Chapter 8: The Bark of Nephys

One of the iconic moments of Dante's Inferno is a scene where he and his guide, the Roman poet Virgil, embark across an ocean of damned souls in a small boat.

When I knew that I would be writing a story set in the afterlife, I decided I had to put my characters in a small boat, and that the voyage would have to deal with the doubt and peril of the afterlife.

Don't try to look for too close of literary parallels.  I'm not sure that the characters of Maggie, Nephys are in any way analogous to Virgil and Dante (to say nothing of Hiero!), just try to enjoy the little nod to one of my favorite pieces of literature.

(As always, the previous seven chapters are available.  Here are the links for the previous excerpts: The New Prologue, Chapter One – which was the old prologue – Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six & Chapter Seven.  And you can download the whole book for FREE, this week only.  Details here.)

Chapter Eight
The Bark of Nephys

After all that screaming, the trip back to the necropolis in the skiff seemed eerily silent. The air was still and stagnant, and even the movement of the boat could not seem to stir it. Nephys was in the back, tired, and poling the boat forward. The woman sat dejectedly in the middle, her palms in her lap, her eyes vacant, near catatonic. Her head hung limply to one side, without focus. She had passed from panic, to despair to outright horror in the space of half an hour. Now she was just numb. Nephys felt it too. Only Hiero seemed to be happy, bouncing lightly on his mismatched feet in the prow. It had been a veritable smorgasbord of negative emotions. Nephys figured Hiero had been well fed on the outburst. It had been a lot of screaming.

“Vicious little imp,” thought Nephys. No wonder he went looking for these souls.

And it was a bit of luck too. Horror was an entirely different feeling than despair. The sound of her screaming had cleared away the approaching shades like a foghorn. Then there was the wreck. Ten minutes into the screaming fit, the tree and wreck had sprung to life. It pulled up its roots, which turned into a giant chicken leg, grew batwing ears and hopped around on the single appendage, a grotesque, metal, tree monster clanging its hood and trunk like a mouth on either end. All that horror had given birth to a monstrous new imp. The sight of that had guaranteed another ten minutes of screaming alone. For a moment, it looked like it might turn on the three of them, but Hiero brandished his knife at it ferociously with honks that sounded suspiciously like “Mine! Mine!” It stormed off and was probably halfway to the wastes on the other side of the swamp by now.

The silence after the screaming was so profound that when she finally spoke it surprised both Nephys and Hiero.

“I had hoped someone would be waiting for me,” she said quietly.

Hiero turned to look back at Nephys and then just snorted dismissively. Nephys grimaced at him, but said nothing.

“It’s not like I was expecting a whole big family reunion or anything,” she said after a while longer.

“Fhwerpan?” Hiero tooted querulously. She paid him no mind.

“…or checkered tablecloths spread on the grass…and water fights…and grandparents, or noodle salad, but you would think there would be someone waiting for me.”

She breathed in slowly and took a pause. She drew her knees up and hugged them to her chest, resting her chin on them.

“Verroooont?” Hiero gave Nephys an odd look. Nephys just shrugged and pushed the skiff forward a little faster.

“I guess I was really naïve.”

There was another long pause. Nephys said nothing.

“Is this…I mean…is this where…bad…people…go?”

Nephys had been dreading this question. Sooner or later any spirit that made it this far asked that question. People in the living world were obsessed with judgment and validation. Nephys’ grandmother had told him that his heart would be weighed against the feather of truth and that if his heart wasn’t lighter than the feather, it would be eaten by a monster. Nephys’ uncle had told him that was nonsense. He was a soldier and had survived many battles. He believed that Mithras, who had slain the Bull of Heaven, had protected him, and that he would not abandon him at the end, but there was no Mithras here.

Whatever Nephys had believed in life, he couldn’t remember exactly, he just knew it wasn’t this. There was no judgment, no condemnation or sermons when souls passed through the gates of Erebus. Kings, paupers, saints and sinners; they were all the same. They were only catalogued and measured and passed on – they weren’t even told where to go. A few asked directions, which the Children of Limbo would be happy to give them, if they had any, but it didn’t matter anyway because all paths led to equally displeasing places. Once catalogued, the souls were not anyone’s concern. Some lingered, others wandered. Some went to the pits of punishment to the South, some disappeared into the wastes to the West and became shades or lost souls. Others just ceased to be at all. Most faded away or disappeared eventually, to where exactly, no one really knew. Nowhere, probably, Nephys guessed.

Nephys realized he should say something to her.

“No,” he began sympathetically, “this is where everyone goes.”

“Everyone?” she said gingerly.

“Everyone,” Nephys replied.

Her face tightened as if suppressing a sob, but then she remained silent for a long while as Nephys directed the skiff across a rare section of open water. Black lotus blossoms floated beside the boat and the way became easier. They were getting closer to the edges of the city.

After a long while she spoke again softly.

“Is it all like this? I mean…isn’t there anywhere…with any warmth or light…it’s just that…after all the stories…” she trailed off.

Nephys understood how she felt. Expectations for the afterlife were very high; it was hard not to be disappointed.

“Well…” Nephys began trying to say something positive about his home, but couldn’t think of anything, “Yes, it’s mostly all like this,” Nephys gulped. It hadn’t seemed quite so bad yesterday, but after this morning, the weight felt heavier than it had in centuries. He started again…“Once there were nicer places. Not as nice as you imagine, but …nicer.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“How so?”

Nephys sighed, “Well, once…long ago…the city was much bigger and brighter. There were orchards and springs. There was even a school of philosophers.”

“Philosophers? Really?”

“Oh yes, some of the greats: Aristotle, Menephis, Nasruddin, they all organized it.”

“They were here?”

“Oh yes, they were all here. Epicurus was the most disappointed by the existence of the afterlife, but Diogenes thought it was the perfect ending to a cruel joke.”

“You met Epicurus?” she asked incredulously. She was distracted now, which was better, so Nephys continued.

