The Dead One’s Tale

It was a good day to drown, a fantastic day, to feel the noose tighten. A saltwater rope coiled around Edith’s throat, indefinite, invisible, infinite and blue. Blue. The ocean was supposedly blue. When its vast tentacles filled your mouth, choked your throat, spread through lungs, chest, eyes, ears and nose, its brilliance was far from enchanting. No. It was haunting and hungry, like a famished crow. Unlike the crow, the ocean’s stomach was bottomless, devouring everything and everyone without remorse. Escape, even the idea, was nugatory. That, Edith knew. She swallowed water and the water swallowed her — they became one, her life and the blue mass called ‘sea’. Still, she chipped for air, twitched, kicked, tried to rip the seams of fate and weave them anew, but no fate would be rewritten, not today. 

    Blood and bones and broken boards floated atop the waves like fragments of a tormented past. Fragments that mingled with black tar, gunpowder, torn canvas, and helpless humans who thought the fruits of their labour were sweet and crisp and juicy. But like the cannons and chests, these humans sank towards the suffocating depths; only their bubbles reached the surface, only to burst and disappear. 

    Death surrounded Edith but Edith would not die. Not today.

    She had died before, drowned before; many a time had she dangled limp and helpless from the oceanic gallows. But it had always spit her back, that cursed sea, returned her aboard cogs and galleys and carracks and galleons, again, and again, and again, and again. At least the weavers of fate are creative, she thought, drowning. 

    This was true. Too true, if truth be told. 

    She had been impaled on a wooden stake, left to rot and decay on some desert island. Like foul fruit I ripened on that stake, feeding the ravens my festering flesh until the sea finally claimed me. She had been cut into pieces and dumped down a well. In one of her more tortuous pasts, titan crabs had torn her body asunder, feasted on her flesh and drunk her blood as if it were some fine Madeira wine.

     I could use some wine, but I’m drowning, again. She chipped for air that was not there. Is this the seventh time? she wondered. Or perhaps the ninth? Each death made her many pasts foggier and less defined, abstract, like the end of the rainbow she had found as a child. Each death erased a part of her, for the new being to emerge. She was still the same woman, but her memory was often adrift, lost somewhere under the sea. My rainbow has no end, nor a beginning. But neither did life, not for her, not for anyone. Life was a waking dream. You found yourself on its timeline but never remembered where it began, where its first roots nested.

    What she did remember was death, suffering and pain — all of it. They were her only friends. Death, death, death, all I know is death. Death was pain. Death was torture. Death was salt and lemon on the flayed man’s fingers, a rusty spike through the sole. It was a blazing bath in torchlit oil. Dragons and demons, serpents and snakes – death is a prison, it takes and it takes. This was death. But whenever she had crossed the threshold and faded beyond its black veil, the sea had spit her back. Seven times, or nine. She did not remember.

    Why?

    At first, she thought her resurrections served a purpose, that she was an integral pawn in life’s grim game. Now, however, her prolonged existence was nothing but a farce. The world would never let her vanish. Each time she died, the ‘great unknown’ pieced her together, merged body with mind, soul with spirit, and reassembled the fragmented parts that once were one. Her first death still clung to her memory, like the eyes and talons of a hunting hawk. “Don’t you dare forget who you are!” it screamed in her face. “You sick freak who linger when all else is lost!” Her first death was a cerebral anchor — an unyielding piece of black iron fastened in her fading pasts. A most tragic tale, a pitiful shanty named ‘The Violet Truth’. Violet it was, but only she knew its truth – the full truth.

    Their fates were sealed on a cloudless day. 

    She was aboard the Scarlet Sunflower, a red-sailed, two-masted brigantine with a vehement-looking goat as its figurehead. It was rumoured to have been built by the pirate queen Cassandra, back when her legend was unwritten. Cassandra was long dead, but in the minds of sailors she was immortal. Just like me, Edith reflected, undead and dying.

    Aboard the Sunflower, Pate the Peeker, self-titled captain of the crow’s nest, had spied an empty skiff drifting far off in the distance, turning with the tides. Was it empty? Far from it. Could they have known it was not empty? Mayhaps, but that reality was not theirs. It had been a fortnight since they last came upon another vessel, and the prospect of unoccupied treasure enticed Captain Twoface and his enchanted crew. Poor souls. Twoface was persuasive, but not immortal. 

