by A J Hackwith
“Yes, I am aware who you are, Ramiel of the Watchers.” Sraosha ignored their surprise by turning their attention. “And you, Hero of the Lost Book.”
Hero’s mood curdled. “I know precisely where my book is, thank you.”
“Oh?” Sraosha tilted their head. “Is that the when? My apologies. It is easy to lose track in the tearoom.”
Unease sifted up through Hero’s confusion, though he couldn’t place a finger on it. Thankfully, Rami knew when to step in. “If you know us, then you’ll know we are not meant for this realm. We arrived here by misstep, and we can be on our way if you simply indicate the way out.”
Sraosha tilted their head to the exit with a practiced gesture. “The exit is, of course, that way.” They paused, studying them both. “But the only way is the bridge.”
Hero suspected very much that he did not wish to avail himself of the bridge. Bridges in after-realms, in his experience, had a troubling way of leading to grief and bloodshed. Symbolism was a bitch. “I don’t suppose you have a gently sloping path.”
“The bridge is quite comfortable,” Sraosha said. They appeared to scrutinize Hero for a moment. “Human souls find on the bridge only what they take with them.”
“How lucky that I am not one,” Hero said. “Souls sound like rather pesky things.”
“There’s no other exit out of this realm?” Rami interrupted before Sraosha could say something irritatingly vague and profound again. “Surely there is.”
“On the far side, past the bridge,” Sraosha offered with a gentle lift of their hand. “Once you cross, the judges might be happy to grant you audience and passage to your realm.”
“Judges are not usually our most ardent allies,” Hero reminded Rami. The irritated look he threw reassured him that the angel was well aware of the trouble Hell’s Library dragged around with them like a tin can on a string.
“There’s no exit from this side? Not even for nonhumans such as us?” Rami pressed. Hero was again reminded of the nightmare that was the abandoned realm of crocodiles and labyrinths. They’d fallen through a gate that had remained open. Ramiel himself had been there, still struggling to fulfill his role as avenging angel and barring their path. He’d taken away their only route back, and Leto, their youngest companion, had sacrificed himself for it.
It seemed like the kind of thing Hero should hold a grudge about. He knew himself and was very aware of his deep capacity to hold grudges. It was his favorite pastime. But every time he tried to rip the scab off that memory, instead of anger he got something different. He remembered clutching Claire as they’d scrambled over the crocodile god’s back. He’d tossed one wary look behind them, expecting to see this malevolent angel that had been dogging them. Instead, shadowed in the doorway of the arch, he’d seen a worn man in a shabby coat, with the saddest eyes he’d ever seen. Hero knew what it looked like to be lost and far from home.
Neither Hero nor Rami could go home again. It’d been hard to fault him for trying.
Sraosha shook their head. “This tearoom is simply a resting place for unjudged souls. Some dead refuse to cross the bridge without a loved one; others simply need to accept their death and summon up the courage to cross.” They paused, a thoughtful look coming upon their confident features. “Strange that you should fall here.”
“We had help.” Rami flicked a glare toward the ceiling, as if he could have struck Probity from here.
“Nonetheless, there’s nothing for ones such as you to gain by waiting here.” Before they could protest, Sraosha straightened their shoulders, pulling up authority like a cloak. “Last call.”
A faint hiss brought Hero’s attention down to where steam was sizzling out of the teapot. When he inspected his own cup, it was dry as a bone. “You’re kicking us out? Bad form!”
“I am encouraging you to move forward.” Sraosha began their ritual of wiping the booth table.
“What happens on the bridge, Sraosha?” Rami asked, intent as a hunting dog. “How can we pass it?”
Sraosha pursed their lips. “I suppose most souls arriving here would already know that much, so I may explain. One is guided through Chinvat to pass beneath the judgment of Divine Mithra and Rashnu.”
“Chinvat?” Rami stared. “This realm is a realm of Zoraster?”
Sraosha tilted their head. “It is a realm for those who know that truth, yes.”
“What judgmental nonsense is it this time?” Hero lifted his shoulders when Rami frowned at him. “What? I’m an atheist.”
