The Afterlife Series Omnibus: Heaven, Hell, Earth, Wasteland, War, Stones

by Mur Lafferty

  He was missing an eye.

  Daniel froze. Kate's hand wrapped around his wrist tightly and she shook her head slightly. Don't make a scene. Don't make a scene? What was he supposed to say? The boy was named for him, presumably, which was nice and all, but the fact that he was missing an eye gave Daniel a cold feeling, making him uncomfortably sure that it hadn't been an accident to remove it. He balled his fists and walked next to Kate, who kept her arm closed around his.

  It was only his boyish desire to see a nesting pterodactyl that kept him walking with her and not razing the farm to the ground with fire. He knew he could do it; he could feel the power bubbling within him, looking for an outlet.

  The woman, who said her name was Lania, inexplicably called their roost the "henhouse" - with the lizards nesting on outcroppings along the wall all the way up to the perch scores of feet above them. The farm kept seven nesting females and two intact males. Immature castrated males were kept for meat, she explained, and Daniel forgot his rage at seeing the beasts up close. One of the hens looked placidly at him as he reached out a hand to touch the warm leathery skin.

  "And what's the problem with them?" Kate asked.

  "Two of our best hens stopped producing. I was hoping Persi would bless them to get them laying again," Lania said. "Not that I really expected her to come. She's much too important to appear to a humble farmer and dino rancher."

  With a furtive glance at Daniel, who shrugged, Kate lay her hand on the lizard. She looked quickly at Lania and then murmured something under her breath. She did the same for the second hen, and the woman burst into tears again, thanking them loudly. She begged them to come into the house for lemonade, and Kate accepted, but Daniel shook his head. He couldn't stand it anymore.

  "You go ahead. I want to check out the triceratops barn," he said, and Kate nodded and followed the weeping, gibbering woman back to the farmhouse.

  Daniel didn't want to see the boy. He couldn't handle it. He knew the boy was probably dying to see him, but Daniel couldn't face him. What kind of society rose out of someone blinding a boy to honor a god?

  No. He did want to see him. He peered out of the henhouse and waited until Kate and Lania had gone into the house. He frowned. Trickster gods. Illusion, fooling, shape-change, those were the tools of the trade. Along with quick thinking.

  Well. He could work on the quick thinking part. For now...

  He blinked his eye as half the henhouse disappeared. His eye was on the side of his head, not the front, and his blind side was more pronounced than ever. He spread his wings and saw they were long and leathery. The hens looked at him with interest, but none tried to usher the pterodactyl chick back to a nest. He laughed, a high, clucking sound, and beat his small wings fiercely to climb the air up to the perch eighty feet above the ground.

  The landscape spread around him and he could see the triceratops barn behind the house, the freshly turned fields, the neighboring farms, and several henhouses just like the one he was in. Further to the west was what looked like a larger city, and he made a point to tell Kate.

  A warm wind came under his wings and he dropped off the perch and soared over the farmhouse. Delicious and intoxicating, flight made him forget for a moment his goal, and he circled the land lazily a moment before spotting the boy back out in the field, dejectedly leaning against the placid triceratops, which had wandered a bit and had dug a trench through the yard to get to a particularly tasty flowering bush.

  Daniel came to perch atop the triceratops's neck ridge and watched the boy stare at the ground, the blue cloth around his head dusty and drab. He looked around when Daniel arrived.

  "Hey there, chick," the boy said. "Glad someone wants to be around me. I'm supposed to be blessed by Daniel, and he didn't even want to meet me. I guess Daddy was right - I don't have the sight."

  That's because they took your fucking eye, Daniel thought. He almost jumped down and turned back into human form, but he wanted to see what the boy would say when he didn't know his god was listening.

  "I just wanted him to be proud of me. All the other seers are cool. They see things. I don't see anything. I wonder if I should pretend."

  Daniel would have smacked his head if he'd not had wings. The kid was actually talking about prophesy. That made sense - they thought the kid was touched by god, and therefore they took his eye and made him special. Or maybe they took his eye to give him the sight.

  We're out of touch for a couple of days and look what they've done. This may be harder than we thought, he thought.

  He hopped down from the triceratops's neck and became himself again. The boy cried out and fell back against the lizard, who didn't even budge, her great bulk more than enough to take his weight.

  Daniel put his hands out in a placating manner. "Hey, calm down. It's cool. I just want you to listen, okay?"

  The boy tried to fall to his knees, but Daniel caught his shoulders. "You have one job here. Listen to me. Can you do that?"

  The boy looked up at him with an eye the color of his mother's and nodded, clearly terrified.

  "I don't know why the churches around here think it's cool to half-blind kids and say they have sight given by me, but this is the first I've heard about it. I didn't tell them to blind you and I'm so damn sorry they did."

  He stopped and swallowed, the anger choking him again. "Does it still hurt?"

  The boy nodded. "Mama says it's the sight coming on me."

  Daniel gritted his teeth. "No, that's the pain from your eye being removed." He put his hand on the boy's face, and his scars disappeared. His remaining eye grew wide, and he tried to fall to his knees again.

  "Thank you, Lord. The pain is gone. Oh, thank you."

  Daniel pulled him up again. "I don't think I can give you the eye back, though. I can't fix my own, after all. Kate might be able to-" he stopped at the boy's vigorous head shaking.

  "No, Lord, I don't want the eye back. I'd rather have the sight like the other boys do."

  Daniel sighed. "Look, I told you, I didn't touch anyone and give them sight. You were wondering if you should start pretending you have it. I guarantee that they're doing that exact thing. They may convince themselves that they are seeing something, but I promise I'm not sending them anything."

  He paused and stared, unfocused, into sky. Then he smiled at the boy.

  "Daniel. Do you really want to have the sight? Be my prophet? Spread my word? The real Word of Daniel?"

  The boy's jaw dropped. He nodded slowly, his eye wide.

  Daniel grinned. "Okay then. You know you'll be the only kid with the real sight. And since I have no idea what bullshit they're spouting in my name if they're blinding kids for Christ's sake, it's likely you won't be saying the same as the other seers. They'll call you the liar. Are you cool with that?"

  He nodded again. "To spread Your word, I'd lose the other eye, Lord."

  The utter devotion on his face made Daniel's soul ache, but he smiled anyway. He had no idea how to do it, but he figured putting his hand on the kid's head and throwing some divine will or something in there would work. He put his hand over the boy's head and closed his eye.

  Her eyes, Coyote's yellow eyes, hovered in his vision, and he thought he heard her laughing. And then something passed from him to the boy; it felt like a searing heat went from his hand and out into the boy's head. The boy fell down, convulsing, and Daniel dropped to his knees, horrified.

  "Are you okay? I'm sorry, I didn't know," he babbled, but stopped when the boy's eye flew open.

  "He is the trickster who protects his own," the boy hissed, his green eye staring blindly at nothing. "Blind not your sons or else feel his wrath. The pterodactyl is his animal, the desert his home."

  "Huh. That's about right," Daniel said, sitting back on his heels as the boy slowly got to his hands and knees.

  "I will serve you, Lord. Until my end days," he said humbly, bowing his head.

  "Thank you," was all Daniel managed to say.

  He helped
the boy to his feet and supported him as he staggered. "Do you think your Mama has any more of that lemonade left?" he asked.

  The boy nodded. "Lord, may I ask a question?"

  "Anything."

  "Who is Christ?"

  Daniel laughed. "He was a guy I knew once. He was pretty cool. I'll tell you about him later. Let's head inside, imbuing a kid with the touch of God takes it out of you."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  "I don't get it, Kate. How can they be so misguided as to blind their own kids?"

  Kate walked with her head down, wondering why the road was so disorienting. It was wrong somehow.

  "I don't know. Think about how many terrible things people did back home in the name of the God of Abraham. So many people interpreting the Word differently. As Douglas Adams once said, Christ's message was essentially "wouldn't it be great if everyone were nice to each other for a change?" and people STILL misinterpreted that."

  "But I don't feel like I've given any messages, good or bad. I've been kinda busy with you. I haven't had time to say, "Be nice to each other" or "Blind your kids" or "Eat your veggies.""