    When they had neared the empty skiff, Leif the Lark climbed over the railing with spare rigging tied around his waist. He dangled like a ragdoll over the waves and awaited the innocent skiff whilst singing. 

    Oh lonely skiff, soon you’re mine;

      I’ll steal your treasures, your humble heart.

    I’ll piss on ye deck, so polished, so fine;

     And tear your soul and spine apart!

    “Apart!” Echoed the crew. 

    Leif loosened the rigging, reached for the skiff with his left foot. The smile on his face spoke louder than any of his twitterings. You are mine, you sweet, sweet skiff, he must have thought. But the skiff would never be his, for when he touched the gunwale, the skiff exploded. Leif was obliterated, the skiff reduced to dust. The bang deafened them for a heartbeat, and when the crew finally regained their hearing, Leif’s blackened skull fell onto the deck, cracked, but smiling. 

    Then came the wizard. 

    Leif’s skull opened its jaw and from it sprung a man. No, not a man, a wizard. His raucous laughter filled the air and penetrated their minds, writing his name on their bones with a quill dipped in venom. The wizard had come, and he was hungry for cattle.

    He bore a wavy purple gown adorned with glittering suns and crescent moons. His hat was massive, his snow-white beard reached his waist, and in his left hand he held a crooked branch whose tip sported a bright yellow star. With every movement it sparkled, as did he. He had a wrinkly old face, but a kind one, like a peaceful shepherd, or a grandfather.   

    Twoface saw the kindly grandfather for the threat he was and seized his opportunity in the confused spectacle. He leapt from the forecastle and onto the main deck, and with cutlass in hand, he rushed towards the grinning wizard and drove the blade straight into his heart. “Grin however much you like, but I am your end,” he said, twisting the blade. The wizard looked at his wound and chuckled, grabbed the handle, pulled out the cutlass, and tossed it up into the heavens. His grin widened, his blue eyes gleamed, but the name written on his fatherly face was Death. Deep, purple, death. He tapped Twoface with his curious stick, and the captain melted, layer after layer, like a human candle in a fiery furnace. First his clothes, then his skin, then his flesh and finally his bones until Twoface was nothing but a smoking puddle. The crew froze, unable to think, unable to act.  Some crewmates soiled their breeches and begged for forgiveness. Others leapt overboard hoping the sea might save them. A scant few loaded their pistols and unsheathed their cutlasses. Most, however, sank to their knees, closed their eyes, and prepared for the final plunge. Even blackblooded pirates quaver before death. Mortality, man’s greatest foe, Edith knew. Not mine. Never mine. I’m just drowning. When the wizard had come, she had been full of fear. But now, she could no longer taste it. She had forgotten its fragrance. The wizard had taken that from her too. 

   Hundreds of beasts sprung from his wand as he moved it up and down, in and out, round and round. Purple and poisonous were his beasts, made from mist and shadow. There were sabre-toothed serpents with jet-black eyes; electric eels the size of cannons; thorned jellyfish, cruel yet majestic; and a bouquet of roses, strangling its lover. All his creatures spread and slithered, bit and clawed, tore and cracked everything they touched. The sails collapsed, the masts burst asunder, the ship split in half, and the colourful carnage pulled the humans apart, limb by limb, separating heads from bodies, legs from feet, and flesh from bones. Trapped in the wizard’s indiscernible carnage, chained to the eye of his purple storm, Edith doubted that even their souls could escape. But they did, shipped to the Watergardens beyond the Western Horizon, where all souls rest

    Gods and wizards, how benevolent they are.

    It was over in a matter of seconds, or hours, or days. Edith could not have told you for how long it lasted, only that it started in her past and ended in her present. She had been blown off the ship, lashed by a purple serpent that had also bit off her left leg and left arm. It had swallowed half of her face, leaving a gaping hole into her head. Edith Half-a-Face, she thought, blinded by blood and pain and the smoky stench of death. It was her final thought before the sea and stars took her home. And so the Scarlet Sunflower wilted, devoured by a hungry wizard who had taken what he wanted and left nothing but shattered remnants, and Edith. Only Edith. She returned from that death on another cloudless day, aboard a ship that would become her new home, until her next death.

