Afterworld

by Lynnette Lounsbury

  ‘They? Who’s they?’

  She sighed again. ‘The Guardians of the Maze. They are like us – the Guides and Guardians here. Humans who have been given a special role. There are also some strange beings there. They appear in the forms people have given them over the years. Humans imagine all sorts of creatures are in the Afterworld, so that is how they appear. We created them.’

  ‘And I say this is unfair. I never imagined any weird creatures after death. Never. I never imagined an Awe or half-Angels who would want me to fight like a gladiator. I never thought there would be anything when I died. So why do I have to live everyone else’s sadistic fantasies?’

  Dom’s tirade brought a wry smile to Eduardo’s face. ‘The group, Dominic: the group mind. All of you humans are part of the one thing, part of the Awe, you are all able to think whatever you want, but your thoughts are linked and you create with them. Apparently the majority of people thought that death was going to be a difficult and arduous journey.’

  ‘If I could go back, I’d be preaching some pretty glowing new theology then, waking up to beaches and room service and meat. Lots of meat. And animals. It’s weird without animals.’ Dom rubbed his eyes with his hands. He was tired. He was worried. He hadn’t seen his sister for two days.

  Eva pointed at the book again. ‘Okay, back to this. You need to know how to think carefully and clearly even when you are tired. Anubis, the Guardian of the Maze, will have tricks in place to waste your time. You have to be on guard every second, which means you get very tired and it’s hard to think clearly when you are asked questions.’

  Eva’s face was wrinkled with concentration. He was sick of talking about the Maze so he changed the subject. ‘Why were you asking Satarial about Anubis?’

  ‘Yes!’ Eva joined him in looking at Eduardo. ‘What did you ask him?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing of importance.’ He shook his head casually.

  Eva was silent for a moment, glancing first at Eduardo and then Dom and finally back at Eduardo. ‘I think you know something. I’ve been watching the lake for weeks and I’ve seen it too. What do they have to do with Anubis?’

  ‘Who? Don’t do this half conversation thing, it drives me mad.’ Dom tilted his head and smiled.

  ‘What have you seen?’ Eduardo turned suddenly, his entire bulk twisting on the small wooden chair to face Eva.

  ‘There is something going on in the Maze.’ She waited until he gave a slight nod and then she turned to Dom and sighed. ‘I didn’t want to tell you, I didn’t want things to be any more confusing than they are already. But everyone who has entered the Maze in the last few months has come back. And I mean people who are prepared, with good Guides. Smart people. Usually only a small percentage return to Necropolis.’

  Eduardo leaned forward. ‘The City has been filling. What have you heard?’

  ‘Not much. I waited at the front gate yesterday and there were twelve people there, all returned before they even reached the centre of the Maze.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘They have no memory of what happened at the end. But they all remembered the dogs. The jackals. That’s it. And now they all have to go back to work.’ She sighed ruefully and sat on the edge of her bed. ‘Now you know why I didn’t tell you.’

  Eduardo was thoughtful. ‘Jackals mean Anubis. I have sensed something, but he is keeping it hidden. I don’t know what he is doing.’

  ‘So this Anubis, the god, is just chasing people out of the Maze with dogs?’ Dom raised an eyebrow.

  Eduardo frowned. ‘He is not a god, he is Angelus and the Guardian of the Maze. He is troublesome and dangerous, but is not usually bothered with people. He has wreaked his havoc on my race many times. This is not good, Eva. I will talk to Enoch. These changes worry me.’ He rubbed his face. ‘This place has not evolved in millennia.’

  ‘Are you coming through the Maze with me?’ Dom turned to Eva.

  She glanced at Eduardo. ‘I will try. I can’t promise anything. This place has its own rules and I have to follow them. If I can, I will.’

  ‘What about you?’ He gestured to the Angel.

  ‘I don’t know. I made a,’ he searched for the words, ‘a pact so that I could be here in the first place. Part of that was to remain disguised. People and Nephilim do not interact well with Angels.’ He snorted.

