A Time to Die

by Nadine Brandes

  41

  000.009.22.24.03

  The assassin pulls Jude’s dead weight off me, but hollow pressure remains on my chest. My throat convulses against the thickened toxin coating my veins. Footsteps crunch against the silence.

  “Jude.” I arch my back against the forest floor. His dropped tear slides down my temple and panicked energy propels me to a sitting position.

  The assassin is gone. I guess now that he got what he wanted, he’s returning to the Council. Instead of relief, alarm surrounds me at his absence.

  Jude’s body is folded against the ground like an ironed hem, his arms flopped to one side and his head lolling back.

  My breathing jolts like a racehorse. I shake his good shoulder. “Jude?” I recall the blankness in his eyes and reckless screaming overpowers my sanity. “Jude?” I push him weakly. “Jude!” I crawl to see his wooden face. The chip in the base of his skull is covered in blood from the puncture points, but one sickly green word blinks on the tiny face.

  Terminated

  “Jude. Jude!”

  It’s the only word in my vocabulary and it grows like an orchestral crescendo until it’s so loud in my ears it impales my muscles. I roll on my back in the rain, exhausted, ill, allowing the swollen drops to hit my face, my hand, my body, my hair. Then I sob, wrapping my fingers in his dirty black coat. I sob until dirt cakes my face, until my ribs and lungs beg for deliverance, until I allow myself to drown under God’s eyes alone.

  Darkness accentuates my defeat and I succumb to the misery like a pitcher of water poured into a soulless drain. Morning arrives and departs with crusted tears on my cheeks and in my hair. I stare dazed at the thick line of trees waving to me over the wind. My body exudes emotions, soaking the dirt with sentimental fertilizer. Maybe trees of abandonment and surrender will sprout around me. Black leaves. Black trunks. Void of oxygen and life.

  “. . . Jude . . .”

  The sun rises and sets in a pattern I can’t keep track of, stuttering between the swirling yellow aspen leaves. The rain stops, but knots of muscles twitch along my body. Spasms. They prick at my body like animal nips. I can’t seem to focus, to think, to care.

  Darkness blows in, once, twice, carrying a hollow feeling of hopelessness in the deepest crevice of my heart, leaving no room for fear of nocturnal noises or creatures crawling over my still, damp body. My thoughts rest in my head like an abandoned pool of water in a silent glade. I stare until I see nothing more through the darkness. My muscle jerks become a second hand. Soothing. I close my eyes once more.

  Another sunset touches its colors on the white tree bark and I can no longer fight the snake squeezing my organs. I roll over and vomit. My muscles cry out at the sudden movement. Some sections are numb, others convulse in renewed spasms.

  Toxin.

  I’m sitting up. The world swirls, stirring my equilibrium with it. A body lies beside me. Jude. Jude’s dead. Jude’s gone.

  I touch his hand.

  He’s ice. He’s cold. Too cold. I’m cold. We need to warm up.

  Fire.

  In a dazed state, I stumble around the forest like a drunk on stilts. With one hand, it takes hours to pile enough wood beside us. As I stagger, pulling fresh branches from their trunks and dragging away dead ones, hallucinations meet me with swirling pockets of reality: Jude’s tattooed arm burns in my unlit fire. His snake tries to bite me as I lay another stick on the pile. It’s venomous. It will kill me.

  I’m already dying. I’m already infected.

  I shake so hard I drop my tiny supply of matches. They scatter among the leaves like escaped worms. I find one. Two. Strike.

  Flame.

  The wood is wet. My tears are wet. Why am I crying?

  The match dies. “God! Fire!” I suck in shuddering breaths. “Fire. Please!”

  My second match catches with the barest of movements and His miracle breath blows it to light. With the fire comes mental illumination. I straighten and swallow the tar of emotions.

  “I’m on a pilgrimage.” My voice is hoarse and broken.

  Jude’s cold body looks stiff. Heavy. Alone.

  I knew he would die. But I hoped . . . I hoped he’d outlive me. The thought was selfish. I glance at my watch. Seven days left to suffer. One week. My finish line.

