Eternity's Echo

by H. C. Southwark

  “No, Ellie. The truth is not that nothing matters,” Niles said. “The truth is much worse than that. The truth is that everything matters. Every little thing: good and bad, done and undone, intentional or not. It all counts. That is the joy and horror of existence.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ellie replied, trying to grasp his words.

  “Meaninglessness is impossible,” Niles said. “When something means ‘nothing,’ then it still means ‘something,’ because nothing is something. The question ‘why’ is impossible not to answer. It’s a paradox built into the pattern of existence: all things have meaning, which lead to the source of meaning, who we call God.”

  Ellie tried to keep track, only finding herself asking, “But if God exists, then where? He let the world die.” And she thought: He let me die.

  “He’s right here,” said Niles. “With you and me.”

  “But how?” Ellie almost demanded, yet unable to muster the energy for that. The word was only a whisper. She thought, Is God invisible, like a reaper is to the living?

  And Niles sighed. His hand patted her shoulder, and she felt him wince at his torn ligaments. He said, “Reapers stand at the threshold of Heaven. This far down, we only see God the same way the living do: reflected through the deeds of others. When you see someone sacrifice for another, or put another first, when you see every moment of kindness, then you see reflected the love within the image of God.”

  Ellie felt her breath stuttering in her throat. She reached for her scarf, only to find that the knot was undone, and her bruises were fresh in the air. She breathed deep. And thought of her behavior, every single cutting remark, every cruel gesture, every impatience with a crying soul, said, “If that’s the case, then I haven’t been...”

  Niles patted her shoulder again. “None of us have, Ellie. And so we forgive each other and we forgive ourselves and we move forward, each step a little further upwards to Heaven. This is the great example taught to us by God Himself.”

  Forgive others? Forgive herself? Ellie felt the words rolling in her mind, tasted them in her mouth, her tongue. And she closed her eyes, denying herself the sight of the lit snowfall, understanding that this was something she did not deserve to enjoy—

  “Here, Ellie,” said Niles, and she opened her eyes, realized that he had a light for her to hold. Hesitation. She should not touch. And yet, here Niles was, offering...

  Cupping her hands, she let him drop it into her palms. There was no heat. No coldness, either. And it weighed nothing. The star was much brighter than the shards of the Spindle—it shone, not glowed. It had traveled millions of miles to be here with her.

  But as Ellie peered closer, she saw: there was nothing doing the shining.

  It was like the light was a thing in and of itself, without needing any source. Light was just light, by definition, and as she stared at this, Ellie found herself wondering: Is this what God is like? A thing of existence, in and of Himself?

  The thought was too big for her to grasp fully, too heavy for her to keep in her head.

  And with this, came the memories:

  She was sitting with her parents at table, saying grace, but she kept stumbling over words, rambling, and her father laughed, and took over from her, said something sweet and simple, and prompted, What do we say at the end, Ellie? To which she announced “A-men,” with the certainty that this was the end and the most important part...

  She was standing outside in the cold and lifting the broken form of a bird that had banged into the window, her mother holding the shoebox, saying, We’ll give him a nice funeral and headstone, please don’t cry, Ellie, it will be okay... and the bird was still warm in her fingers...

  Warm hands took each of her own, lifted her, and she squealed with joy to rise, to fall...

  She was wailing, I don’t want to go to bed, and her father was saying, It’s all right, Ellie, there will be more fun tomorrow, right now we have to sleep, it’s the end of the day...

  She was being carried, opening her scratchy eyes; she knew this shoulder, knew the smell of her father, and behind was her mother, carrying Robbie, his eyes closed...

  And more and more memories, tumbling down, fluttering through her like snowfall, like the stars gently gliding from their own places on the shelves in the sky.

  She had been loved.

  This was my life, Ellie thought. It was short and simple and sweet, and it was mine. It was like one of these stars. So much bigger and littler than it seemed...

  Beside her, Niles reached up, open hand waiting, inviting another falling light to rest. It came shyly, floating gently to land. Niles cupped it, smiled into it. And the look of this was wonderful—Ellie felt herself wanting to thank and praise who had made the stars, made Niles, that she now could see him look at the light like this—

  But then she saw that his face, illuminated by the shine of what was in his palm, was discolored. Her eyes widened in horror, for only then did she see that he was battered, bruised and cut, fresh wounds, the kind that had barely scabbed over—

  Did I do that? She wanted to scream. But Niles glanced down at her, and there was nothing of blame in his face, and Ellie realized that he was not angry with her. She understood then that he could not be. Because the wounds would heal. Because he cared more about her than being hurt. Because her rage and pain had been just a fraction of time on a universal time scale that did not end, and so was nothing.

  It was not the stars that were small. It was her. She was the small thing—the thing that appeared for only a blip, a tiny fraction of a second on a universal time scale.

  And not just her. Everyone was. Lifting her head, she gazed out at all these small people—Cookie, Shawn, Carson, John, Josephina, reapers old and young, reapers leaping through the air and standing still gazing at light in their fingers, all of us—

  Niles smiled gently. He said, “Do you know what we do now? We say thanks.”

  Ellie saw that everyone was lifting their hands, the lights held up once more toward the sky, and as Niles lifted his she also lifted hers, showing—Here, I have this, this little thing, thank you—

  And Ellie felt herself come unmoored, as though there was a part of her that was outside her body, brushing up against an electric wire—knowledge and understanding at a level that hurt to contemplate, let alone comprehend—

  She gazed out at the shape of the dome, the underlying structure of the planet, comprehending—it was not only people who were small. It was the whole cosmos, all of everything ever made—every mountain, every moment, every star, was as big as a grain of sand. Nothing was big because the only way to understand it was to compare it to the only stable thing in all existence, and comparing things to God was always going to end unfavorably for the compared. Of course everything was small. Of course.

  I have it backwards, Ellie realized. I’ve had everything backwards my whole life. People are more important than the Earth—we last forever, it doesn’t—but that is why the Earth is important, because we live on it. And life is the same way. Life is important—was important—because it leads to this. The eternal self. What I feared of dying was my living self—because I couldn’t see that it had to die, it has to, to make this.

  To make the real me.

  That’s what all this was for. To know. To have this moment. A moment where she did not grasp what she was reaching for, but understood, for the first time, that there was something to reach toward—something to know and be known by—

  And even her error before, to seeking to stop the end of the world, was full of meaning—for while the world could not be saved, she had pursued that course for the sake of others, in at least one small sliver of herself, and that was to be praised—

  “Ready?” asked Niles, holding his light before his lips. Ellie saw that everyone else had one, or two, or a whole handful, stars glowing like fire under the now dark dome of the sky. Glancing around, wondering what Niles meant, Ellie noticed everyone had
the same posture, waiting stooped over, hands to their mouths...

  And that at least she understood.

  Niles nodded to her. “On the count of three, okay?”

  One. Ellie stared at him, at the way that Niles was so calm. He looked at peace.

  Two. She gazed down at her own star, little light burning without any source. A spare thought: What will become of us reapers now? Will there be another world? Another plane of existence?

  Three. A collective inhalation. An answer: I don’t know, but I’m going to know soon.

  And she blew the star out.

  Postscript

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