Tosho is Dead

by Opal Edgar

  Suddenly I was rooted to the ground. Legs numb and arms frozen, incapable of wiggling the smallest finger.

  “No! This isn’t fair!” Merlin screamed through my mouth.

  But no one was listening. Like a single entity, all the people threw back their heads. The faces of the agglomeration went slack, their eyes rolled back into their skulls and their voices rose in the air as one. Insults poured out of my mouth. My cheeks flamed with embarrassment. If anyone else cared, though, they weren’t showing it.

  “Theodore Baumhauer, Tosho, body of the soul Merlin Myrddin Emrys Ambrosius Wilt,” the chorus of voices boomed.

  I felt my body shift as Merlin continued his rant. My torso grew light, then heavy, then light and heavy again. I started to shake. My skin broke into goose-bumps. What was happening? Merlin was a ball of fury in my throat.

  “Your desire is the sword of Bartholomew. This is your mission. This alone will let you grow.”

  And that must have gotten through to the guy screaming with my mouth because he stopped. Or maybe it was the fact that all the pain in my body vanished. I was shocked, speechless too. Heaven must feel like that. Not the tiniest scratch or itchy discomfort. I was the happiest person alive ... dead … whatever. This felt nice if you forgot all the craziness.

  “You can’t do this to me! A zombie! A pathetic, lame zombie! You have to give me a body in function of my strength – in function of who I am. In function of my mission’s needs!”

  Merlin was never satisfied. The eyes of the assembly rolled back into their rightful places. Immediately, the Egyptian kid winked at me again. But he was the only cheery one. Bartholomew sighed while the suited lady tossed her crow black hair disdainfully.

  “You can’t do this to me!” Merlin screamed one last time.

  “You are already dangerous as you are,” she said. “I hate to think what trouble you’ll create with the sword.”

  She shook her hand out of her neighbour’s, breaking the circle. They all looked like they wanted to forget about this episode. I rubbed the back of my head nervously. Hey, I was able to move of my own free will again!

  That’s not my evaluation! Get back in circle! Now, people! Merlin screamed for nobody but me. Merlin the voice was bottled back in my head. He was my problem again. Whatever had happened, it was clearly over. My body felt heavy now, as if gravity had increased. Was Merlin really my soul? How did that make sense? I yawned. My thoughts were fuzzy. I swayed on my feet. I had to take a nap and clear things in my brain.

  Yeah, do that, take a nap, you great lump of meat, AND NEVER WAKE UP! Merlin snarled.

  That gave me the strength to keep my eyes open. One by one the members of the assembly popped out of existence. What was going to happen now? I tried to catch someone’s gaze, but they were very good at avoiding eye contact. I grabbed Bartholomew’s sleeve. He shook it out of my grip.

  “I can’t look after you, Danny-cube,” the old man said. “Conflict of interest – you heard the lady.”

  “That’s okay, don’t look after me. Just send me back to my life.”

  The Egyptian kid in the loincloth tapped my shoulder. I stared at his gleaming shaved head, and he smiled. It was so genuine it went all the way to his sparkling eyes.

  “No one can send you back to life, Tosho,” he said, “but we can have fun, everything’s much more exciting here than on old Earth!”

  “I don’t want fun! I want—”

  “Bartholomew’s sword,” he finished for me, as if I cared about that at all.

  I was going to say sleep. Right now a simple mattress and half a pillow would do perfectly fine.

  “Lucky we’ve got Bartholomew on hand to tell us everything,” the kid said. “So where did you stash it, oh great Hippocrates worshipper?”

  “Crick-O-blimey! You know it was lost centuries ago.” Bartholomew grimaced. “Might even have been destroyed! Gee-whiz, what do I know?”

  The kid laughed as if it was a good joke. We were the only three people left in the room, even the ogress had gone back to her office. The kid stuck his ear to the wall, knocked on a few stones and dropped his head a little lower to his right.

  “Come on, I can hear the hidden libraries in your walls. All the knowledge calling out to be learnt! I know you have a ledger on all of your inventions. The sword was stolen, but you can at least give us the name of the last owner.”

  Bartholomew smiled nastily. “Well, Daddy-O, Bluebeard kidnapped, threatened and killed for it. He rogued through the seas and, blimey-O, he was attacked by a bunch of dirty power thieves. It fell into the deep, and there the sword might still be.”