“Yes.”

“You took lessons from him?”

Nephys sighed through his nose, which was the closest he could come to laughing anymore. “No…not really. I heard Seneca give a few lessons, he lasted longer than most, but I mostly stayed away.” Nephys paused. “Our kind, I mean the Children of Limbo, weren’t supposed to mix with the others.” The woman didn’t answer, so he continued.

“Well, in their day…they piled the ruins of the old city up higher until it made a hill, an acropolis, and there they built their temples and stoas, gathered the people, shared ideas, even played music, but that’s all gone now. Some even managed to grow trees and plant fields, and for a while, there were farms all around the city and laughing and pleasure, at least of a sort, here in the afterlife, but it was only a pale echo of the world above. They gave it a name…they called it…”

“Elysium,” the woman whispered.

Nephys almost smiled. Not many souls knew the old names anymore. “If there were ever a golden age here…below…that was it.”

“What happened to it?” she said softly.

“It fell apart.”

“Why?”

“Everything falls apart,” Nephys said flatly, “That’s just the way things are.”

“Yes, but what about all those great thinkers? Where did they all go?”

“They’re still here…out there…somewhere. Maybe.” He shrugged. He didn’t really know. He just knew that no one had seen them in ages.

She huffed an angry sigh. “And the fields? What happened to the fields, the gardens; where are they now? The Plains of Asphodel should at least have asphodel flowers shouldn’t they?”

There once had been fields of flowers, asphodel and narcissa and daffodils, the flowers of forgetfulness. Nephys looked around, he wasn’t certain exactly where the old gardens and fields had been, they were all flooded now. “Somewhere around here I guess.”

“Here?” She said quizzically. “Under the water?”

“Yes.”

“Well, …I mean…how did that happen, what of the river Acheron…I mean the stories, is that all true?”

Nephys was impressed. This woman knew more about the underworld than most spirits these days.

“The Acheron is gone,” Nephys said flatly, “Once it ringed all of Limbo, but it over-flooded its banks long ago. This marsh is what’s left of the fields of Asphodel and Elysium, other than the small part surrounding the city and the ruins of the acropolis.”

“But…” she began then stopped. Nephys could tell she was confused. To be honest, it didn’t make much sense to him either, so he gave the pole a strong push that set the bark on a long glide that would give him time to contemplate without working.

“The people on your side…” he began, “There must be quite a lot of them now.”

“Billions,” she said.

“We could tell. An awful lot of them have been coming down. More people on Earth, means more dead down here…only things here work differently than things up there.”

“How so?”

“Up there, dreams, memories, hopes and feelings, they all seem real, but you can’t touch them, they’re not…real, not really there…but down here…” Nephys paused, he needed to give the bark another push through the brackish water.

“Down here?” she prompted him.

“Down here…those are the only things that are real.”

She was silent, but Nephys went on.

“When you die, all those dreams, feelings, emotions; where do you suppose they go?”

“Down here I guess.”

She was starting to understand.

“The River Acheron, its water, it was the well of those feelings, those dreams. That was the source of its waters…but…”

“But?” she interrupted.

“But…” Nephys continued, “More people means more dead, more dead means more departed dreams and feelings, more departed dreams mean…”

“More water.”

“Exactly. The River Acheron overflowed its banks long ago, sometime after the Black Death, and it hasn’t receded much since. Oh, the tide of the river had always ebbed and flowed, but from that time on, it just kept encroaching on the land.” Nephys pushed the bark and paused again. After a while the woman started again.

“What about the Ferryman, what’s his name…Chiron? Is that real too? I mean…you’re not him…are you?” She turned around to look at him, then turned back to look at Hiero, who was wheezing faintly in smug laughter. Whatever her vision of the ferryman, it must not have been a thirteen-year-old boy and a possessed bagpipe.

“Him? Oh, he left long ago. Couldn’t keep up with the traffic. To make the passing easier, we knocked over the remains of the city and filled in the gap between the city and the gates of Erebus. Now, instead of a ferryman, there is a broad path of rubble…oh, and the charge is free now, so I guess that’s an improvement.”

He tried to smile at her, but she wasn’t looking. That was fine because he was certain he hadn’t done it right. There was another long pause, and Nephys could start to see the faint, dim outline of the tombs and docks on the edge of the city which, with his poor eyesight, must mean they were getting close.

“So, that’s your job down here…recovering lost souls in the marshes?”

Hiero made a series of panting, punting sounds that sounded like chortling. Vicious ol’ windbag.

“Um…no…not really,” Nephys stated nervously, “This is more of a hobby…really.”

“A hobby?!” she sounded a little indignant, but it subsided. “So, what do you do down here?”

“I’m a scribe,” Nephys stated with some pride.

“A scribe? What do you scribble?”

Nephys was a little insulted by the word “scribble,” but let it go.

“Everything. The underworld is more than just the well of human souls.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes,” Nephys explained, “Books, works of art, treasures of knowledge, when it passes out of human sight, it comes here and is made real, just like your…” he was about to say “car,” but decided not to for fear it would remind her of unpleasant things. “Well, any book or piece of writing. But it doesn’t last forever, it fades over time, just like the…”

“People?” she said suddenly interrupting him. Then she got very still. Nephys hadn’t meant to say people, but it was true enough, so he let it slide past him. He gave a few vigorous prods on the long pole and guided the bark towards the docks.

“Well, someone has to record it permanently, in indelible ink, forever in the houses of the Great Master.”

“Great Master?” she asked querulously, but there was something odd in her voice, as if she already knew the answer to her question.

“Yes, the only deathless one here. Death himself.”

“Hmmph.” She snorted. “So no noodle salad or picnics, but Death is real? That’s just great.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I suppose he’s a fright, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know.” Nephys looked for a good spot to dock. The dock was cluttered with broken and half-sunken vessels, and he didn’t want to lose this one after having taken care of it for so long. “Almost, no one ever sees him. He lives deep in a sanctuary in the center of the city, and even then he is always covered in shrouds – at least that’s what they say.” Nephys pushed further down the docks; he was too far from his house here and needed a closer spot to moor the little boat.

