by Mur Lafferty
She grinned at him again, and the lightning flashed and lit her brown eyes. It was dark again when she kissed him, but he finally knew it was her.
The reborn god and the trickster god held each other in exile, in the rain.
CHAPTER TWO
With the rising of the sun, Kate marveled at the transformation of the Wasteland. She lay between Daniel’s legs, leaning back on him as he reclined against the world tree.
“This is amazing,” she said.
Daniel laughed. “I guess if you stab a god’s corpse with death god’s sword, it makes, uh, life?”
Kate shrugged. “Who knows? But like you said, no one dies here. Kinda hard to die in the afterlife. But what’s going on here?”
The greening of the Wasteland hadn’t stopped with the return of Kate. The grass and flowers had crept over the dunes and continued in all directions. The sun had risen in a blue, not gray, sky, and puffy clouds lazed by. The night’s storm had left everything with a clean, sparkly look.
Of course it looked clean, she realized. It was brand new.
Daniel nestled his head into her shoulder. “Thank you.”
She rubbed his cheek. “For what?”
“Being real. Existing. Making this easier. And, apparently, making the Wasteland a better place.”
“I think you did that. I was just dead weight.” She laughed, but he frowned.
“As usual, I don’t know what’s going on. But I’m glad you’re here.”
She leaned forward, turned, and kissed him long and slow. He was delicious. “We’ll figure it out. We always do.”
His arms tightened around her, but she pulled back. “Hey. Let’s explore.”
He groaned and tried to pull her back in, but she grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet. “Come on, we need to figure out what’s going on around here!”
“Yes, Goddess,” he said.
They walked in silence, marveling at the landscape. At the top of a hill they discovered mountains to the west and a dense forest directly south. Kate squinted to the east and thought she detected a glimmer from an ocean.
Daniel followed her gaze. “Clearly, it started from where I buried you. But, really, what is “it”? Why is the Wasteland growing?”
Kate shrugged. “Let’s pick a direction and go. Mountains, woods or sea?”
“What about north?”
Kate didn’t turn around, but she shuddered involuntarily. “No. Not north yet. Just… not yet.”
Daniel watched her for a moment, then nodded. “You wanna tell me?”
“I would, but I don’t know. Let’s just save that for last. I’m a god, right? I’m supposed to listen to these feelings.”
Daniel laughed. “Yeah, that’s what it means. I think it has other benefits, though.”
Well, her eyes were certainly better than a regular human’s. She pointed. “Look.” A thin line of smoke rose out of the woods a couple of miles to the south.
“A campfire?” Daniel asked.
“Or something. Let’s check it out.”
They headed down the hill and into the woods. The trees were unremarkable, they didn’t loom, they didn’t lurk, and they didn’t hide tormented felines like cat hell had. It was the most normal forest Kate had seen since they had died. Every other place in the afterlife had had some sort of purpose, some sort of meaning. This felt, well, normal.
They covered the miles faster than they should have been able to, what with Kate just returning from the dead and Daniel having gone through a grueling night of facilitating that return. And while the walk did make Kate somewhat tired, she definitely didn’t feel as though she had hiked miles through the woods.
Still, she was more relieved than startled to come across a small cabin in a clearing, the source of the smoke, which still drifted from its chimney.
An old woman sat in a rocking chair on the front porch, knitting something from blue yarn. She smiled at them and waved. They approached her.
"I always knew my Lords were comin' but I didn't realize they would come in person," she said, laughing.
"We're not here to, ah, collect or anything," Daniel said. "We're just exploring the land."
"This land is new. Brand new. Well, in the terms of land, anyway. I lived in this house since I was a girl. Had a coupla husbands, a whole mess of children. They're all gone now, or dead, and now I sit, knit, and wait."
"For?" asked Kate.
"For my Lords," she said patiently. "I knew they would come for me. I served them well."
Kate looked at Daniel. He looked as confused as she felt. "You have us at a disadvantage. This is all pretty new to us too. Where are we? And who are you?"
