The Death of the Immortals

Your time is coming soon, Arkyn, he had said. His visit was strange. Unannounced, unwelcome, and the first of its kind.

I laughed, and who could blame me? After passing millenia in the blink of an eye while the mortals in the growing, glowing, bright cities built of man-made stone and glass could hardly last a century. Death’s domain was in those cities, not in our heavenly home. 

Your ignorance, he had said when I laughed, is the beginning of your end, Arkyn. Your time is coming soon.

By the time I finished laughing and asked what he had meant by that, he had already vanished with my dearest Manisa, leaving nothing of her sun-filled hair, fair skin, or hazel eyes.

“No!” I shouted. “She is not yours!”

She couldn’t be his, not when she was still in the prime of her beauty. Not when mortals wilted every minute moment as often and as naturally as the rain in a storm. 

Without ever a need for food or water, we simply lived our lives, relying, for entertainment, on the mortals whose technological advances they considered necessary for progress and life. All we were gods of were ourselves. Our lives. An example from the Creator of all that was necessary for existence: life. 

Death had no right to take one of us. Death certainly had no right to take her. He was an enemy of my life. An enemy of my love.

The elders of our people often enjoyed the mortal realm, and having lived long enough in immortal bodies to appear as the elderly of the mortals without their frailty, they chose to live in the silent, relaxing homes of mortals full of the dying and dead. There, our elders, though scattered, had a peaceful life in simplicity and community while near enough to their favorite topic: humans. Yet even there, Death did not touch them despite his proximity.

“Have you seen Death?” I asked Finan, our oldest elder, over the phone.

“Only in passing, young one,” he replied. “Never face to face. He would not dare reach for our kind. Why? Do you seek him? The nurses here have been whispering of one of the mortals getting ready to ‘kick the bucket,’ which I have come to understand as meaning ‘die.’”

“He has taken Manisa.”

Finan was silent for a moment. “You’re sure?”

“He visited our home, threatened my life, then she was gone as he vanished. He must pay.”

“How strange,” Finan mused. “Perhaps he knows something we do not know.”

“How could he? We know everything that has passed in this world! Every mortal kingdom, every age and myth, every city, every monument, every distance, and every deep! What could he possibly know that we do not?”

“Death knows himself.”

I could not respond.

“Come quickly,” Finan suggested. “Hopefully, the man will die after Bingo and we can ask Death together.”

Finan muttered as he saw the home’s nurses rush through the hallway during the game of Bingo. “Aggh! So close!” He had managed to secure three lines of four on the board, needing just one more tile to win at Bingo, but he was watching the hallway instead of listening to the caller. His eyes, though old and surrounded by wrinkles, watched that hall with the same light and fascination of a newborn. He looked much older than the last time I saw him nearly fifty years ago.

I sighed. “Finish your game, Fin. I’ll handle Death myself.”

I followed the direction the nurses had pushed their cart and came to a room where Death waited beside the doorway. Inside, a heart monitor beeped ferociously, passionately, and the nurses did their best to soothe the dying man, moving to silence the device as I arrived and spoke my question.

“Why?” The mortal world seemed to stop.

It is this man’s time. Why else?

“Why did you take her?”

It was simply her time, and your time will come soon. I am only a collector.

“Where is she?”

Death did not respond.

“Where is she!”

Where she is meant to be. Where all that has Life will go.

“Take me to her!”

It is not your time.

Then time resumed, the monitor silenced, and the man inside breathed his last.

I could only wonder what purpose the nurses served if they could not stop Death. “Why now?” I asked in the hall. Death was gone, and I expected no answer.

“Did you know him?”

I looked up. A nurse began reaching to my shoulder, his eyes softened as a well-practiced smile spread across his face. I nodded in a lie.

“It was his time. That’s why. His life had done all it needed to do in this world.”

I feigned comfort and offered thanks, but in truth the words infuriated me. Manisa had not yet done all her life needed to do. Not for me. I needed more time with her. She needed more time with me. Our days together were worth eternities, and our eternity together now felt like no more than a minute.

Finan was right where I left him—his long white hair was easy to spot among the balding men and bob-cuts of the women—and despite my time away, he had made no progress on his board. “What did he say?” he asked in the croaking whisper of all the elderly. He said he liked making such a voice despite the youth still within his natural voice.

“Nothing useful.”

“Just like the board then, eh? Never know when you’ll finally win and take home the prize. That’s why I try and be ready. Don’t want to miss a call of this board.”