    Many lives later, either her fifth or her sixth, Edith had stumbled upon the wizard. He was drunk and half dead, drowning in a pool of sweat, soil, and rot, poisoned by a lifetime of indulgence. Edith later learned the wizard was the author of the ‘Violet Truth’, but when she returned to torch his bones, someone else had swept him away and off the docks, into the bottomless tomb beneath the waves.

    I was not even granted vengeance, she thought bitterly, drowning. She was now beyond the point of no return. Her vision had become groggy; the revolving chaos was a blue-brown stew of people and pieces. She was drunk without having had a single droplet of rum, or wine, or anything worth drinking. When even was the last time I drank? 

    Alcohol had lost its spark. When it was no longer a fatal poison, its allure had vanished, just like all else in life when stripped of your mortality. Drinking herself to death was impossible. She had tried, twice. Neither was it as pleasant as they all had said. It was a poison, and like a poison it killed you, slowly and sharply. In a state of lucid, un-aware awareness, you did not know what was killing you. You knew the nausea and the vengeful hammer’s relentless blows, pounding and pounding at your head until you thought it exploded. And then you belched and belched until your breakfast and bowels merged into the last meal you would ever taste, a sick amalgamation of vice and gluttony. Drowning was better. It only tasted of salt. 

    Salt. Is there anything but salt? Is salt what I desire?

    Edith no longer knew what she desired. Desire was what had put them in their present predicament, dead and dying in the great salt sea. Everyone around her had ceased their fight against the liquid noose. None of them wanted to die. I doomed them, I drowned them. I sent them down this path and yet they followed, willingly.

    Willingly, they did it willingly. She repeated it to remember. Guilt transcends death. It was a self-braided scourge made from strands of her sins, and the scars it left would never heal. All those she had failed, all those she had slain, all those who had fallen because of her, they lived in her scars. Willingly, they followed willingly. It did not matter now. They were drowning because of Edith’s cursed desire.

    When she was last returned from death, she had not been brought aboard a ship. Instead, she had found herself in a rowboat, alone, drifting along a winding river through a damp and misty jungle. The moon was full and mighty. Her reflection lit the river, a bright shadow from the heavenly vault. But there were other shadows too, shadows Edith could not see. Leaves rustled, a branch broke, then another. A bird called to his friend, but the friend did not answer. There was a grunt, then a roar, then a whimper. A beast, or worse. A drop fell and landed on her brow. She wiped it off and saw it had stained her hand black and red. Blood? Poison? 

    Slosh.

    There was something in the water. Bubbles rose and broke the surface. Tap. Tap. Tap. A frog croaked. 

    BANG

    The rowboat hit a rock and Edith nearly fell overboard. By the riverbank on her left she saw a stilted hut. It had a thatched roof and walls made from many-coloured logs of various shapes. Built by the jungle, she thought. It was covered in at least a hundred wax candles, and had it not been for their flickering lights, the hut would have been hidden from Edith’s sight. She grabbed the broken oar in the boat and pushed herself off the rock and towards the hut. She moored, climbed up onto the outer terrace, and made for the door. 

    “Come in will you,” said a soft, warm voice. “No need to fear me. I am a fragile little thing. Come in and see, will you please, come in.”

    Edith hesitated for a second, pushed the door open, and entered a bright spectacle. There were thrice as many candles burning inside. Some were thin as twigs, uneven and sprawling, and others were thicker than bottles of rum. They were tall and short, twisted or straight; some were blue, some red, and others came in yellow, purple, or green. All burnt with flames of many colours. A few were violent creatures, dancing and clawing at the air. Some had nearly lost their spark, fading into obscurity.

    Where there were no candles there were cupboards, benches and tables. The shelves on the walls were stacked with a profusion of pickles. She saw jars with pink radishes, beets with cauliflower, red and white cabbage, fiery peppers stuffed with cheese, turnips, dill-seasoned carrots, red fennel, apricots and pears. Pickles to tickle everyone’s pickle.

