Psychopomp

“Only the dead may speak to the dead. No man born of mortal womb may challenge this. Amidst the dark, they must plunge into the abyss to wake upon the sands. Across the void lies home. Keep thine eyes ever forward, to the light, lest one wishes to be lost forever in the gulf between life and death. Only ever forward.”

Excerpt, