Mitei smiled, then nodded and Leo gestured her towards the stairs. Watching as she stood and preceded him down the stairs, taking note of the cast off shoes and her lack of hooded robe he relaxed. Even if she is wearing a business suit instead of a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt, I doubt she’d come to kill me again without the robe.
The thought though irrational put a smile on his face as he followed Mitei down the stairs, through the living room and into the kitchen. She moved into the space and took a seat on a stool by the island without waiting for him to turn on a light, Leo decided that despite appearing relatively normal those hazel eyes of Mitei’s must come with a few added bells and whistles like better than human night vision as he reached around the kitchen door frame and flipped on the overhead lights.
With the lights on the kitchen sparkled, partly due to the stainless steel everywhere, partly due to the high shine he polished everything to and partly due to the colorful accents Leo had scattered about. The entire effect was completely different from the rest of the house, where the living room was almost store room cold and the bedroom felt like a spa retreat the kitchen was both inviting and full of life. Leo moved into the space and busied himself making the coffee for a few moments. It had never dawned on him before how warm the kitchen felt, the thought as he pulled the coffee beans from the freezer and ground them.
The atmosphere of the place seemed unmistakable in the presence of Death. Leo smiled to himself as he measured coffee into the percolator and took a damp cloth to the grinds that had missed the pot. I suppose this is why people who’ve had near Death experiences all say they’ve felt a renewed love of life, he thought as he bundled the tools and coffee away again.
“Why did you not come to the L.A. office Mr. Kaylor?”
The question was again tinged with a faint amusement and Leo glanced at the woman sitting at his kitchen island. Mitei had propped both elbows on top and her head rested on interlaced fingers, he took a moment to scan her eyes, seeing the amusement but not the source he turned back to the cabinet and pulled out a couple mugs noting as he did that he had a set of six but had never had as many guests.
“Is that why you’re here?” Leo asked as he turned back to the island and placed a mug in front of Mitei. “Have you some terribly important position that only I can fill then.”
Mitei picked up the mug and turned it over in her hands, it was made of hand thrown clay with a leaf pattern etched into it and glazed about the rim and inside with a warm walnut color. Leo watched her examine it, trying to get another look into her eyes but with her lashes lowered they were as impossible to read as the rest of her. With the mug immobile in her pale hands Mitei looked almost a marble statue, perfect and poised mid motion, the kind Leo always expected to clear their vision with a blink and be on their merry way at any second.
“Actually, I think I do have the perfect position for you.” Mitei said putting down the mug and meeting his gaze with her own.
“What?”
“I think you would make a lovely secretary Mr. Kaylor.”
Leo turned from the island with a snort of suppressed amusement, “Leo, remember,” he said and pulled open the refrigerator door rummaging for the cream, placed the carton on the counter and turned back to the cabinets, pulling down a creamer and a sugar bowl and began filling each. “You mean to tell me that you came here to find one more person to do your filing for you?”
When silence was all the response he received Leo put down the sugar container and turned to regard Mitei once again. Her hands were fiddling with the long length of snowy hair, tugging and pulling it back into a messy plait, the motion so inexpert it was obvious she was absorbed with the task, perhaps she hadn’t even heard the question, he thought as he turned back to the task of pouring sugar into the small ceramic dish.
“My secretaries do not do much filing Leo.”
Leo picked up both sugar dish and creamer and brought them to the island.
“I suppose that does sound a bit too ‘everyday’ for secretaries at Death Inc.” Leo said as he got the percolator and poured the coffee.
“I suppose,” Mitei said white brows knitting together. “They do things like bring me coffee.”
“Oh,” Leo said with a snicker. “Admittedly, that’s a good deal easier than being a teacher.”
Mitei spooned sugar and poured cream into her coffee then looked up at him. It was impossible to mistake the confusion in her eyes. He shifted his feet uncomfortably and busied himself sweetening his own coffee. It was obvious that she was serious and didn’t seem to understand his condescension.