She laughed, a deep, rich laugh that reminded Kate of her own grandmother, and the bittersweet emotion surprised her. "You two were the Alpha and the Beta. I am The Gamma, the first woman. I was born from a drop of blood that came from the god-wound of the goddess Kate. My first husband was The Delta, he was formed from a discarded bandage that once covered the eye of the god Daniel."
She settle back in her chair, getting comfortable with the story. "And my second husband was The Epsilon, the man who was hatched from a hummingbird egg after Daniel cut Kate down from the world tree. And my third husband was The Zeta, the only man born of woman, as he was created from the tears of the weeping mother of the goddess."
Daniel's mouth hung open. "Wait, how old are you?"
"I am as old as the land, which to me is ninety-three years, and to you is about nine hours. I have birthed enough children to begin the population, from enough husbands to ensure the lot of them don't end up simpletons. I have done my duty to you, although it wasn't easy."
"Doing the work of the gods is never easy," muttered Kate. "But I still don't understand where we are."
"Honey, You're on Imari. The Earth Mark Three. You built it and created me to populate it."
"I don't remember any of this," said Daniel, rubbing his forehead above his eye.
"Here, honey," the old woman - the Gamma - said, and her needles flashed in the sunlight as she finished what she was knitting. She bit through the thread and tied a quick knot, then handed the narrow cloth to Daniel. He wrapped it around his eye.
"You don't remember because you had other things on your mind. My last task to serve you is to tell you what you've done and let you continue your work."
"This isn't the Earth, though," said Kate. "It's the Wasteland. We're exiled here."
"What's the Wasteland but unmolded clay? You molded it, made it yours. Now it is the Earth. Imari."
"We made another Earth?" Daniel asked, sitting heavily on the woman's front steps. "But we didn't take good care of the LAST one!"
But Kate nodded. "Yes. That's what happened. I remember now. We're not exiled, we're just where we should be. And we have work to do here, Daniel. A lot of work."
She grinned. "Mother Gamma, can I press upon you one last task?"
******
"You have no idea what heaven she's going to," Daniel said, looking around the little cabin.
"Doesn't matter. She'll do it. She'll take the message back." Kate held up a crocheted afghan and smiled. "I never could get the hang of this stuff. I only ever knitted lopsided scarves."
"But Kate, how do you know that?"
Kate put down the afghan and looked him in the eye. "Daniel. Come on. She spent her whole life bearing children to populate the world. What I've asked her to do is nowhere near as hard as that. And she's dead now, meaning she's comfortable, her joints don't hurt, she doesn't have incontinence, and her elbows aren't itchy. She'll go to heaven and deliver our message."
"Yeah, if she lives to get there."
Kate walked up to him and put her arms around him. "When did you get so damn cranky?"
He touched her face softly. "Since I completely messed up everything we did in heaven and hell. The second Earth was eaten by that creature. Now I have to be god of a third?"
"Things are different this time. You have proved yourself, you h
ave faith in yourself, and you have me." She kissed him gently. "We were always stronger together than apart."
He clung to her, then and kissed her harder. She wondered if she would ever lose the thrill his touch gave her as his hands roamed her body, pushing clothing aside, desperate to touch skin to skin.
Although it started quickly, this time it did not have the air of desperation and fierce love that the first time did. They took their time and languished in each other, and the world shook with them.
They spent hours together, learning things about each other they’d only ever suspected, and when the sun rose again, they lay tangled in each other’s limbs, too drunk on each other to move.
"You're sure that old woman is dead and gone to heaven?" Daniel asked as Kate lay her head on his chest. His voice was deep to her.
"Yeah, why?" She ran her hand over his belly and he laughed, batting hers away.
"Because it would be awkward for her to return and find out what we've done on her bed."
"And the kitchen table."
"Don't forget the chair."
"Ohhh. Yes, the chair. Sorry about that. Is your back okay?"
