Breath (14 page)

He remembered a blissful moment of being complete.

And he remembered losing pieces of himself once again as more living things were born.

“What’s it like?” he repeated. “When things are born, part of me is ripped to shreds. And when things die, those shreds return to me. It’s a moment of solace. In that one moment, right after the dead return to me what’s mine and just before they move on, I’m more whole. But then something else is born, and I’m ripped apart again.”

“Does it hurt?” the boy asked.

“Do you remember the pain of being born?”

“Um. No.”

“You’re lucky, Xander Atwood. I remember every single birth. I feel it all. And yes, it hurts. It hurts more than you could imagine. But it’s a temporary sort of hurt, just as when life dies and returns to me, there’s a temporary sort of peace.” He traced an eternity symbol in the air. “Life, then death. One leads to the other, and I’m there at the place they meet.”

“On the edge of the Möbius strip.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay,” the boy said, nodding. “So you became Death. What then?”

He let out a laugh. “What makes you think there’s anything else? I’ve been Death for thousands and thousands of years.”

“But something led you to sit on my balcony railing,” said the boy, “and contemplate the end of everything. Something changed.”

He didn’t reply.

“So you became Death,” the boy repeated gently. “What then?”

A breeze toyed with his hair, slapping golden strands against his face. When the wind quieted once more, he replied, “Then I died.”

“You . . .” Xander’s voice trailed off.

“Died,” Death repeated. “Even Death can die. Do you think this is my true form, Xander?”

“Um. Well, no. Not unless you were also the lead singer of Nirvana . . .”

Death smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m not human. I don’t look human. But when I was stranded here, I took on a human guise. Humanity was the reason I’d come here, after all. I wanted to get more bang for my buck. So: one head, two arms, two legs. No wings. No nothing that wasn’t grade-A human.”

“You have wings?”

“Do I look like I have wings?”

“You look human.”

“And do humans have wings?” he chided. “Of course not. Look what happened to Icarus. Wings are too fragile to survive human vanity.”

“Wings would’ve been cool.”

“Aren’t you afraid of heights? What would you do, fly two feet off the ground?” Death clucked his tongue. “Trust me, you wouldn’t do well with wings.”

Xander decided not to push the point.

“I took a human form, but that form didn’t last. It couldn’t,” Death said. “All living things burn out eventually. So my body died.” Then, softer: “I’ve died so many times.”

Xander felt like his brain had caught fire. He thought furiously, trying to untangle the meaning behind Death’s words. Death had died before—many times, he had just said—and yet the world was still here. So was Xander wrong? Was the world not at risk while Death was on suicide watch?

Could he really take that chance?

And even if he could—even if the world was safe no matter what happened to Death—could he just walk away from someone who was hurting so deeply?

Of course he couldn’t.

“You died,” Xander said, “but here you are. Alive.”

“My body dies,” Death corrected, “and then I’m reborn in a new form. Sort of like picking a new outfit, one that you’ll wear for years. Without washing it. Gets very wrinkled.”

“Your
body
dies,” Xander repeated. “But that’s not the same thing as
you
dying.”

“You think so?” Death laughed, the sound harsh and bitter and painful to hear. “Do you remember dying, Xander? Do you remember the agony of feeling life leave your body?”

“Of course not,” he said. “I haven’t died yet.”

Death stared at him with a gimlet eye. “‘Of course not,’” he repeated. “Then take my word for it: When I die, it doesn’t just hurt. It redefines hurt. Feeling yourself slow as you age is nothing compared to feeling your body suddenly, irrevocably, shut down and fail. So don’t tell me that it wasn’t
me
who died, that it was merely my
body.
It was me, Xander Atwood. It’s always me when I die.”

Xander’s mouth worked silently, and then he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

The apology hung in the air. Just as Xander began to think that it was either being ignored or refused, Death nodded once, minutely, a jerk of his chin that was almost imperceptible. And then he continued.

“The first time I died, it was like getting caught in a tornado—I was swept away by a vast power that I couldn’t control. It didn’t happen all at once. For some time—years, maybe—I’d been feeling colder. No matter how much I stood in the sun’s warmth, I couldn’t feel the heat along my skin. Have you ever become cold to the point that you no longer feel anything?”