    Opposite Edith by a counter full of vibrant vials stood a tiny little figure grinding violet flowers in a mortar. She was an old crone with pale, empty eyes. Blind, Edith supposed. Her hair was long, grey, and braided with pearls, cockles and seaweed. She wore a hat that looked like a blue jellyfish, semi-translucent and dotted with pink hollow ringlets. The ringlets pulsed and whirled serenely over and around the hat. Is it singing? It seemed so, but the hat was silent. It was near-impossible to avert your gaze, but something about it was queer and disquieting, like a pleasant itch underneath the skin that comes and goes but never disappears until you grow mad, angry, furious and you slice up your arm to find it and rip it from your body. 

  “Why have you come?” asked the little woman as she pounded her violet flowers. 

    I do not know. Edith had not known then, and neither did she know now, ten years later, in her present predicament. She did remember the crone, however, and all that she had said. Even when drowning, her words echo.

    “Hungry, you must be. Empty stomachs are unkind to their owners, and the owners are unkinder still, when hungry they are. Many have suffered that salient scourge, unless scurvy assailed them first. For the latter, we mix grog, for the former, we eat. Alive, you do sound, my dear, but stay alive, to dance and walk, we must feed ourselves and save our talk. Hungry I take you are.”

    She was correct. Edith was starving. Rebirth always came with ravenous hunger, and now there was nothing that prevented her from refusing a free meal. Edith expected little and less from the blind old crone, so what she served was more miracle than meal. Much ond the table she recognised. There were large wooden bowls of roasted summer squash, honey-buttered onions and green beans, cripsy kale, golden mushrooms, a healthy portion of spiced potatoes sprinkled with sea salt, and a rich, red, aromatic three-bean stew, simmered with chestnuts and rosemary. She served it with freshly baked bread and some purple spread that tasted of almond, beetroot, and garlic. 

    “Fear not my hospitality,” the crone said, but Edith had already started shovelling food into her mouth. “My oven is for bread,” she assured her, “and I tend not to eat those with a mind of their own. Alas, the suffering of our neighbours is ever-present. That it is, yes.” The crone grew quiet and contemplative, lamenting the unknown. “Tell me little one,” she said after a long silence. “Have you ever seen the rain?”

    “The rain?” Of course I have seen the rain. 

    “Yes, the rain. What is it you see when it rains?”

    “Rain. I see rain.” I have no time for this. 

    “Oh but do you? Is it not a confusion of droplets, or straight streams of broken ice? Perhaps your eyes see an illusion, for the mind to sense-make reality? When I see rain, I see not rain, but another avenue, a cloud of broken mirrors, the watchful storm with a million eyes.”

    How can she see if she is blind?

    “Seeing is more than the eye beholds little one. A crone I am, as you see, but is that all your eyes behold? If so, if you take me only for a blind old crone, you must be blinder than me.” She chuckled. 

    “Who are you?” Edith asked. She reminded her of a great-aunt she had known before her first death. That aunt had been mad, violent, and long gone, and Edith could not recall her name.

    “You know me.”

    “But I’ve never met you before.”

    “Oh, but you know me. Are we not talking?”

    “Yes we are but you are. . .”

   “Then you know me,” she interrupted, “the being I am. You may not know my name, but me you know. Tell me now, little one, why have you come?”

    “I . . .” Edith hesitated. She dared not reveal her nature to this unnatural woman. “Where else am I to go?” she finally asked. 

    “Are you lost?”

    “No. . . Yes. I do not know.” Why have I come? Edith fished for an answer but caught nothing. Then her thoughts erupted, unbidden and fragmented, scattered in the air like a swarm of dragonflies. “I am cold and hungry,” she said. “I kick and struggle and I chip for air but the noose is around my neck and I claw and cough but the noose, the noose. . . I am sentenced – eternity. Why is eternity so fucking long?” She paused and looked down into her empty bowl. “I want to feel the breeze again, I just want to feel it. I want to fear the depths. And I want to sail beyond the horizon to the world’s end, afraid. Terrified. And then,” she stammered, “then, I want to return, and I want it all written down and I want it known, I want to be known.” Edith slammed her fist into the table as tears fell from her eyes. “Their blood is on my hands! My hands! My clothes are drenched in their lost bodies and even my bones are red. Their blood. . . their blood. . .” Her heart was pounding her head was pounding, pounding, pounding like drums on the northmen’s warships, their horn-helmed raiders hungry for battle. 

