Authors: Jonah Hewitt
Lucy did blush this time. “You really think so?”
“I do,” Amanda spoke it with absolute authority and without hesitation.
Lucy felt a little bit shallow, but it was more than a little gratifying to hear she was beautiful from a complete stranger – especially one that was so glamorous. Even then, Lucy still wasn’t so sure she believed it.
Amanda seemed to sense what she was thinking and dropped her chin and reached up to take off her glasses again and looked at her with her big cow eyes. “You may not believe me, Lucy, but I used to be something of an ugly duckling.”
“Really? But you’re so gorgeous!” Lucy said that a little too eagerly and felt embarrassed afterwards.
Amanda smiled, “Well it may be a bit vain to admit this, but I do like hearing that. Thank you.” She laughed and Lucy smiled as she went on, “Believe it or not, I was always a bit of a tomboy when I was a girl. I always thought my hair was too plain or my legs were too skinny or my eyes were too dull. None of the boys were ever interested in me. I was a real late bloomer, and then one day that all changed.”
Lucy looked at Amanda and found that hard to believe.
“So what happened?” Lucy ventured, then leaned over to whisper, “Was it…y’know…
puberty
?”
Amanda laughed. “Well,
no
.
Actually
, one day I discovered that I had a choice. I could be the person I thought I was, or I could be the person I always wanted to be, and that changed everything.”
“Seriously?”
“Absolutely,” Amanda replied with dead certainty.
“How old were you when that happened?” Lucy was curious. Her own “blossoming” still felt ages away.
Amanda looked up as if searching for the exact date. “Not…as…long ago…as…you might think,” Amanda finally replied cryptically. “Of course, it didn’t hurt to have one good friend, one
true
friend, who believed in me too.” Amanda smiled at Lucy with both her mouth and her eyes. Lucy’s mom had always believed in her also, and for a moment Lucy wondered if Amanda could be that one true friend who believed in her too.
Lucy looked at Amanda with her stylish glasses off. She didn’t look quite so glamorous anymore. In fact she looked fairly normal – pretty and stylish maybe – but very normal and even kind. Lucy suddenly felt very silly that she had suspected her at all. The tightness that had clutched her chest since she had met Amanda eased significantly. Lucy thought she should give Amanda a second chance and try to get to know her better.
“So you read French?” Lucy asked cautiously, looking at the neatly folded copy of Le Monde.
“Mais, oui!” Amanda nodded, “Also Spanish, Italian, Dutch, German….aaaand… even a little Hungarian, oh…as well as a smattering of other things.”
“You speak
all
of those?” Lucy said, genuinely impressed.
“Well not fluently, at least not
all
of them, but yes, languages always came easy to me. How about you? A smart girl like you; I bet you know another language.”
Lucy shrugged. “I took some Spanish in middle school, but I wasn’t very good at it.”
“I bet you know more than you think you do,” Amanda said very reassuringly, “Try this on, kiddo, do you know what
in loco parentis
means?”
Lucy did know that one. It was Latin, but she couldn’t remember where she had heard it. “It means in place of a parent or something like that.”
Amanda smiled, impressed. “That’s exactly right, Lucy. You could have a future as a lawyer.” She paused to take another sip of coffee and continued after she put it down. “
In loco parentis
means that the state recognizes that the hospital is acting in the same role as a parent. That means that right now
I
am acting in the place of a parent since I am the representative of the hospital. I take that very seriously, Lucy, and I want you to know that I will do my utmost to do what’s best for you.”
Lucy looked into her warm, brown eyes tinged with grey and she could tell that she meant every word sincerely.
“So,” Lucy asked, “Is that why you became a lawyer…to help people?”
“Well that’s the Miss America answer isn’t it? But as corny as this sounds, that’s exactly why I got into it, Lucy, though the particulars are a bit complex.”
Lucy moved her chair a little closer.
Amanda smiled. “Alright then. Well, where to begin? / Hmm. I put my ex-husband through law school. After the divorce I thought to myself, if this dumb bunny can do it, anyone can.”
“You were married?” Lucy asked, surprised. Amanda didn’t seem the marrying type.
