Death's Apprentice

Death had taken some of his best Reapers into the auditorium room to talk to them. Everyone else waited impatiently. Lily and Edgar were laying down looking up at the lightbulbs on the ceiling. Arno sat close by, watching the people around them with wariness and wondering when Helen was going to be finished with the meeting.

“Lily?”

“What?”

“Do you miss your Mommy and Daddy?”

Lily stretched, listening to the worried murmurs around the room. .

“Yeah…” she whispered back.

“Do you think we’ll ever get to see them again?”

“Of course we will silly! Everyone dies don’t they?”

“Well yeah…”

“Then you just have to wait for them to die and you get to see them again.”

It took a moment for this to sink in.

“Oh…” Edgar said softly. “I’ve never wanted anybody to die before… But that’ll be cool to see them here. I can’t wait.”

“Things are different from the other side huh?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you think they are all doing? Down there I mean? In the living world?” she asked.

“I don’t know… They’re probably sad cause they miss us. Because we died.”

“But dying isn’t horrible. I’m not that sad. Are you sad?”

“Not really. I miss Mommy and Daddy, but we are having a beventure. And making new friends.”

“Adventure.”

“Oh.”

Lily was silent for a moment, thinking about her Mommy, Daddy, and older sister Andrea.

“Don’t be sad family…” she whispered even though she knew they couldn’t hear. “I’ll see you again…”

The sound of an argument distracted her.

She and Edgar sat up and looked over to a group of Reapers as Arno strategically scooted in closer to them. The people in black seemed to be pointing and laughing at the Greeter Robert.

“What’s going on?” Lily asked as she saw one of them push him.

“I… don’t know.”

It looked like they were being bullies, and it reminded her of how the Guardians had treated Arno. Furiously, the little girl marched over there, much to her Guardian’s dismay as he hurried after her. As she got closer, she could hear more of what they were saying.

“I am absolutely fine with being a Greeter.” Robert sputtered. “I wouldn’t want to do anything else!”

“Yes. Keep telling yourself that.” The reaper Lily recognized as Zachary scoffed.

“Everyone knows that you’re just failed Reapers.”

“No we’re not!!”

Robert’s fists were shaking, his face reddening as much as his hair.

“Hey! Stop being meanies!!” Lily yelled. The reapers stopped to look in wonder at the kindergartener scolding them.

“Shut up and stay out of this little girl.”

“Hey! Don’t tells me to shut up! That’s a bad word!” The Reapers laughed.

“Awww look at the next Death! She’s so cute! Instead of reaping people, she can bake us cookies instead!”

“I can too bake cookies!” Lily yelled, not catching what they actually said.

“Lily, it’s ok. Just don’t pay any attention to them.” Arno said quietly, trying to pull her away from them.

“Oh yeah-I’ve heard about you-you’re that Guardian that can’t even do anything. Weren’t you a Nazi?”

Lily didn’t know what a Nazi was, but she did know that it was bad and that Arno had said countless times before that he wasn’t one. With an angry five year old roar, she pounced on the teenage boy who said it and bit his leg as hard as she could. As soon as she touched him, she suddenly had a vision of a boy skateboarding into the road as a car was coming…

“Lily!!” Arno exclaimed as the boy cursed and shook her off.

“What the freak man?!? She bit me!!”

“In my day they gave kids like that a good beating!”

Arno didn’t really think they were going to try anything, but he stood in front of Lily anyway.

“It’s Robert right? Come on over here with us. We won’t treat you like dirt.” He said.

And with that, he pulled the Greeter away from the group of Reapers.

“Now Lily, it’s usually not ok to bite people…”

“He started it!! He called you a Nozzy!” Arno sighed.

“So Robert-why were they being so mean to you?”

The red head sat down and leaned against the wall, a sour look on his face.

“Just because they’re Reapers, they think they’re better than everyone else. They’re always bullying the other Greeters.”

“Hmmm. Well that’s no good.”

At that moment, they were all called into the auditorium.

Lily squirmed in her seat, looking around at all the other Reapers and Greeters coming into the large domed room. She could see Death down at the bottom, in the midst of everyone. He looked a little worried, which made her worried. He always seemed to be at ease with everything, but this time was different.

She looked over to see Marissa and Garry walking down the stairs, with Miss Rose trailing behind them. Lily stood up in her chair.

“Miss Rose!! Come sit with us!” The five year old exclaimed, waving her arms. The three Greeters looked over to them and made their way over.