    “Why have you come?” the crone asked again. 

   Her thoughts were lost. “The rainbow . . . the wizard . . . Twoface . . . Stranger . . . crabs . . . rum . . . a well. . . my shadow. . .

    Am I drowning?

    She was.

    “Let me help you,” the crone said and took her hand between hers. “Do not be afraid.”

    Edith rose violently and threw the bowl out the window. “How can I fear?” she yelled. “How can I fear when I cannot feel?” Her eyes were red, full of rage. “Have you not listened? You cannot help me, you sick old hag. You are the wizard come again, ugly and foul.” She sniggered. “Fear, I laugh in his face.”

    The crone sighed heavily. Her vibrant jellyfish hat went grey, and all her candles died except for one white crooked creature on the table. “I see you cannot see,” she said after a long pause. “Fear, little one. That is all you are. You have your eyes, but see, you do not. Take this, and leave.” She held up a small linen pouch. “This will set you free, for now. It will show what you desire, take you where the heart and mind want to go, and you will reach the white shadow. But when you’ve opened your eyes and decided to see, ask for Hershel and he will take you to me.”

    Why did I take it? Edith had grabbed the pouch and stormed off into the unknown, onto the same path she had always treaded. The crone’s promises had been alluring in the moment, but Edith had come to regret taking the pouch, now that she was drowning, yet again. In the pouch there had been a compass, and it did not point north or south, east or west, but always towards her inmost desire. That was what the crone had said, was it not? 

    The compass had, at the very least, led her to Alder Rowan – captain of the majestic galleon The Stranger – and his vibrant crew. It had brought them on a ten-year voyage, epic and tragic and wondrous, occasionally sparkling. They had crossed the Seven Seas and reached the Eight, where Captain Bloodbeard’s mythic chest was hidden, supposedly. Legend said it nested in the heart of Bloodbeard’s beastly shipwreck, the once-haunted White Widow. They had found the hulk and the chest, but when Little Roy Cuttle tried to pry it open, the fishpeople had attacked. So they were forced to flee across the seas they had previously crossed until the fishpeople finally abandoned their hunt. Half a year later, they landed on a rocky, sweet-smelling island full of flowers, fruit trees, berries and chestnuts. When the island rumbled, rose and moved, they realised the island was no island, but the shell of a gargantuan sea turtle with a voracious appetite for potatoes. Thankfully, for us. On the cold, windless morning on their voyage to the Great Dandelion, Saint Elmo’s fire had enveloped their ship like a divine mist. Everybody marvelled at the glowing blue luminosity as it crackled and hissed and slithered around the masts. Everybody, except for Edith. Mist was mist, and mist was the wizard. She cursed his grin and cursed her fate. Even you, you putrid purple curmudgeon, even you died. But here I am, here I remain. . .  

    Members had come and gone, died and turned cloaks. Some had tried mutiny; others had washed overboard. It had not mattered. The Stranger and her crew were as resilient as a mountain, fierce like the wind, and bound by blood, tears, admiration and respect. Their greatest feat was when they killed the kraken, the legendary sea monster whose wrath had drowned and devoured many a pirate and many a sailor. When its lifeless carcass had finally drifted away, Captain Rowan roared and the crew thought nothing could stop them, not even death. 

    Fools. Only I am immortal.

    To Edith, all their quests were only reprieves that hid her torment, the pain of eternity. But with every friend that fell, with every foe she fenced, the burden got heavier, the red crust on her bones grew thicker, layer upon layer of guilt and sin. The compass’s freedom was false, fleeting moments in a sea of permanence. And now my desire has drowned them, doomed them, stripped them of hope and joy and laughter. My desire – Death!

    Death.

    Death had come to The Stranger with the coming of the pale beast. It arose at dawn, on yet another cloudless morning, breaking the unbreakable horizon with its shadowy contour. Atop its shoulder perched the kraken, like some bestial parrot stripped of its wings.