“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 Earth, 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 her 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, 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.

“I have to go to work. You should stay here. I will come back for you tonight. You can stay at my tomb…I mean house.” He didn’t want to panic her. “Hiero, here, will show you the way and look after you.”

“BUH-PlaaaaaarrGANTKPH!!” Hiero almost dropped his knife.

“No arguments, Hiero.” And, for once, the diseased sheep’s bladder stopped it’s bleating. Nephys turned back to the woman.

“I have to go, but I will return, I promise, just go to the house and try…” he chose his words carefully, “to stay calm.”

Nephys got only five steps away when the woman called out after him.

“What’s your name?”

He stopped and turned around slowly. “Nephys,” he replied.

“Neth puss?” she tried to pronounce it.

“No, Neph-ys,” he tried to say more didactically. He was well aware his name hardly existed amongst the living, and no one spoke his language anymore. No one ever got the “pf” sound right.

“Nep-fus?” she tried again.

“Close enough,” Nephys replied.

She paused and looked away and then looked directly at him. “My name is Maggie. Maggie Miller.”

He nodded and almost turned to go when she called out again.

“If you hadn’t come out there to get me, I would have turned into…into one of them, one of those shades, wouldn’t I?”

Nephys shrugged and then nodded yes.

“Thank you,” she replied.

Nephys felt flushed for a moment. No one said “thank you” here. Things were what they were and that was that. Nephys glanced nervously from side to side and didn’t know what to do or say. The woman shifted her position and straightened her back, raising her chin a little, and stuck her hands into her back pockets. Suddenly, a subtle transformation came over Maggie Miller. She looked sterner, and if there were any trace of sadness in her left, Nephys couldn’t see it. She suddenly reminded him of what he hoped his mother must have looked like – dark-haired, beautiful but mature, resolute yet comforting all at once.

“Well, you best get along, Neppy,” she said suddenly, “I’d hate to think we’d lose some timeless classic because you didn’t get to work in time to copy it.” When she said that, Nephys suddenly wanted to stay, but he turned and walked down the dim, grey, sepulchral street. As he turned the corner, he heard Maggie Miller talk to Hiero, “Well, you bloated, little sack of nightmare fuel and flat notes, let’s see how bad this place really is, shall we?” The frustrated little bleat that came from Hiero after that was the most priceless sound Nephys had ever heard the evil instrument play and it buoyed up Nephys all the way to work.

Chapter Five: Meet Maggie Miller

Meet Maggie Miller.

Maggie is the mother of Lucy, our second main protagonist that we meet in the new prologue and in chapter two. (Which was the old chapter one before we added the new prologue - I know, it's confusing, trust me.  This post explains everything.)

As always you can find previous chapters, here, here, here & here

This chapter introduces us more to the world of Limbo, and how our protagonist Nephys, really is an odd duck, to say nothing of his companion Hiero.

I hope you enjoy it.

Update:  I originally titled this blog entry as "The Bark of Nephys" - that's a couple of chapters on.  Mistakes like that happen when you decide to change the chapter order at the last moment.  Oops.

Chapter Five
The Marsh of Lost Souls

Nephys thrust the punting pole down into the reedy, black mud and slowly pushed the skiff forward on the stagnant water. Hiero was at the prow like some demented figurehead, scanning the featureless horizon. From where he stood in the stern, Nephys could barely see above the tall reeds. They were well beyond the plains of Limbo now, out into the marshes and dark swamps that surrounded it for miles. Nephys didn’t like going out this far, but fortunately, he still remembered how to navigate his boat through the thick bulrushes like he did when he was alive. There wasn’t much he remembered, but he did remember that. They hadn’t seen many shades though, so he had that to be grateful for.

“Do you see anything yet?”

“Fhank-blatt,” the bagpipe spluttered.

That meant “no.” An imp could sniff out a suffering soul like a bloodhound could sniff out a blood trail – except imps could do it over open water. Suffering was their life bread – they fed on it, and it didn’t take much to set them on the scent…a galling mistake, a frustrating afternoon, an embarrassing memory that suddenly came rushing back, anything really, and an imp would be on you like a tick. Still, the two of them had never been out quite this far or long before, and Nephys was getting nervous. Shades could be as hungry as imps were, though they preferred the taste of sadness and despair.

“Are you sure you sensed something this way?”

Hiero’s whooshing breath went silent for a moment, and then the bagpipe exploded. “Fhank, thaaaarn, thookooool bummm-paaaarhntf!!!” which, as near as Nephys could translate meant, “If you’re so darn anxious to get there, then why don’t you…USE YOUR DEATH SIGHT ALREADY!!”

It was true. Nephys could use the inner sight and all the reeds would become like glass and he could see to the horizon. The bright flame of a newly departed soul would be easy to see, but he had already used the Death Sight once this morning. Each time you used the Sight, it caused your natural eyes to atrophy a little more and he wasn’t quite ready to go blind that much sooner. Turning back had it’s own risks though. He didn’t want an angry, psychotic bagpipe following him around all day.

He was just about to suggest giving up when Hiero bleated out a triumphant, discordant note. Hiero plunged the big butcher knife forward with his spidery arm and nearly threw himself out of the boat in the process. Nephys could see something above the reeds ahead. The water grew shallower and Nephys pushed the boat forward onto a nearby shoal. Hiero was out of the boat and splashing ahead, using the knife like a machete to clear a path, hooting and slashing in anticipation.

