What Remains

I existed before there were names for things.

On a planet whose name was never spoken, I watched its last ocean disappear beneath a blue sun. What remained of the water had collected in a shallow hollow of black stone, its surface trembling beneath the heat. Steam curled upward in thin white ribbons before vanishing into an atmosphere already too dry to receive it.

I crouched beside what remained of the ocean and waited. Heat trembled above the black stone. The water had retreated so far that its final remnant barely covered the hollow beneath it.

A thin skin of it vanished first. Then another. The last trace darkened the stone and disappeared.

There was nothing more for me to do there.

I did not know who made me. I did not know if anything had. I only knew that endings had always required my presence.

I had attended a star that shed its outer layers for centuries before collapsing into itself. I had watched a moon break apart slowly enough for its pieces to continue orbiting the planet that had torn it open. Neither required an explanation from me.

Humans would.

***

The first one had been struck in the head with a stone.

His body lay facedown in wet grass beneath a sky swollen with rain. Blood threaded through his hair and sank into the earth while, somewhere beyond the trees, several other humans shouted at one another with the confidence of creatures who had not yet realized how easily they broke.

His soul stood beside me.

For some time, he stared at his own corpse. He crouched, pushed one finger experimentally through his shoulder, withdrew it, and frowned at the offending hand before finally turning to me.

“What now?”

No dying star had ever required instructions.

I regarded him. The bewilderment would prove typical. Apparently consciousness survived the body more gracefully than dignity did.

I lifted one hand and opened the way.

He stood as if the wet grass were still beneath his feet. It was not. Only pieces of the field followed him here—the smell of rain-dark earth, the chill before another shower, the men still shouting.

Behind him, the dark divided beneath my fingers. Light spilled through the opening.

The man recoiled. “That way?”

“There is only one opening.” I lowered my hand and let the light speak for itself.

He leaned toward it without taking a step. “What’s there?”

“I do not know.”

His brow pulled tight. “You don’t know?”

“I have never crossed.”

“Aren’t you supposed to know?”

“My function is to open the way, not provide a tour.”

This seemed to trouble him more than death had. He glanced from the light to me. “I thought you were Death.”

“Death has already finished with you.” I gestured toward the body in the grass. “I deal with what remains.”

“Then what are you?”

I had never been asked that. I opened my palm toward the waiting light.

“Necessary.”

His laugh came thin and uncertain. Still, after another entirely avoidable hesitation, he crossed.

The opening sealed behind him, but something remained in the dark: a piece of flint floating where his soul had been. I caught it before it could drift away.

The stone he had carried in life had been black; this one gleamed silver against my palm, every rough edge preserved in perfect miniature. There was no purpose in keeping it, yet after turning it once between my fingers, I looped it onto the thin chain around my wrist.

The next human left a tooth, another a shell drilled neatly through its center.

I kept those too. Humans died with extraordinary enthusiasm. Cold took some, hunger others. Childbirth, infection, animals and fellow humans proved particularly effective, while their own ridiculous decisions accounted for an impressive remainder.

I opened the way for them all, and something always stayed behind.

***

Centuries later, snow sifted through the broken roof of a house in a village whose name even I no longer bothered using.

The living had packed the room with bodies and smoke. A fire struggled in the hearth and failed to warm much beyond the stones around it. Wet wool steamed nearby. Cloth had been stuffed into the gaps between the planks, but cold was persistent, and humans were inventive only up to a point.

The girl had been five. Her mother sat beside the bed, rocking the little body against her chest.

Between worlds, the child watched with her head tilted. “Why is she crying?”

“Because you died.”

The girl rubbed her nose. “That seems silly.”

“Humans frequently become unreasonable when confronted with permanent circumstances.”

“I’m still here, though.”

“For the moment.”

Her eyes narrowed at me.

I opened the way.

Light stretched across the dark, soft against the edges of the room. The child inspected it, evidently decided eternity could wait, and wandered around me instead.

A chain had worked itself around my wrist again. I freed it while the girl circled me, then caught a key before it struck the knife at my hip. Disorder created delays.

The girl’s attention settled on a silver ring near my wrist. She slipped one finger through it before I slid the chain out of reach.

“That belonged to someone else.”

“Who?”

“Lyra.”

The girl peered around me toward the opening. “Did she go there?”

I tipped my chin.

She kept staring into the light. “My mama goes there too?”

“At some point.”

“When?”

“That is Death’s concern, not mine.”

She frowned, dissatisfied. “Can I wait?”

“No.”

She resumed circling me until one of the lower chains dragged behind my heel. Her attention snapped to it.

“Did all those come from people?”

“Yes.”

She stared at the chains. “You have to carry all of them?”

“I do.”

“Does it hurt?”

I worked a knot free at my wrist. “Pain requires a body. Weight is merely a nuisance.”

The girl looked at the chains, then at me, as though one of us had plainly misunderstood the question. Eventually, she crossed, and a small silver marble appeared where she had stood.

I bent to retrieve it. The chains slid forward with me, crowding my arms. When I closed my fingers around the marble, I stayed there a moment before forcing myself upright.