    We killed the kraken. The thought echoed among and within the crew. Toothless Thorbert lost another tooth. Beorn of the Hinterlands cursed his northern gods and clutched the queer anvil-shaped pendant on his necklace. The cook, who they called the Sea Barber, sighed and said, ”Supper will have to wait for us this time.”

    Supper does not wait for the dead. The dead are supper. A kraken’s supper.

    They had killed one kraken, another kraken. Now they saw there was no singular ‘the’, only a colony, indefinite but numbered. With their slimy tentacles the krakens clung to the pale beast as it rose from the sea.

    The crew were quivering, some were crying, but Captain Rowan laughed – he laughed in the face of their despair and roared, “I looked up, and there I beheld the pale shadow, whispering among the beasts. What followed him? Hah! Ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys, the faceless rider has come, and his name is death! White, polished death! Hoist the sails, for fate is our wind and we are her pawns.” It gave them strength and courage, but no amount of strength or courage could have saved them. Not from the pale beast. 

    The pale beast was a creature of the sea, a creature of the land, and a creature of heaven, sent from the darkest depths of hell. Tall as a mountain, its sprawling serpentine body twisted and turned as if made from hundreds of thorned vines. There were leaves as well, and claws, and tendrils and spikes, all white, just like the scales that covered its body. Smoke rose from its many limbs. Its head was not a head, but a red rose, and in its midst was a massive eye, watchful and calm. Too calm. 

    “Feel the noose tighten my brave sailors,” Rowan said as they approached the pale beast. “Can you feel the rope around your neck? It will not loosen; it will not break. The gallows await – our last breath before the great plunge.” 

    That was the last words uttered aboard The Stranger. The colony of krakens soon descended upon the majestic galleon and tore it apart. No human was taken by the monsters, none were eaten or brought to their master, who eyed the carnage silently from afar. They came, they destroyed, and they left, all within seconds. Another ship sunk, another crew laid to waste. 

    Not me.

    Was this the crone’s final gift? Edith wondered, still drowning. 

    She had reached the climax, the crescendo. Her body had finally accepted what her mind already knew. Pain turned to pleasure, stress to serenity, and Edith floated, free and weightless, cradled in silk. She was not warm or cold, only still, perfectly balanced, and finally, dead. For a heartbeat that should have lasted forever, there was silence. 

    “Welcome back.” The voice was foreign and familiar, calm, soothing, as smooth as mother-of-pearl. But it was also commanding and mighty, with the explosive force of a hundred cannons. 

    “Where am I?” Edith asked. For a second, she thought she had reached the Watergardens, but that was impossible. Only the dead reach the Watergardens. Only they may rest. 

    “Where are you indeed, but in the here and the now, the continuous present, as I like to name it,” the voice said. It was neither male nor female, or anything in between. It simply was. “You have returned to me, to the world between worlds; death, life, rebirth, all in one chamber. This is blivion and totality in a paper bucket, locked and open, neither black nor white. Uncharted waters, sailed but unremembered.” Edith felt the voice approach but saw nothing but iridescence. Every imaginable colour danced before her. They were together, they were apart. Some hugged, others were separate. They shifted and waved and blurred into one. Edith drifted from delirium to clarity, from insanity to revelation. In the midst of this madness, there was a light. Death?

    “Sadly not,” the voice said. “We have yet to climb said ladder.” 

    The light is speaking. It must be the light. It moved closer, now brighter, less intense. “Who are you?”

    “Does the revelation make you happier?”

   “No . . . Yes . . . I don’t know.”

   “Always the same answer, always uncertain. Some nets never untangle, I suppose. Suppose,” the voice chuckled. “A pristine candidate, but I can presume, assume, surmise, suspect, and they also fit, I suppose. Does it truly matter, which word I choose?”

    Edith hesitated. Whatever I say the voice will twist it. “Yes and no, I suppose.”

    “Exactly! So as to me, well, some name me God, a despicable title, if truth be told. Others have named me All-father, the Creator, Tem, the Shepherd, Bemba, the Keeper of the Key, or the Merling King. Call me what you wish, it makes no matter.”

    “I died.”

    “And you will live again.”

    “This is the afterlife then.”

    “It’s a bridge, nothing more, nothing less.”

