They had fifteen minutes to wait before the next signal, the next cue to motion. Root wanted to spend them sitting down—maybe with her head on the table, a quick nap. Her eyelids, at least, were exceptionally persuasive in this.
As soon as she peeled away from the crowds and plopped into a chair at her empty table, she became aware of eyes on her back. Syrus. He turned his attention her way like a circling shark.
Bitterly, she hoisted herself back to her feet. Sitting alone, she was too approachable—and she’d promised him a conversation she never wanted to have. Ugh. That meant there was only one thing to do.
Root shuffled back into the waves of conversation. She wanted to find Saly—or even Brian—but too much contact with the others in the group would put them in Syrus’s sights as well, and she couldn’t do that to them. Whether it slapped them with a label of suspicion or just marked them for a conversation with the awkward seeker later, she couldn’t do that to them. It was downright cruel.
Shrouded amongst the crowds of the corner opposite the bar, Root found a small operation piloted by Pastor Lamley and a few other faces from the clergy. They centered around a large golden urn, wide as a barrel and stamped with embossments of layered scenes, less gruesome and less populated the higher up the sides they rose. Around the urn, on the walls and propped on easels, ads pawed for attention with wide, watery eyes.
“Bring this poor child salvation—donate today!” said heavy, demanding text over an image of a scrawny child with more flies on their bones than muscle. Another read: “Ten feet of industrial-grade steel fencing FREE with a gift of three helixes or more! Used by the Grand Priest!” A third: “The Holy War could begin tomorrow; jump the queue and reserve a spot among the first to enter eternity today.” The words jumped out over a horrendously tacky depiction of sun rays shining through clouds in an unnaturally blue sky. Or perhaps Root had simply been beneath the grey sky of the spirit world for too long. A fourth, straightforwardly, read only “GIVE” five times over in five different colors. It looked like they’d added some glitter to that one.
The ads rimmed the corner like a hungry pack of wolves, ears trained on the clink of coins, tongues lolling as they dribbled saliva on the tiles. Pastor Lamley gave them a voice, and at his careful prodding, guests dropped thick rolls of coins or checks into the urn.
Root turned and backed cautiously away from the donation urn as if in an effort not to provoke its prey drive. With limited options and none of them good, she found herself gravitating towards Aria.
“Oh, hiii,” said the girl when she looked up and spotted Root next to her. “So sorry—what was your name again?”
“Vixie,” said Root’s traitorous tongue.
“That’s such a pretty name! Did you hear it might rain? I had to go out and buy a raincoat. They only had yellow—it does not go with my outfit.”
Root chatted with Aria for exactly twelve minutes. Rather, Aria chatted at Root for exactly twelve minutes. It felt much, much longer, and she learned far more than she’d ever desired to know about Urk’s latest fad diet, which included camel milk as a staple as well as multiple varieties of fish oils. Root was more at home with the plates of pastries that made their way down from the kitchen of Herb and Apple.
When the time came, she extracted herself from the conversation and made her way to a secluded corner where she had line of sight on the halo case through a window. She pulled one of the fata pomorgranate seeds from the pouch in her clutch.
No bigger than her pinky nail, the lone seed rested on her fingertip. Translucent pink flesh surrounded a pit like a tiny fractal of bone. Root held it up near her face.
“Remember,” whispered the king. “Clear visualization. Perfect focus.”
“I’ve got it,” said Root, who was mostly visualizing her bed. But she was doing it with perfect focus.
She took a long, steadying breath. A cluster of guests walked up to the halo case, led by Anjeanette.
Root used her thumb to close off one nostril, then crushed the seed between her fingers below the other. She snorted the juice in one clean inhale.
“Oh, fuck. Ow,” she muttered. “Stings like a motherfucker. Could’ve warned me.”
“Never used one,” said the king. “And my memories of nostrils are a little fuzzy by this point.”
“Yeah, well, my nostrils are also a little fuzzy now. Ugh.” She suppressed the urge to sneeze.
“Focus.”
“Mhm.” She closed her eyes and pulled a clear image of the halo case into her mind, the display windows all around. Then, she pictured it empty.
“Huh?” said a voice inside the Hall of Relics.
“It’s gone!”
Root opened her eyes and blinked.
“Hold the image in your mind,” said the king.
“I amb,” said Root, pinching her nose. She wanted to reach inside her skull and give her sinuses a good massage.
The ripples of confusion spread. The tour sent up the call, but it quickly reached those in the courtyard nearest the doors. In no time, more guards pushed their way into the Hall of Relics. David wasn’t far behind them.
He looked unsteady on his feet. Was he drunk? If he was drunk, it was a comfortable haze, judging by the look on his face. It wasn’t the expression of someone hurrying over to check on the rumor that their priceless prized possession had gone missing, rather the look of someone reclining on an inner tube as they drifted down a languid river. But jostling that expression out of the way as it took the reins was a scowl of deep confusion.
