The Gatekeeper's Daughter (4 page)

Tamara was at first confused, but when she heard her brother’s words, she turned and touched his face. “I love you, too.”

Then Therese and
Than swept her off to the banks of the Acheron and onto Charon’s raft. After they left her in the Elysian Fields, they returned to Than’s room so Therese could collect herself. She was trembling, her cheeks wet with tears.

“This isn’t easy,” she whispered.

“No,” he said. “No, it’s not.” He took her in his arms and held her. “It gets much worse.” He kissed her wet lips tenderly and looked into her eyes. “Ready?”

She held him tightly for many seconds. Then she wiped her eyes and cheeks and gave him a brave nod. He could not be more proud.

Chapter Five: The Trapped Boy

Therese stood beside Than near a mountain of rubble and debris where hundreds of people in various uniforms and civilian clothing, of multiple nationalities and ethnicities, dug with shovels and combed the site with metal detectors and, unfortunately, carried bodies, most of them dead, off to the nearby ambulances awaiting them.

Other people—old men and women and children—huddled along the perimeter, weeping and praying. Some of their prayers, she could hear.

“Let my grandson be alive.”

“Help the rescue workers find my baby boy.”

The prayers weren’t in English, but Therese could understand them. Adding to their anxiety was the fact that dusk was settling, and darkness wouldn’t be far behind. As she looked over the scene, she felt a pang of sorrow for
Than, whose entire existence was filled with scenes exactly like it. More than ever, she wanted to add joy to his life. She wondered if her love for him could be enough to tip the scales of the balance of his life toward happiness.

“Where are we?” she asked
Than.

“In a Turkish town near the border of Iran.
These are earthquake victims. A building, several stories high, collapsed earlier in the week. I’ve taken over two hundred souls to the Underworld. Men, women, and children of all ages. This was a building of department stores among other businesses.”

“Oh my god.”
She covered her mouth.

“There’s one more boy here about to die. It won’t be easy, so brace
yourself. He’s young, only four years old, and has been trapped beneath this rubble for five days. The others trapped with him have already died. He’s the last of them.”

Tears rushed to Therese’s eyes. “Okay. I’m ready.”

Now she could hear the prayers of the boy. “I want my mother and grandmother. I want my mother and grandmother.” Over and over, his prayer was the same. She could sense his desperate thirst and hunger, but his only prayer was for his mother and grandmother. “Ahn-neh! Ba-ba-ahn-neh!”

“How do you do this every day, all day?” she asked as they stepped closer to the rubble above the boy.

“You’re about to find out.”

“But you do it all the time, forever. How do you avoid depression?”

“Until I met you, I was depressed—mainly because my life never varied. But look around you.”

“What do you mean?”

“See how they all work together, helping one another?”

Therese surveyed the multitudes digging, sweeping, praying, carting,
reviving. “It
is
heartwarming to see people working in harmony for a common cause.” She held her eyes on Than for a moment longer, realizing the thing she loved most about him: He always managed to see the good in things and to make the most out of each circumstance.

“Some of them are enemies, but to save the victims, they put aside their differences.” He took her hand. “It’s almost time for the boy. Let’s go to him.”

She squeezed his hand and nodded. He softly kissed her forehead.

Therese cringed as they passed lifeless bodies. Some of their eyes and mouths were still open; they died gasping for their last breaths. Others were crushed and had likely died instantly. All were covered in dirt. The boy, Sahin, cried dry tears and muttered soundless words: “Ahn-
neh! Ba-ba-ahn-neh!” His hair was white with powdered concrete. Rings of caked mud circled each eye where pre-hydration tears must have gathered on his light brown skin. His brows were knitted together, his eyes half closed with fatigue and dread. He sat on the ground with his knees pressed against his growling stomach, all but his head hidden in the wedge between two collapsed walls. His parched lips moved their soundless cries. “Ahn-neh! Ba-ba-ahn-neh!”

“Can you see me?” Therese asked the boy.

The boy nodded, sucking in his lips, and for a moment his prayers halted.

“I’m here to help you,” Therese added. “Are you in pain?”

He said the words for thirsty and scared. Then he continued his chant of “Ahn-neh! Ba-ba-ahn-neh!”

Therese glanced at
Than, wishing the boy’s torment would end. How much longer did they have to wait?

Clutched in Sahin’s hand was a yellow toy the size of his fist. He held it out to her, above the block of cement trapping the rest of his body, so she took it. It was a miniature dump truck.

“For Mother,” he whispered in his language. “Please give it to her.”

Above their heads, a thick concrete beam lay across other broken walls, creating a small space that allowed air to circulate. This had surely kept the boy alive. Otherwise, he would have expired days ago with the others. Therese could sense the rescue workers above them, digging the rubble on top of the beam overhead. They were so close. She wished she could hasten their work and help them find the boy, but she knew she wasn’t to interfere. Than had told her again and again it was not his place; nor was it hers. The earth could not support a human population that never died. But she wished people didn’t have to die so young and in such tragic ways, with their mothers and grandmothers praying for their lives.
She wished all people could live to old age and then die a peaceful death. Why did things have to be this way? Now that she was a god, could she change them?

Maybe that could be her purpose—her service to humankind. She could be the goddess of those too young to die. She could save people from dying before old age.

Than knew her thoughts before she spoke them. She hadn’t realized she’d been sharing them with him this entire time.