“Noisy thing,” muttered Nephys. He’d bring every shade within a furlong down on them. Fortunately, shades were just as scared of imps as everyone else. Nephys secured the boat and stepped off; his feet sunk deep into the black muck. It pulled and sucked at every footstep. Eventually, Nephys managed to find firm ground and pulled himself free, following Hiero’s trumpeting cacophony. The ground here was firmer and drier and the reeds became less thick; with a final push, Nephys pressed on past the rushes into a small, damp clearing. Hiero was nearby, silent, and even Nephys gaped at what he saw.

It was a tree, a large tree, with two large trunks, shaped like a “V.” High up, higher than a person could reach was some awful, huge, twisted hunk of metal and glass squeezed in the scissor grip of the tree, like a poor animal in a trap. The tree was denser and more solid and somehow more real than its surroundings.

Once, there had been trees in Limbo, whole orchards in fact, but now there were none outside of a few twisted, dead trunks near the acropolis of the city. The whole landscape of Limbo had changed over the centuries. The plains progressively got swampier. The center of Limbo was getting lower as well. Like a sandcastle melting in the surf, the whole of Limbo was slowing eroding. Since the orchards of the dead had disappeared long ago, this tree could only have come from one place – it had been dragged from the land of the living.

Such things were not impossible, but they didn’t happen very often. Most souls arrived in Limbo in the usual way, through the gates of Erebus, muttering, disoriented, and bearing the wounds and marks of the method of their parting. They were generally not in the best of sorts, but they knew they were dead and more or less resigned to something like a compliant state. There, the servants of Death processed them, recorded their names and measured their wounds, but it was not the only way to get to the afterlife.

The world of the living lay over the top of the underworld like a tablecloth on a table. In certain places and at certain times it could be very thin. So thin, that if a person’s death was violent enough, traumatic enough, it could tear through and drop them here, in the swamps surrounding Limbo, or further away, in the barren desert wastes that surrounded the Pits of Punishment. When that happened, the dead often dragged something, an echo you could call it, a psychic manifestation of their death, with them. A murder victim could conjure the weapon that had killed him. A person who was long sick on their deathbed would often bring a shadow of that bed with them, but Nephys had never seen someone drag a whole tree after them before. The soul must have been wrenched from life suddenly with a near unfathomable amount of pain and horror, like an arm torn from its socket by a wild beast. No wonder Hiero could smell this thing from so far off.

Nephys scanned the tree and the twisted hunk of metal. He recognized the wheels and suddenly knew what it was. Over thousands of years, the arriving souls had changed their dress and language a great deal, but for most of that time Nephys could tell the world was largely the same place he had left. Every culture had its bakers and blacksmiths, millers, scribes and politicians, housewives, maids, and cobblers. People were people and no matter how strange or foreign, they still had to eat and they still got around by horses and carts, but in the last century that had all changed. Spirits started showing up with strange devices of no discernable purpose. Worse yet were the ones with horrifying wounds with bits of glass and metal embedded in them. Some carried strange wheels still gripped tightly in their hands, while others had the marks of wheels on them, heavy wheels that crushed their bodies as they passed.

In snatches of conversations between these new arrivals he had overheard how men now moved about in strange, fast-moving carts­­ – metal and glass carriages powered by steam and fire without horses. How these conveyances worked was a mystery to Nephys, but it was certainly some sort of evil magic, because they extracted a heavy toll. Never had so many mangled souls entered the Gates of Erebus before. The Children of Limbo referred to them as “death-carts” and were convinced they were a conspiracy on the part of the Great Master to speed up the work. Nephys had never seen a whole one before, but this mangled metal thing stuck in the tree had to be one of them.

“Phlarnk!” Hiero nudged Nephys’ leg, hooted and gestured with his nose trumpet. Nephys could see a woman struggling frantically at the base of the tree. She was desperately trying to climb it to reach the metal carcass of the death cart, but she instead clawed helplessly at the bark, sliding back down to the ground. With each failed attempt, she became more desperate until she collapsed at the base of the tree, sobbing hysterically.

“Fhwooootonk!”

Hiero was right. They had to put an end to this right away. All that crying was bound to attract some shades. There were certainly shades nearby, and Nephys didn’t want to meet up with any way out here. Touching a single shade was like thrusting your hand under ice water for several minutes. If several shades surrounded you, it was like falling into an icy lake, and release only came when you managed to escape or became a shade yourself.

Nephys quickly padded over to the sobbing woman. Hiero splashed alongside him in the puddles like a lame, but excited, dog. When he got closer he could see that she was tall and thin and dark haired, but not young. Middle-aged he guessed. It was hard to tell her age exactly; after a while all of the dead looked the same to Nephys. She was dressed in the strange, tight-fitting pants that so many souls wore now, but they looked uncomfortably binding to him. Nephys stopped just a few feet short of her and didn’t know what to say or do. Hiero looked from Nephys to her and back to Nephys again.

“Haaaarnt!” Hiero hooted exasperatedly. Then he shoved Nephys hard behind the knees until he nearly fell over.

“Stop that!” Nephys muttered hoarsely.

“fhun, fhun, fhun…weeeeeeenarn,” Hiero bleated sulkily. He hated dithering.

“Alright then, fine.” Nephys took a few cautious, small steps forward. Nothing was worse than being less decisive than a demonic wind instrument. Nephys approached carefully and said nervously, “Hello.”

The woman didn’t notice and kept on sobbing. Nephys tried a little louder, this time with some throat clearing as well. Still nothing. Nephys had learned many languages working as a scribe in the record houses of the dead. He tried various greetings in several of these, but still nothing. She couldn’t see him. She couldn’t hear him. It was like he wasn’t there at all. This was bad. A soul torn so swiftly and violently from the land of the living was often in such a state of shock, it couldn’t be made to understand the nature of its new reality. Most did not even know they were dead. If she couldn’t be made to see the truth, and quickly, she would be locked forever in a state of denial, forever clawing at the base of the tree, sobbing. That is, until she became a shade, at which point she would wander without a thought at all, clinging only to the memory of the terrible sadness that had consumed her.