“Sometimes, in the winter,” Xander said. “If I’m not wearing a good pair of gloves, my hands will get so cold, I can’t feel them.”

“It was like that,” Death said. “That moment before your skin goes from painfully cold to numb: That’s where I was. I didn’t equate the cold slowly seeping into my form with my body slowly failing. How could I know? It had never happened to me before. And I had no one to tell me what was happening.” Something dark passed behind his eyes. “Just as well. There are things we all have to discover on our own. They either destroy us or rebuild us. And sometimes, they do both.”

Xander thought he heard Suzie yelling at him, telling him something he couldn’t understand—but the memory slipped away. He shifted his feet uneasily.

“I became cold to the point just before numbness,” Death said, “and then I turned numb. And that’s exactly when I died: the moment I no longer felt anything, I died.”

Awed, Xander said, “What was it like?”

Death closed his eyes. “I had just taken a human, a woman who had died in childbirth. She’d given me her due and moved on. I remember watching her essence depart, remember the feeling of flint in my hand.”

“Flint?” Xander asked.

“When living things die, they return to me what’s mine, and they give it to me in a pleasing shape. For a time, the most valuable possessions people had were hand axes made of flint.” Death smiled, and his face looked almost peaceful. “Over the years, the notion of value changed. Flint was replaced with shells and beads. Then came metal. The first time I saw a turtle coin, I was enamored. You people and your creations,” he murmured, his smile broadening. “I still prefer coins.”

Xander thought of his lucky penny, tucked deep within his pocket.

“I held the flint axe and couldn’t feel the stone in my hand as the spark returned to me. And then the spark caught and flared.” His eyes opened, but they focused on something Xander couldn’t see. “At first, I was so pleased to feel heat again, I didn’t realize the spark had already transformed into wildfire. And then it was too late. It had become a conflagration. It consumed me.”

Xander watched the memory of agony play across Death’s face, and part of him wanted to reach out and grab his long-fingered hand and squeeze it tight, let him know that he wasn’t alone, that it was okay.

But it wasn’t okay. He was Death, and when his story was done, he was going to kill himself and take the world with him.

“I felt myself die,” Death said quietly. “And just as everything went dark, I was pulled away from the edge of nothingness.”

Surprised, Xander said, “So you were saved.”

“It was a lifeline,” Death said, “but I wasn’t saved. I was thrown into the tempest, into the heart of the maelstrom. You said I was a battery charger. If so, that was the moment I got plugged into the outlet. I was caught in a vortex of power, and I was reshaped and cast back to the world, in a new body. I’d been reborn,” he said flatly. “Happy birthday to me.”

“That’s . . .” Xander shook his head and fought the urge to whistle. “That’s amazing.”

“It was agonizing and beyond my control. It was terrifying,” Death said. “You call it amazing, but it was punishment for my hubris, for thinking that I could fix something that the rest of my kind had decided to leave untouched.”

“You didn’t want to live?” Xander asked, horrified.

“‘Want,’” Death repeated slowly, as if he were tasting the word on his tongue. “What does ‘want’ have to do with anything?”

“When you want something,” Xander said, “it has a way of happening.”

“Tell that to the person who buys lottery tickets and never wins.”

“Something
important,
” Xander said.

“I’m guessing that winning the lottery is important to people who actually win.”

“You know what I mean,” Xander insisted. “If you want something that much, if you work for it and not lose sight of it, then it can happen.”

Death was quiet for a time before he said, “I had thought as much, once I found the Slate.”

“What’s the Slate?”

“It’s what gave me hope.” Death turned to once again gaze upon the sky, which was now a bruised purple. “Morning of the day of my death and resurrection: Things were born and I was ripped apart; things died and I received temporary solace. Life to death to life again. I walked among humanity, hungry to better understand that for which I’d given up everything. None saw me, unless I wished to be seen. And I rarely did. It was enough that the dead saw me, spoke to me, before they moved on. So I watched humanity define itself and find its place in the world. And soon it was my time to die again. But now I was better prepared. I felt it coming.” He paused. “This time, I could fight it.”

