Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology(93)

“Violating natural law is an extremely serious transgression.” I’m cringing inside at how stilted and nerdy I sound. “The penalties are severe—”

The woman throws back her head and shouts laughter at the sky. “Bitch, please! What kind of severe are we talking about? Twenty years of hard labour? Or—” She draws her free hand across her throat and makes a grating noise. “News flash: I don’t have twenty years. A couple of months, if that. You wanna kill me, stand in line. The Grim Reaper’s got dibs, and as far as I know, dying is one of those things you can only do once.”

Mixing up Death and Reapers is such a common mistake, I should be used to it, but it still gets me every time, even though there’s no way any of them could know better while they live. But she knows something, I realise and I blurt it out before I can think to stop myself, “You’re gonna cheat.”

“Is that what you call it?” The woman raises a nonexistent eyebrow at me. “I bet that’s another extremely serious transgression. If you want to hit me with one of those severe penalties, you’ll have to catch me. Which might be hard.” She smiles at the bird.

“Don’t worry about her,” the bird says, fluffing itself up on her finger. The woman has to rest her arm on one crossed leg and even then, I can see it’s an effort. “She’s working on an old business model she doesn’t know is obsolete.”

“Huh?” I say.

“It must kill you having to waste your wit on the dead,” says the parakeet. “Oh, that was mean. I’m sorry. I know you don’t have any say about any of this. You’ve probably been given the impression that mortality has always worked the way it does now, But it so happens—”

“Mortality isn’t what it used to be,” I say. “That message is actually for Death, but I figure I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.”

“You got it,” the bird says, and I could swear it sounds pleased. “At one time, we carried the souls of the dead to the afterlife—”

“Knew that.” I can’t help it being smug. The bird doesn’t care.

“We alone could move at will from the world of the living to the realm of the dead. No other beings of any kind had that ability, not mortals, not gods, not spirits or demons, only us. A god that wanted to make such a journey had to petition us, then wait at our pleasure for an answer. Death was a nobody, a servant employed simply to quieten the flesh and keep it from flailing or struggling and allow souls to begin the journey with dignity.

Self-important popinjay, I think, but with no conviction. I have a growing feeling that I’m in the deceptively small presence of something very old that, after a long sleep, woke up displeased with the current order of things and decided to do something about it. And those responsible for the current order have no idea what’s coming for them.

“Amazing,” the woman marvels. “Who knew? Live and learn.” Bird and woman laugh together.

“You can’t do this,” I say. “It’s a violation—”

“Enough with the violation,” the bird says.

“But the afterlife—”

“—is what comes after death,” say the bird, stretching itself again. “We transport the souls of dead people. Therefore, wherever we take them, that’s the afterlife.”

“That’s one hell of a loophole,” I say. “But doesn’t that mean you’re no longer the only ones who can travel between the land of the living and the realm of the dead? I mean, if wherever you drop souls off is the afterlife—”

“Whatever happened to the classical education?” The bird looks at the woman, who shakes her head. “The realm of the dead isn’t the afterlife. Dumbass.”

“Yeah, well, nobody tells me anything,” I say. Somehow I don’t feel too stung by a parakeet calling me dumbass, although maybe I should.

Holding onto the IV tree with her free hand, the woman pulls herself to her feet. “Are we done here?” she says to the bird on her finger.

“All set. Just keep watching the skies,” the bird says, and takes off, going up on a steep slant.

“Wait!” I jump to my feet. “What happened? What did you do?”

“Nothing that concerns you,” the woman chuckles. She does something to her head scarf and I catch a flash of green. A feather?

“It does concern me, it’s why I was sent here—”

As she walks away, I lunge for her. I haven’t forgotten that I can have no contact with people, that I slip off and around and away from their awareness. Most people, all of them except this woman, who saw me even though it was impossible.

I don’t even brush the back of her T-shirt. Suddenly she and everything around here look very small and I’m caught in hardening molasses. I know it’s no good to keep trying but I can’t help it. She saw me, she heard me, she talked to me. If I could just get to her, even though I can barely see her—

To my surprise, she turns around and for a moment I think she’s looking at me. But all she sees is what anyone else would see: plants, a bench, translucent floor, more plants. There’s no one here but her. Anyone looking up from the lobby will see only one pair of footprints and three dots made by the wheels on her IV tree.