Persons who fell so far from the Gates of Erebus were rarely recovered. Their numbers were so small that the bureaucrats of Death could hardly be bothered with them. Anyone lost out here would usually become a lost soul, a shade, a mere memory of their former selves, with nothing but hunger to guide them.

Nephys wasn’t sure why Hiero kept dragging him out here to find these hard-luck cases. Perhaps he had become a connoisseur and the vulgar flavors of torture, rage and obscenity of the Pits of Punishment no longer appealed to him. Now he liked the salty wine of sadness and despair. He was an imp after all; it was in his guts – even if he didn’t have any. But none of that explained why he dragged Nephys along on these rescue missions. Nephys went all the same, but mostly out of boredom. Still, of all the scribes and courtiers of Limbo, why choose him to share these adventures? Nephys would have thought to ask him if he wasn’t certain that Hiero would respond with a string of flat, minor key raspberries.

The woman kept sobbing. Nephys felt the slightest trace of wind, and inside it was the touch of frost. The air of Limbo was normally as stagnant as the fetid pond water. The movement of air could mean only one thing. The shades had noticed them, and they were approaching. This was getting serious. Nephys was frozen in thought and deliberation, not knowing what to do – that is until Hiero snorted out a “BAARNT” and stabbed him in the back of his calf with the point of his butcher knife.

“YEAARRRGH!!!” Nephys screamed. He reached down and grabbed the calf in a moment of agony and looked as the gash Hiero had made quickly disappeared. Nephys glared at Hiero, who only blithely rolled his glassy eyes in indifference. The afterlife was full of bitter and cruel ironies. You could hardly feel light or warmth or cold, you couldn’t taste or smell anything but flatness or stagnation, you couldn’t feel your breath, or a heartbeat, and you lost your eyes a little day by day, but a deranged imp with a rusty butcher knife could still stab you and hurt you as real as anything. Then the wound would instantly fade, disappear entirely, so of course, the cursed imp felt no compunction against doing it again. Meanwhile, the wounds you acquired in life remained indelibly, permanent. Hiero had stabbed Nephys a dozen or more times, usually just to get his attention, and not a single wound remained a second afterward, but the large black gash across Nephys’ throat was always there.

However much Nephys disliked Hiero’s tactic, it had worked. The woman had noticed, and stirred herself from her despair. She stopped sobbing and stood up gingerly and spoke weakly. “Is…is someone there? Oh, please…anyone?! Can you hear me?!!”

Nephys stepped a little closer and said, “Yes, yes…we can hear you. I’m here.”

“Where?! Where?!! I can’t see you.” She said, even though she was standing less than two feet from Nephys and looking right at him.

“I’m right here. Are you alright?” Nephys tried to sound reassuring.

She gazed directly at him, her brow furrowing, she was having a hard time seeing him, but then she blinked a time or two and a look of surprise passed over her face as she finally recognized Nephys.

“Oh! Oh, thank God.” She lurched forward at Nephys and grabbed him by the shoulders. Nephys stood awkwardly not knowing what to do. “I’m so glad you’re here…I need help…we were driving…it was night. Some kid ran out into the street and …I don’t know what happened, but we went off the road into the trees. I must have been thrown from the car….” She continued on, disjointedly, occasionally sobbing between breaths, trying to collect her thoughts while Nephys nodded complacently.

This was not good. She may have seen Nephys, thanks to Hiero’s executive decision, but she was still not seeing him. She was still trapped in the delusion that this was the land of the living and that she was still alive. To her, Nephys was just some passerby who had come upon the accident. The newly dead saw what they wanted to see. This was a harder case than either he or Hiero had ever stumbled upon. Once, they had met a man who was convinced the swamp was the Florida everglades, and he wouldn’t leave until he had pulled in that big fish. He said this all the while not noticing the alligator bite-sized piece missing from his middle. When Hiero had stuck his knife through the empty space, the man came right to. Nephys had no idea what else to do in this situation but to play along and try to get her to listen. The hard part was finding a way to enter the woman’s one-sided conversation.

“Look, we are here to help you…” Nephys began awkwardly.

“I was driving when…out of nowhere!...was this boy…what on earth was a boy doing on the highway in the middle of the night?!!” She was rambling.

“I know this will be hard, but you need to listen to me,” Nephys tried to implore the lady, but she just continued her ranting; she was in shock.

“I must have been thrown from the car, but I can’t find her anywhere, so she must be up there still.”

“Look, I know this is hard, but…wait…her?” Nephys asked carefully.

“Yes, HER! My daughter. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!!” the woman screamed frantically, and just then a chill wind blew through Nephys. Shades were coming.

“I’ve looked all around, but I can’t find her! She must still be in the car!”

No wonder the woman was still in a state of denial; she was searching for her daughter and was still attached to the thought that she might be alive.

“Fhween,” Hiero hooted impatiently. Nephys glanced either way and then closed his eyes. In his Death Sight he could see dozens of shades slowly approaching, though still a few hundred yards off. He looked up to the strange vehicle, which was now like glass to his sight, but no soul flame was in the metal wreck. He opened his eyes again. Even from this short use they were dimmer.

“Your daughter isn’t in the…the thing up there…Now I know this must be hard, but we can’t wait, we must go…”

“What? What do you mean? Have you seen her?”

“Well no…” Nephys began, but the woman wouldn’t let him finish.

“Then how can you be certain she isn’t in the car?!” she said angrily gesturing at the metal thing in the tree.

Nephys had no easy answer for her. Trying to explain the Death Sight to her in her condition would be worse than useless.

“Look,” Nephys said exasperated, “if I can prove that your daughter isn’t in that…car…then will you go with us?”

She looked at him oddly, but was silent. Her eyes seemed to alight on the gash on his neck, but she closed her eyes and shook off whatever recognition had touched her.

“Yes,” she said tentatively, “I’ll go…but please hurry.”

Nephys nodded once at her and then turned to Hiero and raised his eyebrows at him while he tilted his head towards the tree.

