if you want to go on, if you want to hold on to your flame as long as possible, hold on to what little is left of you, then emotions are forbidden. You can’t be angry, or sad, or happy…”
“
Happy
?!” she interrupted at last, somewhat indignant at this new restriction, “Why can’t I be
happy
?!”
“Gwarnt,” snooted Hiero in derision. She really was clueless.
Nephys thought for a moment then it struck him, “Do you remember what I told you about Elysium?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to know why it fell apart?”
She nodded meekly.
“It’s because they burned themselves out. We only have a little flame left here and anything out of the ordinary burns it up faster. They wasted their afterlives building, thinking, working out the perfect formula for a three-act comedy long after everyone had forgotten how to laugh. Some come here and try to live like they used to, but it doesn’t work down here. They burn up their lights creating things, making things happen, and soon they’re just a shade
or worse
. If you want to last…if you want to make it…you have to control yourself. Make the light last as long as possible. Remember who you are and say your name to yourself 10,000 times a day…because without that, you just won’t be you anymore.”
There was a deep stillness and even Hiero fell silent. Then she nodded weakly once.
It had been an eventful morning. It was already getting late, not that there was any objective way to tell time, but the streets of Limbo were already empty; the children had passed up to the scriptorium to begin the day’s work and to the gates of Erebus to relieve those who had catalogued the thousands that arrived by night.