Page 58 of Mortal Things

Nearby, I see Wraiths in the shadows, numbering in the thousands, their dark silhouettes haunting the devastated landscape. So many fragments of souls, lost and vicious and despairing.

Raven nods toward a fire burning at the end of a trench, near a massive avalanche of earth.

And there, I see him.

A young soldier, dressed only in dirty brown clothing and unprotected by armor of any sort, is knee-deep in the dirt, his face so smeared with blood and ashes that I can’t even recognize him. He is digging furiously with several others through what looks like a landslide of shattered stone.

Arthur.

This scene had happened hundreds of years ago, but his entire body is animated with a frantic energy that I would find familiar even today, the strength and life of a mortal. He’s shouting directions at two of his fellow comrades, gesturing for them to go fetch something instead of following him deeper into the rubble. One of them turns back, while the other ignores the advice and continues doggedly on alongside him.

I can only look on as they throw their entire body weight against a massive stone, until they somehow get it to move aside. It finally slides to one side of the ruined earth. Then he’s on his hands and knees, reaching in, calling out encouragements.

“Come on now! Come on! I’ve got you!”

His voice, too, is both familiar and strange—optimistic and almost cheery, a mortal version of Raven’s voice with an accent more fitting for his time, full of the urgency of life. He is not an echo, but the origin, and everything in me is pulled toward him. He shouts for a second man to help him push another large stone out of the way.

But before he can, a sharp whistle of warning comes from the third soldier standing at the top of the ruined earth. Before Arthur can react, an enemy soldier is upon him, sword glinting in the night, and the two topple backward, clawing at each other. Through the attack, I can hear Arthur’s urgent voice shouting for the other to stand down, to stop, that he is just trying to get a friend out.

I flinch, looking away. Even though I know what is about to happen, that this soldier will kill him, I can’t bear to watch.

Abruptly, the scene slows, as it always seems to do when death is near. That’s when I notice a cold, slender, graceful figure standing nearby, her hair thick and curling, her face solemn as a statue’s. She watches the two men fighting, stands by as one finally collapses, while the other—Arthur—lies leaning against the dirt hill, hands pressed against his chest.

I don’t even need Raven to confirm it for me. Death. Death must have been a goddess before she chose Raven to replace her. She wears a dark, flowing dress, and her hands are hidden behind black gloves.

Arthur.

Her voice is deep and cool, genderless, an echo in the void. It resembles how Raven had sounded when he’d first visited me. It is the voice of an immortal.

Arthur looks up at her with pleading eyes, burning with that mortal will to live.

Almighty god, he says, but the goddess stays silent, refusing to acknowledge his call to her. You’re here for me.

She just looks at him and says nothing.

Please, not here, he begs her. There are too many who need help. My family’s waiting for me at home.

What would you be willing to give up, she says, in order to live?

Then the scene fades away altogether. In the next moment, we are back in the atrium, under the silver shade of the Eternal Tree, its pale leaves stirring gently from a night breeze, its white branches curling around us in a silent embrace.

I reach up to hurriedly wipe away tears trailing down my cheeks. The echo of the battle is still ringing in my ears. I look to my side to see Raven beside me, his expression grave.

He had been me—a mortal, a young man agreeing to an eternal bargain that he didn’t yet fully understand, not aware of the burden that he was about to shoulder. Not knowing the weight of cutting himself out of his loved ones’ memories, of forever stepping away from his mortal life.

When he did, he must have returned to a family who never knew he existed, who only saw a stranger in him. He went home, but home was gone.

Had this earlier incarnation of Death seen the thread of light in Arthur? Had she known, like Raven had known, that Arthur would be destined to replace her, to take on the eternal weight and responsibility of a god?

She must have. And she had been right. Arthur had become her Harbinger, and in time, she had handed him the reins, let him become Death while her soul went to an eternal rest.

“Why a raven?” I murmur softly to him.

“There was one by the river, searching for its mate,” he replies. “But I had already seen the body of the other raven. The endless calling of that widowed bird was the last thing I heard before I became a Harbinger.”

The endless, anguished call of a raven that would never see its partner again. I find myself wondering how he must have felt in that final moment, as his own life ebbed away. Thinking of love that never had a chance to win, wars that humans would never survive, families that would never be reunited.

I turn toward him, my heart tight. There is grief and guilt in his eyes, human emotions unearthed by this return to his memories.