  A deep shuddering breath stills my poisoned nerves. I wipe a trembling hand against my forehead and it comes away coated in sweat. My hair is stringy with leaves trapped in its tangles. I’m sick. I’m dying, but I’m dying slower than the assassin said. He gave me two days.

  I have seven.

  He can’t defeat my Clock. My Vitality suit is fighting the weakness the toxin carries to my body. I know how long it will fight. But can I fight?

  “Jude, can I fight?”

  He doesn’t answer. He’s dead. I jerk from the reminder. He needs a burial. I can’t bury him. I can’t say Good-bye so thoroughly. The ground is too cold. The wolves will find him. I have no shovel.

  I’ll bury him in light. In ashes. In fire. The same way I want to be buried—not in the ground, not wasting earth.

  Nighttime brings me back to my own fire after organizing branches around his body. They will smoke. The albinos will be angry, but they’re far away. This isn’t their forest. This is Jude’s and my forest.

  I light his fire at dawn and take an emotigraph. For me. For Hawke.

  Hawke. Does he know Jude is dead? I swallow hard. Why didn’t I know? Their connection and friendship makes so much more sense.

  As I click the sentra, I try to recall all the brave things Jude did, but all that sticks in my mind is his surrender to the assassin. His last act . . . of cowardice.

  I lower the sentra. Why did Jude relinquish his information? Why did he go against his life convictions? Was it only because he feared for my life?

  Ask Solomon . . .

  His funeral pyre burns through the afternoon and I watch it until it turns to embers. The smoke blackens the air like clouds of sorrow.

  I take his pack against the pounding in my muscles and add it to mine. I don’t have long before the assassin’s toxin will bow me to the ground to fade away. I can’t accomplish much in a coma. I need to reach the Wall.

  “Tally ho, Jude-man.”

  The clearing stays behind like a blot on my timeline. It’s the moment when Jude gave in with a fruitless attempt to save me. Why didn’t he listen?

  Another day passes with as much progress as a slowing merry-go-round. I don’t see the Wall and don’t know how to get there, so I head toward the sunrise. My tongue sticks to my mouth, but water doesn’t quench. Shadows seem to shift into people. At one point, I find myself asking one for guidance.

  I collapse and force a swallow of dinner, but it resurfaces almost immediately. Who needs food anyway? I’m dying.

  At noon the next day, both my arms are numb with the familiarity of amputation. I can’t seem to remember why the albinos took my hand. I did something bad. It was an accident.

  Jude. Jude Hawke. Hawke.

  My NAB feels old in my hand. I haven’t touched it in a while. There’s been no need after I sent Skelley Chase my last entry. But does Solomon Hawke know his brother is dead?

  I pull out Jude’s NAB. It’s small. I navigate through the many contact bubbles until I find one labeled “Solomon.”

  ~Hawke, My numb lips work against the cold to speak to the NAB. ~Jude was . . . killed by the . . . assassin. He gave away his memory to . . . save my life. But I’m dying. I’m poisoned. I . . . can’t think straight.

  As if to punctuate this last sentence, I stare at my message, trying to remember what I wanted to write.

  ~You are brothers?

  I stare at my message and my throat squeezes out my air. I’m alone. I’m going to die alone.

  Press on toward the prize.

  God’s
written words float into my mind as consolation. But I’m dying, God.

  Trust Me.

  Trust. It seems so simple, the act of finding calm in the midst of my Last Days. I knew these were coming. The question of my childhood is being answered at last: What will my Good-bye be like? Drowning? Accidental? Painless? Sickness?

  Sickness. The shutdown of my nervous system.

  I sink to my knees. How much can my will battle my body? I smile at God and pluck at my Vitality suit. “I’ll bet”—I manage between shortened breaths—“You made sure”—I hold a fist at my sternum—“Wilbur gave me the Vitality suit . . . just for this . . .”

  God prepared me for my death . . . and for my pilgrimage.

  Skelley Chase’s name bubble blinks when I reopen my own NAB. Out of instinct, I sniff for the scent of lemon when I tap his message.