“They make the offices a nice place for me.” Mitei said each word carefully spaced as if considering each carefully before speaking. “My offices are, imposing and cold, they are also, for lack of a better word, home. My home. The secretaries make them more inviting and warm for me, places it is good to return to…” She trailed off and he could have kicked himself; Mitei hadn’t been trying to demean him by offering him a minimum wage position; she had honestly been offering him what was, at least from her perspective, the best position her company had to offer.
“You mean these secretaries are your friends.” He said and sat down on another stool beside her. Mitei had said before that no one got to know her. Except, Leo now thought, maybe for these secretaries. He sipped at his coffee, but as people taking home a wage for their services Mitei could never be certain of their friendship, he shook his head. “I’m sorry Mitei. I can’t be your secretary.”
From this position he couldn’t see her eyes to read her emotions but he felt her stiffen on the stool. “But, I could always use a good friend,” he added. Seeing as friends are one thing I seem to be fresh out of.
The smile that Mitei graced him with then gave warmth to her face and set sparkles to dancing in those wonderful hazel eyes. All in all it transformed her lovely but distant features into warm beauty and Leo found himself smiling back.
***
Mitei left not long after. They had talked some more and Leo had gotten a better idea of what her life was like when he suggested they switch the barely padded stools for the sofa in the living room. Mitei had begun to precede him from the room and then, rethinking it had stepped aside to let him pass with the tray of coffee and other goodies and disappeared before her foot had touched the ground.
Watching her disappear before his eyes again had been every bit as disconcerting as their first meeting and he resolved to ask her not to do that the next time she popped in. This had of course reminded him that Mitei was likely to pop in anywhere at anytime completely unannounced and perhaps scaring passerby to death with the whole hooded Death thing.
Leo laughed himself silly and put away the coffee things noting as he did that the microwave clock read well past three in the morning. Lucky he had already decided to convalesce at home for a few more days before returning to teaching. As it was there was no need for him to contemplate the grim prospects of tossing for a couple of hours in a caffeine crippled nap and then rousing himself to more coffee and several hours on his feet.
Kitchen tidied and everything back in its rightful place Leo headed back up the stairs and to his waiting feather mattress. Even with all the caffeine screaming through his veins the bed was still a delightful prospect. Though it wasn’t until Leo sunk into the feathery depths that he realized how tired he was despite the caffeine. Healing or no healing it was obvious to him as he slipped off into slumber that he wasn’t completely healthy yet.
***
There cannot be anything more disconcerting then stepping sideways out of a comfy kitchen barefoot at night and onto a rocky hillside still barefoot sometime during the day; Mitei decided as she picked herself up from where she had tumbled down the slope. She dusted off her new suit and surveyed the scene of her latest arrival. The countryside stretched bleak and mostly empty of life, human and otherwise. She stood on one of many steep and hilly slopes consisting mostly of rocks, dust and spotty vegetation. Nothin
g seemed to be in immediate distress but Mitei knew from long experience that that did not mean nothing was about to die. Pulling the List from the air beside her with one hand, she began to beat at her rumpled suit with the other. It looked like the expensive garment was going to need to be sent out to a tailor, one of the seams had popped and there was dust ground into it all over. Nothing a good tailor could not fix though, she thought, and unrolled the List.
Before she had even unrolled the List properly Mitei could tell that something serious was going to happen, and soon. Usually the List was quite short; a reflection of the few human names that were left on it after she had given out the assignments at the various offices. The only names that were not given to one of the workers were those in places that her workers simply could not get to, like a sold out flight were someone was scheduled for a heart attack or a space shuttle about to blow up shortly after takeoff. Sometimes, there were events that were just too dangerous for Mitei to send her employees to. Fires for example, Mitei never sent a worker into a fire be it in a building or in the woods, they would obviously be in danger of dying themselves. So things like fires remained in her sole purview, during disasters, Mitei was simply the only one who could safely go. Always when the assignment was more than one or two names, the List was longer to reflect it.