    It suddenly dawned on Edith. This was the being who kept her alive, who had cursed her, enslaved her for his pleasure. “You, you are the monster who send me back!” Her fury was awakened. “Why can’t you let me die? Why can’t you let me rest? All I see is pain. All I feel is pain. Pain permeates my existence and there is no escape. Wherever I turn, that infernal lash whips me. And the scars they linger, they fester, they become beings that cling to my back, reminding me of the life I cannot live, of the memories that never vanish. Yet you spit me back from death to suffer once more, and then again, and again, and again and again, forever and ever with no end in sight. I have died seven times, or nine, or hell, I might never have died at all, but I remember. I remember. . .” Edith fell silent. 

    “What’s so great about death?” the voice asked her. “What do you think it will mean, to vanish, to never resurface? Is that your deepest desire, nothingness? You humans are obsessed with the end. You think it is the fate to which all must succumb, but all you do is run from it. And then, when I liberate you, all you wish to do is die. Suicidal, that is what you are. No one wants to live and no one wants to die: the human paradox. Do you truly believe you are alone, that you are special? Hah! I see it clearly now. You are all Narcissus, and the world is your mirror.” 

    “Where are they then? Answer me that! I have watched my friends burn. I have seen children drown. I have murdered despicable maniacs. All of them are gone, dead, buried, vanished from this world. Where are they? If I am alive, then so must they be! If I cannot experience death, then neither can they.”

    “It is true. They live. Not in your world, but in theirs. The one they experience. There, in their worlds, you have died a million times.”

    “It doesn’t make sense.”

    “Little does in this world.”

    “So we are doomed to live in solitude, consumed by grief and greed, dead within but forever walking.”

    “That is where you err,” the voice countered. “You were born to perceive, to feel, to experience, and observe, and if that is what you call life, then yes, but that is not for me to decide. I am, in the end, as unreal as death. The only ‘real’ is your perception. In the eye of the beholder, you exist. In your eye you exist. Every version of you exists! The ones that die, the ones that survive, the ones in delirium, and those whose temporal reality has reduced them to a flat, fixed stick. Who would you rather be? The figure or the stick?” The voice paused briefly but did not allow Edith to answer. “A senseless question, for there is only one. You are the sum of awareness. You have died a million times, but how could you know? Death is the end. Death is oblivion. Death is the black curtain that envelops your being until there is nothing but the void. You cannot live in nothingness. How can your eyes see that which is not? It is impossible. So tell me, how can you experience death, when death is the state that cannot be perceived? Death is nothing and nothing does not exist, but you do.” 

    Nothing the voice said was true. It could not be. Could it?

    “You are like the river,” the voice continued. “Change is your nature. From each moment, you emerge, altered, mutated into the ‘you’ in a singular present. The being before does not exist, only remnants. The being in your future is an undefined figure, infinite versions that coalesce into one – the ‘you’. Each moment, each day, each year, with every step you transform. Immortality is not eternal life. Immortality is memory, a mnemonic chamber that tells you who you are and what you have become.” 

    “I have had enough.”

    “No you have not! We have barely started. Have you learnt nothing? Have you not listened?”

  Edith was lost for words, again.

   “You think you have become death. Such arrogance. Do you think anyone can conquer death? No. You, you have become fear. Fear is what you are.”

    “I fear nothing,”

    “No my child, you are nothing but fear. One must first fear death to face it. One must face and accept it. One who cannot grapple with death can never die. Death is not given – death is a choice we all must make. When you are ready, I will give you death. First, however, you must learn how to live, and find worth and value in the worthless. Understand the inexplicable.”

    “How is understanding possible when it is impossible?” Edith roared. Tears of despair welled from her eyes.

    “The horned goat gives birth to the falcon; clouds of dust rise over the ocean; one tree writes poetry and the other flees. Open your eyes you blind fool.” The voice paused, for a second, for a lifetime. “Farewell,” it said. “One day, you will listen. One day, you will remember me, one day you will learn. But that is not today nor tomorrow.” The voiced sighed. “Farewell young sailor, off you go.”

    Edith woke. The sky was blue and brilliant, the breeze but a gentle touch. Salt was in the air and the deck beneath her feet rocked to and fro. She fastened her belt, breathed, and looked to the horizon.

    Hershel. I must find Hershel!