Returning to Life

         Her slippers caught in the thick swirling snow that lay everywhere around her, and it was not the first time. She cursed herself again for having been unprepared for this journey of sorts, for having gone out without much of an inkling of what she was doing. Her feet were frozen stiff; she was surprised that she could still walk. But what her words might have been came out slurred, as a mere chattering of numb teeth beneath even number blue lips. She was going to lick them when she thought rather wryly that her tongue would get stuck on the now bluish flesh. She withdrew it, content with brushing with her bare hands the stray snowflakes that had found their way to her hair and face. She pulled herself free and steeled herself for future slips.
         Her thick silken robes did little to keep her warm. Her surroundings were a wasteland of snow, cold white clouds of sharpness, barren of anything else but misery. The wind howled in her ears like a thousand voices of the bansidhe, keening and wailing of what might very well be her own demise. It would not be surprising; she was pushing herself near her limits, near what she thought she could do. Which was not much, despite what the Olders and everyone else thought that she could do. Nothing had prepared her for this. She had been trudging past the expanse of snow for days, and still she had not seen any sign of where she was headed.
         Not that she expected the journey to be quick. The Olders had told her in their characteristic fervor that she had to cross this land, and that beyond it somewhere lay her destination. But the wretched men and women, with skin as crumpled as parchment and temperaments no less creased, were elusive at best, diverting her with insidious half-truths that she had always been aware were their ways. Somewhere could have meant nowhere. Or everywhere.
         She braved the raging winds buffeting her all over to glance upward. There was nothing, except for the faint purplish tinge to the usually greenish sky. The phenomenon had been in stark display for months now, that strange color that had set everyone’s hearts to fear and panic. The Olders were being harassed from all sides with questions regarding the lurid firmament, as to what was causing it and why it was there. The Olders were reticent, ever passive, yet beneath their façade of cool indifference, she knew, was fear. Terror, perhaps more than anyone else’s. They were the ones who kept the secrets of the restless graves, the strangers in the towns that seemed familiar yet were truly not, the smells of carrion lingering in the streets. The Olders were also certain, as was she, that whatever it was causing the purple attack on the sky would strike at them first. They were, for the first time in centuries, unsure of what their future was going to be. Why else would they call for her, after all?
         When she stumbled once more, she grabbed the pendant around her neck and hissed inwardly at herself, Damn you for a fool, woman! Your life was all as you wanted it to be, and you had to go to those Olders. Why? She gritted her teeth, as much with anger as with the cold that continued to assail her exhausted body. Why, indeed? She was already free of worry, free of responsibility, when they had called upon her. And she had come, like a dog, scrambling to take orders from an abusive master. What was worse, she had stooped down to take orders—requests, as the Olders had put it—from ones who were normally below her…
         She grasped the ebony pendant tighter, drawing ample warmth from it before hurrying on. It would not do to take all of its energy before her journey’s end. She would be needing more of it. She could already feel it weakening even more than when its dimming power had prompted her, at least in part, to accept this mission. Her inactivity had caused all the strangeness, so the Olders had told her. At that moment her stubborn streak had made her refuse to so willingly accept it, but now she knew that she could no longer afford to be in denial. She tucked the pendant beneath her cloak and drew the inky black cloth more tightly around her.
         She was amused by the stark contrast she presented, black figure in white snow. Then again, she was aware, and all too well, that life was of contrasts. There would be more where she was going. Much more. Oh, how she had longed to be far from such contradiction!
         She adjusted her eyes to relieve them of the momentary strain that cold wind and cold thought had brought about, and that was when she saw the mansion. She was startled. Certainly, the sight of such a rich, ancestral home amidst harsh landscapes was enough to shock the toughest hearts, but that there was what sounded like singing inside further shook her. A mirage? But the auditory aspect disagreed with that notion. She could not tell. She knew that she had to come nearer. For shelter, if for nothing else.
         Beyond the exquisite gates, tarred by age and rust and infested with the gargoyles of dark design, was a little girl, singing an old rhyme better times may have taught her. She was raggedly thin and falling apart even more; the traveler swore that she could see the girl waste away in front of her own eyes, pieces of skin dangling loose and falling. She knew that she had seen much worse in those ages when torment and suffering were the food of the days, but great agony tugged at her now. She was unsure why; the sensation was almost alien to her.
         Seemingly oblivious to her presence, the girl kept on singing. It was only when she touched the child—and she was careful about it, for fear of shattering her frail shell—that she was given a response.
         Blank eyes stared back at her, devoid of any emotion and life. She tried to hide the new wave of shock that threatened to render her numb, even as some strange warmth had eradicated the numbness brought by the winter snows. But warmth? What warmth? The child was chilly, and when she asked, “What has happened, child?” the only response was, “I sing for the buried that haven’t died and have dug themselves out in misery. Look, see for yourself.” The girl beckoned her inside the mansion, and when she looked through the doors she was met with a staggering stench and with the grizzly sight of what looked like walking corpses, more people like the girl, alive yet dead, a whole houseful of them. Buried but not yet dead .
         She froze for what seemed a longer time than when she had challenged the unrested spirits of the ice. Then more hastily than she ever thought possible for her, she pushed herself away from the site, from the girl, through the ice, and as far away as possible from that graveyard of the awaiting.

         Two days or so found her before the place where she had been sent to go, both by the Olders and by her own need. The latter she wanted to think she had just conceived of after the harrowing flight from the mansion, but she lacked the conviction that would have comforted her. Here she was, in front of the ancient citadel of black and white, of swamps and gardens, of nights and days, and of contradictions, where right now were none of the globs that the more dramatic called souls, those that used to flow out of the citadel in a steady stream into the green sky. She went on inside, unhindered by the defenses of the citadel, even welcomed by its denizens in their own silent forms of invitation. After all, she was being expected.
         She had been too long away from this place, a nether-realm of no constant location in space or time. It was a wonder how the Olders knew where to find it—or did they?—but she did not dwell on that matter now. She knew that even had the Olders not given her directions, she would have been able to find the edifice.
         Climbing a flight of stairs she finally came to the room that she had spent centuries of her life in, to that cold warmth that only now seemed to be too much of the latter. The room was the central chamber, and from it usually came out the souls that would give life once more to the sick sky and lay to rest the girl from the mansion and more like her. And there, at the end of the chamber—which seemed much longer than she remembered—was the other woman that she had shared the room with since eternity, that woman with the warmth beneath the white robes and the pendant that was twin to hers but for color and now lay exposed to call out to her own. She sighed; it was time to let go of her foolishness. What had even made her think that she could escape from such a heavy responsibility?
         She drew out her pendant, and it pulled her toward the other woman, who said with a faint smile, in her mind and not through mouth, Come, sister. You have been missed.
         As the sisters joined as one once more, as they had been for centuries before one sought comfort away from the other, the one shrouded in black was certain that the sky would be as it had always been, that the mansion’s residents and the voiceless strangers of the cities would find peace, and that all would be all right, for now Death had returned to her place with Life.