  ~Parvin. The Wall Keeper has agreed to open the door at one o’clock each day for five minutes. He starts October first. Keep me updated on your progress. I expect you through early. Reid will be there, under my watch. -SC

  This message came two days ago, hence his follow-up message:

  ~Parvin. Where are you? -SC

  I lean against a sodden log and type a reply to spare my breath.

  ~Mr. Chase.

  ~I’ve been attacked. Jude and I were traveling to the Wall when an assassin found us, killed Jude, and inserted a toxin into my neck. I’m trying to find the Wall. I’m lost and sick and it’s getting worse. I don’t know if I’ll find the entrance, but I’m trying. Don’t touch Reid.

  I don’t mind using Jude’s name now that he’s dead. I want people to know he died. It seems important he doesn’t fade into ignorance.

  Fade.

  I want to fade. The farther the sun sinks behind the trees the more I want to join it in its mystery bed. Where does the sun sleep? Is it warm? God, can I join You there? Where You bring peace and constant light?

  You will.

  I don’t know if it’s my hallucination or if His words enter more consistently into my mind now that I near my Good-bye. During the death of His children in the Bible, He always seemed nearer to them, like with Stephen the martyr. I want to see into Heaven.

  Do you see me as Your child?

  He doesn’t answer this time, maybe because I already know the answer. Of course He does. He smiles like Father’s crinkled face every time He looks at me. Even if I mess up and desert my companions for a ride to Ivanhoe, or lead Jude to his death by allowing him to come with me, or break albino laws to build a fire. Because He is the essence of shalom—the way things were intended to be.

  “Parvin!”

  I gasp so hard from surprise that I choke and hiccup through repeated deep breaths to keep my stomach still. When I open my eyes again, Willow kneels before me. Behind her stands a young albino boy with child muscles showing he’s worked with the men since his first toddler step. His white hair spikes at different angles and varied lengths, giving him a fierce, but playful appearance. His most noticeable feature is his one eye, the other is patched with a stretch of brown animal skin.

  Elm. Willow’s grafting partner.

  “Elm and I decided to follow you and Jude-man to help with the Radicals. We saw the smoke from a giant fire and tracked you.”

  “You burned a lot of green wood,” Elm says in a voice forced a notch lower than what sounds natural.

  “It’s not your part of the forest. I . . .” I raise a hand to my head and try to form floating words into a sentence. I needed to bury Jude. I wasn’t thinking straight when I gathered the fire. What are you doing here? Please don’t make me atone.

  A tiny hand feels my forehead. “Parvin, you sick?”

  I nod. “Jude . . .”

  “I know Jude-man’s dead. Elm and I want to help you.”

  I give a tired laugh. “Thank you.”

  She pushes against my shoulders. I open my eyes, disoriented, and realize I’m now lying down. To my left, Elm takes out a bag of coals and prepares a small fire.

  “Rest,” Willow says in her light soothing tone. “Get better tonight and we’ll leave tomorrow.”

  “I can’t get better . . . I’m poisoned.”

  “Then we’ll leave tomorrow anyway.” A hum of disconcertion lines her words.

  My sleep is delirious, combed with whispers between Elm and Willow. The morning dawns as the worst so far physically, but the most calming mentally. Overnight I seem to have accepted my Good-bye. I’m not alone. I’m not lost.

  Elm takes the lead in the morning and adjusts my traveling direction so we head east. Willow walks with me, taking my hand to help me every few steps. They carry my packs on top of their own. Now that they’re with me, I realize how slowly I’ve stumbled along the past two days. They adjust their pace for me, but still push me faster than my poisoned brain wants to accept.

  “My legs,” I cry at one point the next day, falling to the ground. “I can’t feel them. Where are they?”

  “They’re here,” Willow soothes, rubbing a hand up and down my calves. “Right here.”

  “Are they?” I must lie for a few hours because when we walk again it’s dusk.

  My mind plays a reel of pictures from my life to keep me company as we travel. I remember Reid giving me my cross ring a week after I told him I believed in God with my heart and my head. He said the hardest part about growing closer to God is remembering what He’s done.