  The kid nodded.

  “Any idea which deep? Just to narrow it down?”

  “Have fun, kiddos,” Bartholomew concluded, slamming the door in our faces.

  I felt Merlin throw himself round inside of me as surely as if I’d been a jail cell.

  “What happens now?” I asked the kid.

  “We’re going on an adventure,” he said.

  Chapter 4

  Little Spirit Guide

  The kid slipped his tanned hand into mine and started to pull. I felt heavy. Maybe I could take the tiniest of naps before we left? Just sit with my back to the wall and close my eyes for a minute – that would be enough.

  Pathetic, commented Merlin in my head, but even he sounded too tired to really care. The kid shook my arm. There was something I wanted to do, or maybe to say, but my head was fuzzy. There was something dangerous about outside … but I really needed a nap.

  “Don’t sleep,” he said.

  I stumbled forwards and the world crumbled. First a stone disappeared from the middle of the ceiling. Like in an inverted ant-eater cone. Then the heavy grey blocks tumbled away, sucked up into oblivion. The kid pulled me forwards with surprising strength. More stones vanished with each new step I took. The ceiling transformed into a giant checkerboard. The walls caught the disease, and by the time we reached the door they were gone, too. In seconds, everything was powder, amassed in piles all round us.

  Wait. Not stone powder – sand. Everywhere. The kid and I were in a desert. His little hand tightened round mine. The sand parted under our feet.

  This isn’t going to turn out like I want at all. He doesn’t give a damn about me. Turn back, Tosho, Merlin said.

  But that thought was quickly wiped away. I couldn’t concentrate on anything, my eyes stung and my body weighed a ton. All I wanted was to curl in a ball and sleep through centuries.

  That’s a brilliant idea, do that! Merlin spat.

  “We’re almost there,” the kid said. “Don’t sleep. Whatever you do, don’t fall asleep now.”

  I blinked conflicted eyes at him. But my eyelids were too heavy. Blinds came down on the world. Not even a tiny hand shaking me could pop them open again. Not even the rising stink. My nose wrinkled in distaste and I stopped breathing. It felt weird to stop, but it’s not as if I needed air. My head was too heavy and I let it loll down onto my chest. The smell started to grow unpalatable. I clapped my tongue in my mouth, the smell tasted disgusting.

  “What’s the stink?” I whined.

  “You,” the kid said.

  That got me to crack open my eyes. The sand was still swirling about.

  “The evaluation took a lot of energy out of you, and gave you a fresh new body … a zombie body, so now, wait for it, fun part, you rot!” He smiled.

  The sand fell away. We were now standing on the dock of a small fishing village. At our backs rested cute pastel houses with flapping nets in their gardens. In front, the crystal ocean rolled and frothed. And all round my stink enveloped us like a putrid blanket.

  “How ...?” I exclaimed.

  “Where there's sand, I can go,” the kid said, opening his arms wide and inviting me to look round.

  But I didn’t have the stamina. I collapsed. A large merchant ship lay empty in front of us – its cargo sat on the dock. The kid fought with a crate and pulled a handful of dates out.


  “Eat, to maintain your body. Sleep for the dead is not the same thing as for the living.”

  He’s right, damn him, eat! Just Eat! Merlin yelled in my head. I was kidding earlier!

  The simple idea of chewing was too tiring. But already the kid was shoving handfuls of dates in my mouth. I felt like a Christmas goose. One slipped the wrong way, blocking my throat. I coughed. Its stickiness glued my windpipe shut. I hit my chest to no avail.

  “Help!” I inhaled.

  “By Isis, take it like a man. I thought you were a Teutonic brute who slaughtered animals with a club, ripping hearts out barehanded!” The kid waved a fist in the air, way too much into it.

  I glared and he stopped boxing an imaginary punching bag.

  “Or not.” He laughed.