“Fwhooont,” Hiero completely deflated, the pipes on his back laid down nearly flat.

“Don’t give me that!! I’m not the one that dragged us out here!! I can’t get up that tree and we need to get out of here and…”

“FHWEEM!” Hiero cut him off and was already thrashing ahead to the tree. Using the butcher knife like a pick, he clawed up to the wreck with remarkable speed. The woman moved aside as he passed and stared at him as if he had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. As Hiero stabbed at the glass and metal, she narrowed her eyes at him uncertain of what she was looking at. Whether she thought he was a trained monkey, or a rescue dog, or a hunchback dwarf, Nephys couldn’t tell, but she was so desperate to find her daughter she didn’t care.

Hiero began wrenching doors and parts off the wreck, raining them down below with little regard to who was underneath them. Nephys reached forward and pulled the woman out of the way. With great dispatch, Hiero passed through the whole vehicle, finally emerging from the gaping hole where the door had been and gave a short, flat hoot.

“Nothing there,” Nephys said, turning to face the woman, “Now we really need to be going.”

Nephys had turned to go and Hiero had already dropped to the damp ground beside him with a splash when the woman spoke.

“No,” she said in a whisper.

Nephys turned around. Hiero just wheezed impatiently.

“What?” Nephys said, “but you just said…”

“I DON’T CARE…what I said,” she replied resolutely. She had suddenly become far less hysterical and seemed almost calm. “I’m…I’m not leaving here without my daughter. She has to be around here somewhere. I’ll look over here while you look…”

Just then a cold breeze made Nephys shudder. They were running out of time. This had to stop. Nephys strode over to her and grabbed her by the shoulders, took a breath and blurted it out.

“Look, I know this is hard to understand, but I have some very tough news for you.”

She gazed at him and her momentary resolve began to slip. She looked down at him with moist eyes as if she were about to cry again. “You mean…” her voice trembled, “she didn’t make it?”

Nephys sighed. There was no easy way to say this.

“No,” Nephys said, “she did make it. You didn’t.”

A brief happy moment of relief that passed over her face was replaced by confusion.

“Look at me, and tell me what you see,” Nephys said forcefully.

She looked at Nephys and shook her head, looked away, but then cautiously looked back. Her eyes looked over his face – his strange eyes, his odd robes and some recognition flickered across her face. Then her eyes saw the black gash on his throat and the look turned to disgust. She closed her eyes quickly, shrugged off Nephys’ grip and stepped backward.

“No…” she spoke it softly, then louder, “NO!”

She was close now. She had, at least for a moment, acknowledged the possibility, but forced it away. She had seen something. Now Hiero stepped forward to seal the deal. He slowly stab-dragged his way to her feet, looked up at her and blew out a single, horrid, cacophonous note. Her eyes followed over his body with growing disgust and horror. At last, her mind could not find any last minute rationalization (Monkey? Pig? Mutant duck?) that could explain the hideous imp in front of her. The final realization hit her…she was dead…and then she screamed…for nearly twenty minutes.

My Own Worst Enemy. (The New Prologue)

When it comes to writing, I am my own worst enemy.

Let me tell you a truth.  I want this book to be successful.  Not just because I have no other real financial prospects at the moment, but because I want the affirmation of other people who love the book as much as I do.

I know the quote by Samuel Johnson, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." BTW, but it's bunk.  Writers ARE blockheads. People don't write for money, though money is appreciated.  We write for fun.

When I started this project, it was really just a way of filling my evenings up with something more than just idle web-surfing.  I had been rattling an idea around for two years and finally decided to put it to paper...er...word processor.  Now I have written a lot in the past, but I have never written a large work of fiction before.  A short story or two perhaps in HS or college, but nothing like this.  I really had no idea WHAT I was going to do with it.  It was just fun.  Soon I was staying up late every night just to keep going.  When I had 200 pages and I was nowhere near the middle act, I began to think I had something.

A month went by and my wife really desperately wanted to know what it was I was doing staying up until two in the morning.  So I started reading her chapters as they came.  Her response stunned me.

She loved them, and became my first fan.  "You have to publish this book!" She said. 

That was March people.  That really wasn't all that long ago, but it was my wife's intervention that started me on the current path to e-publishing. 

Now I am a not normally a writer of fiction.  The non-fiction market is a totally different ballgame, but  both of us know several writers of fiction personally, including a few published authors, some successful, some not.  We all knew that the road from authorship to publication in fiction, and in particular the young adult market, was a very long road indeed, usually years. 

First is the agent, then the editing, then the submissions (and endless rejections) before you finally find a sympathetic ear somewhere, and more editing and then proofing.  Even then if they take the manuscript, chances are it will be buried somewhere on the mid-list section with no marketing.  Worse, they might market it to the wrong people. If your book has vampires, it will instantly be sold to the Twilight crowd, even if your vampires have nothing to do with Twilight.   If it doesn't hit all the right popular buzz words or trends of the moment (and how could it if it was written years before?) it might never get a shot at an audience.

I just wasn't willing to do that.  I do have a day job, I teach, and I have a family, so I wasn't prepared to sacrifice a huge chunk of my life for a several year prospect, with little hope of ever breaking through.   Good books do rise to the top, once they get past the gatekeepers, but that's the tricky part.  My wife was convinced the book would be a success,  but I wasn't convinced I would ever get the chance.  So we decided to go it alone and publish it ourselves online and sell it for very little.

I got the help of friends to edit it, make the illustrations and cover art and then we set some goals.

Principle writing would be done by summer, editing by September, proofing by October, when the book would be published.

I'm amazed we've hit those goals and yet the book still doesn't feel rushed or sloppy to me or to any of my readers.  The book is ready and yet, I can't quite let it go.

We have entered what my wife calls "hand-slapping" stage.  That's the stage where you can't help picking at it, like a scab, and yet nothing - usually - will be improved by continued picking.  Hence, you have to slap the hand to keep it from picking at it.