“Yes, but I won’t bore you with the details. It fell apart as all things do. I don’t like to dwell on it.” Then she got a far-off look and a coldness crept back into her voice, “Of course that’s all over now,” she drifted off and went silent.
“So, he’s still a lawyer then?” Lucy prompted.
“Hmm?” Amanda was a bit distracted in thought. “Oh! No…not anymore. He actually only recently stopped…
practicing
.” A sudden, vicious glare passed over Amanda’s eyes, but it was gone in an instant and replaced by sadness. Lucy thought she understood. She had friends back in Texas whose parents were divorced. It generated a lot of complicated, hurt feelings. She decided not to press Amanda on it.
Amanda looked down wistfully into the dregs of her cappuccino. There was a long pause before she next spoke, “I could never have children, Lucy. I tried, I even got pregnant twice, but they both ended in miscarriages.” She was very quiet and still and melancholy. Suddenly, the warm and friendly Amanda returned. “
BUT
…that’s probably why I got into family law, so that I could help other people’s children instead.”
Lucy wanted to reach across the table and hold Amanda’s hand, to show her some compassion, but it was such a private moment, Lucy felt too awkward to try. They sat in silence for an indeterminate amount of time before Amanda spoke again.
“So,” Amanda began again impulsively, “What do you think, Lucy? Do I pass muster?”
Lucy looked earnestly at Amanda. She appeared so different than she had seemed just a few minutes ago. She was no longer mysterious and frightening but vulnerable and human. Lucy decided that she had just let her imagination get away with her and that she had misjudged her. “Yeah,” Lucy said meekly.
“So we agree I’m not an alien?”
Lucy laughed out loud this time. “No…definitely not an alien,” she said shaking her head.
“Good,” Amanda said with a satisfied smile, and as she spoke she put her stylish, amber glasses back on, “Because I don’t think I could take being stared at by you and all those kittens at the same time.”
Lucy quickly pulled her robe over the princess kitty pajamas and Amanda gave her a look like she was afraid she had offended her.
“Oh, Lucy, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”
“No, no…it’s ok,” Lucy began, then she leaned in to whisper confidentially into Amanda’s ear, “Actually…I
kinda
hate them.” It felt fun to share this little secret.
Amanda at first smiled and then burst out laughing uproariously. Lucy looked on in shock and then joined in.
“Oh, Thank GOODNESS,” Amanda blurt out after a moment, “Because, honestly…no offense, seriously, they really are hideous.” And then she laughed some more. Great, barking guffaws even. It was funny to see such deep, hoarse laughs from someone as fashionable looking as Amanda. It made her seem far more human and Lucy didn’t feel nearly so tense anymore.
“I know!” Lucy joined in the laughing. “Aren’t they the
worst?!!
”
“Where on
earth
did you get them?” Amanda tried to compose herself and retain some of her more usual dignity.
“The young doctor, the one with long, curly, brown hair? I don’t…I don’t even know her name. She got them for me.” Lucy felt a bit guilty about not knowing the nice doctor’s name.
“Carfax,” Amanda stated, wiping a tear of laughter from underneath her black-framed glasses. “Rebecca Carfax. I think she’s the head resident here. She’s a good doctor, but she obviously doesn’t know a thing about thirteen year olds. It even makes you wonder if she ever was one.”
Lucy laughed again and slapped her hands over her mouth. It felt somehow wrong to laugh at the young doctor. After all, she had meant well, but it still felt good, like some forbidden pleasure, and it felt even better to share it with someone like Amanda. Lucy felt ashamed of how suspicious she had been before.
When Amanda had finally managed to stop laughing she spoke again, “Well, Lucy, when you finally finish that bottomless smoothie, how about we go over to the gift shop and buy you a couple of black t-shirts and some nice, dark plaid drawstring pants to go with them and we can say goodbye to the royal kittens with thyroid problems?”