“Why hello Lily!” Miss Rose said kindly, as they sat down next to them. The little girl threw her arms around her neck and hugged her.

Arno sat back in his chair, feeling rather tense. He kept glancing around-his arms squarely folded in front of him. He was beginning to feel that this Guardian job was going to be quite exhausting. He didn’t like how some of the Reapers were looking at them. And he had a sense of something boiling under the surface. He glanced over at the little girl next to him to make sure she was still there.

“Miss Rose! Miss Rose!! Lily and I went reaping!!” the little boy sitting on the other side of the Guardian exclaimed happily. The school teacher wasn’t exactly sure how to take in this information.

“Oh...Uh...That’s nice…”

It was then that the room started to get quiet.

Death was about to speak.

“By a show of hands, how many of you have encountered these dark entities?”

A sea of hands came up, which caused Lily to assume that just about everyone in the room had come across one.

“Thank you. Which of you have been attacked?”

Only four hands stayed up in the air.

“All right. Now, seeing that this has never happened before, it is understandable to feel a sense of alarm. The dark entities have been growing in number-much to the confusion of everyone in the Inbetween. I have invited Lærke-who is the President of the Insanities realm to come speak to us about them.” With that, Death took a step backwards and let a tall blonde woman in heels step up to address the room full of reapers and greeters.

“As you know, the dark entities originate from the Insanities realm.” she said with a loud authoritative voice. “There has been some talk of shutting it down, which is completely out of the question. For my Savers and I have been doing some research of our own in regards to these shadows. They have been seen in every realm-and there have been numbers coming from places other than the Insanities. This has led us to believe that our realm is not the only place of origin.”

This led to a lot of concerned whispers. Lærke threw her long hair behind her shoulder and smoothed out her gray pant suit. There was an air of superiority about her-and Arno decided that he didn’t like it. The woman nodded to Death and then walked off the platform and sat back down.

“Thank you. At the moment, we are still unsure of where the Dark Entities may possibly be coming from, so we are going to be calling some of you to be scouts to help with the research. This may put a bit of a heavier workload on the rest of you, but it will all be fine. Some Greeters will be called as Reapers temporarily to make up the difference.”

There was an audible gasp from the audience, and it was fairly obvious that many of the people in black were not very happy with this new piece of news. They kept shooting dirty glares at the people dressed in white. The Greeters simply looked shocked and a bit uncomfortable.

Lily wondered what would happen now with all these shadows out in the realms that she hadn’t been to yet. However, she didn’t worry about it long. For she knew she had the best Guardian in the world.

“That will be all. You are all dismissed.”

“Where are we going today Death?” Lily asked as she and Arno followed the tired looking man down another hallway towards another large glass ball.

“We are going to start visiting the different realms so you can become acquainted with them.” he humored her, despite his obvious exhaustion.

“But what about the dark entities?” Arno asked, concerned.

“That is precisely why we are doing this. I need to do my own questioning and searching among the realms.”

“Ok. So where are we going now?”

Death seemed to glide up into the orb with ease as Lily and Arno clambered up after him.

“The Land of Dreams.”

Dark smoke encompassed them like all the times before, and Lily thought she could see a hint of purple in it. The smoke seemed to curl in unusual ways-like something unreal. It started to clear, and Lily looked around in amazement. They seemed to be in a wispy world full of fantastical things. They were standing on a purple cloud, which Arno seemed to be a bit uneasy about. It started to move through a starry night sky-with random objects floating around in the sky like an occasional cat or potted plant. Lily thought she even saw a unicorn.

Suddenly, in a puff of bright green and blue smoke, two interesting characters appeared out of thin air.

“Hello hello hello!” a girl with red curly pigtails smiled at them.

“Welcome to Dreamland!!” the boy with the purple polka dotted bowtie exclaimed.

The little girl between Death and the Guardian really liked their colorful clothes. The girl had overalls with different color patches, and bright knee high socks, and the boy was wearing a robe that looked like the bottom of the sea. The creatures on his robe even moved, and the seaweed swayed like it was actually the ocean.

“I’m Star!” said the girl.

“I’m Fish!” said the boy.

The newcomers took a moment to process this.

“Are those your real names?” Lily asked.

“Of course not!”

“We made them up!”

“When we get tired of the name-”

“We change it!”

Lily shook her head, thinking that this was a little silly.

“Where where where would you like to go go go?” asked Star.

“To nowhere land?”