“Atheist?” Rami was aghast. “You literally live in Hell. You have met literal gods.”
Hero sniffed. “Yes, and I didn’t find myself that impressed.”
The way disbelief lit Rami’s gray eyes was simply delightful. “You weren’t impressed—”
“Honored guests,” Sraosha cut in, before Hero could bait a further reaction. “This was your last call. If you are so curious about the Chinvat, perhaps you can see it for yourself and continue your debate. Outside.”
Their host’s tone brooked no argument. Rami threw Hero one last exasperated look before standing and nodding to the door. “One last question. This realm’s judgment, what is it based on?”
One of Sraosha’s brows inched up, as if Rami had asked if the sky was blue. “The primary virtues, of course. Good thoughts, good words, good deeds.”
“Oh hell,” Hero muttered under his breath. It was like the entire afterlife was built to menace him for the simple happenstance of being his story’s villain. It really grew old.
“Thank you,” Rami said without sounding as if he really meant it. Sraosha herded them between the low tables effortlessly. Hero noted that new souls had appeared during their conversation, looking around with disorientation before nervously taking a cup of tea in hand.
They pushed through the heavy doors of the tearoom, and Hero began to wish he hadn’t gulped his so quickly.
The sky was a forbidding and violent oil painting. Dark carmine reds swirled and roiled against indigo, lashed with occasional blooms of orange. It felt too thick and vibrant to be air. The clouds churned like undertow, threatening to pull them up into it. Navigating the roil like agile fish were figures on winged mounts. At least he assumed they were mounts; Hero saw them only by their silhouettes, inkblots against the oil sheen of the sky.
“We should be cautious. Stay close,” Rami said, drawing Hero’s attention back to the earth. The tearoom had emptied them out onto a simple paved square. It was the kind of open area you’d find in a historic village, pavers too uneven and chalky to be modern. It was also clogged with people. Young and old milled around the square, mostly single but sometimes in tight, anxious groups. The majority were dressed in the same kind of bland fashion Hero had observed humans preferred these days, though some of the older ones were embellished with heavy gold jewelry and brightly threaded coats and dresses. Burial wear, Hero realized. The crowd simmered with a roil of emotions—not violent, but erratic and volatile—that must have been what put Rami on high alert.
The crowd milled, though more or less reluctant progress seemed to be made in the direction of the far end of the square. From a distance, it appeared more as a wall than a bridge, so steep was the incline toward the sky. But the details gradually resolved as Hero and Rami were inexorably jostled closer.
The bridge was composed of embers of color, shimmering sparks that somehow supported the heavy traffic stumbling across it. It stood in stark contrast to the rough cobbles and appeared to arch up nearly to the clouds, like a moon bridge, before dropping again to a distant cliff.
It spanned a mist-choked nothingness of a ravine, so devoid of the oil-paint colors above that it was nearly white. Wind currents stirred movements here and there in the depths, though Hero could make out nothing else from this distance.
“Good deeds.” The voice was so close behind them it made Hero jump, though Rami was calm e
nough to have heard the approach. Sraosha stood with their feet planted in the crowd, seemingly unmoved by the press and jostle on either side of them. Souls seemed to shy away. They studied the bridge briefly before looking back to them. “Good deeds, that much I can grant you.”
“You’re one of the judges,” Rami said.
Sraosha nodded. “Your shadows cast enough tales for me to be certain of that much. I can grant you the judgment of good deeds. But good deeds only. For the other two, you will have to face the divines.” They gestured, and Hero twisted to follow the line of their arm up, up, up.
The blots of indigo, which Hero had previously mistaken for storm clouds, had gained shoulders. Two impossibly large figures flanked the sky above the bridge, obscured in clouds and roiling twilight. They were so large it was impossible to discern whether they looked down on the bridge or away, or if the petty world escaped their notice entirely.
“How can they even see us, let alone judge us? It’d be like you discerning which are the very kindest ants in an anthill!” Hero was done; he was completely over the idea of being judged, cast in a role, given a title, measured up, inevitably found wanting.