  "It would be nice if we could get some guidance. That's been the worst part of this whole thing," Kate said. "We could have asked Christ why he did miracles sometimes and not others. So many people have begged for proof of a god and nothing happens, but now we know they did - we do - exist." She frowned at the road. "I'd like to head into the city in disguise. Can we do that?"

  "Sure. Hard for me to hide this, though," Daniel pointed to his blind side. "It seems to be a rather prominent feature around here."

  Kate stopped walking and appraised him. "Shape-changing isn't a problem with you, is it?"

  "Well, I did the pterodactyl thing pretty easily, yeah."

  "Then you just turn into an animal. If you prefer, make it something shaggy, like a dog or horse. Something with hair that can cover your eye."

  He grinned at her. "If you're going to ride me, I'd prefer it not to be my back."

  She laughed. "Dog, then?"

  He sighed. "The coyote part of me objects loudly, but you're probably right." He concentrated briefly, and then there was a shaggy white dog where Daniel used to be.

  Kate knelt in the road and arranged the hair on the dog's head to cover the blind eye. The dog licked her hand. She grinned.

  "That'll do."

  She stood up and watched the dog romp through the woods. She realized she had no idea what the clothing looked like here, and then just guessed, creating with her divine will a pair of brown boots, green pants, and a white blouse. Nice, rugged, generic, she assumed. Her brown hair she willed blonde - then red, because she'd always wanted to be a redhead.

  She peered at the road again and then laughed. She realized what was wrong. It was the wrong width. She'd been fascinated with the fact that Earth roads were the size they were because of the wagon wheel width from the times of ancient Rome. One of those situations where traditions held on for quite a long time. This road was wider - not a lot, but it was noticeable.

  A clattering came from behind her, and she stepped out of the road to see exactly why the road was so wide. The wide wagon was pulled not by four horses, but four dinosaurs. Kate didn't know the names of them, but they each walked upright and had powerful, quick hind legs. She wondered if she were smart in not pushing Daniel to become a horse. She wondered if any familiar beasts of burden were used here.

  The wagon clattered by, the man sitting in the driver's seat ignoring her. In the back he had raw bars of metal stacked, gleaming dully in the midday sun.

  Daniel came up beside her and sat down. "Maybe I should have told you to become a dinosaur," she said.

  He barked once and shook his head, his hair flying around.

  "Okay, I get it," she said, arranging his hair to cover his eye again. "Dinos aren't shaggy. Let's head into town and see what's up."

  Daniel barked once more and they started walking again.

  The city was much more technologically advanced than Kate had expected. As they crested the hill that led to the city, she gasped as she saw towers rising over the smaller buildings, shiny and brass, with different insignias over the roofs like beacons.

  She stared for a moment. "This is really going to wreak havoc on any evolution versus creationism debates, isn't it? Dammit. I was on the evolution side."

  Daniel barked once, and Kate was pretty sure he was laughing at her.

  "Did I ever tell you about the watch my mom gave me? This was before you moved to town, when we were kids." Daniel whined, and she continued. "Mom gave me a real watch, one that wound. I loved it. But I was a dumb, curious kid. I wanted to see how it worked. I took the thing apart and laid out all the gears and springs to look at them. Mom walked in on me and yelled at me. Scared me to death. I whacked the desk and the innards of my watch went flying, then they all clattered and bounced around my room and were gone."

  She paused and stared at the city as another dino-pulled cart passed them. "I was finding bits of watch in my bed, clothes, and carpet for years after. I kept each piece in a bag, promising myself I'd put it back together some day. I never did."

  Daniel barked, and she grinned. "I guess so.”

  "I am getting a little freaked, honestly," she said as they headed toward the city. "I mean, this world is evolving too fast. How can we hope to influence people if they go from amoeba to industrial age in forty-eight hours?"