  ‘Maybe it’s Angels who don’t play well with others.’ Eva raised her eyebrows at him.

  He snarled playfully at her. ‘Perhaps. I find it difficult to like humans. Present company is, of course, excluded.’

  ‘Why?’ Dom pressed him, partly out of interest and partly to keep from studying any more of the difficult language.

  Eduardo sighed. ‘Oh, you will be offended if I start railing against your race.’

  Dom laughed. ‘I’m black, you think I haven’t heard people railing against my race before? Give me some credit.’ He pointed a finger at Eva. ‘And she is always offended, so fire away.’ Eva pushed his finger away.

  Eduardo leaned against the wall, staring without blinking while he considered the question. ‘Humans have everything. They have everything and they do not use any of it. They forget what is important and prioritise what is not. They love quickly and fight over insignificance. They are weak about almost everything. They have shortened their lives to a blink and yet they act like children for the entire time they are alive. It is frustrating to watch them and I no longer do.’

  Dom sat back. ‘That was pretty general. What do you mean we have everything? You are faster, stronger, smarter and immortal. What exactly is this everything that we have?’

  ‘You have the group mind. We do not. To communicate, Angels must touch. I can read a few thoughts occasionally, if the emotion is sufficient, but I cannot communicate by thought alone. Humans can. Even the Nephilim were not as good at it as humans.’ Dom narrowed his eyes. ‘What? I think you’re confusing us with some other planet. We have to actually speak to hear each other.’

  ‘This is what I mean. You have minds capable of interpreting thought and yet you have chosen not to use them. You have minds capable of creation and yet you have chosen not to use them. Your minds can heal, your minds can move matter, your minds are linked together in a way no other race is, and yet you disconnect from each other all the time. I have felt your mind, Dominic; you are using a fraction of it. The rest is . . .’ he closed his eyes for a moment, ‘behind a closed door. Locked. Inaccessible.’

  Dom was stunned. He had no idea how to respond. He imagined his mind, locked up and closed. He had read something similar to what Eduardo had said – that humans used only a small percentage of their minds. He had never considered what the rest might be capable of, but it made perfect sense that if humans could create the sort of technology and art they had from that small part of their brains, they could have the potential for much greater things. Creation? Healing? He could have healed his sister.

  Eduardo added as a quiet afterthought, ‘And you have mortality.’

  Eva interrupted at this point, her eyes narrowed from the same imaginings as Dom. ‘Mortality? How is that possibly a good thing? I died when I was seventeen, Eduardo. I died before I had a chance to change anything – to do anything. I saw terrible things, and then I died. And that’s it. Game over. Dead. How is that better than millions of years of experience and life?’

  ‘Because, Eva,’ Eduardo advanced on her, his voice deeper, his hand gently touching her face, meeting her eyes and holding her gaze, ‘for you, every minute is the tick of a clock. A moment gone from a very small store of moments. It means something. You use it wisely, or you lose it. For us, it is just another among an infinite number of moments. Imagine the inertia in that, the time wasted, there is no urgency to do anything, because there is literally another billion moments to do it. There is great emptiness in immortality.’

  Eduardo turned to Dominic; his eyes blinked slowly and his voice lightened. ‘Enough bookwork, my friend. Since time is, at least for you, short,
let’s fight.’

  5

  Dominic’s Hourglass

  158 Minutes

  For a sleep-muddled moment Dom thought it was Eva leaning over his bed and his heart raced. Then he thought it might be Kaide and he sat up quickly. The moment he did, he felt a familiar sensation. The wholeness that was a physical warmth and an emotion at the same time. The Awe. He gazed at the woman who sat on the end of his bed. She smiled at him and he felt at once at ease and fearful.

  ‘I still don’t have any idea what I’m supposed to do.’ He sighed.

  ‘Good. Certainty breeds complacency, inertia.’ She said. ‘Last time we talked you were worried about your reason for being, Dom. Have you at least found that?’

  ‘No.’ He stopped smiling. ‘Are you here to ask me to do something else? I told Satarial that I would fight. I’m probably going to be part of his collection.’ He was wary.