  “Use this as a reminder . . .”

  What has God done? I collapse when Elm says we’re stopping for the night. Willow covers me with a fur. It smells dusty, but blocks the cold.

  I think of small answered prayers—surviving the wolves, finding water, discovering Independents, reaching Ivanhoe, but the one that shines brightest overarches the other like a dome. God, You answered my prayer for purpose.

  I found purpose in Him. With a meager year left, He filled my life to the brim with meaning. I discovered the meaning of shalom and how crucial it is to weave into my thinking. Jude taught me a new sense of freedom from the Clocks, though I don’t fully grasp it yet. I experienced the loss of my hand, but saw God’s provision through my weakness.

  Weakness. It’s okay to be weak.

  I thought I knew what the Preacher meant when he asked what I’d want to do when on death’s doorstep. I thought it’d be to save Radicals and reverse deaths. Now I know it’s so much deeper. What I really want to do is share every ounce of passion in my heart for shalom, for God, for purpose, with every other person in the world. But that would have been a lifelong pursuit. My life wasn’t long enough. My passion came too late, but I’m ready.

  God will use someone else to accomplish what I should have.

  “Come, Parvin.”

  Willow drags me up a crested hill midmorning the next day, beyond the aspens and pine trees until I’m crawling on my hands and knees up a plinth above the world. When we crest, Elm and Willow kneel beside me and point ahead.

  The Wall.

  It’s so close, carrying a strange welcome. My family is on the other side. Mother is there. Father may cry. Reid will hold the two perfect hands of his stranger bride to introduce to me. And, if I make it across, then Reid will live. I’ll save his life.

  Solomon Hawke will be there. How is he feeling, knowing his brother is dead?

  “We’re close,” Willow says. “We can be there by noon. A little more forest and then we climb that incline on the edge of the canyon.”

  I follow her pointing finger. So close. I look down at my hand clenched in the grass and cock my head to one side when I see my stump. It doesn’t revolt me anymore. It’s a scar from the West.

  My blue watch reflects the sun into my eyes. I squint against the spinning in my vision until I make out the time on the bright face: 11:02 a.m. and ticking. October sixth in the year twenty-one forty-nine.

 
; I die tomorrow.

  42

  000.001.02.27.46

  I stagger down the hill after Elm and Willow, tumbling part of the way and gathering crackled leaves on my clothing. We bid good-bye to the golden aspens and enter yesterday’s forgotten world of red, orange, and purple. I never thought death could be beautiful, but now I witness the eighteenth autumn of my short life with new eyes.

  The leaves peak with a rainbow of stunning color waiting to fall, and when they do fall, it’s beautiful, like jeweled feathers dancing their descent. Once on the ground, they bring life through their deaths. I push through a supple tree branch, letting drops of dew rain on my face.

  It was predestined I die in October. I wouldn’t want to die in any other season. The world looks most alive to me now. Maybe I’ll carry this same aura to those waiting at the Wall. Maybe my presence and my story will bring the same life these dying leaves bring to the ground.

  Uphill steals my last energy. I disregard my pride and sink to all fours. Wet dirt soaks my knees. I crawl through the undergrowth. Elm and Willow walk beside me.

  “Stand up so we can support you.” Elm presses a hand on my shoulder.

  They’re too small to help. “Let me crawl.”

  Blood dries from scratches on my hand, but I don’t feel them. The rocks denting my knees leave no pain. I’m swimming. Swimming through air toward the Wall. Sick. Ridden with pain.

  Willow offers me water. I shake my head. I hurt too much to swallow.

  “You must drink some,” she says.

  For her sake, I do. It tastes like acid. I choke and can’t seem to draw enough breath. My sight blackens.

  I’m floating. Flying. Angels carry me. I relax what few muscles still obey my mind and allow the will of God to take me. I wake in Elm’s arms, a steady up and down motion rocking me like a ship’s bow.

  “The angels?” I breathe.

  He looks down at me with a surprised jerk. “What angels?”

  “They were carrying me to the Wall.”