LXXX
Dear Vincent
MATILDA What good is a herald for the dead if I cannot cross back into the living realm?
This was all I could think in those early days of my service, when I would lay my hand on my breast, eager to feel my heart’s song, only to find it quiet and broken. When I would battle my thirst for the mists by walking to the wasted door. I would touch its iron handle, but I never attempted to pass through it again, no matter how much my soul yearned for the crossing.
Instead, I would sprawl upon the pink ground and let my mind wander.
What I would have given to feel time flow around me again. To watch the moon wax and wane and the sun rise and set, spilling its light across the land. To lift my face to the rain and let snow gather in my hair. To draw breath. To feel someone’s hands on my skin. To ache and to bleed. To hear
Vincent whisper my name.
What I would have given to live again.
“Of course, you will live again should you want to,” the Gatekeeper said to me, as if I were daft. This was not long after I had begun my service to her, and she had sensed the heaviness of my soul. “No, the question is … will you still desire to live as you once did when the seven years have come and gone?”
Seven years was not a long time to an immortal.
It should not have felt like a cage, and I could not understand why it had bruised me so deeply until the Gatekeeper added, “I have seen my share of mortal men. Their hearts may break like glass, but they are just as fickle as gods. Are you certain he will wait for you?”
Seven years was a long time for a mortal.
I thought of Vincent.
There had been a part of me that had worried I would find him here in the wastes. He had been so weak when I had died. The cold had stricken him, and men easily fell sick beneath such elements. But as the days passed, he failed to appear, and I was relieved. Relieved as I was sad.
“When I agreed to this bargain with you, I thought his mortal life would be over by the time I returned here,” I said. “I thought the seven years would feel like respite, not a prison.”
“Hmm.” The Gatekeeper seemed amused. “Time will go by faster if you
agree to what I need you for.”
“Why do you need me?”
She waved her hand and two trees in the distance disappeared. A moment later, a stack of parchment appeared at my feet. Then she took a glass vial and filled it with water from the iridescent stream, and it became ink. Lastly, she plucked a feather from the sky.
“Be ready for when the next soul arrives at my gate,” she said. “You still have my eye on your belt. When it opens, you will know that I need you.”
With that, she absconded to the mists. A place I still refused to tread, for fear I would never want to return to the wastes. And I could not guess what she wanted, but I gathered up the parchment, the magical ink, the quill.
I waited for the next soul to arrive at the gate.
It was Hugh Delavoy.
He arrived with foamy blood streaming from his mouth, his eyes wide as he took in the wasteland, the tall gate of arched bone, the swirl of sweet mist.
“What happened to you?” I asked, although I was pleased to see him here.
Let him rot.
“That bastard poisoned me,” he said. “I am certain of it.”
“Vincent?”
“Nathaniel.”
“Oh. What a pity,” I said with a sigh, just as the Gatekeeper arrived to greet him with her golden scales. I had the parchment, ink, and quill on hand, waiting for her instructions.
“Write down everything he tells me,” she said. “All the stories, all the sins, all the heartaches. I want a record of everyone who comes to my wasteland. I want to be able to relive these tales whenever I want.”
This caught me by surprise, but it should not have. I vividly remembered how she had craved pieces of Nathaniel’s life, Xan’s, even mine, as if our pasts had been nectar for her to sip. All the moments that had defined us. Stories she could only hear once in the moment as they were spoken.
I sat beside the gate and began to transcribe Hugh’s life. He was a man of many years by mortal reckoning and had endless stories to share. I did not like to see him earning bones from the Gatekeeper; I did not want to see him step into the mists. But this was not my decision, and so I was quiet, writing his words down as a good scribe should.
He had memories of Vincent.
A memory of me.
My fingers went stiff when Hugh shared the moment when he had first seen me. When I had been a god-child, running from Vincent and his brothers. How I had vanished into the wind before they could catch me.
He repeated the words Grimald had said to Vincent.
Next time, you hold on to her. Demand her name, her favor. We could have used her. You do not let go of a goddess, especially a young, nameless one … “Little did I know I was bound to see you again, goddess,” Hugh said, and I could feel his eyes on me. “Indeed, I never imagined I would meet you here, or that both of us would be dead. But at the very least, Vincent learned something from his uncle that day. He found a way to hold on to you, to use you for his advantage, didn’t he?”
My hand clenched, threatening to snap the quill. I had stopped writing a while ago, refusing to immortalize Grimald’s words. Slowly, I lifted my gaze and stared at Hugh. If there had been blood in my veins, it would have been searing. If my quill had been a sword, I would have plunged it through his neck.
Strangely enough, the Gatekeeper did not bestow a bone for this tale, even as her eye burned with interest.
“Continue on,” she prompted Hugh, drawing his attention away from me.
Hugh spoke for a long time, or so it felt. I had no way to measure days and nights, seasons and years, in the wasteland. But when the time came for his soul to be weighed for the mists, he came up wanting.