“Or to somewhere land?”

“In the land of Inbetween!!”

They laughed hysterically.

Arno didn’t see what was so funny.

“Actually, we are here to introduce my apprentice Lily to the wonderful things here. Do you think you could show her what you Dreamlanders do?” Death said cooly. “And… if you don’t mind, we would like to talk to Morpheus about something.”

“Oh! The Sandman! You’ll like him!!”

“Sandy Sandy Sandy!!”

“Off to the dream factory then!” Fish exclaimed, pushing a button on his bowtie. The bowtie started to spin and whiz, and the cloud shot through the purple spacy sky, swerving around an asteroid belt made out of bathtubs.

“What the-wait!! We’re going to crash into that mirror!!” Arno exclaimed. Lily screamed with glee as she felt like she was falling forward. Either that, or flying.

“Calm down Arno. We won’t hit the mirror. Or actually, we just might… You never know with the Dreamlanders…” Death chuckled, his black cloak billowing behind him.

They did in fact hit the mirror, but instead of shattering, it swallowed them up like jello. The surroundings changed, and soon they were standing in a type of fantastical factory.

“Wow!” Lily exclaimed, looking around.

They were in a huge cavern with odd looking contraptions and random objects placed in silly places. Over on one side, there was a machine made out of cereal boxes, toothbrushes, and hamsters, and on the ceiling there was a big spider web made out of bubblegum that different Dreamlanders used to get around quickly. They would harness themselves in, and then swing across, holding paintbrushes or baskets of odds and ends.

“Who ya got there Fish Star?!” a short old man with a long beard exclaimed, sticking his head out from behind his large pet cockroach who was munching on pennies.

“Death Death and Lily and Arnoooooooo!” Star sing songed.

“Woah! What a party!” another voice said.

It was the television on the old man’s robe. Inside, was a smaller version of himself.

“Let me tell you my joke! A Dreamlander, a Time Keeper and a Reaper walk into a bar…”

“Quiet you! Young ears!! I’m putting you on mute!”

The old man reached down and turned down a dial-much to the frustration of his mini-me.

“Sorry about that!”

“Is this Death’s new apprentice?” a wispy voice asked. Lily turned to see a woman with long green hair coming towards them with. Lily’s eyes grew three sizes as she saw the lady’s multicolored polka dots.

“I like your dress!!”

“Why thank you! Each spot is a different smell! Would you like to try it out?”

Lily jumped forward and put her nose on a big blue one, which smelled like blueberry pie.

“Arno and Lily, the wizard here is named Backpack, and this is Shoelace.”

“Nice to meet you!” the two Dreamlanders said in unison.

“Do you make dreams?!?” the little girl asked.

“Yes we do! You want to see?”

“Yeah!”

“Then follow me!”

Lily raced after the dreamlanders, excited as to what she was going to see. They were led into a little room lined with shelves that were littered with seemingly random objects. Two more Dreamlanders were there-carefully choosing items and putting them in a large box.

“Dittle! Pippers! Death’s new apprentice Lily is here and we get to show her how to make dreams!”

“Really? Exciting!!”

Lily couldn’t stop gawking at everyone she saw. Dittle was an older woman wearing a faded brown jumpsuit and light blue hair that glowed. She had lightbulbs shining in her up do that occasionally changed color, and she rotated her goggles to get a better look at them.

Pippers was a young African American woman with two little buns on top of each side of her head. She was wearing a large brightly colored fish as a dress, and was always levitating a few inches off the ground with some weird type of shoes.

“What an honor!! Nice to meet you little one!” Dittle announced, bowing low to the ground. Pippers did the same. The little girl giggled as the Dreamlanders around her made her feel special.

“What is up with this place? I don’t even know what I’m seeing half the time…” Arno muttered mostly to himself. However, he did feel less in danger than he did with a bunch of Reapers glaring at them, so he figured he couldn’t complain too much.

“Why are you putting those things in the box?” little Lily asked curiously, standing on her tiptoes and peering.

“We’re making a dream. Each of these little objects holds dream essence in it.”

Lily reached inside and pulled out a little water gun.

“Are you sure?”

“Sure we’re sure we’re sure!”

“Come on! We’ll show ya how it’s done!”

Dittle took out a little jar and handed it to Backpack.

“First we’ve got to change rooms!”

Before she even knew what had happened, the room changed to a blank white box.