Lucy laughed again. “That would be GREAT!” Lucy didn’t even bother to finish the smoothie but just dumped it in the trash. Amanda gathered her notes in her usual elegant fashion and the two got up and walked off together towards the gift shop. Amanda didn’t even grab her by the hand, although a small part of Lucy wished that she had. Their friendship was still too new, but it was good to have another friend. As she thought this, Lucy suddenly thought of Yo-yo. She hadn’t even thought of him at all ‘til just now!! She was still planning on the escape but now as she looked up at Amanda she wondered if there might not be another way. If Amanda could help Lucy, maybe she could help Yo-yo too? Lucy was nearly ready to abandon the escape plan altogether and tell Amanda about Yo-yo when Amanda unexpectedly stopped, grabbed Lucy gently by the chin and stared directly into Lucy’s eyes from behind those amber lenses.
“She would have been about your age by now…my daughter. Had she lived.”
Her voice was cold and distant. Talking about her lost child this way made Lucy feel very awkward and uncertain. Lucy was about to look away when Amanda pulled her chin back a little too roughly. What she said next wasn’t at all comforting and the voice wasn’t the friendly, funny Amanda, but the stern imperial one.
“Lucy, I promise you that I will never let anything bad happen to you…
ever again
.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Halls of Death
Nephys followed the Herald of Death solemnly through the abandoned streets of Limbo. If the streets weren’t abandoned before they arrived, they almost certainly emptied out when they saw the hulking frame of Death’s Herald coming their way. Nephys didn’t see a single other soul the entire time. In fact, all he could see in front of him was the great, hulking mass of the headless warrior. The herald never turned around once to see if Nephys was following. Nephys assumed the monstrous warrior was utterly confident in his ability to intimidate all into compliance.
They trudged unstopping through the dense landscape of tombs and avenues deeper and deeper into the city. Rarely had Nephys ever come this far. This had once been the very seat of Elysium, Limbo’s only golden age, though it wasn’t terribly golden. It was already ebbing and falling apart by the time Nephys had arrived. Here the tombs and buildings were larger and more magnificent than those towards the edges of the city near the swamps were Nephys lived, but they too were falling into ruin. Everything passes in Limbo, and few held on for as long as he had.
The long walk through the somber ruins of the once-great city gave Nephys time to reflect. Why was he being selected to see the Great Master? Obviously it had something to do with the stone. To all the other children and scribes it was only one of several identical, glassy pebbles, but Nephys had seen more. He saw it not with the penetrating, crystalline Death Sight, but with his own, natural eyes. He had seen its true color, a color he only faintly remembered from the date palm groves and reed-lined canals of his youth.
Nephys marveled at the paradox. The Death Sight gave the user unparalleled clarity and reach of vision, penetrating nearly every substance and giving the viewer the power to render the world transparent and open. Virtually nothing could hide its true nature from the Death Sight – it could see right into the very souls of men and see their life fires burning. But it didn’t see everything did it? There were simple things it could not see, simple truths that eluded it; things that any living person took for granted but most in Limbo could no longer see. But Nephys could see it, and somehow that had set him apart. He could see things the other children of Limbo couldn’t anymore. That’s what had brought him to the attention of the Great Master.
What they wanted from him was another matter altogether. Did they want to punish him for failing to conform and holding on to his natural eyes so long? Or did they want him to use his natural eyes for some unknown purpose? Whether for good or ill – Nephys couldn’t tell – his persistence in keeping his sight had brought him this far. Right now he didn’t much like his chances or the look of the brutish figure leading him.
The long walk also gave Nephys time to reconsider Falco’s unexpected acts of kindness. Falco’s sudden interest in Nephys’ skills was starting to come into focus. It was Falco’s dearest wish to be elevated someday to the higher echelons of the Great Master’s service, so he had readily accepted the opportunity to assist the Herald in hopes of future promotion. Once he knew that Nephys was the subject of the Herald’s interest, he had set about ingratiating himself to Nephys. That explained the wonderful manuscripts and the sudden praise of Nephys’ skill. “
Proper
scribe,” sniffed Nephys to himself. He was embarrassed he had been taken in so easily by his own vanity.
Whether Falco did this to mock him or to obtain a good report to the Great Master, Nephys didn’t know for sure, not that it mattered much. That was what was so infuriating about Falco. The little tyrant’s plans could always be manipulated to benefit himself, no matter the outcome. That was Falco for you, all cynical calculation. Nephys thought about Falco’s life for a moment. Falco had only been eight years old when he died of the plague. He tried to imagine Falco running or playing ball like other eight year olds, but he just couldn’t. Nephys knew Falco’s Father had been a Roman Senator. Falco’s father must have scrupulously ingrained into the little child, through constant repetition, all the vagaries of Roman politics from the time he was an infant. How else could you explain why Falco was such a manipulative political climber by the tender age of eight years? If Falco’s father could see his little boy now, thought Nephys, he would surely be proud.