“You have fooled me!” he cried at the Gatekeeper.
“How so, mortal man?” she drawled. “My scales do not lie.”
“She has bewitched my words.” Here he pointed to me, his mouth twisting in fury. “She has used enchantment and made them weigh less.”
“She has done only what I commanded of her, and there is no enchantment. This is only a record that you were here and that you lived.”
The Gatekeeper gathered up her scales. “You are barred from the mists, Hugh of Delavoy. You will roam the wastes until you forget your name and become a shadow. You will dwell in nightmares, and you will never find rest or quench your thirst. That is, unless the herald is generous enough to escort your soul back to the living realm?”
Hugh’s face went slack. All that fury faded as he fell on his knees before me.
“Goddess,” he begged, bowing low in reverence. I could sense his desperation, the edge of his fear. “Please. It was not my time to die. If you would lead me back home, I will build an altar for you. I will worship you, offer you all the first fruits of my lands. I will never forget your mercy and
what you have done for me.”
I stared at him, impassive.
He sensed my coldness and dared to lift his head to look at me. “I will carry your words to Vincent. I am certain there is more you would like to say to him? Your own time, like mine, ended far too soon. Or perhaps a
letter? Write your words down to him, and I will bear them for you, lady of
Wyndrift.”
Another bruise bloomed across my soul.
I had to glance away, but the despair remained, like an arrow had lodged in my side.
Was this my fate? To bear souls back to the living realm so they could then carry words of mine? I felt the constraints of my magic like it was a net cast over me, that I could possess a multitude of powers and yet be hindered by them.
“No,” I said, rising. I looked away from him, passing the record of Hugh’s life to the Gatekeeper. Even she seemed shocked by my refusal.
Let Hugh wander the wastes, I thought. The same fate as Warin.
It made me feel as if there was some justice in this world—that cruel gods and men were not rewarded by paradise when their end came—and that was a comfort to me.
I chose to walk the hills, keen to be alone. To wrestle with my thirst, my
loneliness, the things I desired.
I wanted to write Vincent a letter.
But I wanted to carry those words on my own.
I settled into my role as the Gatekeeper’s scribe, recording all the stories of the dead. She was creating a library in the mists, binding each tome with leather, needle, and thread. She claimed that she reread most of them when she rested, awaiting her next arrival.
Sometimes, there would be a line of mortals at the gate, anxious for admittance.
Sometimes, there would be a lone god or goddess, shocked that their immortality had been snuffed out like candleflame.
Sometimes, there would be no one for long swells of time, and this is when my loneliness and my aches would flare up like old bones in winter, and I would walk the hills. For some reason, I always found my way to the wasted door, and there I would sit, imagining what it would feel like to open it when my seven years had ended.
Would I still desire to return?
I had been so certain of it when I had sent Bade back, but I had just died and my soul was keen to reunite with my flesh and blood. As my time in the wastes stretched ever onward, as I wrote life after life down on parchment … I began to worry that I would be changed by the seven years’ end. I worried I would not remember what it felt like to be fastened to a body that was warm and vibrant. A body that aged, even if it was by slow measures.
Or, if I was honest, it was not only me, but Vincent. For all he knew, I was dead and would remain so. He did not know I could return after the seven years. I imagined he would heal and move forward, and I could not fault him for it.
I continued to trace the Gatekeeper’s words in my mind.
Are you certain he will wait for you?
Time continued to spin like an eddy, even if I could not feel its pull. And the Gatekeeper, while pleased with my scribing, seemed to be waiting for something else.
It took me a while to grasp what she was offering, but there came a moment when it struck me like a bolt of lightning. She had the power to weigh lives for the mists, but I had the power to weigh lives and return them if I thought fit. She and I were our own golden scales; we stood side by side, a fearsome pairing to all who gazed upon us.
We listened, we wrote, and we weighed life. We banished, we welcomed, we carried souls to their appointed place.
Hugh had begged me to bear him back to the mortal realm, but most of the dead did not even know what to ask of me when they arrived at the gate, thirsty and—more often than not—bewildered. They spilled their life out in panicked fragments.
I soon realized I could thwart both Orphia and Rowena. I could unravel these warps and wefts of Death and Fate by bringing back souls, but it was not as simple as I had first believed. There were consequences for pulling
threads loose from the tapestry, for bringing someone back who had been appointed to die.
Not long into my service, a young mortal woman arrived at the gate, weeping. When the Gatekeeper found her lacking for the mists, I chose to bear her back to the living realm. “Take my hand,” I told her. “Do not let go of me until I tell you it is safe.” But when we trod through the thickest, darkest portion of her nightmare, she let go of my hand. I lost her, watching as she turned into a shadow, doomed to haunt her own nightmare for eternity.