His outburst gained the attention of the crowd, and souls cast them dreadfully reproachful looks before skirting a wider berth around them. Rami gestured furiously for him to quiet. He looked nervous, but Hero was past nervous; he was scared. And when Hero got scared, he got philosophical. “What even are good thoughts and words anyway? Who decides what is good? And good for whom?”
Philosophical, and a touch dramatic, granted.
Sraosha was unflustered. “To ask what ‘good’ is. Yes. Perhaps you are right: you don’t belong here.” With that, they bid them farewell and slid back into the crowd toward their tearoom.
“Have you never heard of the trolley problem?” Hero hollered at their back. Granted, he himself had never heard of the trolley problem until one particularly boring night inventorying the unwritten morality narratives section of the Library, but he was a book; a god of moral conscience really had no such excuse.
“It’s all right,” Rami said. He wasn’t bothered by Sraosha’s words. His attention was focused again on the bridge. “You’ll pass through just fine.”
Hero stopped short. He scrutinized Rami’s profile but couldn’t detect a hitch of sarcasm. “You’ve got to be kidding me. I’m a villain! Worse, I’m not even human.”
“See, you didn’t mention good or evil a single time in that statement.” Rami focused on Hero with a hesitant smile that did terrible things to the outrage in Hero’s chest. “You are a good person, Hero. You fought for your fellow books; you’ve risked much to make it this far and help your friends. Even Sraosha had to grant that those were good works.”
“Oh, I’ve done my fair share of wrongs.”
“A minority. Your words have more sting in them than real malice most of the time, and good thoughts . . .”
“Aha,” Hero said when Rami paused. “Let’s not lie to ourselves; we both know my mind is filled with rotten schemes.”
Rami’s smile persisted, even as it softened at the edges. “I never cared for the puritan notion of policing a man’s thoughts. I think the weight of a man’s life lies in what he does with it. Reasons and heart are important, but it’s your actions that have long-reaching effects.”
Hero blinked. He leaned forward and pinched Rami’s cheek until he grimaced. “Are you sure you’re our Watcher? Or maybe you’ve seen him around? Tall, dark, and endlessly broody?”
“You are taller than me,” Rami muttered, rubbing his cheek.
Hero arched a brow and opened his mouth to respond before a noise rose from the crowds near the bridge. He half braced himself against a pillar to see over the turmoil of heads.
Something was happening on the bridge. A segment a few yards from the entrance had begun to shrink, rainbow material flaking away rapidly on either side. Souls crossing the bridge scrambled, peeling backward and forward to escape, but the decay seemed to follow. Finally, like frantic schools of fish, the crowds on the bridge parted, backing away from one old man who was rooted with shock as the bridge narrowed on either side of him.
Even the dead still had a sense of self-preservation. The man regained his senses and lurched ahead, hands outstretched for the crowd. There was a hesitation, a perilously hung moment when it seemed someone—anyone—in the crowd might reach back. But a groan, far and deep, shook the bridge under their feet, and the edges disintegrated faster. The man reached the edge of the crowd, but panic had set in. Someone shoved; the man stumbled back with a cry.
The rainbow section he stood on had narrowed to the size of a tea table. The doomed man swiveled, but it was obvious by now no one behind him would risk their own eternal soul to assist. Froth of mist churned to either side of the bridge, but whatever moved in the ravine stayed out of sight.
The bridge had crumbled to a balance beam beneath the doomed man’s feet. He swayed once, twice, trying to keep his balance, but his arms pinwheeled and signed his fate. His fall seemed silent at this distance. A gout of mist lashed up into the air as the man fell through, then nothing. The crowd was quiet for the count of one breath; then a susurrus of murmuring returned. More subdued.
The bridge quickly rebuilt itself, filling out again to be a uniform shimmer. Sooner than Hero had thought possible, migrants planted their feet over the space where, moments before, a soul had fallen to the dark.