It took longer than it once had. I set the marble beside a carved horse and continued my work.

***

Humans became louder as civilization progressed.

They invented writing and immediately used it to record increasingly elaborate explanations for why they intended to kill one another. They built cities, burned them, rebuilt them, and composed songs lamenting the inconvenience. They named gods, renamed them, divided those gods into factions and, with admirable consistency, murdered each other over the details.

One priest arrived between worlds clutching the place where an arrow had entered his chest.

The instant he saw me, his face brightened. “I knew it.”

I opened the way.

He ignored it.

“The burdens of sin.” His gaze fixed instead on the chains now draped from my shoulders.

“No.”

He frowned at the chains, lips moving around some unfinished conclusion. “If not sin...” His attention caught on the silver spoon near my hip.

“They are chains and charms.”

He reached toward the spoon. “May I?”

“You may proceed through the opening I have made specifically for you.”

His hand dropped. “The spoon belonged to someone?”

“A baker.”

“Ah.” His gaze returned to it. “His trade, then. Something he used every day. Perhaps—”

“It is just a spoon.”

“All things contain meaning.”

“Not necessarily the meaning you assign to them.”

The priest turned fully toward me, warming to his subject. I looked past him at the open threshold.

He had been dead for six minutes and had already developed a theology about my chains.

I untangled a link caught beneath another while he began pacing as though the void had become his congregation.

“You guide souls from one existence into another,” he said. “You bear the evidence of their mortal lives. Surely you understand the sacred nature of your purpose.”

“Perfectly.”

He looked insufferably pleased with himself.

I pulled the final knot free and pointed toward the light. “I open the door.”

His expression fell. Whatever sermon had been forming died a second death. He crossed, looking offended.

A small silver book appeared in his place. I caught it and studied the embossed cover.

Onto the chains it went.

***

The woman appeared beside me with one hand pressed beneath her ribs.

“You may stop doing that,” I told her.

She looked down at herself. There was no wound on her soul, no blood beneath her fingers.

“Oh.” Her hand dropped.

The bedroom existed around us in two overlapping states. In the living world, a lamp had shattered beside the bed, and one dresser drawer lay overturned across the floor. Clothes tangled with broken ceramic. Near the door sat an open suitcase, half packed, a green sweater hanging from one side and books lined carefully beneath it.

Three photographs were wrapped in shirts to protect the glass. One shirt had failed. The woman stared at the broken frame. “Damn.”

“You are concerned about the photograph.”

“My sister gave it to me.”

“You cannot take it with you.”

“Yes, thank you. I noticed.” She approached the frame anyway and attempted to straighten it. Her fingers passed through the glass.

Several feet away, the man who had killed her stood staring at the body on the floor. Blood darkened the cuff of his shirt. His chest rose and fell too quickly, each breath ragged and shallow.

He was alive. Therefore, he was not my concern.

Yet.

“He wasn’t supposed to be home.” The woman sat on the edge of the bed, although the mattress did not acknowledge her weight. “He told me he had a meeting until six.”

I opened the way, spilling pale light across the shadow of the bedroom. She glanced at it but made no move to cross.

Naturally.

“I was leaving him.” She picked at a loose thread on her sleeve, repeatedly forgetting she could not grasp it. “I got an apartment. Tiny place,” she continued. “Fifth floor. No elevator.”

I worked a silver fishhook free from the handle of a miniature teacup. The relevance of the fifth floor remained unclear.

“It’s cheap. The kitchen window faces a brick wall, but the bedroom gets great sun in the morning.”

I adjusted the chains across my shoulder. The woman watched.

“That looks heavy.”

“It remains manageable.”

“I bought plants yesterday.” She picked again at the useless thread on her sleeve. “I heard people are supposed to put plants in apartments. One was already dying.” She mistook my silence for judgment and hurried to add, “I’d owned it for twelve hours.”

“Apparently sufficient.”

She laughed. The sound startled me only because souls rarely laughed once they understood their circumstances.

“You are terrible at comforting people.”

“Comfort is not one of my responsibilities.”

“Clearly.” She rose and approached the opening.

For a brief, optimistic moment, I believed she might cross without further complication. Instead, she stopped beside me.

I should have known better.

Her eyes followed the chains. Silver rings and buckles hung among knives, coins, buttons, prayer beads, locks of hair made metal, children’s toys and objects whose purposes had vanished with the civilizations that created them.

“Why do you carry all of those?”

I looked down. The answer seemed obvious.

Because they remained. Because I had kept the first. Because once something became mine to carry, I carried it.

“I always have.”

“Not a reason, but okay.”

I widened the opening by several unnecessary inches.

“Subtle.” She stayed exactly where she was. “Does everyone leave something?”

“Yes.”

“What will mine be?”

“I do not know.”

Her attention returned to the chains. “What do you think?”

“I do not guess.”

“Ever?”

A small charm had worked beneath the links at my wrist. I freed it before answering. “Guessing is an inefficient substitute for waiting.”

Her mouth curved. “That sounds like no fun.”