Just then, one of the mortal elderly cried out as loud, breaking as best as he could through his weakening voice, that he had a bingo. The volunteers, young adults from a local school, confirmed the board and called the end of the game.

“Or,” Finan continued, “you never know when you might lose it all.”

“How can I bring her back?”

“You can’t win everything, Arkyn.”

“Then what am I supposed to do with my life now? Millennia with Manisa… What does another day matter?”

“Perhaps you should take some time in the mortal realm, learn from the people who count their days instead of their centuries. Perhaps then you could find Death and get the answers you seek.”

I thanked him and left. Pondering his words, I came to agree with part of it. Human opinions mattered little in the grand scheme of life. But Finan was still wise; I could search for Death myself. Or better still, force him to come to me.

I returned to my home, high in the mountains. Despite frequent human climbers on these mountains, none ever seemed to notice our houses. It was hardly difficult to find, but it was always missed.

At the threshold of the outer gate, I turned to gaze upon the falling light and rising stars, breathing in the view. The distant rolling waves of grass, the dots of light and life from nearby cities, and the wide expanse only mountains can offer. Manisa and I loved this view, but it now filled me with pain, hardening my resolve for my final visit here in a long while. I would return, I promised myself, to my home with Manisa by my side.

I had seen others do this, but Manisa and I loved our life together too much to ever dare say it ourselves. We wanted eternity with each other. Now that she was gone, however, I saw no more reason to fear the words. In the center of our small village, I shouted the simple command to nature, “I renounce my immortal life!” And it obeyed.

Life among the mortals was painful. My wounds bled, bones ached, muscles sored, hunger panged, and my mouth was forever parched. Every second of a mortal existence hardly felt worth living. My body aged rapidly, and now my reflection was no different from the face of the man who died the day I spoke with Death.

Finan was surprised at my choice to become mortal, but I knew Death after our first conversation. He would not answer fully those to whom he was not called. I had to call him. I had to reunite with Manisa. I had to bring her back to our mountain home to reclaim our immortality that Death had wrongly stolen from her. I had to do it to see the mountain view with her again.

I had planned to work and keep my mind busy, but as soon as my body began its long-withheld decay, Finan offered to finance my stay in the same nursing home as him.

Death had said my time was coming soon, but now that I was mortal, I felt as though Death avoided me as the year began to pass as swiftly and forgetfully as it had before.

That was until the day he knocked on my door.

It is not yet your time, but your time is coming soon.

“Return her to me, or else, Death.”

Or else ‘what,’ my friend?

“I am not your friend.”

I am not against you, nor am I against Manisa or any of your kind.

“Then why did you take her after tens of thousands of years of leaving us be?”

I am a friend of Life and Love. You call me ‘Death’ only because you do not know the life that follows me. I am not the arbiter of my own will, merely a servant of eternal Life.

“Then why?!”

It was her time. That is all I know. I cannot bring her back. She does not wish to return.

“You’re lying! She wants to be with me! To come back to me!”

She waits for you. Your time is coming soon.

Death vanished once more.

It felt wrong to return to the immortal home without Manisa, but I could stand the suffering of mortality no longer.

I made my way up the familiar mountain road, but now I could not find my home. It had vanished, and in its place was a cut-out plateau. I had no choice but to return to the home where Finan lounged at present for the weekly movie night. The home had chosen a family-friendly movie as they always do, and this week’s choice was Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, a movie that hardly made any sense to me. I had tried to watch it before but failed to finish it. Death is not to be feared, I never feared him. I have only ever hated him since he revealed himself.

I explained my issue to Finan.

“So Death will not come for me, and I cannot return to the immortal life? Am I doomed to this great suffering?”

“What is there for you to suffer here? I have seen friends here suffer greatly, and while you suffer simple things like aches and hunger, never call your suffering great.”

“Why do you care?”

“Why do you think I am here? In this retirement home of all places? I am here because I want to preserve these mortals in my memory and learn from them as I tried to tell you to do. They do not moan about their pain, they do not cry about their inability to move themselves, at least not anymore, they do the one thing you can never seem to do: accept life as it is.”

“I had a life with Manisa!”

“And now you have a life of your own! If Death, for some strange reason, calls me home, I will welcome him, for I have never seen him take something he is not due.”

Well said, Finan. You are a fine life-watcher.

I stood, finding strength in myself I had nearly forgotten, and bolted away from Death’s voice.

