She was lost out there somewhere, his only companion in this bewildering place and he could have stopped that from happening if he had pulled his head out of his rear long enough to make sure that she understood the dangers. I might even have suggested a safer way for us both to go looking for water if I wasn’t so busy letting my fears rule me.
There wasn’t anything to do about it now, though. Leo sat down and closed his eyes, resting his head in his hands to give himself a little bit of a respite from staring into the formless distance.
It seemed like nothing more than a moment later when he heard a shout off to his left, it was Jules! He looked up to see the young woman waving something at him from a distance before stepping forward and appearing more directly in front of him. The look of absolute relief on her face was probably matched on his own and he couldn’t resist jumping up and hugging her.
“Thank goodness – I thought you got lost out there,” he said starting to squeeze her tightly but feeling an odd bump against his stomach.
“Me too,” Jules said pulling back quickly and cradling something in her arms. “I thought I was a goner there for a second. But apparently I really, really, wanted to bring these back and make you eat them.” She brandished something at him cradled in her shirt and laughed.
Leo tried taking a closer look at the objects she was holding but they shared the same look of everything around them. His eyes couldn’t focus on them properly; best he could tell was that Jules was holding several largish round things. He gave her a dubious look.
“Hard to see aren’t they,” she said grinning from ear to ear and Leo let himself smile back at her, resolutely pushing his fears aside. “I think they might be some kind of gourd or squash, maybe even small pumpkins but almost definitely edible!”
“Great! Now how are we going to test that theory?”
“Nothing for it but to break one of them open and take a bite, I guess.”
Leo nodded and reached for one of the objects, “let me do the taste testing. You sit down, I’m a little nervous that you might hop off somewhere and not find your way back this time.”
While Jules obligingly sat down in front of him Leo regarded the round object in his hands, it was almost as if he had managed to pick a section of the path up and pack it into a ball like snow. But the texture was all wrong, it wasn’t cold or wet, a mixed blessing at best, since they didn’t have any way of keeping warm if the temperature here dropped at all but they definitely were in need of water. As he thought about it, he felt his throat clench in answer. Well, we will just have to go looking for water next but together this time, he thought as he turned the object over in his hands finally settling on trying to break it in half, like a loaf of day old French bread.
It was smaller than a loaf of bread and he had to strain but just when he was about to give up and try whacking it with his shoe instead, he felt it give. The object popped open in two neat halves, the insides almost as indistinct as the world around them but, “is that – juice?”
Leo made a face and forced himself to bring half of the object closer to his face, there wasn’t a smell but when he touched his tongue to the part of the object that seemed to shimmer in a way that spoke of liquid, “it’s sweet!”
Sweet didn’t really describe it. Heaven wouldn’t be far off. The liquid pooled in the center of what he now thought of as strange fruit, was both sweet and refreshing. He couldn’t place the flavor but the way his body was reacting to it was to visceral to deny, he actually had to stop himself and remember to hand Jules the other half before upending the strange fruit over his mouth and sucking down all the juice in the center.
Once he’d tasted that sweet nectar he couldn’t stop himself from chomping down on the soft inner meat of the strange fruit as well. Juicy! Not as juicy as something like an orange a little denser like the meat of a pear or maybe a plum? Oh what does it matter it’s delicious!
They both lost themselves for a minute gobbling down their halves of the strange fruit eagerly, tossing the spent rinds over their shoulder and then contentedly licking their fingers of the last traces of its juices. They finished at about the same time and caught each other with equally content and gluttonous looks on their faces and broke into spontaneous laughter.
Now that they were full and together again the Path didn’t seem half as frightening as it had mere minutes, days, hours before. Leo flopped down on the ground beside Jules, noticing for the first time that whatever they had been walking on was pretty comfy to lie on too. Might come in handy if we actually have to sleep here, “that was great Jules, you really came through there I had no idea how hungry I was until I tasted that.”
“To be honest, I don’t think I was half as hungry either until I tasted those.” She said, wiping her mouth in the crook of his shirt. “I hope they weren’t poisonous or anything. If they were we’re definitely done for.”
“Yup, too late to worry about it now.” They laughed; it was good to laugh in the face of the potential dangers of this place. It was good simply to laugh with someone else. “What’s next?”
Jules scrunched up her face while she thought. Finally, “well, I don’t have my cell phone on me but next would probably be trying to attract Mitei’s attention, don’t you think?”
Cell phone, of course! Leo scrambled in his pockets, looking for the phone he’d had so much trouble locating right before Aedan had appeared in his classroom. He still had it of course, in his hip pocket, but when he pulled it out and flipped it open to make the call he was met with the swirly bars of no reception. He punched in Mitei’s number anyway putting the phone on speaker and waiting for it to ring, nothing happened. “Calling out doesn’t seem to be an option either.”
“Then I’m out of ideas,” Jules said. “Got any other way of getting a message to Mitei?”