But I am still doing this mostly for fun.   I write compulsively now.  I write to entertain myself, but I hope it will entertain others as well.  If I come across an entertaining idea, off I go, and burn ten hours writing some minor side plot when I should be concentrating on editing.

So when my wife found out this last weekend that I had written an ALL-NEW prologue to the book, she was about done with me.

I'm sorry, I can't help it.  Let me explain.  We have a friend who had a pet fish.  This fish had been through so much and yet survived, they had begun calling it "unkillable."  It suddenly struck me that this would be a great introduction to Lucy, her mom and the power they share.  So I wrote it up.  "Fred the Unkillable."

Changing anything at this late date makes my wife impatient...to put it mildly.  But then we read it and the worst possible thing that could happen happened.  She loved it.

Now I want it make clear that my wife is not an easy woman to impress.  Graduating with a PhD, only merited a 5 on a scale from 1 to 10 for example.

I had first thought that I would include this as an extra on the website, another "Secret Prologue," so when she told me I HAD to include this as the new official prologue, you can imagine my surprise.

So just to make sure we weren't delusional, we passed it by the other two readers who've read the whole thing.  They loved it too.  Furthermore, they all agreed, it had to be the new prologue.

Changing one chapter isn't as easy as it sounds.  It means everything has to be reevaluated in light of the new information.  The old prologue, which was dramatic and tense, now becomes chapter 1.  As the new prologue reveals certain pieces of information sooner than the rest of the book, I had to rewrite some of those scenes too.

So here we are, two days from the publication date and I've undertaken another major edit.  Talk about crazy.  My wife and a couple of readers have agreed to review and proof this new major edit, ASAP, tonight and tomorrow, so it can still be available for you, the reader, on Saturday, as planned.

It's nice to have friends that believe in it as much as you do.  More so even.  It has thrown the whole thing into a frenzy, but I think you'll see the book is better for it.

But my wife has EXPRESSLY forbidden me from doing anything else.

Here then (in not completely finished form) is the new Prologue.  It's just five pages long.  FRED, THE UNKILLABLE.  I hope you enjoy it.

Prologue
Fred the Unkillable

“MOMMY!!”

Maggie Miller tore down the hallway.  There were angry voices and pouty voices and upset voices, but she knew her six-year old daughter Lucy well enough to recognize a “horrified” voice when she heard it.
            She came into her little girl’s room expecting to see a monstrous spider or something far, far worse.  That was why it was such a surprise when she stopped at the doorway and all she saw was her daughter Lucy sitting on her bed holding a fishbowl in her lap, crying.  Maggie looked at the fishbowl.  The beautiful purple and red tropical fish inside it was belly up.
            “Oh honey…” Maggie said coming into the room.
            “Fred’s not moving.”  Lucy whimpered.
            Maggie sat down on the bed beside her daughter and put her arms around her shoulders and gave them a little squeeze.  Then she laid her head on top of her daughter’s.  Maggie stroked her little girl’s sandy hair while she sobbed, but she didn’t say anything.  Sometimes these things just needed to be cried out.  After a long while, it was Lucy who started speaking.

“It’s not fair.”  Lucy suddenly said, angry.  “I didn’t overfeed him or let him get too hot or too cold or anything! I did everything right!”
            Maggie just sighed through her nose. This was going to be a hard one.
            “Honey…” Maggie paused. “Honey, fish don’t live forever.”
            Lucy began sobbing again.  Maggie stroked her arm.  Maggie hated this part of being a parent.  She loved her daughter very much, but it was so hard being the grown-up, having to be tough all the time.  So she just held her daughter and tried to punctuate the tears with the best parental advice she could muster.  She never knew if this did any good or not.  She wasn’t even certain if she believed it herself.  So much of what people said about death was so trite as to be meaningless, but she just felt as if she had to say something, so she soldiered on.

She started with, “Fred lived a good long life for a fish and it was just his time.”
            The sobbing petered out to some light whimpering.  Maggie rubbed her girl’s back and decided to go on.            

“The best we can do is to remember the good times.”

A few more snuffles.  Lucy was nearly cried out now.  Just a few more minutes and it would be over.
            “Bad things happen. We just have to be strong and move on.”

After a few minutes more, Lucy had almost stopped crying completely and was just sniffing back tears and a runny nose now.  Maggie hugged her daughter again, gave her an extra squeeze and then leaned back and looked into her daughter’s eyes.  They were big and green and moist, but they weren’t tearing anymore.  She was almost there.  She decided to say one last thing to try and comfort her.

“Sometimes these things happen and they just don’t make any sense and we just have to accept that.”
            Lucy looked back at her mom with wide eyes and spoke. “Like dad?”

Maggie took in a breath but it never came back out. Her eyes darted nervously around the room at first and then between the fishbowl and her daughter’s equally glassy eyes.  She remembered now the circumstances of when and why they had bought the fish.  Her husband was dead.  Her daughter was sad.  She wanted a pet, but Maggie had insisted on a simple pet, a safe pet.  Something she wouldn’t have to worry about Lucy ever touching.  It was in the months, no…weeks! after her husband had taken his…after her husband had passed away.  How long ago was it?  A little over two years now?  Two years and three months, but how many days?  She didn’t know exactly.  Not without counting it up in her head.  How could she not know?!  She had thought about his death every minute of every hour of every day the first year, but this year, the next year, it had gotten easier.  Had she thought of him today?  Yesterday?  This week?!  She didn’t know when she had thought about him last.  It was a week at least.  She felt guilty, ashamed, alone and hurt and it all suddenly dawned on her.  Here she was parroting back all the trite things her friends and coworkers at the library had said to her back then.  No wonder her daughter was so upset.  It wasn’t just the fish, it was her dad dying all over again, and here she was telling her it didn’t matter, suck it up, move on, grow up, get over it.