“It was there just a second ago—I saw it!” said one of the guests in Anjeanette’s tour, looking red in the face and sweating profusely as if he needed to jump into the narrative to make sure he didn’t get labelled suspect number one on proximity alone.
“Step back, please, step back,” said David’s guards as they made room for the Grand Priest. Guests poured in from the courtyard, curious to see what had happened. Root followed the flow.
“Not to worry,” said a worried-looking David. “One of the crown’s many magical protections is likely acting up.” From around his neck, he pulled a small key. He pressed it into the lock.
As he lifted the lid, Root yanked her imagination back like a dog on a short leash. She’d seen the halo through the glass numerous times; it wasn’t hard to put that image back.
The lid went up, and the halo popped back into view. A number of guests gasped or sighed with relief. A few clapped.
“See? Just as I said,” said David, but the expression on his face was unmistakable: confusion, relief. The king had been right—seeing that case empty was like a needle in his side, like the worries from the depths of his mind wriggling into the sunlight and taking form as a living nightmare. Even whatever he’d had to drink couldn’t soothe that. “We can all thank Saint Persindus, the patron of thinking things are missing when they aren’t.”
David lifted the halo from the case, just over the lip of the cradle. Oohs and ahs filled the room. The gold spines and rim of diamonds and magenta gems glittered in the light. David gave the crowd only a second’s glimpse before placing it back atop the plush pillow inside the case. He adjusted the skip snare with a finger, scratched a nail across the inside of the glass, pursed his lips. Then he snapped the case closed, turned the key, and hung it back around his neck.
With little else to see, the crowd meandered back into the courtyard. David conferred with a few of his guards, but whatever they said was well out of Root’s earshot.
“That went perfectly,” said the king once Root was back out of the crowd. “Just as I told you: paranoia that deep will never be sated until it comforts itself with its own eyes. Even if he knew, logically, that it must have been some issue with the case or skip snare, he simply couldn’t ignore it. It’s just as I would’ve done when I was in his shoes.”
“Yeah, well, let’s hope you continue to be right. Because that case is still locked.”
“Trust me,” said the king. “But it’s not time yet—let the event return to its track. Let them lower their guard again. I believe you were learning about the applications for camel’s milk? Invigorating.”
“Didn’t sound like that was the purpose of the diet, actually.”
Root looked around. Everyone had returned to their prior spots. Suspicion had evaporated from the room, much to the relief of Anjeanette’s most defensive touree, who seemed to be coming down out of his bout of hyperventilation. No one watched the case, and no one watched Root.
Except one beady, wet pair of eyes. They watched her closely. Surely by now they’d located Vit and Azriah, too.
“Damn, all right,” said Root. “Camel’s milk it is.”
“I don’t think we have—” started Vit in Root’s ear. “Oops, sorry. Too many voices around.”
“Hey all,” piped up Brian’s voice. “Great work hitting our metrics. Give yourselves a pat on the back. Keep it up! Best, B. S., Senior Marketing, Strategy, and Operations Coordinating Analyst.”
“Thanks!” replied Vit earnestly.
Root fetched another glass of champagne and then did a lap around the courtyard, making idle chitchat here and there. She avoided Syrus, but even more diligently she avoided Aria. When enough time had passed, she made her way to a new spot with visibility on the halo case.
“Mirage up in two minutes,” she said under her breath. “Vit, you ready?”
There was a lengthy pause filled with the overlapping chatter of Brian and Saly’s conversations and Anjeanette’s tour spiel. Then Vit’s voice came over the channel.
“Ready.”
“Riiiiiiggghhhhhhhhht… now,” said Vit to themself. They sat on the edge of the cabin’s deck, legs dangling off the edge, scanning the water all around. Bugs skated the surface, making tiny V-shaped ripples that pulsed like a beating heart as they crossed the water. Spirit frogs and squishier things sang an evening lullaby in the muck.
Nothing more—nothing bigger—broke the surface. Vit waited another minute, then started the incantation again.
“Riiiiight. Nnnnnnnnnnnn… owwww.” Something in the treetops chittered a mournful ballad. Vit sighed.
It’d been this way for years now. Most fourteen-year-olds would’ve been elated to find themselves in an empty house more often than not, as it left more time for brooding about and not answering for the lousy test scores or fresh ding on the cupboard door. By some teens’ standards, Vit didn’t know how great they had it.
But Vit had a different set of standards—as everyone does, yet somehow goes so easily forgotten—and by Vit’s own reckoning, they were terribly sad and lonely.
They tried their predictions for another thirty minutes. When the time came, they were between reps, as fate so regularly necessitates.
A splash sounded in the distance, and then a great movement stirred the water, racing up to the cabin. It started around towards the side, then looped back and broke the surface near the edge of the deck. A salmon leaped from the water, a perfect trajectory towards the reclining slope of a cushioned deck chair. It landed amidst the blankets, and then Bradan retook his form. He adjusted feebly.
