After a small eternity, he felt solid ground under his feet, and after a moment to collect his thoughts, he felt brave enough to look. Limbo’s eternal storm clouds swirled overhead in the grey sky—promising a storm that never came, brimming with rain that never fell, and occasionally cracking with lightning that never struck the ground and that was never followed by thunder.
The grey earth beneath his feet let up little puffs of dust as he crossed towards the tree line of the winter-dead forest and two little girls.
One of the girls was the child he was there to save, the other was the grey land’s guardian.
Limbo rolled a bright red ball towards the dead child, turned to him, laughed, and looked away. Limbo existed entirely in greyscale, her hair silver, her skin ashen, and her eyes black. Even her monk’s robe was in muted tones. Limbo, despite her age and responsibility, always appeared as a child.
All he could do was watch them play. The girl he’d failed was happy. All her fear had disappeared. There were no more terrified screams or tears of pain, there was just the ball and her new playmate. Children adjusted so quickly. He envied them that quality.
His hands shook, and Ryan buried them in his pockets—it was a useless gesture. The sisters would know how he felt, know his thoughts and decisions before he spoke them aloud. His mind was as open as a picture book with large text. Secrets were an impossibility when dealing with the Ladies. Death knew his fears, his paranoia, his guilt. It was more honesty than he preferred. Bravado didn’t work. Facades of strength did nothing to keep her from seeing his lack of conviction.
The little dead girl caught the ball, bounced it, and pushed it back towards Limbo. Limbo turned to him and laughed, the innocent sound doing a lot to make him feel a little better about the situation.
He sat on the felled log behind Limbo and watched the girls play for a few long moments.
The ball rolled in his direction, and he pushed it back towards the little dead girl. She barely looked at him, her attention entirely focussed on the ball. The lack of attention didn’t bother him. He was an agent. He wasn’t there to be noticed. He wasn’t there to be remembered. Today would happen, and then it would be lost in the miasma that was the foggy memories of childhood. His mistake wouldn’t impact her.
If he could take her back.
If he took her back.
‘You’re right to hesitate,’ Death said as she stood beside him, making him feel so small. She touched his arm, a rare gesture of affection. ‘You do not have the right to do this. You can’t force this choice on her.’
‘It’s my right,’ he said as he uncurled his fists within his pockets, ‘to try and save her.’
‘Is this really saving her, Ryan?’ Death stepped in front of him, blocking his view of her sister and the little girl. Death’s face was skeletal for a moment, angry, before appearing human again. ‘There is every chance,’ she said, ‘that she will become a ghost. Is that what you wish on her?’
He felt a chill as he struggled for an answer. ‘My Lady—’
‘Do you want her to become a ghost?’ she asked.
It took every shred of self-control to keep his voice calm. ‘Of course not.’
‘Then let her pass.’
He looked away from Death and down to Stephanie again. ‘She deserves a chance,’ he said, the words coming easily as the decision fortified in his mind. ‘She has to have a chance.’
‘This isn’t even about her,’ Death said, an angry edge to her voice, her skeletal face returning and staring through him. ‘You’ve no investment in the child. You’re acting out of guilt because of—’
‘I know,’ he snapped, and shame overtook the anger. He hung his head and stared at his feet, unable to meet Death’s gaze, taking in the detail of the fine dust covering his leather shoes. ‘I know why I’m doing this,’ he said, quieter that time. He looked back up at her. ‘I need to save someone,’ he said weakly, ‘even if it isn’t Carol.’
Death sighed and stared off into the dead forest of identical trees for what seemed an eternity. ‘As is your wish,’ she said at last. ‘But she has to come willingly.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, my Lady.’
Ryan stepped over the fallen tree and walked towards the little girl. Limbo grabbed his pants leg and offered the red ball. He stooped and accepted it, thanking her with a nod. She stared at him for a moment, her black eyes reflecting his unsure expression back at him, before she smiled, climbed to her feet, and ran off into her forest.
Stephanie stared after her playmate for a moment, then began to get to her feet to follow Limbo into the never-ending forest.
‘Wait,’ he said, not wanting to risk losing her. He held up the ball, sat in the dust, then rolled it across to her. She clapped her hands and pushed it back towards him. Children’s games. A skill that had grown rusty with disuse, a skill he didn’t mind reviving, if only for a few minutes. He pushed on the ball again and reached for the doll that he’d brought with him. The doll was missing.
That time when she rolled the ball back, he let it go past his leg and hit the log behind him.
He looked at the ground around him and to the log where he had sat.
No doll.
He looked up and followed his footprints in the dust back to the place he had entered the grey land. No doll.
‘You dropped it,’ Death said, picking the question from his mind. ‘What’s to say that you wouldn’t drop her?’ The broken doll appeared in Death’s hand, and she passed it to him.
‘I would be—’ he said, then faltered. Careful? He would be so much more careful with a child than with a doll. The doll wasn’t important. The doll wasn’t a small, precious life that needed protecting. The doll wasn’t a tiny step towards redemption.
He noticed that the girl was watching him, staring at the doll in his hand through the wispy brown hair over her tiny blue eyes. He couldn’t leave her behind. ‘I would be a lot more careful with her,’ he said as he offered the doll to its small owner. ‘I will be more careful with her.’
The child’s eyes grew even wider, then filled with tears, her tiny pink mouth opening to let forth yet another wail. He looked back to Death, wondering what he’d—
His gaze fell on the doll in his hand. He’d grabbed it without thinking, without repairing it. He shoved the broken, bloody mess into his jacket, out of the little girl’s sight.
In Limbo, he had no connection to the System, so he couldn’t require the doll fixed. Any other time, it would have been the least of his worries, the enormity of standing separate from the world far outweighing his ability – or need – to conjure items. But now, in this moment, with a crying child in front of him, it felt as though he was missing a limb.
It was such a small thing, and he was without his usual way to fix it.
The land being what it was though, it had a way of providing what you needed, of paying heed to small wishes, of filling simple needs. He brushed a finger over the broken edge of the china doll’s head and concentrated, opening his mind, and asking for the doll to be whole again.
Immediately, he felt the broken face flow, tiny, perfect features once again in place. The was a fuzzing sensation under his palm as the clothes replaced themselves, clean cotton and silk, the blood disappearing like a bad memory.
With a smile, he pulled the renewed doll from his jacket and held it up to the girl.
The screams stopped, and the tears disappeared. She rubbed her dirty face with a sleeve, then half-stood, resting one hand on his leg and grabbing with the other for her doll. He lowered it to her reaching hand, and she dropped back to the ground, her tiny, pudgy arms wrapped tightly around the redhead doll. She buried her face in the doll’s frizzy hair, her hands curling into the fabric of the doll’s dress.
He let himself take comfort in making her happy for a moment, then rose and looked at Death, whose face was skeletal again. ‘May I take her home now?’
‘She has not said yes yet, Ryan. She has to make the choice.’
He opened his mouth to protest, a dozen arguments forming in his mind, each fighting to be the first stated. A child so young had no way to understand the choice she was being asked to make, nor any way to articulate the answer. It was unfair. He’d failed after all. There was no way to—
There was a tug on his jacket. He looked down and saw the girl. She smiled up at him, then hugged his right leg, mumbling something that was probably a thank you into the fabric of his pants.
Death put a hand on his shoulder and smiled down at him. ‘She wants to go with you. That’s a “yes”, Ryan.’
He knelt and picked up the little girl and her doll. ‘Time to go home, Stephanie.’
Comments (0)
See all