“Just one,” he said putting his phone away with care and not meeting Jules eyes. “One of us is going to have to die again.”
***
Itching, burning, discomfort, none of these words sufficed to describe the sensation anymore. It was nearly noon in Philadelphia and all around the world several thousand appointments had already not been met. Most were the types of things that would never make the news but already a smattering of information was coming in from the board members about executions that hadn’t worked or assassination attempts that had not managed succeed despite going off without any apparent hitches.
Things were getting worse in the office as a result and the secretaries were having a harder and harder time keeping panicked executives from coming through the double doors in search of Mitei. Without checking in she knew that the other secretaries in all of her offices were probably suffering similar fates. Forced to defend her even as their jobs were snatched away and they faced the prospect of job hunting in an uncertain market.
She made her apologies to Megan and the rest in Philadelphia and then let Aedan take her away again. Ultimately there had been nothing she could do for them. Still something in her wanted to object to leaving their side during such a trying time. No longer paid to take care of her, her secretaries were none the less doing just that despite pressure and false promises from the rising faction of power in the office.
So she had fled to free them of some of their sense of obligation, still it did not sit well with her. Unfortunately the discomfort of the not dead was worse. Mitei did not recall feeling half as bad when Jules and Leo had survived, there had definitely been some discomfort but it was a cold quick sensation entirely different from this crawling heat. It made it hard to think as Aedan ushered her through the halls of Underhill and back out again to what seemed like an ancient temple built on a mountaintop.
As with all the other locals this was well kept and impossibly empty despite that. Aedan had led her from a central open area with what like a large pool at the heart into a hall and finally a large and aery chamber with an absolutely huge bed. Silken cloth danced gently in the mountain breeze as he led her to the
bed and pressed her down onto the soft surface.
“Rest now.”
“I cannot, I have to find Leo and Jules.”
“You can’t do much of anything right now can you,” Aedan was right she was having an increasingly difficult time just focusing on the conversation. “Rest, gather as much of your strength as you can, I’ll take you wherever you want me to – after you’ve had enough rest to tell me clearly where that is.”
Mitei wanted to protest but could not deny the difficulty she was having finding the words to do just that. She settled back, relaxing into the heavenly softness of the bed beneath her and not exactly loving the sensation of something so comfortable while her friends suffered and the numbers of not dead grew.
The only way to stop this horrible feeling was to get a hold of herself and fix her Path, every moment she delayed increased her discomfort and made it harder to think. Mitei knew that Aedan just wanted to help but she also knew this was not a problem for the god of the hunt. Someone whose duty was that recreational could never understand the strict order of her life, she realized as another minute ticked by and another group of names missed their appointments with Death.
Mitei rolled to the edge of the mattress and retched violently, screaming between upheavals as her body was twisted in ways she had only seen distantly in others before. Aedan returned to her side in a rush, pulled her hair back and away from the steaming puddle forming beside the bed. He ripped a scrap of silk from the ceiling to wipe her mouth and face with when her stomach was finally empty and Mitei glared at him.
“There is no time for this, Aedan. I have to go – now!”
“Alright, where would you have me take you?”
Mitei wanted to pull the list out of the air and point to the names at the top of it but knew there was no way that he would be able to make those appointments. His methods were far too slow, briefly she contemplated jumping down the list a bit and trying to get ahead of the schedule but that would be of little use either. “Take me to the doorway.”
Aedan gave her a quizzical look but she had no answers to give him, for the first time in her long life Mitei understood what it felt like to be rather violently ill. She was not at all sure she was thinking properly or at all but inaction would solve nothing, indeed as they walked another appointment was missed and Mitei crumpled, heaving again with nothing left in her stomach to come up.
They reached a doorway, it was not the one that they had used to come to this place from Underhill and Mitei did not think that it mattered which one it was. Not for what she wanted to try, “can you open betwixt and between without building a bridge to a certain place?”
“I’m a god, little sister I can do just about anything I want.” Aedan said and oddly, winked at her somehow Mitei found the strength to smile back at his joke ,though her smile was grim. “I can probably do it but without a bridge, there’s a danger we’ll fall in.”
“Why, is that dangerous?”
“There’s always a danger in the entirely unknown,” Aedan said shrugging. “I’ll do it but do me a favor and don’t let go of me, or the doorway. But if it comes down to a choice – hold onto me, no matter what. You hear me?”
Mitei nodded gripping the stone of the doorway in one hand and Aedan’s hand in the other as he gestured once again, seeming to slice through the very fabric of reality in a much slower motion than ever before. The chill intensified as it had every time he had built a bridge from location to location.
Mitei had enough of her mind left to wonder if what she was doing was wise when the sensation of ground beneath her feet suddenly disappeared and was not replaced with the assuring sensation of another location beneath her questing heels. She nearly lost her grip on the doorframe as the entire weight of her and Aedan was suddenly anchored to firm ground only by her right hand. The searing pain in her shoulders as her body suddenly became the only tether for both of them in a material plane was enough to clear her head. She still felt horribly ill but she could think beyond the pain again and feel something besides the roiling in her belly.