“We tried that once before,” he said. “It was a terrible time in human history. We thought we were adding value to human life, but we were actually diminishing it.”

“What happened?”

“People stopped caring.”

She looked up again toward the sound of digging and scraping. They were so close! “So there’s nothing we can do to save this boy?” she asked.

The boy looked at her as though he could hear and understand her.
“Ahn-neh! Ba-ba-ahn-neh!” He pressed his little legs against the concrete wall for what must have been the hundredth time. He squirmed against his trap, like a butterfly in a jar.

Therese held out her hand to comfort him. “I’ll give your toy to your mother. I promise.”

The multitude of prayers above them was overwhelming, but even louder were the fervent sounds of digging and scraping. The rescuers were closer, about to break through. They would miss the boy by minutes!

The boy lifted his now empty hand above his concrete trap and circled his fingers around Therese’s index finger. He looked at her as though he knew it was time. She gave him a sad smile and kissed his little hand, which seemed to hasten his death. But just as his eyes widened and he sucked in what should have been his last breath, a shovel struck
through the rubble above, and a hand reached down and grabbed the boy by his arm.

Sahin flew up from his trap and into the hands of a rescue worker. A storm of activity followed. Therese and
Than left the heap to watch as the boy was rushed, oxygen mask to his face, across the debris to an ambulance. The mother and grandmother lifted their faces as though they knew who he was before seeing the child’s face. Other parents, too, looked on with hope.

“What just happened?” Therese asked
Than, full of excitement. “I could feel him die. I could sense his death with my whole being, like a pressure, like god travel. My heart knew he was dead one instant, but then he was alive the next. Does that happen often? Is he going to live?”

“Hold on.” Than took her hand and together they returned the toy dump truck to the boy’s hand. “You can give this to your mother,” Than whispered just before he and Therese left the back of the ambulance and the doors were closed and the engine roared to life.

He took Therese to his sitting room and held her on his lap. “Someone intervened.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It was Athena. Only gods of Mount Olympus can, and they do so rarely. Someone must have moved her with their prayers. Perhaps a soldier, since she is their special patron.”

Therese buried her face in
Than’s neck. She was happy for the boy and his family, but sad for all the others who, for whatever reason, had not moved Athena. She held back her tears, though, and gritted her teeth, because she had to be strong for Than. This was only the beginning of her training, and she had to make him feel secure about leaving his duties in her hands. She was death, and death, though sad for those left behind, was a gift to those who suffered and was inevitable to all.

Than’s strong arms wrapped more tightly around her, and a sigh escaped her lips. She peeked up at his hooded eyes, his bottom lip
between his teeth. The sight of his beauty, so close to her, made her shiver. Despite the gloomy training, she was grateful to be with him.

She bent her face to his and said, “So what’s next?”

He pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “You need to learn to disintegrate.”

“Yeah, what exactly is that, anyway?” She shifted in his lap so she could better face him. “I mean, how does it work?”

He bit his lower lip, drawing her attention to his mouth again. She couldn’t believe she was really here with him, and she wasn’t ready to give him up to the maenads. Two days wasn’t long enough. She suddenly felt giddy after all the depressing events.

“Let me see if I can think of an analogy,” he said.

As he gazed up at the shadows on the ceiling of his room, she couldn’t resist taking a quick nibble of his lower lip.

He squeezed each of her upper arms, laughing.
“Holy moly.”

“Holy moly?
Who says that anymore? Holy moly!”

“At one time it was a very popular expression.” He tickled her sides. “Now quit making fun of me and pay attention.”

“Yes, sir.” She smirked.

He tickled her again.

“Stop! Stop and tell me your analogy.”

“Okay. Imagine a shower head.”

She pulled her head back and bent her brows. “A shower head? Okay?”

“Dozens of individual streams pour through the openings of the shower head, and all of those streams are water—not part water, but fully, wholly H20, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Both the overall flow coming from the shower head and the independent streams consist of one hundred percent water.”

“Correct.”

“And yet the streams are all part of the flow of water even as they are complete in and of themselves.”

“What a philosopher you are.” She playfully punched his arm.

“That’s disintegration. You are one hundred percent you, but you are simultaneously in many places, and in each place you occupy, you are still one hundred percent you.”

“I think I get it. Piece of cake. Let’s do this thing.”

“But it can be overwhelming, processing all the stimuli. Because even as you disintegrate into multiple selves, each self knows what every other self is experiencing. You are inundated with sights, sounds, smells, etc.”

She jumped from his lap. “Well, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Beam me up, Scotty.”

He laughed. “That saying’s almost as old as holy moly.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Let’s see…of the two of us, who’s been around longer?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“So, here we go. We’ll stay here, in my room, but we’ll also go see Hip in the fields of poppy, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

For a moment she thought it was interesting he’d used water to describe disintegration, because she felt, at that instant, as though water—cold water—was running across her back. She even reached over her shoulder, half expecting to find herself wet. She now had four arms and two backs, and her peripheral vision was like looking through a kaleidoscope at a bunch of distorted, but patterned, images. When Than
spoke, she heard an echo, as though he used a microphone and loudspeaker.

“Are-are-you-you-okay-okay?”

Slowly, like when you can hear an echo of yourself on your cell phone, she said, “I-feel-dizzy.”