Maggie’s heart was suddenly in her throat.  Her face went stiff and hot.  She tried to turn away but couldn’t.  A sob erupted from her mouth.  It was more of a gulp of air really.  She tried to hold the next one back but couldn’t.  She slapped her hands over her mouth, but it didn’t matter.   They sobs just kept coming.  Soon the crying was racking her whole body with great heaving sobs.
            “Mommy!”  Lucy buried her head into her mother’s chest and threw her arms around her mom to try and comfort her, but with both arms around her mother’s middle, she didn’t have a hand free to hold onto the fishbowl.  It slipped off her lap.
            “L-Lucy!”  Maggie yelled through sobs.
            The fishbowl crashed to the hard oak floor, shattering into dozens of sharp pieces, sending glass and water and colorful gravel everywhere.
            “Mom!” Lucy cried.
            “It’s ok honey, it’s ok.”  Maggie reassured her daughter.  “We’ll just clean it up.”  Maggie was instantly glad the fishbowl had shattered.  Somehow the shock of the breaking glass had brought her back around.  There was something to do now, something to clean up and something to distract both of them.  Maggie pulled herself together and the two of them got down on their knees and started picking up the pieces.
            Not a minute into the cleanup, Lucy yelled out.

“Ouch!”
            Maggie looked up.  Her daughter was looking at her finger while a single trail of scarlet dripped from the fingertip.  “Just great.” Maggie thought.  Lucy had cut her finger on the glass.  Already Lucy’s lip was trembling and in a moment the whole thing would start up again.  Maggie couldn’t be certain she wasn’t about to start up again herself.  Just when the waterworks were about to get going, Lucy looked down to the ground, stunned.  The lip had stopped trembling.
            “Mom look!”
            Maggie looked down.  Fred was twitching.  A few seconds on, and the fish was practically flopping around in a small puddle of water caught in one of the larger fragments of fishbowl.  A drop of Lucy’s blood was slowly dissipating in the tiny puddle too.  In an instant her daughter went from despair to elation.

“MOM!! FRED’S ALIVE!!”

But Maggie went from distress to near abject horror.  She went rigid.
            “Don’t touch it Lucy.”

Lucy just looked at her in disbelief.  “But MOM we have to save him!”
            “DON’T TOUCH IT!!”  Maggie screamed.
            Lucy looked back at her mom scared.  Why was she so angry?

“But mom…” Lucy went on.
            “Um…ok, honey, hold still, don’t move! I don’t want you to get cut again.” Maggie had to shake herself to bring herself back to the moment.  What to do?!

“But MOM!!”
            “HOLD ON LUCY!! I’ll be right back!!”

Maggie got up and ran to the kitchen.  She found a large mason jar and filled it with water and ran back to the room.  She paused, looking disbelieving at the flopping fish.
            “Mom!” Lucy implored.
            “Right,” Maggie set about her task.  She scooped up the fish and plopped it into the Mason jar.  Fred swam around the smaller confines of the jar contentedly.  Lucy began jumping up and down holding out both hands for her chance to hold her fish once again.  Maggie reluctantly handed over the Mason jar.
            Lucy was beside herself with relief. 
            “I can’t believe it!!  FRED’S OK!!”  She gazed into the Mason jar with wonder.  Maggie stared too.  She hugged her mother around her middle, but Maggie Miller didn’t hug her daughter back.  Instead she just stood there, hand on mouth, staring at the fish.  After a while Maggie gingerly pried the jar and miraculous fish from her daughter’s hands.
            “What?” Lucy protested.
            “Honey, Fred’s ok, and I still need to clean up all this glass. Ok?  Now just go out into the kitchen and bring me the dustpan, broom and some rags. Ok?”
            “But…”
            “Honey, please don’t argue.”

Lucy reluctantly went.  After she came back with the cleaning supplies, Maggie sent her to the front room to wait.  Lucy didn’t want to go, but Maggie insisted because Lucy didn’t have shoes on, and there was still a lot of glass.  Lucy didn’t want to be parted from the resurrected pet so soon, but she was so happy to have Fred back, she didn’t complain too much.
            Maggie swept up the gravel and glass and mopped up all the water, but she never took her eyes off of Fred swimming in the jar on Lucy’s dresser.  When she was all done, Maggie went over to the fish and narrowed her eyes at it and tapped on the glass once or twice.  It looked just like a normal fish.
            Maggie leaned back and put her hands in her back pockets.
            “Well, at least we’ll save on fish food.” She muttered to herself before leaving and shutting the bedroom door.  “Thank goodness you weren’t a kitten!”
            From that point on, Lucy and the fish were inseparable.  In the years to come, the fish survived many more accidental hardships, including a couple more dropped fish bowls, being accidently placed under a heat lamp and even an unexpected freeze when left outside. It didn’t help that Lucy insisted on taking the fish everywhere: show and tell, vacation, camp.  It had survived so many mishaps that Lucy began calling it “Fred, the Unkillable.”  When she got older however, and she learned that fish simply don’t live for that long, she began to suspect that her mother was secretly replacing her original fish with identical fish all along.  On a couple of occasions, she even found bags from the pet store lying around the house with receipts for new fish in them.  Lucy hid the incriminating evidence when she found it and tried not to let on that she knew.  Lucy never said anything about it to her mom even when she turned thirteen.  She just figured it made her mom happy to keep up the pretense.  It must have been a way for her mother to hold onto the innocence of her childhood just a little while longer.

But those receipts were for fish Maggie Miller secretly gave away to neighbors, coworkers and the children of friends.  Maggie gave away enough fish over the years people began to think she had an odd fascination for them, but Maggie Miller didn’t care for fish at all.  She only needed the bags and the receipts.  She left them around the house for her daughter to find every time Fred “miraculously” survived another calamity.  The truth was, Fred really was “Fred the Unkillable” and Maggie was prepared to do anything to keep her daughter from finding out the truth.  She just wished her daughter wasn’t so accident-prone.  Those fish were expensive.