Reaper Girl: Episode Fourteen
If you’re a new subscriber, welcome! This is the fourteenth episode of my novella Reaper Girl. To start at the beginning hit the Start here button.
Erica steps through the door into bright warm afternoon light. She hears wind in the trees, the chorus of bird song, the drone of insects. The scent of honey permeates everything.
Her eyes adjust and she sees a familiar stone cottage along a familiar path. She runs up to and around the corner where she finds Nawn sitting on the large tree roots under the Great Tree grafting broken threads together with honey and a wire crimper.
“Oh Nawn! What happened?” she says as she kneels in the dirt and plucks up a loose strand. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about this strange being and their fondness for giving answers in riddles that made no sense, but seeing the devastation puts a lump in her throat.
Nawn removes a basting brush from between their teeth with one hand while gingerly holding a grafted thread with the other. They put down the baster, reach for the crimper and crimp the grafted thread. Then they let the thread go and watch as it springs up, rejuvenated, to a cluster above their head.
Nawn looks at Erica and chucks her under the chin, “Nothing to worry about, Reaper girl, just a bit of a scuffle with that scurrilous angel. He thinks he killed me. Silly oaf! As if anyone could kill Fate. Ha!” Nawn throws back their head and laughs a deep throaty laugh.
The cat, Lydia, appears at Erica’s knee and nuzzles her, “So, you’re back then? Finally figured out the answer?”
Erica rocks back on her feet, “I feel like I have. Like it’s there on the tip of my brain, but I don’t quite have the words to express it yet. But anyway, how did I get back here?”
“You made a choice,” says Nawn.
“But it wasn’t one of the three paths you gave me.”
“No, but that was sort of the point. Those riddles were pretty vague and meaningless. You were right about that from the start. In the end, all Fate can do is give you some options, but Fate is still determined by the choices only you can make. So, what do you choose?” Nawn says, ever the cryptic.
“I don’t think destroying Jerry is the answer,” Erica pronounces.
“We don’t think so either, but we had to let you figure that out for yourself.”
“Getting rid of him won’t actually solve the problem, will it,” continues Erica, “It will only lead to more problems,” she realises.
“That’s what the threads suggest, yes.”
“So, I have to find another option. Urgh! If only I was still the Reaper, I would probably have a really clever solution to this!” says Erica, standing and pacing, hugging herself.
“Who says you’re not?” asks the cat from her spot in the shade of the tree.
“Well, when everything went kaboom, I returned to the land of the living, ergo, not the Reaper anymore, right?”
“But you’re not in the human realm anymore, are you?” Nawn points out.
“No, I suppose not.”
“Did you bother to look behind you when you went through the portal that brought you to our little pocket of existence?” asks Nawn.
“No, why?”
“Well, you would have seen your body, for one thing,” says the cat, yawning.
“You mean this whole time I’ve been dead? Again?”
“Well,” says Nawn, “technically you’ve been detached from your corporeal being, as you were the first time, all those years ago. The term ‘dead’ doesn’t really apply to you.”
“But why don’t I remember all the things I knew before about life, the universe….ooh!” Erica’s eyes go wide. A montage of memories fly through her mind.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Erica says in a voice that is a little boomier than usual, “But, why didn’t I know this as soon as I got here?”
“You were thinking with your human brain,” says the cat loftily.
“You didn’t realise your celestial mind was still in there,” adds Nawn, “It’s allright. It happens to most of us in the first thousand years or so. You’ll get the hang of it. Anyway, now that you’re awake, what do you want to do?”
Erica thinks about this for a while. Nawn goes back to fixing threads. The cat takes a nap.
There is a clear path in the sand around the well by the time Erica stops pacing, looks up, and says, “I’ve got it! I know how to fix this!”
“Oh good, I was starting to think you might need another clue,” says the cat, stretching out.
Erica rolls her eyes.
“But, before I go, I think it’s time for a wardrobe change.” She blinks and is once more in her favourite outfit. Her cane and tablet appear in her hand. Her t-shirt reads I’m with stupid.
“Right, time to go. Thanks Nawn! I’ll try to pop back for a cup of tea sometime, now I know where you are. Toodles, cat!”
And with that she jogs off into the trees looking for door marked Entrance that she now knows is hiding behind a wall of ivy.
The cat watches her disappear and licks her paw, “She forgot my name, didn’t she?”
Nawn chuckles softly and finishes fixing another thread.
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There are only two or three more episode left to go until the final showdown!