  He hit me on the back and the date flew across the dock, bounced a few times and landed in a barge. The jetties round us served to moor boats of various sizes and origins. There was a tribal pirogue next to a modern sailboat, and I was pretty sure the closest ship to us was a Viking knarr. But most of the boats were small and had been pulled under the dock, where the sea stopped and the sand took over. On both sides of the dock the beach fanned out. Solid gold seashells gleamed under the sun. Lush trees swayed under the weight of giant honey-fruit. Their sugary scent floated over the harbour. The sand matched the colour of the fisherman’s houses: amazingly striped blue, pink, orange, green and yellow, it arched round the bay like a rainbow. This coast looked simply magical.

  I shovelled the dates in: amazed to realise that with each bite I felt more awake. Even the fetid smell receded.

  “You’re such a low level undead that you basically have to eat all the time – try to stick to raw foods, they’ll charge you up better,” he warned. “Right now you’re almost like when you were alive: you’re a body, a mind and a … a Merlin, I guess.”

  I nodded absentmindedly. My arm reverted back to my normal skin colour as I chewed until full. Slowly I pulled the lid back onto the crate. There was a big indent in the merchandise. That was sobering. But the kid dropped a gold beetle onto the crate: payment, I guess. I got back up, taking in the scene. Everything was beautiful, from the chirping birds to the salty breeze, and none of it was for me. I wiped my hands on my repulsive woolly trousers.

  “Thank you for the meal. My family is waiting for me. They’ll get worried if they think I’m dead for too long. Maybe one day I can cook something for you, to repay you.”

  Merlin laughed. I can’t believe you’re still in la-la land.

  “You’re dead, Tosho, you can never go back,” the kid said.

  He was sitting on the jetty, feet trailing in the crystal water. Tiny fish swam round his legs. He laughed as one tickled his toes. I looked at my feet in their new uncomfortable leather shoes. Was this my burial suit? It must have cost my mum a fortune. Why had she spent so much when I was dead? Who was going to support her now? Old socks would have been just as good.

  “You’re not even in the same world as the living anymore,” the kid continued. “But don’t worry because I’ll be here to help you all the steps of the way. I’m your self-appointed spirit – I’m Lil’Mon. And I must be insane to take you on. Merlin is trouble.”

  He sure didn’t have to tell me.

  I’m charming, and bright, and brilliant, and if that comes with a pinch of trouble who are people to complain, huh? Are they as amazing as me? I don’t think so! Merlin snapped.

  “Why are you helping me?”

  Lil’Mon looked up into my face, more serious than any child should ever look. “I know what you’re going through. I am quite different from most other spirits. A long time ago I had to make a difficult choice like yours. That’s why I want to help you be exactly who you want to be, not who Merlin wants you to be.”

  He lies as much as any of us! Don’t get fooled by his cute little face. He doesn’t want to help for your good. I’m the only one who wants our good! Merlin said. Listen to me, runt. You’re going to say thank you and pretend to listen. I’ve got it all planned out. You’re going to—

  I stopped paying attention. Lil’Mon didn’t look like a liar. He looked concerned and frail, and his beetle tattoos looked like they were trying to crawl out of his skin. I looked away at the aquamarine horizon, so flat I couldn’t tell where the sky stopped and the water began.

  “Merlin inside me: that’s not normal is it?” I whispered.

  “Well, no. By Horus, that’s not normal!” he exclaimed. “You're a Tosho-mind, and we’ve given you a Tosho-body, but you have no soul of your own. People are normally made up of a body, a mind and a soul. Instead, you have an all merged Merlin-soul-mind-body-block inside. I don’t want to be a pessimist, but you are outnumbered by him.”

  “Which means?” I insisted.

  Lil’Mon frowned.

  “I don’t know. It’s never happened before,” he admitted. “I’ll give you just one free piece of advice, don’t ever fall asleep. Sure, that’s how we communicate with others and have hearty chats with our souls. But it’s also a way to black out the world. It takes stamina, and seeing how weak you are: sleep equals suicide. I’ve seen people do that. People who weren’t happy with their current situations and chose not to wake up. When that happens, their body and mind melt away. All the memories in their soul disappear. The soul is … washed, you could say, so it can be the core of a new person, with a new life, new experiences and new powers. And the whole thing starts again. You call it reincarnation. But in your case, there is no Tosho core. You fall asleep and everything about you is gone forever, melted, and only Merlin remains to be the core of another poor schmuck.”

  So I’d just narrowly escaped oblivion thanks to Lil’Mon. I blinked.