Nephys’ walk with the dark Herald had led him to the very heart of the city of Limbo. Here now, towering above him, was the shadowy outline of the crumbling acropolis of Elysium. Limbo was a vast, flat plain, and the ground that the city stood on was scarcely higher than that of the spreading marshes around it. Even that was slowly eroding and sinking into the wetlands, the city disintegrating a little each day. The only high point and distinguishable landmark for leagues in any direction was the acropolis jutting up incongruously in the middle of the ancient city.
The acropolis was not a natural hill at all. Instead, it was an enormous, artificial mound constructed by the ancient architects and rulers of Elysium. They had piled the detritus of the afterworld up in a great heap, like a pyramid or a ziggurat, and had built their great temples, palaces and cathedrals upon it, reaching higher than anyone had ever reached in Limbo before. It was said that from its heights you could almost tell if the dark, low overhang that covered the land of the dead was the ceiling of a cave, or the underside of a dark, persistent cloudbank. No one went up there anymore now, however.
The Herald’s path led them around the base of the hill onto a narrow trail that wound through the shadow of the abandoned acropolis. Nephys stepped into it with great trepidation. As the edge of the darkness passed over him, he shuddered. The silhouette of the broken hill cast a pall over this section of the city creating a profound gloom that somehow managed to stand out in a land of nothing but shadow. The acropolis was a great, dark, wretched mass of mismatched architectural styles and crumbling battlements. It was like the carcass of a massive beached whale or the hull of a giant, shipwrecked vessel. Its broken towers and spires were exposed like bleached ribs, broken bones and snapped spars and masts. Gravity was deforming any of its remaining beauty. In a land of decay, its hopelessness and despair was exceptional, perhaps because its light and fire had been greater.
It wasn’t always like this. It had once been beautiful. Its fabled towers had reached a great height, and its halls were filled with the sound of philosophy and music, but it was not to last. The ground beneath the acropolis, like all the land in Limbo, was swampy, and the foundation ultimately proved too weak and unstable to support such a lofty structure.
In its last centuries, the architects frantically tried to shore up what remained of the glorious building. Whatever natural grace or rational planning the original acropolis had attained, it was completely overshadowed by the many haphazard accretions, retaining walls, buttresses, additions and other ad hoc preventive measures that had been hastily erected to forestall its imminent collapse. All attempts had failed of course. Even now as they passed beneath the high steep embankment of one side, stray stones periodically fell from the crumbling edifice. The path around its base was strewn with fallen rubble – so much so that Nephys had to be careful where he stepped.
He knew that the dangerous path around the edge of the massive ruin wasn’t leading to the acropolis but to what was directly beneath it: the courts of the Great Master, the Halls of Death himself. The creators of the acropolis hadn’t been complete fools. They knew that the flat, swampy plain of Limbo was unsuited to any large construction so they built upon the only sure foundation they could find – the imperishable stone walls of Death’s temple. The Halls of Death had become completely incased by the hill of the acropolis and the machinations of its architects. The souls of that time were vain and full of hubris. Some had been in the afterlife so long they even thought themselves gods. In their arrogance they thought they could change Limbo and remake it in their image, so they piled their edifice on top of the only lasting structure in the underworld.
The Temple of Death preceded all other buildings in Limbo. It had once stood alone on the lone and dreary plain, a vast structure of unadorned, unforgiving, polished black granite. Unlike the crumbling stone and rotting brick of all the mausoleums and crypts that surrounded it, the Halls of Death were said to be imperishable and unbreakable. This was only spoken in rumor however, as none of the structure could now be seen, but Nephys knew it was true. The large, shallow basin he used as a mirror – that Maggie was now using as her stewpot – had come from there. It had been passed to him by another scribe long ago and was one of his most cherished possessions. In fact, it was his only possession other than his reed pen and palette, frankly. He knew it was special the first time he had dropped it, because it reassembled itself back to its original form the second it had shattered. No matter how many times you tried, no matter how hard you threw it, it always came back together flawlessly. It was as if time rolled backwards and undid whatever harm was done to it. That’s why he wasn’t too put out about Maggie cooking in it. If being smashed to smithereens couldn’t undo it, certainly a batch of bitter soup wasn’t going to harm it. It was like Death himself, everlasting. There was only one thing permanent in life and the afterlife, the certainty of Death, and it was the only thing that could wind back the clock of time.