This was not right. This feeling was not kin to her, she knew it to the very core of her being as she threw her head back and roared at what should have been the sky but was not. Not here, not there, this place was the opposite of her Path; Mitei could practically taste its total wrongness on every fiber of her skin. She was not meant to travel here, nothing was meant to be here. Somehow she had thought that this place was pregnant with the possibility of all places as she had always imagined her path to be but it was a dead place, an empty place and it wanted her out.
But that is not right, she thought as she felt Aedan’s weight unexpectedly increase and tug on her arm as if the space itself was trying to yank him from her grip. She screamed as she felt that tug again and tightened her grip. Death is mine, she thought holding on. Death is mine, if this place is dead then it is also mine.
She actually felt the space around her laugh. Sentient? Aedan never said this thing could think! Of course she knew the answer to that question; Aedan never asked, just used the tool he was given without question, as she had done with her Path and her abilities for almost all of her life.
Mitei wanted to stop and talk, wanted to ask this dead space that was nowhere and therefore could take you everywhere so many questions. Something in her sensed it had as long as she did to answer all of those questions and more; and here she noticed she no longer felt the sickness from the thousands of people around the world who were not dying. There was time – except there was not, there never was, if anything Mitei had finally learned that lesson for herself. There was never enough time to do everything one wanted to do, thinking otherwise was just fooling oneself.
Instead she did not try arguing with the space, she tightened her grip on the doorway far behind herself and reached deep within again. Searching for the all of whatever made her Death and pulling it out one more time. Not offensively as she had with Aedan, more like a signature, a note of self and same to offer to the angry space around herself to show it that she knew it, that they belonged together.
The space was not laughing now, or pulling on Aedan’s body trying to wrench him from her grip. Mitei felt it instead, brush against her almost in greeting, it recognized her!
What do you want little one, you should not be here. Not yet. Have you lost your way?
The voice of the space was impossible. It echoed, overlapped and could not be claimed to resemble any of the human languages Mitei had spent so many years learning. Nevertheless, she understood it clearly and wondered if she had always known this way of speaking, “I have lost my Path! And two upon it, I know many have used you to go to places that are known to them, can you help me find a place that is known and unknown to me?”
You have lost more than that, much more and more to come. Fine then, be gone little one.
Mitei was not entirely sure how it happened but the space around her changed. Instead of the dead space that was nothing and nowhere a formless white vista opened up beneath their feet approaching quickly as if they were falling from a great height. Formless the landscape below might have been but it was a warm and familiar space, Mitei felt relief hit her hard as she finally let go of the pillar and fell an indeterminate way to a ground that was just soft enough to cushion their landing. She had never actually seen it before but nonetheless recognized it as her Path.
Aedan lay still beside her, apparently unconscious. Mitei started to wonder if it was possible to knock a god out but of course, the evidence was lying at her feet, hand still clasped in her own iron grip. It was the work of some minutes to wake him and she chafed at every flying second, somehow she was still insulated from the sensations that had bombarded her on the mountain but she held no illusions that the Path would continue to allow her this respite and she wanted to find the others before then. Somehow Mitei was not at all sure that she would be able to resist the draw of the dying once she began feeling ill again. It had to be now or possibly never
to find her friends.
When Aedan finally came round he surprised them both, pulling her into a rather uncomfortable embrace before his eyes had fully opened. Mitei patted his shoulder, “still not your goddess you know.”
Aedan was human enough to blush as he let her up, though she noticed he still did not let her hand go. Probably wise, since neither of them had a full idea of how this place worked now that they had found it again, “now, what?”
“We walk.”
***
It took some serious convincing to get Jules on board. Leo wasn’t surprised and didn’t begrudge her the minutes, or hours that they debated. The woman had only recently been saved – after – being blown up, it was understandable that she had some serious reservations when he said someone had to die. He let her rant, ramble and try to talk him out of it and took no small pride that he didn’t resort to name calling despite her tirade. For each of her arguments he had a counter and eventually, slowly he wore her out till she was forced to come down to the honest heart of all her objections.
“I don’t want to die again,” she said huddled in as small of a ball as she could get herself into. Her entire body shook violently as she forced the words out, “not the way we would have to do. Or at all. I - just don’t want to do it again.”
“I know,” Leo said crouching beside her and putting and arm around her shaking shoulders. “I never said you should be the one to do it this time.” He felt her go limp in relief a moment before she turned to look at him all shocked eyes and bewilderment. “It’s my turn, you’ve been through more than enough already.”
“But this…”
He waved away her halfhearted argument with ease, “you were right, I haven’t helped Mitei much at all up to now and I’ve been a hysterical ass since you met me. I think you’ve earned the right to strangle the living daylights out of me.”