The List that Mitei held now was rolling down the hill.
A quick scan over the times next to each name indicated that several hundred were to die within moments of each other. Forgetting that she had real feet and that she had left her shoes in Leo’s condo, Mitei stomped down hard on a rock and was too wrapped up in the problem at hand to notice either the sharp pain in her foot or the rocks crumbling to powder beneath her dainty toes.
Even if the Path decided to behave itself there was no way that she could make it to all those people at the same time, she was going to have to cast a pall. Mitei ran a hand through the wisps of snowy hair that had already escaped her clumsy attempt at a plait, I started the company to cut down on this sort of thing especially, she glanced at her watch; exceedingly unpleasant or not, there is still a job to do and no one else to do it, she thought and stood a little straighter on the hill.
Attempting to pull off one of her fingers proved both futile and painful so Mitei settled for pulling out a few strands of silken hair. She stared at the pathetic strands a moment and then began to weave them together, where before her fingers had proved inept at plaiting they proved deft now as she wove a dark net from strands of snowy silk. Letting the ends of the net catch in a wind that blew only along the Path, Mitei felt the disorientation of the pall taking on part of whatever made her Death and seeking out those whose names were on the List. Chanting softly each name, as if they were etched on memory and she needed no List, she felt the pall find each appointment and settle into their shadows and skin waiting for the time to release them from their bodies.
The world swaying dizzily in front of her was Mitei’s clue that the pall had settled over all those people and – she paused a moment sensing along the path and connecting with the far flung bits of herself, yes, with the plants and animals along the way as well. For a moment her vision was prismatic as if each bit of the pall was another eye she could look through and Mitei stumbled blindly for a moment trying to harness her sight back within the bounds of a single body. She shook herself and clasped shaking fingers to her head, there was a throbbing in the back of her skull that had never been there before; not in plague or holocaust, never when she had cast a pall before had it been exactly pleasant but never had she felt such pain either.
Mitei shook her head to clear it and was surprised to find that the shaking had only made the pain worse. First I cannot pull off a finger and now this, she mashed her palms against her temples suddenly and unpleasantly reminded that she was not quite pleased with the new state of her body. Pulling the List from the air again, a quick glance informed her that though the pall would take out most of the most immediate cases, there were still quite a few names left before she could go back to the offices and let the workers here have the rest. Mitei raised her foot and nearly slipped down the hill as it began to shake beneath her heel.
Earthquake then, she thought and stepped quickly forward on the Path.
***
The ground seemed to dance beneath her feet as she walked, the Path seemed intent on keeping her moving just a little ahead of the shifting landscape. Mitei found the whole thing mildly disconcerting as she moved, quickly placing each foot in front of the other and removing one from ground that seemed to shift or crumble beneath her toes. Move she did and in a hurry, in her new state she was not entirely certain how well she would fare is she fell, the Path continued to dance her along toward her appointments and she decided to concentrate on the task at hand losing herself in the comfort of her purpose.
The Pall snapped into sudden effect and the shock of it nearly flung her to her knees. Her vision wavered as she was forcibly connected with those far flung pieces of herself again, each one taking a bit of her mind and will and whatever made her death and reaching for each of the people, animals, plants that was on the List. There was the sensation of touching hundreds of people and things, the image of sudden darkness the smell of blood, bile and the special reek of hundreds of bowels emptying at once.
Mitei’s consciousness snapped back into her new body and she stumbled forward. The Path warped her another step forward and out of the path of the sliding earth she had previously been precariously close to. Still, a falling branch nicked her as she passed leaving a gash. There was blood but she was too intent on her current task to notice any more oddities of the body. It had become far too distracting, without realizing it Mitei reached deep inside and found a trigger, a core of her being that could not be touched by whim or time. Death.
