by Mur Lafferty
Daniel sighed. “Do either of you see any lost souls in here?”
I looked around. “We need some of those notes. I think we need to see Yama.”
Daniel stared at me. “You’re kidding. How are you going to whip up some children – Buddhist children, at that – to get us some Hell notes?”
I looked at Kazuko. “Do you have any?”
She shook her head.
“Well, it’s unlikely God would have sent us on a trip without some spending money.” I rummaged around in my backpack until my hand closed around a neatly bound stack of bills.
I pulled them out with a flourish. “Ah ha!”
Daniel sulked. “Why does your backpack give you everything and mine is always empty?”
I counted the brightly colored money. “No idea. Maybe because I say please?”
Daniel got the Marilyn Monroe Hell notes, 1,000 denominations, I got John F. Kennedy 500s, and Kazuko got stuck with the Lyndon B. Johnson 100s.
“You’re kidding me,” Daniel said, staring at his fake money. I shrugged; people around us were clutching similar bills with famous Americans and-we assumed-famous Chinese pictured on them. We approached the officious-looking man in the robe, who glared at us.
Daniel smiled at him and flashed his blue Marilyns. He smiled immediately and took two thousand Hell notes for all of us. I grinned at Kazuko and followed Daniel into the VIP queue.
Beyond Kazuko, I caught the eye of two little girls holding hands. Clearly orphaned and poor, they stood at the very end of the line, which looked as if it would be a couple of miles long, snaking through much of the room.
I dashed back and slipped them a handful of bills and patted each on their heads. They looked at me in disbelief and I grinned and ran back to my friends.
I was convinced I saw every Chinese person who’d been alive at the end of the world as we walked past the lines. The room was bigger than it appeared, almost adding another dimension, giving us the illusion that bodies were pressed in every cranny. I wondered what would happen if we had a stampede and then swallowed the panic back into my stomach. What could cause the dead to panic? Where would they run? Everyone docilely waited their turn.
Kazuko caught me staring. “They have nothing else to do. It is merely waiting. If Buddhists are willing to wait lifetimes for enlightenment, then waiting in a line in the afterlife is nothing.”
I nodded to her. I ran a couple of steps to catch up to Daniel. “Any idea what you’re going to say to the Yama guy?”
He didn’t look at me. “Ask him what he knows about my sister, I guess. Why don’t you talk to him? You always seem to know what to do.”
“Oh, don’t be mad. You’re part god, after all. I just help out how I can.”
He deflated a bit. “I know. I’m just feeling so out of my element.”
I laughed. “Dude, we’ve been out of our element since we died. And we’ve managed to do okay. I mean, apart from the whole losing your eye stuff.”
He snickered. “Twice.”
“Oh yeah. Forgot about that.” I grinned at him, relieved he could finally joke about it. “Does it hurt?”
He reflexively touched his face above the missing eye. “Not really. Odin’s a god of healing, after all. I don’t stay hurt very long.”
“That’s good.”
He pointed ahead of us. “Look up there.”
Ahead of us rose a great temple built of black stones. The line continued its way up the great steps. Our straight line led us through the doors.
The interior walls glowed brightly, causing us to shade our eyes. Fountains sprung from the floor, giving a sense of serenity to the room that I hadn’t expected. My fatigue from walking so long dissipated and I straightened; first impressions always count, after all.
Our line finally began as we caught up with the fussbudget couple. They squabbled over how much they’d bribed the official and then squabbled about someone named Chen who the wife had said had made eyes at the husband.
She looked up when we filed in behind her. “What are you doing here? Did you steal from us? I told you they stole from us!” She smacked her husband on the top of his shiny head.
“No, I was just mistaken at the number of notes we had,” I said.
“Liars,” the woman sniffed, then turned away from us. “Yama will deal with you. He deals with liars. May you rot in the plain of Arbuda where the cold will raise blisters on your skin.”