Are you ready now, Finan?

“So, my time has come?”

Indeed.

“Death!”

Yes, Arkyn?

“Why do you come for us now? Why do you take Finan? Leave him alone!”

“Hold, Arkyn. Our duty, our purpose as life-watchers is ending, my friend,” Finan answered for Death. “Do you know why, young one, we lived our long lives?”

“We are immortals, or at least I used to be. You still are! Death! You cannot take him!”

There is no such thing as an immortal on Earth, Arkyn. Even the tree of Life in the Garden was a part of my domain, though I was told to collect it sooner than even I expected.

“We were given long lives to watch and preserve mortal culture through the generations,” Finan explained. “I have seen men fear Death, and I have seen men embrace him. Now that the world can preserve its knowledge on its own, we can go on.”

Come, Arkyn, it is nearly your time, too. I have been told to show you something.

“Come, young one. Death is a friend of Life.”

“No, not of mine.” But it was already too late to resist. 

The home around us faded and an ethereal plane of tall grass and light filled my eyes.

Here, I saw her. Manisa was sitting in the field, watching children play around her.

“Manisa!”

“Arkyn? You’re here at last!” she said, running over to me, hugging me, and planting an everlasting kiss on my lips. Oh how I had missed those lips. Her hair smelled like lavender as it always had from her favorite store-brand shampoo, her body was just as warm and scented like sugar cookies, and her eyes were just as full of light. “You still look the same, handsome,” she winked as she pulled away. I looked down at my hands; the wrinkles were gone. Here, I was in the fullness of my youth again. Then she turned to Death, “Thank you for bringing him here.”

I brought him as commanded, but he still must make the right decision before he can stay. He can still return home and bring you with him, I have been granted such permission for this one occasion to bring someone back. The Word heard my pity for the pair of you, but he commanded that I could only return you once he arrived, and now his time is here.

“Come home with me, Nisa.”

For the first time in our millennia together, I saw her face fade to an unknown sorrow. “Leave here?”

“We can go home! You heard him! Don’t you want to spend more time at our mountain view? Experimenting with new kitchen wares? Watching short films like Titanic? I know you loved that one.”

“Arky, the mortal world is nice, yes, but I would not leave this place.”

I could not believe my ears. I was restored to my immortality, given another chance to live forever, and she did not want to come with me. “Why not?”

“On Earth, we passed through eternities like wind through a flag. Here is eternity. The end of all life is here: in eternity. Here we can live, not just observe or waste away or entertain ourselves. Here in eternity you and I can truly live Life together.”

I looked around the plain environment. This place was infinite and unchanging, and I longed to see the changing view of the mountains again. But as I completed the thought, the ethereal world shifted around me. The mountain view came forth again and shifted through thousands of years in seconds. I saw the view before I had known it and moved to that mountain; I saw the view as I had known it; then I saw the view as I had never known it. Then the mountain view crumbled as the world I had known fell apart. Then, the ethereal plane around me returned to the grass-filled expanse and iridescent sky.

So, what do you choose?

“I say we leave. Nisa, come with me.” I grabbed her hand. “Eternity passes too quickly here, I want to savor it with you.”

I see. Come then. Both of you.

She wept, pulling herself free of my grip. “No,” she muttered, turning to Death. “Death, do not take me back. I was brought here because I was ready to come. I had accepted you. I do not wish to return to time.”

“Nisa–”

“You are blind! I am happy here in true eternity, and you could be, too. I won’t have you if you will take this from me. You swore to honor and cherish me, and if you take me away from this place of happiness in the Eternal Word, you will have destroyed my wishes and forsaken me. If that is what you choose, then go. And forget me.”

“Nisa…”

Come, Arkyn, I will take you home.

I followed Death as we started away from them, slowly I felt the ethereal reality begin to harden around me as the voices of countless nurses attended to the sudden fall of Finan’s body in the retirement home.

I turned my head back and watched as Finan’s soul, young as he was in his prime before I knew him, comforted Manisa in her tears, tending to her as I loved to do.

“Wait,” I said to Death. “I’ll stay.” The fragments of the former physical world faded again until I was completely in the ethereal plane again. “Perhaps,” I said to Death while staring at my wife, waiting for her to notice my presence had not gone, “there is hope after you. Perhaps it is good that I came here. Perhaps it is good to let go of that world. Perhaps you are a friend of Life and Love. After all, you reunited me with mine.”

Wise choice, my friend. Welcome home.