“Mm. Hello, Vit,” said Bradan, his words slow and hoarse. Vit handed him a mug of water. “Beautiful evening. Did you have a pleasant day?”
“A pleasant two days.”
“Ah, yes, I suppose it has been that long since I’ve been home.”
Vit said nothing.
“Well, what have you gotten up to?”
“Just taking care of things.”
Bradan nodded. “I’m lucky to have you around.”
Vit, given the circumstances, did not feel that they could return the sentiment.
“You don’t have to sit around here, you know,” said Bradan as if listening in on their thoughts. Bradan seemed to be able to do that, but none of the research Vit had done into salmon turned up any indication of that trait being hereditary like the gills or leap or Vit’s own legs and fangs. “You could spend more time in Egogbin. Or move out there altogether.”
“But—”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m well taken care of.” He ran a hand absently over the gills on the right side of his neck.
Vit didn’t say anything.
“I hope you don’t resent me for my absences. I’m sorry.”
“No,” said Vit. “It’s okay.”
Bradan sighed. “It’s easier, you know. Physically, of course—spirit bodies don’t wear down the same way as humans, no arthritis or bad hips, and there’s no worry about hauling myself up to go use the bathroom. Because…” Bradan chuckled. “You know. My age just melts right away. I feel young again, full of energy. It’s a tremendous reprieve; you’ll understand one day.” Bradan coughed, a long bout that snowballed from the first. He took a deep drink. “Mm. Excuse me. But I was saying: it’s not only easier physically, but mentally. It’s… comforting. Like becoming accustomed to the next life. Testing the waters. Heh. It’s a transition period, easing into it. You’ll understand that, too.”
Vit scrunched up their face more and more as Bradan spoke. It didn’t make sense.
“But,” they started, “how can that be? The comfort, I mean. You… you’re going to lose your humanness; why wouldn’t you make the most of it while it lasts, while you still have a choice?”
Bradan considered this over a thoughtful drink and what looked like the creeping hints of a nap. “I can see why it might look that way from where you’re sitting.”
“I feel that way even when I’m—”
Bradan smiled and put up a hand. “But… well, it’s a unique position we’re in as half-spirits, but what a gift it is. What a gift this life has been—I can’t express that enough, and my feelings shouldn’t be taken as indicative of some disrespect.” He readjusted in his seat with a small wince of pain, silent for a long moment of contemplation. Vit knew the silence did not mean he was done speaking despite its extended lifespan. “We are like two organisms, in a way,” he continued. “A relationship of two beings, one spirit, one human. Both are us, but they are each a distinct self as well, perhaps. When we are small… human infants are somewhat unique in their dependence on a caretaker, whereas many creatures can take care of their needs all on their own from the moment they come into the worlds. You remember the story of when I first found you?”
“Yes.”
“So you understand. The spider was looking after the human. Had I not found you, you would’ve been just fine. You had a caretaker, because there was another you that knew what to do, even if the human couldn’t manage on their own.
“But this is not a relationship flowing in only a single direction. Once the human is up and running—as you so quickly were—they, too, are taking care of the spirit. The spirit is in infancy as well. The human—the human life—is raising the spirit for their continued life after the human has passed on. The time they spend together… think of it as a prologue, one you and I are both living now, though I’m much nearer to beginning the full volume of the story.”
Vit thought about this. They understood the words, but they still couldn’t make sense of them. What Bradan explained did not sound comforting; it sounded… bleak.
But Bradan clearly felt otherwise. How? How could he see this ending, this infinite future of simple wants, meager capabilities, this poor prison trapped out of reach of the joys and possibilities of the worlds they’d come to know… as better?
Somehow, even dying outright seemed better to Vit. Terrifying in its own right, but at least there wasn’t a whole world being withheld. Could Bradan really believe that a salmon—or a spider, or a fruit fly, or a mole shivering in fright in its burrow—had the same rich, wonder-filled existence as a human or a more powerful spirit—minor, major, a spirit that could speak and play checkers and fall in love? There was simply no contest. And that was the existence he was soon to face—which he’d decided to go out and live in every day by choice in anticipation—the existence Vit would one day be confined to whether they wanted it or not.
“We are the only way new spirits are born,” said Bradan after another long silence. “Most spirits have been around since the earliest days of the worlds. But we—we are new spirits, fresh, a new life to live on through the ages. Isn’t that marvelous? Isn’t that the most special thing to be? Our lives—our lives lived jointly, human and spirit—are the dreams new spirits have in gestation, a prologue to their immortal lives. How incredible.” He closed his eyes.
Vit looked down into the water below, churning and fetid and black. No—no, it wasn’t marvelous at all.
I don’t want to be a prologue, thought Vit, the words nearly springing tears to their human eye. I don’t want to be a prologue—I want my life to be my life.
They couldn’t face it, not with the calm readiness that Bradan felt. They’d never be ready for that.
I’ll never be ready. They thought the words over and over. I never want to die.