Daniel opened his mouth to retort, but Kazuko, amazingly, put her hand on his arm. “She is right. Yama deals with all.”
Daniel nodded then, and we waited.
A young woman with bright eyes and shoulder-length glossy hair smiled at us as took the couple away. They went around the great fountain and then up a spiral staircase.
“Now what?”
“They will not take long to judge,” Kazuko said.
“How do you know?” I asked.
She didn’t get a chance to answer because, indeed, the woman descended the stairs again and smiled at us.
“Welcome to Di Yu, the place of renewal,” she said. “The Great Yama is looking forward to meeting you.”
We followed her up the stairs where we waited by a black metal door. She slipped inside and spoke briefly, then motioned us through.
When we were led in, the Great Yama sat on a velvet couch, looking much more like a playboy than a wrathful god who nearly obliterated Tibet.
Well, except for the bull’s head sitting on his shoulders. The soft brown eyes assessed us, and then he motioned for us to sit with him.
He opened his mouth and spoke, and the words that came through were pure poetry; I nearly swooned. His voice was light and joyous as he spoke, his words washing over us as we sat, stupefied. It was lyrical and glorious and sad, and Daniel groped for my hand. I squeezed it and closed my eyes, losing myself in the anguished words. Finally, he stopped, and I blinked the tears away.
And every word he had said slipped from my memory like sand. All that was left were my wet cheeks and my fingers still interlaced with Daniel’s.
I let go of his hand quickly, pretending I needed both hands to wipe my face.
“I received word you would be joining me,” Yama said when he was done, his low voice rumbling. I swear I felt earthquakes across Di Yu when he spoke.
“People of your stature are always welcome in my home,” he said.
I looked behind him. Eighteen black metal doors sat in the white walls, each with a different Chinese character on it. I wondered what lay beyond them. I wondered if I wanted to know.
Daniel cleared his throat and stepped forward. I started to recognize the aspect of Odin on his face as he spoke; his mouth became lopsided and knowing, and he spoke to the god as a peer, not as a lowly mortal “We are on a mission from YHWH to recover lost souls. Would you know anything about that?”
The god stretched on the couch, reminding me of a very bull-like cat. “I know the soul of every person in Di Yu. Right now I am processing them, judging them. I touch thousands an hour.”
Daniel looked at me.
“Then why are the lines so long?” I asked.
“The waiting is part of the process.”
“What about the hell note bribes?”
The bull’s lips pulled back, and I realized he was grinning. “That’s bureaucracy. My officials get no payment from me. They are the souls in perfect balance – not good enough for human reincarnation, not bad enough for reincarnation in one of the eighteen Hells or the sixteen Narakas. I see how they do their jobs and then make a decision on them after a certain number of years.”
“So what about the lost souls?” Daniel asked.
“I know nothing of lost souls,” he said.
Daniel rounded on me. “Then why are we here? You said this was the way we were supposed to go.”
“I was only acting on instinct!” I said. I pursed my lips and thought. Then, to Yama, I said, “You mentioned we had high stature. Do many Travelers come through
here?”
He laughed then, a deep, resonating sound that made me fight against putting my hands over my ears. “You still just see yourselves as Travelers? A human carrying a god within him, a human whose soul still remembers its purity, and a-“
Kazuko interrupted him, then, saying, “Nothing more than a guardian, Lord.”
Yama smiled at her. “As you will.”
“So what do we do now?” Daniel asked.
Yama sat up. “You give me my offering, and then go on with your travels.”
“Um, offering?” I asked.
“Certainly. You do not request an audience with a god without giving him something for his time. What do you have for me?”
We looked at each other. I pulled out my Hell notes. Yama shook his head.
“Well, I can’t give an eye, I only have one left,” Daniel said.
“And your guardian refuses to give me her secret,” the god said, looking at Kazuko. She looked back at him impassively.
He wanted secrets? Fine. I stepped forward. “Would you accept my secret?”