“What-“

“This is the time to get creative little Lily.” Shoelace said in her wispy voice, sounding like she was in a meadow of flowers. “We have been given freedom to do whatever we want to do for the most part!”

Backpack opened the jar, and some sparkles floated up into the air.

“What should the setting be for this one?” Pippers asked.

“The moon! But it’s made out of play-dough!!” Fish blurted.

“Play-dough moon it is!”

The white room swirled and soon, Lily was looking up at a twinkling night sky, and the floor she was standing on become a little padded and squishy.

“Good potential with this one. They can make things out of the play-dough.”

“Play-dough snowman!”

A snow man suddenly appeared, his happy face formed out of moon rocks.

“But it turns out to be an evil snowman.”

The snowman’s smile turned upside down and its eyebrow’s furrowed downward in a snarl.

“There will be a chase!!”

“But we don’t want it to be a nightmare Backpack.” Shoelace scolded Remember-we still haven’t figured out the whole running in dreams thing-they always seem to be running through molasses.”

“Oh yeah…”

“I know! A band of friendly ninjas come to help!”

As soon as Star offered this new idea, a band of ninjas appeared and stood frozen in poses against the evil play-dough moon snowman.

“Then the ninja adventures begin!”

The room went back to the shelves as the Dreamlanders applauded themselves.

“Bravo bravo! Another dream well done!!”

Backpack was now holding a little drawstring bag.

“That had to be the weirdest thing I’ve ever experienced…” Arno scoffed.

Lily was too interested in what was in the bag.

“It’s just sand!” she said rather disappointedly as she looked inside.

“Just sand sand sand?!?”

“This is a dream!”

“Our dream scouts will take this out to those in the living world and bring them a world of adventure! You throw the sand on sleeping faces.”

“Woah.”

“Yep.”

“Speaking of which… We would like to see Morpheus if you don’t mind.” Death said softly. Lily had almost forgotten that he was there with the silence that had accompanied him.

“Ok!”

“Nice to meet you Lily and Arno!”

Arno wasn’t sure how he felt about Backpack shaking his hand vigorously. The Dreamlanders waved, and soon, Death, Arno, Lily, Fish, and Star were back in the spacy air they had been in before, standing on a cloud.

“Time to see Sandy!!”

Star reached into one of her many pockets-her arm going in much deeper than was normal.

“Now where is that map…” she muttered. She proceeded to pull out a kitten, a jar of butterflies, a thing of cotton candy, a painting, and then finally a scroll. “Ah! Here we are!” she exclaimed happily as the contents she had just pulled from her pocket simply floated out into space. She opened the scroll for all of them to see.

“But-it’s just a bunch of scribbles and doodles!” Arno exclaimed in disbelief. Death chuckled.

“To outsiders, the land of Dreams can seem a bit unorganized, but they have a system that despite all, seems to work. It’s always different when I come here… Always a surprise. ”

The Guardian decided he didn’t like surprises.

Lily, on the other hand, was loving it.

“So. We are here.” Fish told them, pointing to a crude drawing of a cow.

“But that’s a cow...”

“Precisely!! And we want to get here!” he said, pointing to a flower on the map.

“Yes! You have to help the cow get to the flower!”

Lily seemed to remember similar games she used to play in school.

“It’s a maze game!!” she squealed in excitement. The Dreamers gave her a triangle and square of applause.

“Let’s play!!”

The spacy world immediately started to change, and instead of standing on a cloud, they were all sitting on a very large cow, looking forward into a large maze.

Arno looked around in confusion, Lily accepted it immediately and patted the cow’s head, and Death calmly sat back-fully accustomed to the odd surprises and workings that came with visiting the realm of dreams. Star and Fish sat at the front, but facing the wrong way.

“Lily. It’s up to you now! How do you suppose we get through the maze?”

“Can it be anyway I want?”

“Of course of course of course!!”

She thought about it.

“Can the cow jump really high?”

“It does now!”

Without much further ado, the cow launched itself into the air, showing the full maze below them.

“There’s the flower! Right there in the center!!” the little girl exclaimed, the ponytail Helen had braided for her earlier blowing in the wind.

“Rocket Boosters!! Go Mr. Twinkleshine!!”

The cow mooed in reply, and then turned its hooves into rockets. ZOOOM!! The passengers on Mr. Twinkleshine held on for dear life as they quickly approached the flower.

“I don’t even know what’s going on anymore!!” Arno cried.

Death and Lily laughed.