“Fight dying?” Xander asked.

“Oh, no, not that.” He managed a grin. “Nothing cheats death.”

“Not even you?”

His grin settled into a tired smile. “Especially not me. But I could fight returning to life. And I did. That time, when I felt myself burn out, I dove for the nothingness that was the absence of life. I told myself that when life itself would reach for me, I would fight it. I knew that if I did so and I was successful, nothing would rekindle the spark, and all life would die out. But I didn’t care. I’d been betrayed and abandoned and cast in a role I never wanted, and had suffered such agony that I would do anything to never feel again. I just wanted it to stop.” Death met his gaze. “Can you understand that, Xander Atwood?”

Xander remembered a sound like a screech of tires, pushed the thought away. “I think so.”

Death nodded. “That was what I planned. I would die, and that would be the end of it. But something happened. Something unexpected.” His voice softened. “Something magnificent and brilliant and abysmal and horrifying. Something that changed everything. I found the Slate.”

He said the word with a sense of awe; Xander heard the wonder in Death’s voice, but there was also a hint of something bleaker—a sense of hopelessness, of loss.

“I was on the brink,” Death said. “So cold, so numb. The world had become a frozen wasteland, a winter without end. No living thing had ever been as cold as I. And then heat erupted from deep within me, and I died. This time, as I’d planned, I welcomed the blankness, the nothingness. The end, Xander. It was the end, and it was what I wanted.”

Xander’s throat was too tight for him to speak, so he nodded.

“And again, just a breath away from oblivion, I felt myself pulled back, as I knew would happen. So I fought it. I denied it. And it passed through me without taking me. Do you understand?” he asked plainly. “I stepped between time and space, and I found the Slate.”

Xander’s brow furrowed. “You . . . what, shifted into another dimension?”

“Got it in one,” Death said, sounding pleased. “The Slate is what exists on the edge of this reality. In it, all possibilities are revealed—all the yesterdays that happened, all the tomorrows that could ever be, everything, right there, shining like crystals of every color.” He smiled, truly smiled, and his eyes shone fiercely. “My sanctuary.”

Xander could picture it: wave upon wave of shimmering colors, the proud garnets, the lofty aquamarines, the vibrant chartreuses. He saw colors without names and too many colors to name, imagined them all winking in the nexus of imagination and inspiration. A palette of possibilities, winking against a backdrop that was neither gray nor blue, but somewhere in between.

The Slate.

It was all things and no things all at once, both within and without. It was massive and almost incomprehensive and engulfing and terribly private.

“The Slate revealed so much,” said Death. “I saw what had come to pass, going as far back as the door slamming shut behind me. I saw the future, so very many futures, most of them so incredibly similar, with only a hair’s difference between them.”

Xander could picture that as well: crystals shining with yesterdays, shimmering with tomorrows. Stunned, he asked, “How could you see it all?”

“The Slate is outside of time. It could have taken me a hundred million years to view everything, and that would have passed in the blink of an eye.”

“Still . . . wasn’t it overwhelming?”

“For a human? It would drive you mad. Mortal creatures aren’t meant to view the infinite. Your brains would liquefy. But for me? It was enlightening.” Death smiled, and when he spoke again, his voice hinted at warmth. “In one possible future, I saw something that changed everything.”

“What was it?”

“I saw a hint, just a glimpse, of the one who was supposed to be with me. I even heard a voice, a whisper, meant only for my ears. In that one future, I was no longer alone.” Something in his smile turned sadder, turned inward. “My soulmate was with me once more. And hand in hand, we two shared the burden of keeping the spark alive. Together, we flourished and humanity prospered.”

“That’s amazing,” Xander said.

“It was, truly. And it was enough. That hint, that glimpse, was enough to make me want to live. So I left the Slate, and when life pulled at me, I didn’t fight it. If there was even a possibility of my soulmate joining me, I needed to see it through. And again, I was reborn, this time with a new sense of purpose.”

“Hope,” Xander said. “What you saw gave you hope.”

“Hope,” Death agreed. “It’s astounding how something could both be so small and yet so large.” He looked at Xander, an odd smile playing on his face. “Hope can lead to wondrous things.”