I was sick from the memory of it; I did not attempt to bear another soul again for some time. But then one day a mortal man arrived and knelt before us at the gate. His sorrow was tangible, his heartache was vivid as the blood that dripped from his neck. He reminded me of Vincent in a way, and when he told us that he had been killed and separated from his one true love on their wedding night, I was moved by compassion.
“Take care, Matilda,” the Gatekeeper murmured to me when I offered him the chance to return. “There are some things that are doomed to be, no matter what divinity believes.”
“This is his decision to return, should he take my offer,” I said. “Not mine.”
When I held out my hand to him, he brightened. He took it, and I drew him through his nightmare, all the way to the wasted door. But imagine my surprise when he arrived at the misty gate again the day after. He had been murdered a second time, and his desperation and anguish were only heightened to have endured the pain of separation and the shock of Death
twice.
I did not bear his soul again.
I suppose you could say that I was also waiting for something more. I just never expected it to come in the shape of a little boy with blue-gray eyes and dark hair. A child who babbled for a moment before he looked directly at me and said a familiar name at the gate.
“Vincent?”
As a child, the boy did not have much to tell about his life. He did not speak in sentences. He spoke in words and jumbled thoughts and names. Vincent’s continued to bubble up, as if the child was looking for him.
I did not know if this boy was his son or not, but they were connected, somehow.
I was suddenly so overcome that I set down my quill and walked away. I strode through the iridescent creek and beneath tangled tree boughs. There was no breath for me to draw, no heart to thrum in my chest. The hole was still there; I could trace its jagged edge with my fingertip, the cold shine of my own bone. And I unraveled beneath the stars of the wastes. I gasped and fell to my knees. I crawled, swallowing the salt of my tears, trying to dull my agony.
I remembered, then, what it felt like to be alive after being dead for so many years.
My mind was like quicksilver. It darted through endless possibilities, trying to make sense of this encounter.
I had been gone for close to six years now. This child could be his, and I sought to imagine the woman Vincent might have created such life with.
Something I could never give him; divinity could not twine with mortal blood, and we both knew it.
I did not want him to be alone. I could not bear to think of him lonely, and yet it was a blade in my throat when I envisioned him taking another in his arms. If this was where his life had brought him—if something good had come from my death—then should I let him go? Why should I return once the seven years ended if he was content, loved by another? Why cause us both disruption, grief, and regret?
Perhaps I should stay at the Gatekeeper’s side, weighing souls. Perhaps I should finally walk the mists.
I returned to the gate, my face betraying nothing. The boy still waited, solemnly, as well as the Gatekeeper.
“Hold my hand,” I said to him. “I will take you home, back to Vincent.”
I carried this child through his worst nightmare. When he cried, I drew him up into my arms. I walked him to the wasted door, and not once did he let go of me. His trust in me was implicit, and I could have wept to feel such faith. It was a flame that kindled in the coldest part of me. Once he was gone, returned to his mortal life, I sat for a long moment, staring at the
threshold I could not cross.
A year might have passed.
I was lost within my own thoughts, memories of my old life.
But then I took a sheet of parchment from my belt. The ink, the quill.
Dear Vincent, I wrote.
His name was dark; it gleamed across the page. The words were stilted at first. I had never written something for myself. I hardly knew where to begin until I imagined us sitting before his hearth fire in the castle tower, speaking as we once had done, late into the night.
I wrote him a letter.
When I was finished, I folded the parchment and approached the wasted door. My soul could not pass over it, but perhaps my words could. I had once thought my magic could only flow one way, until Vincent had
challenged me.
Have you ever tried?
I had not, and I closed my eyes, thinking of where I wanted this letter to go. How I could deliver it not with my hands or my swift feet or even my breath, but by magic alone.
I envisioned windows first, welcoming streams of light, then doorways with thresholds that shifted. The ley lines of the under realm that ran like hidden creeks beneath the mortal world, glittering with gemstones. I needed to connect this wasted door to another. At first, I thought of the wasted door of Fury Tower. The one I had passed through to find Nathaniel’s soul. But that door was not on a ley line. I could not find its light, its magical pulse, and so I let my mind drift further, until it fixated on Maiden Tower.
This is where magic gathered. A place where two realms overlapped.
There was also a door to the under realm here, in the abandoned bedchamber; I had used it to come and go. But when I envisioned the passage in the wall and the stairs that led downward, I felt an unexpected
coldness. This threshold opened to somewhere, and I needed a door that led to nowhere.
I turned my inner eye over that bedchamber, remembering its every detail. The stone walls, the bed, the cobwebs, the candle tapers. My attention eventually riveted on the wardrobe. Those doors were wasted. And my magic flared warm and bright, eager to open them.
Trembling, I knelt before the door in the wasteland. At first, I wondered if I should open it, but I worried it would sense my presence. The threshold would bar itself to me again, as it had with Bade.
I swallowed and slid the folded parchment beneath the door instead.
I watched as my letter vanished.