Why the Great Master had allowed the architects of Elysium to build on top of his temple in the first place was always something of a mystery, but now that Nephys saw the acropolis up close, it made complete sense to him. What better monument to the futility of their efforts than this gargantuan, heaping ruin that would one day be utterly washed away by the slow tides of Erebus and the Styx? Death was patient and in time destroyed all evidence of resistance, all evidence of existence other than its own emptiness.
Deep in the shadow of the crumbling hill, the Herald led him further into the rubble. Ahead of them near the very base of the hill were what appeared to be two massive, misshapen boulders. Only as they came closer could Nephys realize that they were two giant heads of bluish stone. One was upside down and badly broken, the other was half submerged in the black sand to its upper lip. They must have fallen from the heights of Elysium and had been left to lie where they landed. They were the heads of goddesses. Only as the massive frame of the Herald approached them did Nephys realize how colossal they really were. The headless Herald could walk comfortably under the first one’s broken nose. The divot between upper lip and nostrils was easily twice the height of the largest man.
They were magnificent. Nephys gasped as he got closer. He couldn’t make out the features of the one that was upside down, but the other wore a massive crown made to resemble a city wall, complete with towers and crenulations. Nephys knew this goddess. He had seen many similar images in his own country. She was Tyche, the embodiment of the destiny of a city. These were the statues that must have flanked the gates of the acropolis. As Nephys passed underneath them he marveled at their size, beauty and skill. These were not created by a people who ever doubted their own fate, and yet here they were lying broken in the black sand, slowly crumbling into nothingness. Just then Nephys looked down at the sand underneath his sandals and wondered how many statues or great cities was he treading on? Surely these were not the first or the last.
The Herald disappeared around the cheek of the first head. Nephys turned the corner and saw that the Herald was gone. Ahead of him was only a narrow passage. The two stone heads had fallen in such a way that there was only a small gap between them. It was so narrow that even Nephys had to turn sidewise and duck to get by. He wondered how the large Herald had managed it, but there was nowhere else he could have gone. Nephys quickly squeezed himself between the two heads and emerged into a small, open space. Sure enough, the Herald’s hulking frame was there with his back turned to Nephys, but it was what was in front of the Herald that drew his attention.
It was a massive door made of polished, featureless black stone. On either side was a giant urn, much like his shallow bowl, only much larger, made of the same black stone. Each contained a raging bonfire of blue flame, but the fires were utterly silent. The door itself was a simple, rectangular opening in the black rock, undifferentiated, without columns or gables or any decoration at all. The only inscription was a single, large triangle over the door, like a pyramid or the Greek letter, Delta. It was identical to the sign on the Herald’s black tabard. Large drifts of sand were banked up on either side of the door with only a narrow trail leading into the gaping maw. This must be the entrance to the Halls of Death.
The heads had completely concealed the entrance from view, though that seemed impossible to Nephys when he thought about it. The door was so massive you could have easily rolled one of the heads through the gap with plenty of room on either side. A door this large and tall should have been visible in the hillside even with the heads. It must have been concealed magically. None of the light from the non-roaring fires could be seen beyond this small area, as if it was confined to this limited space and none other. No wonder so few people had ever seen the Halls of Death. But that was not the most impressive or frightening thing about the door. The most impressive feature of the door was the implacable blackness of its rectangular opening. At first Nephys had thought the rectangular frame held a solid door made of some black, unreflective material. As he walked closer though, he could tell it was just an open frame of darkness; an empty space that seemed to consume all light. Despite the raging, silent bonfires, which filled the small courtyard in front of the door with bright, blue-white light, Nephys couldn’t see a half-inch into the interior.