The cow landed softly, and then promptly ate the flower in front of it.

“Here we are! Sandy is just beyond that door!” Fish told them, pointing to a random door standing by itself. There was an image of a brain with a smiley face wearing a top hat on the front.

“Well, it was nice to meet you guys!”

“Hope to see you again!!” And with that, Star and Fish floated off with Mr. Twinkleshine the cow. Lily didn’t even remember getting off of the cow, but she shrugged it off. She and Arno followed Death to the door, where the drawing of the brain blinked and smiled even wider at them.

“Why hello Mr. Death! What brings you here today?” it asked.

“We have some things to discuss with Morpheus. Very serious.”

“Serious? Hopefully not too much so!”

And the door opened.

They stepped into a light peach colored room, where a tall man with dark brown skin was standing next to a tree. He turned when he realized he had company, and gave a big, broad smile, throwing his arms open.

“Death!! Nice to see you!” he said in a big deep voice. His hat and long coat looked twinkled with stars and comets-lit up by nebulae, planets, and suns.

“Hello-Morpheus-.” the master of the Dead managed as the Sandman tried to squeeze the life out of him. “What can I do ya for?” he asked. “Miniature golf? Walk on the moon? How about a sandwich?”

With that the room erupted in laughter, which caused Arno and Lily to look around in confusion.

“You still are dawning that laughing shirt I see.” Death said in amusement.

“Laughing shirt?”

“But it has math equations on it…”

Morpheus proudly smoothed out his bright yellow shirt for them all to see, the navy blue math problems sprawled all over it.

“Yes. My laughing shirt. You know when you sometimes do something or say something funny and no one is around to see it? Now I have someone laughing all the time!”

“Quite an interesting thing of apparel Morpheus, but we need to discuss something very important now. Something that isn’t a laughing matter.”

Morpheus’ shirt chuckled rather nervously. The sandman’s smile diminished significantly, and he took off his little hat for a moment to scratch his head.

“Hold on. Let me put on my serious shirt.” he told them.

“All right now. Follow me.”

Lily didn’t even notice him changing shirts or anything, but within the blink of an eye, he was wearing a deep blue shirt with white letters that said, “This is my serious shirt.” She couldn’t even recall being able to read before…

They walked through another door into what appeared to be a jungle with comfortable chairs.

“Please. Sit down.” Morpheus said respectfully. “Now tell me. What’s going on my friend?”

“Well, first of all, let me introduce you to Lily and Arno. Lily is my new apprentice, and this is her Guardian.”

“Ah finally found a replacement eh? I’m still looking for mine! I guess my time isn’t up yet!”

“Yes. But the main thing we’ve come to discuss, is a problem we’ve been having with the dark entities…”

Morpheus was silent for a moment.

“What’s happening in the Reaper Realm?”

“Nothing much so far. But Lily was actually just attacked by one when she went out reaping for the first time. They seem to be growing in number.”

“Yes… We’ve actually noticed them here as well… Granted they haven’t attacked anyone, that’s actually the first I’ve heard of that happening, but they’ve been turning more and more of our dreams into nightmares…Even creating their own from dream scraps.”

“Hmmm...”

“Well as you know, we mostly do pleasant dreams. Creative dreams. Nice dreams. And the silly and weird and random dreams. But we do send out messages and occasionally we have to do it through a nightmare. But I’m worried they’re going to get out of hand…”

“Do you have any information that could possibly help us figure out what’s going on?”

Sadly, Morpheus shook his head. “Sorry dear friend. I’m not sure what’s going on.”

“Well if something comes up you’ll tell me won’t you.”

The sandman gave him a small smile. “Of course.”

At that moment he turned to Lily.

“Your name’s Lily right?”

She slowly nodded. With a flourish of his hand, a white flower appeared out of thin air, and he offered it to her.

“Do you know what kind of flower this is?” he asked. Lily shook her head.

“It’s a lily. A pretty flower for a pretty girl.” The five year old hung her head shyly, as he cupped the flower in his hands. When he opened his hands, the flower had turned into a little bracelet, the white flower now hanging as a little chain.

“Thank you…” she said as he put it on her wrist. When he brushed up against her, she caught a glimpse of a death vision of a boy sick with illness. Morpheus smiled.

“I think you’ve got a splendid apprentice Death. This world needs a little more innocence and a little less darkness.”

Death absentmindedly nodded in agreement, looking at the wide eyed little girl standing beside him.

“Yes. Yes it does…”