“Hero.” Rami said his name, but not for the first time. A hesitant hand wrapped around his elbow. In a moment he would shake him; in a moment Hero would be sternly reminded of their duty; he’d have to shrug and pretend nothing had happened and—
“Are you okay?”
The question was like an unexpected drop into cold water. Hero tore his gaze away from the bridge. Rami had angled himself to create a kind of buffer from the crowds, and all of him was focused on Hero. Shoulders turned, serious face emanating concern. It was a question asked in earnest, and it shocked him so much, an earnest answer fell out.
“When have any of us been okay?” Hero focused on relaxing his hold on the pillar until color returned to his whitened knuckles. He constructed a shrug and a smile in much the same way one might erect a barricade. Brick by brick. “No offense, dear man. I think I preferred the crocodile.”
“That’s not happening to you.”
Hero huffed. “Of course I wouldn’t beg so inelegantly—”
“No, Hero. Listen to me.” The weight in Rami’s tone forced Hero’s head up again. Rami’s gaze flickered over his face, as if searching for a key. “That won’t happen to you. I won’t let it. We will force our way across the bridge if we have to. I am not leaving you behind.”
“I believe you,” Hero whispered and found it true, despite all logic. He did. He believed Rami. He believed in Rami. It was entirely foreign ground to Hero. He allowed Rami to help him down off his vantage point.
Rami continued to study him. “Ready to do this?”
Absolutely not. Terribly, terribly unready. Hero flashed a brittle smile. “To storm a magical drawbridge? My good Ramiel, I was written for that.”
20
HERO
So much frivolity and fuss over the human soul. You’ve got to wonder why. What makes the stick-around-ness of a human more special than, say, a muse or a demon? But all the realms seem intent on hoarding the stuff. Gathering souls, preserving souls, rescuing souls, judging souls, eating souls, if you wander into the wrong neighborhood.
Let me tell you, from someone with lifelong experience owning one, a soul’s not that shiny on the inside. A grand bother, it is. We spend half our life worried about preserving it, then the rest of it worried that we haven’t spent the currency well enough. Better if we never knew we had one, in my opinion. Life is for the living; leave worrying about souls for the dead.
But there was no chance we�
��d be that sensibly ignorant. Not in a world so lousy with stories.
Souls: pesky, powerful stuff.
Librarian Fleur Michel, 1784 CE
HUMANS WERE RIDICULOUS CREATURES, in Hero’s expert opinion. They always saw what they wanted to see and ignored the rest. No creature edited its own reality so viciously as a human. After watching a man get sacrificed to oblivion, a rational creature might rebel, decide that three gods and a judgmental bridge were a poor form of moral government. A rational creature might at least consider whether any paradise one has to sacrifice others to get into is worth the price of admission.
But no, not humans. Even in death, they picked and chose a comfortable sort of truth. Humans milled in organic clumps, hesitating at one end, before making the slow progression to the other. It was impossible to walk the bridge quickly. Its sharp incline seemed designed to force a soul to slow down and consider one foot placed in front of the other, the lean of the body against the grade. The glimpses of mist and cinder caught beyond the translucent path.
Hero didn’t allow Rami to hesitate when they reached the point where stone translated to shimmering bridge. He dragged them over the threshold and kept walking. If he was going to pass this damn judgment, he was going to do it his way. Hero preferred having a choice in his dramatics, thank you very much.
They passed under a lacquered arch, and Hero didn’t allow himself to look down until his foot landed, solidly, against the shimmering glass-like substance of the bridge.
It held, souls continued to mill around him, and Hero let out a breath he’d been keeping stoppered in his chest.
Rami stopped at his shoulder, asking a silent question. Yes, Hero would be okay. He could do this. He nodded, still gazing at his feet, and pressed on.
The arch of the bridge was strenuous, and by the time they’d nearly crested the middle, every muscle in Hero’s legs burned, but his hope was rising. The bridge remained, stable and wide, under his feet. Though, nonetheless, Hero stuck precisely to the center of the crowd. The traffic on the bridge was brisk, now that it seemed stable, and if the gazes of the two giant gods shadowing the sky fell on him, he couldn’t feel it.