  Hey, thanks to me too! Merlin cried out. You think I want to go through all this life misery again?

  And you think this is a good thing, do you, Merlin, saving me from oblivion? I wanted to yell back. I mean, that made perfect sense that I was worthless, didn’t it? That I had no soul of my own, nothing to make me a full human. Everyone and everything kept telling me I was broken. Maybe I’d never deserved to live at all. I had tried to be good, or at least of use. I thought I would help my cousin reach his dream. I would have worked to get my mum a place of her own … but now I was dead, having only ever been an extra mouth to feed.

  “Hey, don’t look so gloomy.” The kid elbowed me in the ribs. “I’m not letting you stay a smelly zombie forever. The faster you accomplish your mission, the faster you’ll accumulate power so you can transform into something a little more glamorous. I’ve got to explain how things work. Don’t worry, it’s simple. And just focus on the cool things. We’re getting you a sword!” Lil’Mon jumped up with pure glee, shaking his legs to dry them.

  “About that,” I grumbled. “I’m a pacifist.”

  Says the boy who punches people because they remind him of things he doesn’t like. Merlin sniggered.

  I blanched. All right, I’d made a mistake. A really dumb one. I’d escalated the fight and now I was dead. That sounded like punishment enough.

  “Your quest is finding Bartholomew’s sword, not using it. But I can tell you that it does so much more than cut people in two!” Lil’Mon said, oblivious.

  I froze. A sword was a sword: an instrument of violence. I mean there was no ambiguity, not like a knife that should only ever be used for chopping food and carving wood.

  “Can’t you give me a new mission? No swords involved,” I said, wiping beads of sweat from my brow.

  Lil’Mon laughed. “No. It’s what came out of your evaluation. We are spirits, we are … it’s hard to explain, we are everything, everywhere. We feel all of the universe and the people and the power. And when we touched you, we felt the calling. Everything you currently are needs the Bartholomew sword. You’re being called to it. I can’t change your needs.”

  Was I really that type of person? Bloodthirsty? Did it run in my veins? I wiped my forehead – my fingers felt numb, but it wasn’t fro
m being tired or hungry.

  No.

  I refused to believe it. I wasn’t interested in their goddamned sword. They had to be wrong. I wasn’t a bad guy. I was just in purgatory. Merlin laughed. I hated him so much. It had to be him. He was the one enjoying all the fights, enjoying the pain of others. He had been egging me on.

  Me! Merlin responded. Well that’s rich coming from the son of a mass murderer.

  Lil’Mon jumped about, scaring a flock of geese out of a boat. They fluttered round and flew to the safety of a shady tree. Feathers flew everywhere. This is a little how my head felt, with Merlin yacking in there non-stop. If only I could concentrate.

  Because you weren’t involved in fights you think you smell of roses, do you, princess? Because you did some good in the world, pig-face? Hmm? Answer me. What good did you do?

  I started shaking. Covered in soft white feathers, Lil’Mon turned to me with his hands outstretched.

  Nothing. You did bloody nothing. But I have! I have given humanity knowledge! What did you give them? Hate walls? Just give me one reason why I should care for you!

  Lil’Mon was reaching out now, but my arms were over my head, hands fisted over my skull. I just wanted to curl up and be gone. Merlin was right. What had I ever done to fix anything?

  You are dirt. And I’m not taking it any longer!

  “Take this,” Lil’Mon insisted.

  I dropped my arms and his tiny fingers seized my hand. An electric current shot out of him, sending a searing pain through my limbs. My muscles spasmed and sparks glittered in my vision. Merlin and I both let out a cry. My hand looked huge and pink between Lil’Mon’s tiny fingers. I was now on my knees and in my palm rested a leather pouch.

  “Sorry!” He smiled, rubbing the back of his bald head with embarrassment.

  “What was that?”

  I closed my hand on the bag and stared at my fingers with horror. On each of my knuckles was a little scarab tattoo, like on Lil’Mon’s arm. They crept over my wrist in a line and disappeared under my sleeve. I pulled my jacket and shirt up to the elbow, and the line of scarabs continued. Not wanting to get totally undressed, I pulled at my collar. Sure enough, there were some scarabs on my shoulder too. I turned to Lil’Mon.