  Kate got the feeling of being completely out of her element as she neared the city. Buildings like this hadn't existed on Earth, none that she had ever seen, anyway. Most had some sort of wooden or stone foundation, but they seemed to effortlessly flow into brass or iron or steel towers and spires. One tower had a wooden lift attached with an intricate system of pulleys climbing the outside of a shining brass tower with a great cog rising from the roof. Another huge building had pipes and ducts running in and out of the exterior walls, and an intricate spider web of ducts ran both into the ground and high above the city, connecting the tower to other towers. Habitrails? Steam ducts? Kate had no idea.

  And the people! Well, Kate realized quickly she was dressed as a country rube, as many of the people clearly looked at her as if she were an unwanted visitor. Nobility walked with a certain Victorian air, with waistcoats and corsets and skirts and hats, and more blue-collar types scurried around in coveralls and boots, grime and scars covering their hands. One woman stumbled in front of Kate, dumping her box of cogs and springs into the dirt. She swore, and Kate bent to help her.

  Her forearms were covered in tattoos making her look like the interior of a clock. She muttered swear words to herself as she looked around the dirt for the dropped clock parts, and when Kate reached out her hand to help, the woman batted her away.

  The moment her hand touched Kate's however, her eyes went wide and she stared at Kate.

  Kate smiled and said, "I'm sorry. Can I help?"

  The woman nodded mutely and sat down in the dirt, mindless of the annoyed people skirting around her.

  Kate thought of all the clock pieces lost in her room, and that forgotten bag with some - but never all - of the parts inside. She ran her hand lightly over the dirty street and felt each spring, cog and gear jump into her hand. She dropped them into the box. "That should be everything."

  The woman licked her lips and asked in an awed voice, "Are you..."

  "My name's Kate. What's yours?" Kate ignored the low growl at her side.

  "Gabrielle," she whispered. "I'm a tinkerer here."

  Kate got to her feet and helped Gabrielle up. "Can you tell me where "here" is? I'm afraid I'm new. Quite literally."

  Gabrielle nodded. "You're in Dauphine, Lady."

  "Oh, I'm no lady, but thank you. Can you tell me if there are any, ah, places of worship in the city?"

  Gabrielle pointed down the main road. "The heart of the city beats with two chambers, the organic chamber of Daniel the One-Eyed, and the synthetic chamber of Kate the Reborn."

  "O
rganic and synthetic. Interesting. Kinda scary, too," Kate said, more to herself than Gabrielle.

  "Would you like me to take you there?" Gabrielle asked.

  "Oh, that's not necessary. You were clearly in a rush to get somewhere. I wouldn't want to make you late," Kate protested.

  "It's no trouble, really," she said eagerly.

  Kate put her hand on Gabrielle's arm once more. "Listen. You have an idea of who I am, and you may or may not be right, but I would appreciate it if you didn't let anyone else know your assumptions. Can I count on you?"

  Gabrielle nodded once, her eyes wide at Kate's touch. "Yes, my Lady."

  Kate looked around at the finely-dressed nobility or the practically-dressed workers. "I think you'd better stop calling me that, too, as no one would believe I'm worthy of the title. Kate is fine."

  "Ah, no one names their children after the goddess," Gabrielle said.

  "They don't? But they name their sons Daniel," Kate said, frowning.

  "With all due respect, Daniel is a god who speaks to our sons, we have a closer relationship with him. Kate is distant, removed, to be worshiped and revered." Her face burned and she looked at the ground, clearly reluctant to tell these things.

  Kate sighed and Daniel whined at her feet. "This is more complicated than I thought it would be. Yes, please take me to these chamber things. And call me Jennifer or something. A normal name. Sheesh."

  Gabrielle nodded.

  Distant? She was distant? She had been busy being dead, thanks very much. Kate tried not to let her agitation show, as people began giving them a wide berth and dogs whined and barked as she walked past.

  Daniel kept close to her leg, pressing against her. He butted his head against her and she was comforted by his presence.

  Despite her annoyance, Kate continued to gape at the city's wonders. People moved from one high tower to another by gondolas and zip lines, and she started to realize that several main cables led from towers to the tallest tower in the center of the city. As they reached the center, Kate saw zeppelins through the towers on the far side of the city and wondered if there was an airship station on the other side.