Moving with the Path instead of just on it now Mitei found each of the names on her List. The new body refusing to be abandoned kept sending sensations and refused to allow her quite as much freedom as she was used to in such circumstances. Finger and toe nails snapped off, a few bones probably broke but Mitei was beyond caring as she sought out each appointment. There was a simple joy in it; keeping her appointments and having them all turn out as they should.
Here was a man that was half crushed by his roof, he was beyond screaming and could only weep in quiet agony; he welcomed her touch, as did his wife upstairs and their oldest child who had been playing behind the building. It hurt, but this was a joyous time. So many welcomed her with open arms, few even thought of arguing. None had the strength to struggle against her and she had not the time to indulge any if they had wanted to try. There had been a good few thousand names on her List when she had stood at the top of that hill and she had only a few minutes to take care of all of them. Falling debris hit her repeatedly and stopped her not at all as the Path took her into what was probably a hospital
She passed from room to room and sometimes into the corridors. No one asked her name, or remarked on her appearance none seemed to care. All seemed to know her for their Death and most went quickly with opened arms. Mitei did not even pause to touch them. It was not necessary, just to be there with them seemed all the permission they needed. They fled their damaged bodies without hesitation. Children and strong willed young people alike, when faced with the absolute incontrovertible ruin of having their skulls crushed, ribs cracked, lungs, heart, stomach and other organs punctured; these people who would have in other instances fought to keep on living, were eager for her.
There was joy here. Joy in releasing these poor mortals. Joy in fulfilling her purpose once again. There was sadness as well. Some called for her, screamed, begged, cried for death. She could not go to all of them. This one, his head cracked open his brains a soup on the concrete, he would be that way for a few hours perhaps days more. He was not on the List now though and he would have to wait till it was his proper time. That one there, with the fractured hip and shattered leg, he was a promising athlete. Passed out now with
the pain he was mercifully silent, but if she had passed him by a moment before or come back later while he was being pieced back together in the hospital he would be demanding her presence most forcibly. This woman, her back broken and her arms reaching towards the child that was on her List; this one could nearly see her, this woman’s determination so great to join her child in death, there was little doubt in Mitei’s mind that her name would be appearing on the List shortly. But not today, not now and there were so many others that were on the List. So many whose time had come. Still, Mitei took a step toward the woman, intending to offer what little comfort an invisible touch could and stepped onto the scene of another appointment just like that.
It was – frustrating -- that. Always only able to offer to those in their time the release that some sought so desperately. Still there was relief in this as well. Everyone was dying as they ought. Despite what had been happening the last few days each and every one of those thousand or so that was on her current List was passing without any incident. No chill fire, no improbable healing. They all just died. Moved on or disappeared but stopped living good and proper. Yes proper. Mitei smiled, soothing that, the sensation that everything was again just as it was supposed to be. All in its proper order. Life and Death working properly together again each in their proper time and place; she felt good. Really good.
Despite the rips, tares, bleeding, possible fractures that this new body had sustained her steps became light. Nearly dancing on her bare toes Mitei did a rare thing – she sang. Nearly dancing, though the path had become much more stable as the ground had stopped shaking, she sang. Wordless, sweet, joyous and soothing as she worked her way along her path, her voice defying the confines of the new body and reaching depths and heights that should have been impossible for something resembling a frail human female.
The song itself twisted along the Path faster then her steps, traveling to each on her List and a few that were not. It was not a lament, but it was still undeniably Death’s song. To the dying it brought comfort, they could hear her coming for them and nothing that sounded so sweet could be that terrifying. To the rare living that could hear it, the song awakened a fervent wish. A passion for the sweet soothing joy that that song promised; this would not manifest as a death wish in some. For those rare beings that saw no possibility of joy in death, they would search for joy and sweetness in life a newer passion in living that they would probably attribute to their luck in surviving the disaster of the earthquake. But for the rest, there would be the death wish, a certainty that the peace they seek could only be found in death.