"It was worth it."
"Good." She kissed his chest and he groaned.
"You're going to kill me, you know that?" he said, responding to her yet again.
"Can't die in the afterlife. You wanna?"
"Sure," he said. But they both dozed off then, and slept the rest of the day.
******
Daniel woke up to a queerly empty feeling, realizing that he'd immediately gotten used to the feeling of her beside him, the feeling of her body curled up with him. When her body was gone, that was the wrong feeling, the unfamiliar.
The new cloth The Gamma had given him was gone, as were the rest of his clothes. Kate sat at the rickety table by the wood stove, running the blue cloth through her fingers. The homemade quilt lay casually draped around her shoulders and he looked with interest at the various bits of skin she revealed.
"Have you already studied the rest of my clothes, or have you just started?" he asked.
She smiled at him, not looking up. "I was just thinking. We're not in the afterlife anymore. We're somewhere else."
He sat up in bed, feeling stronger than he had since arriving in the wasteland. "The Earth Mark Three. The Imari, she called it."
"Yeah, what does that mean?"
"It sounds Japanese, but I'm not sure. It could mean something completely new. But you haven't said why my new eye patch is so interesting."
"It's made from synthetic yarn." She finally looked up at him, her messy bedhead making her look slightly mad and very adorable.
"So? When did you become a yarn snob?"
She blinked at him, then said patiently, "Daniel, this is a new world. I seriously doubt there's a Wal-Mart or Michael's or AC Moore where you can find synthetic yarn. If she's knitting, she should be using wool or silk or something."
"Ohhh," he said. "Yeah, I don't imagine the hillsides are crawling with acrylic sheep."
She returned to her pondering. "It got me thinking. Not only how the hell she got it, but just about synthetics in general. We made the Earth Mark Two. It was created instinctively, totally organically, subconsciously. But Three, Three was made in a different way. Dead goddess, a sword, a quest. Not quite synthetically, but definitely not as organic as before."
"I'm not sure where you're going with this, Kate."
"I’m not sure either. But we made one world and it's not in good shape. It was all organic. Now we get another chance. And maybe we should focus on the synthetic. Synthetic isn't always bad. Organic holds within it the seeds of chaos, it is formed however it likes. Synthetic, however, has a hand behind it. Someone to guide it. Likely someone to love it.
"We can make this world, Daniel. Honestly form it to be what we need it to be."
"But what's that?"
"A tool to take back heaven, hell, and Earth Mark Two."
CHAPTER THREE
"This feels weird. Like having a second kid just to harvest stem cells to save the first," said Daniel, sitting outside on the porch.
Kate paced behind him. He couldn't see her, but he was aware of her with every cell. "Yeah, that's a strange ethical question. But we didn't make this world so we could save the other. It came to be by as much accident as the other one did. But if we can build the population of this one to focus on saving the other one, then we'll have two worlds full of people poised to help save the afterlife."
Daniel rocked in The Gamma's chair, determined to stay calm to counter Kate's agitation. "How-"
"Daniel, those gods came into power from civilizations believing in them. Just a nation full of people. We're offering worlds."
"But they were pantheons and we're just two."
"Are we? We're only as limited as we think we are." She came up to sit on the porch beside him.
"You sound like a motivational poster."
"All right Daniel. What do you think we should do? What are you bright ideas here? You're the trickster, you are finally learning how to use your power, you can do anything."
He looked down, abashed. "I'm not used to this. I'm sorry. I don't know what to do. I'm still tweaked about being exiled. I have godlike power-"
"You are a god," she interrupted.
"Okay, I AM a god, but I can't get out of here. What am I supposed to do with all of this power?"
"Make the Earth."
"Imari."
"Yes. Imari."
"How?"
She grinned at him, and he felt lightheaded and confident for the first time in a very long time. With Kate with him, he could maybe believe that he could do something.
"We'll figure it out," she said.