  She reached forward, her hand gripping his shoulder. The jolt that went through him was white hot and he felt something wrench in his brain, like it had been dislocated.

  ‘This is what life and death are about, after all, Dominic – being, doing, creating, fighting, loving. All of it action and all of it everything.’

  He tried to wrap his mind around the concept and found that his mind felt looser, as though things might almost make sense. Almost.

  ‘You mean “life is a journey not a destination”? It’s not about getting anywhere, just existing.’ He was dubious.

  ‘You know I don’t mean that. It is about travelling. About moving from place to place within the space where you are – learning even the smallest of things, feeling even the most horrific of things. As I said, all of it is everything.’

  ‘I hate that sort of crap.’ Dom felt his frustration mounting. ‘It’s the stuff they put on calendars and forward around in emails and it means nothing. It doesn’t make life easier for anyone.’

  ‘It does for those who choose an easy life. You did not. You chose to learn how to act. You already know how to feel – you do it deeply. You already know how to think – you do it often. What you have chosen to learn is how to act. You have chosen a vibrant, powerful soul and you have to learn to be brave enough to use it. But in life you had ceased being a traveller, Dom, you had become a wanderer. Perhaps death is the next part of your learning?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. Aren’t you supposed to know everything?’

  Her voice was endlessly patient. ‘I do know everything – unless it is something I have given you to know. This is your life and energy. Be still, Dominic. Learn who you are. And then act. You are already everything you need to be to win the Trials, to destroy the entire idea of the Trials, and to change the Necropolis from a place of futile waiting into one of preparation and excitement for the future.’ She laughed again. ‘That is all I want from you, Dominic. The complete revolution of your spirit and the Afterworld. And I want it – because you want it.’

  And she was gone. Her light simply diffused and Dom was alone. Sliding from his bed he paced the room. He examined the empty place that seemed to have opened up in his mind. So much of what she said was hard to grasp. It had seemed like a twist of fate. But what if it wasn’t? What if he had chosen to feel like this? Would that knowledge make him act differently? Maybe. He peered through the gloom of the night and saw that Eva was awake, sitting upright in her bed, watching him.

  ‘Eva?’

  ‘What was that?’ she whispered. ‘The room felt like it stopped.’

  ‘The Awe.’

  ‘He spoke to you again?’

  ‘She did. Yes.’

  They were silent, looking at each other in the half dark was easier than in the light. He could see the outline of her face against the pale glow of the City outside the walls. In his peripheral vision he could see that Eduardo was gone; he had recently given up the pretence of sleep and spent the nights on his own, returning when he felt like it.

  Dom felt his blood rush. He wanted to run to Eva and hold her, pull her against him. The feeling was so powerful his arm-muscles twitched. Her face was still watching him, unblinking, her breath shallow. Then he remembered what the Awe had said. He had chosen who he was, and yet he was always stopping himself, catching himself. He let go of himself. He was across the room in a second and Eva was almost as quick. They met in the middle in a crash, their arms reaching around each other, holding and grasping, clutching at each other. His mouth crushed against hers and the kiss was almost violent.

  Her body was hot against his and where their skin touched it almost burned. Eva pulled at his shirt until Dom ripped it over his head and her hands pressed against his bare chest, pale against his darker skin. His hands ran down through her long hair, swinging loose around her waist, and he pulled her close until they couldn’t stay upright anymore and tumbled to the floor. He fell over her, the depth of his hunger so great that he wanted to consume her. Eva kissed him back with a force he had not even imagined existed. The kisses of the past were simple, passionless compared to this wet, hot possession.

  Dom slid his hands up her body pulling at the thin tunic she wore, slipping it up her body. She moved to help him.

  And then the light changed. The doorway glowed brightly for a moment and then opened, vanishing to expose Eduardo standing in the frame looking down on them, his face hidden by shadow. The three figures froze.