“I have survived admirably without it.”

The woman regarded me for a moment before turning toward the opening. “Do you ever visit the living world?”

“I attend crossings there.”

“No. I mean visit. Without someone having to die first. Like a vacation.”

The chains rested against my shoulders with the accumulated weight of millennia.

I had heard descriptions of summer rain and bread pulled hot from an oven, of snow falling beneath a collar, bare feet in grass, broken noses, dancing, sex, sunburn, bitter coffee, warm baths and the peculiar relief of removing shoes that had hurt all day.

One man had spent nine minutes explaining peaches.

Another died furious that he would miss the final movement of a symphony.

A woman from a city buried beneath six meters of earth had tried to describe the smell of her newborn son.

I understood them all.

Technically.

“Others of my kind have done so, though I have never understood the appeal.”

The woman studied me, then looked into the light. “You should.”

She crossed. The opening began to close as a small silver key appeared in the dark and settled into my waiting palm.

I hooked the key onto the nearest chain. It barely altered the pull across my shoulders.

It should not have mattered. Nine centuries earlier, a prisoner’s iron shackle had dragged one chain to my elbow. I had shortened it, shifted two others, and continued. There had always been some adjustment that made the burden workable.

The key settled among the rest. A link pressed against my collarbone.

The chains remained manageable. An eternity of managing them was not.

The closing seam of light narrowed before me.

I had always considered inconvenience an insufficient reason to set aside one’s function.

I reconsidered.

I caught the edges of the opening and pulled them apart.

The woman stumbled back into view. Her eyebrows rose. “Forget something?”

“I have a question.” I motioned toward her body. “May I use it?”

She followed my gaze. “My body?”

“Yes.”

“What for?”

“I would like to visit.”

She stared at me for several seconds. “You can do that?”

“Yes.”

“And I’m finished with it?”

“Completely.”

She looked behind herself, toward whatever waited beyond the opening, and shrugged. “All yours.”

I inclined my head. “Thank you.”

As I released the threshold, she lifted one hand.

“Wait. I have a favor to ask too. It’s a bit… well—”

“You are dead. I assure you etiquette is no longer among your pressing concerns.”

“Great.” She pointed past me. The man had lowered himself onto the bed, staring at her body with shaking hands. “If you don’t mind, could you send him this way?”

“Certainly.”

Her shoulders relaxed. “Thanks.”

She turned toward the light, paused, and glanced back. “Have fun.”

“I have no idea how.”

Her smile returned. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

The opening closed. The chains settled around me.

I released them.

Silver poured from my shoulders and arms, millions of links carrying combs, buttons, marbles, rings, letters, knives, toys, teeth, flowers, and keys down into the dark. The sudden absence of weight nearly made me reach after them on instinct.

They dissolved where they lay, each glimmer extinguishing until the void was empty again.

I stepped into the body.

My cheek rested against the wooden floor, which introduced me immediately to a concept I had previously understood only in theory.

Gravity held the body with astonishing determination. I planted both palms beneath my shoulders and pushed. Muscles trembled in protest. Hair fell across my face, lodged against my mouth and refused to move when I blew at it.

Humans tolerated an extraordinary number of design flaws.

My lungs expanded without permission. Air rushed in. The body convulsed around it, and I coughed hard enough to discover ribs.

A relentless pounding followed beneath my breastbone. I pressed a hand against it and felt the heart strike back from within.

Again. Again.

Persistent little thing.

Pain arrived beneath my ribs, sharp and immediate.

“Inconvenient.” The word vibrated through my throat.

I covered the wound and closed it.

Across the room, the man made a strangled sound. “You—”

I attempted to stand. Knees were an appalling design choice, but after one locked and the other threatened mutiny, I caught the dresser and succeeded.

The man edged toward the door. “This isn’t possible.”

“You have been requested.” I snapped my fingers.

He collapsed. His soul emerged with considerably less composure than hers had, staring first at his corpse, then at me, then at the opening forming behind him.

“No… I’m not ready.”

“Few are.” I inclined my head toward the light. He crossed. A silver bottle cap appeared where he had been. I stepped over it.

Outside, evening had settled over the street.

Exhaust caught in my throat, a bicycle bell cut through the noise, someone shouted from an upper window, and a stranger knocked into my shoulder before I could separate one sensation from the next.

The living world had no sense of sequence.

Air moved across my face. Hair lifted from my neck.

From an open doorway came sugar, grease, smoke, and something floral I could not immediately identify. My heart continued its unnecessary percussion. Every breath entered cool and left warm.

I wandered farther down the block until a voice caught on something inside me. A melody moved through it, rising and folding around words stretched beyond speech.

The closer I came, the more the sound seemed to gather around me. It slipped beneath the noise of traffic and voices.

I knew what humans called it.

I had carried violins and drumsticks, concert tickets and snapped guitar strings. Once, a ninety-three-year-old man who complained that his daughter had sold his piano left me a silver tuning fork.

For millennia, the dead had tried to explain this sound to me.

None had been precise enough.

Music.

I followed it.