They hadn't attempted any great miracles since sending The Gamma to heaven, and frankly Daniel was pretty pissed that it was so easy for her to die and ascend, while he and Kate were stuck here.
Still, they simply walked to learn more about the world. To Daniel's eye, it looked just like the first Earth. And like Kate had told him the second Earth had looked. They walked through a heavily wooded area, a thick forest that looked as if it had been there for hundreds of years, not a day.
"How much time do you think has passed?" he asked.
"Well," Kate said. "Two nights ago the Earth Mark Three was created. About nine hours later, ninety years had passed, but the humans had already evolved to the point of building seventeenth-century cabins."
"So did we make dinosaurs on this planet? Cause I always wanted to see them and I'm going to be bummed if I missed them. I help make TWO planets and I don't get to see any dinosaurs?"
They came to a clearing and stepped into a carefully turned field. Daniel swore at the sight in front of him, and rubbed his eye just to make sure he wasn't imagining things.
Kate laughed. "So did you do that just now? Or is this a happy coincidence?"
Daniel just stared. Across the field two humans worked the land, hitching plows to beasts of burden that looked much less like oxen and much more like triceratops. A young boy rode on the lead lizard, patting its bony collar.
Beyond the field was the house, a small nondescript white farm house, but beyond that was a massive wooden tower that looked like a silo, but was open at the top with large perches extending from the opening. Pterodactyls sunned themselves on these perches, occasionally flying away to return with a hapless deer clutched in sharp talons, screeching loud enough to reach Kate and Daniel's ears half a mile away.
"Shit. They're domesticated," Daniel whispered.
Kate laughed again. "This is the coolest thing I've ever seen. Let's check it out."
The approached the farmer, a tall, muscular woman with brown skin and green eyes, waving at her. "Is she going to recognize us?" Daniel asked. Kate shrugged and continued to wave and smile till the woman saw them.
The woman was laughing at her son's glee on riding the lizard that had to be twice the size of an ox, but her smile faltered when she
saw Kate and Daniel. She let go of the plow and fell to her knees in the dusty field.
Daniel glanced at Kate, unsure of what to do, but she walked forward and took the woman's hands and lifted her from the field. The woman kept her eyes down. "My Lords, I had prayed for Persi to bless the pterodactyls, I never meant to summon the two of you. Please forgive this humble servant."
To Daniel's ears she might have been describing how a nuclear reactor worked. Kate frowned. "Persi? I'm sorry, I don't know who you're talking about."
"The goddess of dinosaurs," the woman whispered. "Please forgive me."
Kate gasped and then grinned widely at Daniel. "Of course! New populations will give birth to new gods!"
Daniel realized with shock that she was right. They were idiots to think they'd be the only gods there. But at least the woman knew who they were, so they were still worshiped.
Daniel looked closely at the woman, whose lip trembled. She shook all over. He put his finger under her chin and forced her head up. Tears spilled from her eyes and she still wouldn't look at him.
"Hey. What's going on? Why are you so scared? We just wanted to see your farm and these awesome dinosaurs. Nothing's wrong."
"Yeah, calm down," said Kate, frowning. "Everything is fine. We're just wandering around, saw your farm. You didn't summon us. We're not angry."
The woman continued to weep silently. Kate sighed. Daniel removed his hand from her face and thought for a moment. What had she said? Something about the pterodactyls...
"Hey, what did you need Persi for, anyway? Something wrong with the pterodactyls?" he asked.
The woman sniffled and shook her head. "I can't bother you with my problems."
"Sure you can," Kate said. "We're here, Persi isn't; we don't have anything better to do."
"Come on," Daniel said, grinning at her.
She finally nodded. "Come with me. Daniel, get off the triceratops and go inside and get some lemonade."
Daniel opened his mouth to tell her that no matter how much he'd wanted to, he hadn't gotten on the triceratops, but then he realized the boy's name was Daniel. He slithered off the beast and grinned at Kate and Daniel before running inside.