  When Eduardo spoke it was gently and with sadness. ‘I may have been amused by this if you had simply been another human going through the City. But you are not, Dominic. You have things to fight for and that is all you can be thinking about. We need to train again. Meet me outside. Now.’ He turned and left, the door materialising behind him and the light fading to the thin dark of morning. Dom looked down at Eva, her eyes so close to his he could feel her lashes.

  ‘Go,’ she whispered, her voice hoarse. He didn’t move for a moment, thinking again about what he really wanted, as the Awe had said. And he realised he wanted Eva, but not like this. He wanted her after he had finished with the Trials. Leaning down, Dom kissed her slowly, breathing gently into her mouth as he pulled away, the useless breath of the dead.

  He stood slowly and pulled his T-shirt back over his head, walked to the door and through it. His blood slowed and he leapt down the stairs to find Eduardo.

  ‘We can talk about it another time. Okay?’ He said to the Guardian, who regarded him with a bemused frown.

  ‘Of course. I will give you one minute of time. Then I will come after you. If I catch you, I break your leg. You must run, or hide, or climb . . . or fly,’ he smiled a little, ‘but you must not let me catch you. You will not work today, we will do this until the light goes again.’

  Before Dom could register his horror, he heard the Angel begin to count and he ran mindlessly down the cobbled path, trying to plan a strategy for his escape. Eva almost vanished from his mind as he sprinted through the narrow alleyways towards the park faster and harder than he had ever run on Earth.

  *

  Hours later, as the light faded into grey, Dominic walked back slowly to the apartment on legs that had been broken seventeen times. There was no pain, they had healed perfectly and after his initial shock that Eduardo truly meant what he had said, he had realised the value of the lesson. If his legs were broken he couldn’t get out of the way of an attack until they had healed and he was a hopeless target. It had gotten easier. All of it had, slowly. He had learned how to backtrack and turn less often so that he covered more ground and lost Eduardo as much as possible. It was still difficult. The Angel was flawlessly fast and agile and if Dom so much as paused to think, he was pinned against the ground. He had also learned to heal himself more quickly. It still wasn’t the skill Eduardo had described, but he had learned that if he did not fight the pain at all, if he let it flow straight through him, his body could react instantly to begin to heal. After his last break it had taken only a dozen seconds before he could walk again.

  When they reached the apartment, it was dull and si
lent and Eduardo pulled Dominic aside before they entered.

  ‘I know what a Guardian is in life, Dominic. They protect you by advising you. But that is not why I am here. I am here to protect you physically, your life force. To train you. So when I say this, it is not as a parent or an elder, it is as a bodyguard. You must not lose your focus for a second. You must think only of Satarial and what he is planning and how you will win. You cannot let your mind follow your body. Or your heart.’ He sighed heavily. ‘I am not one to talk, I have failed in this more than anyone. And here I am – in this place – waiting eternally because I lost my focus. You must not do the same.’

  Dom looked at the Angel’s creased human face. It was tired and worn. His angelic features were smooth and flawless, a rich olive colour – ageless. And yet, he could see the sadness and the longing of the creature, a longing that had turned his supernatural essence into something lost and alone.

  Dom felt an urge to touch the Angel and as before, his mind, which a day ago would have stopped him out of emotional fear, allowed him to do exactly what he wanted to. He reached out and laid his arm on the Angel’s skin. It felt warm and almost liquid to his touch and he realised he had never touched Eduardo like this before, as a friend. The Angel looked into his eyes and narrowed his own. ‘Your mind is changing. I can feel it. I didn’t do that. The Awe has been back.’

  Dom smiled and turned, pulling his weary body up the narrow stairs to their apartment. Eduardo took his place in the chair, gazing out of the transparent wall to the mottled rainbow of city lights. Dom glanced first at his empty bed and then the curled form of Eva in the other bed. Keeping his eyes averted from his Guardian he slid himself under the thin blanket next to Eva’s body, curling around it and wrapping his arm around her. She woke slightly, starting, and then settled against him, pulling his hand into her own and resting it over her heart. He could feel its solid lifeless rhythm under his fingers and the slight warmth of her skin through the fabric. He wondered if he would be able to fall asleep so close to her, but before he could finish the thought he was gone.