He sat forward eagerly. “A secret from a pure soul? That is indeed a special offering.”
I took a deep breath and stared ahead at Yama, not looking at Daniel. “Kazuko asked me if I still loved Daniel. I lied and said no.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Kazuko look at Daniel, but I didn’t see his response. I focused on the shiny brown eyes of the god.
“You lied. You love. Two secrets for the price of one. Very nice. I will help you further, then.” He pointed toward a door that I hadn’t seen before, a green door to his left. “The way you want to go is through there.”
Kazuko bowed to him and led the way, and I followed. Daniel brought up the rear. I wasn’t sure what we would say to each other when we got a chance, but I didn’t have to worry about it; Kazuko opened the door and the wind sucked us in, tumbling and twisting. The door slammed behind us, leaving us to swirl within the vortex.
CHAPTER FOUR
I didn’t have the sensation of falling until I hit the ground rather hard, knocking the wind out of me. I lay there, panting, assessing the damage. Possible sprained ankle. Wetness on my face indicated a cut. And as the pain in my chest wasn’t ebbing: maybe a broken rib.
I sat up. Daniel and Kazuko weren’t within my sight. Dead trees reached up into the dark gray sky and, near as I could tell, I lay on ashes. The hairs on my arms raised as I heard a wail, high and keening, rise through the forest. I realized it came from above my head and I craned my neck back.
Cats. They sat in the trees and clung to branches, each one beginning a low, angry wail. Some hissed, some cried, and each one watched me, amber eyes slit and angry.
Not wanting to be caught in a rain of fur and claws, I painfully got to my feet and limped toward a light that came from the edge of the forest.
Another sound, deeper, came from the clearing, and I paused. I’d only heard this sound in movies, as I’ve never been hunting with dogs. The baying of a hound washed over me, making me shiver, and the cats wailed louder. More deep baying howls followed the first, closer this time.
The cats above me scrabbled higher in their dead trees, and the sound of cracking branches popped around me. The dogs came then, running through from the clearing into the forest. Branches began to break around me, and screaming cats fell from the trees like fat snowflakes, landing heavily and dashing to the next tree available, only to have it topple.
I was standing between the dogs and the forest full of fleeing cats, and I winced, not knowing what to expect, but the dogs just dashed past me, baying and barking and whining their glee. One dog got lucky and grabbed a cat’s tail, and I averted my eyes when it started to shake its head. Some cats tried to fight back, but their claws found no purchase in the dogs’ skin, and their brief stand of bravery proved to be their doom.
I looked up at the ruined trees and tried to think about something other than the horrific sounds around me, when something licked my hand. I forgot my pain and the horrors around me and crouched to my knees, tears filling my eyes.
“Jet?”
#
Understanding flooded through me as I petted her, the bond we’d had in dog heaven returning. It seemed dog heaven was connected through some metaphysical bridge to cat hell; it was just beyond the tree line. Which made a sort of sick, karmic sense.
“What kind of cats go to hell?” I wondered aloud. Animals acted on instinct, I’d always thought, and so assumed there was just an afterlife, no judgment. But then I remembered that breeders often talk about temperament, and how some dogs just naturally are excitable and jumpy and others sleep all the time and still others are trainable. I guess cats are the same way. Except for the trainable part.
“Do you want to go hunting?” I asked.
Jet wagged her tail, her happiness infecting me. I grinned. “Okay. Since we’re so close to dog heaven, can I take a break there? I need a rest.”
She led me out of the woods, leaving the sounds of feline carnage behind us. Once out of the woods, the world changed abruptly to the sunny fields of dog heaven, where canines that didn’t take part in the hunt lounged around in the sun.
I sat down and let the heat relax me. “Man, I hope Daniel isn’t on the hill of bitches in heat. Not sure if we can deal with that again.”
Contentment radiated off Jet, and she lay down on my good side and put her head on my lap. I lay back in the sun.
“I’m really not sure what I’m doing, Jet. We’re searching for lost souls, and all we’ve done is muck about in purgatory, cut in line in Di Yu, and then lose each other in cat hell. Maybe Daniel and Kazuko are still in there. Who knows?”
Jet snapped her head up, alert. I remembered that look, that “let’s play” look. But I didn’t have anything to throw.
“What is it? Timmy stuck in a well?” I joked. She just stared at me, ears perky and alert. I thought for a moment. She had popped her head up when I had said, “lost souls.”
“Wait. Maybe Timmy is stuck in a well. Do you know something about the lost souls, Jet?”
She got to her feet and barked twice.
I sat up painfully. “Girl, I can’t run after you. Can you fetch?”
With that word, she was gone, tearing back into the dark woods behind me. I sighed, still in pain, but excited. Where were Daniel and Kazuko?
I rummaged through my pack for a mirror to assess the wound on my head. It wasn’t bad, more of a shallow rip than a deep cut. Still, I cleaned it and bandaged it as best I could with first aid supplies I found in my backpack while holding the mirror between my knees. I wrapped my ankle tightly and lay back again.
Jet returned, still running full tilt, and skidded to a stop next to me. She lowered her head and dropped a shining golden ball into my hand. It radiated heat and swirled within its confines, and I had a sudden flash of what it had been like to be made of nothing but pure soul stuff, no sins, no cares. A tear slipped down my face and I fought to compose myself. My body felt broken and pointless, a heavy cage that weighed down the glory of what I carried inside.
Jet nosed me in the neck and brought me out of my despair. I sniffled. “Good girl. Where did you find this? Are there more?” She barked again. “Okay, then. Fetch.” And she was off again.
I found a small wooden chest in my pack and carefully placed the soul within it. Jet returned with more souls, one at a time, carefully dropping them into my hands. As I handled these perfect little vessels, I began to be able to tell them apart. Little nuances were different; this one was more male, this one more female. This one was brand new, this one had been reincarnated a couple of times. The sheer potential of each life nearly overwhelmed me every time Jet dropped a new one into my hand, and I had to keep from crying every time I touched a new soul.
Jet finally returned to me with her final soul, followed closely by Daniel and Kazuko. Daniel waved to me, relief scrawled on his face.
“Man, I thought we had lost you!”
I laughed. “You did. How did you find me?”
They sat down next to me. “We pretty much fell on the stash of souls in the cat hell. We were trying to—” Kazuko put her hand on Daniel, stopping him.
“The dog arrived as we were liberating the souls, so we asked her to help us,” she said.
I raised my eyebrow at Daniel, who was staring at my head.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Oh, I got banged up when I fell,” I said. “Ankle, rib and head. I am afraid I’m going to be a bit of a slow traveler for a while. Sorry.”
Daniel reached out and took my hand. Heat rushed to my face but he got a faraway look in his eye and the pain started to fade. I remembered too late that he had a god’s powers as my bones knit and body healed.
He focused on me again. “Better?”
I nodded, suddenly quite uncomfortable. He smiled. “Kate-” he said.
“I keep forgetting you are able to do stuff like that,” I said, interrupting him.
He paused, then dropped my hand and sat back. “Yeah, it’s pretty weird. But comes in handy.”
“No kidding,” I said, removing the now-unnecessary bandages.
He got up and extended a hand to me. “Are you good enough for a walk?”
I took his hand and tested my weight. My ankle had healed entirely. Kazuko stayed seated by Jet, staring at us.
“We’ll be back soon. Guard the souls,” Daniel said, and started walking. I followed, confused.
“That was subtle. And you wanted to ditch her why?” I asked once we were out of earshot.
“She didn’t want to tell you what happened in the woods, and I think that’s pretty dumb.” Daniel looked at the dogs rolling in the field of interesting smells. “We didn’t fall like you did; we just stepped out into the woods in front of a chest full of souls. I could open it, but neither of us could touch them.”
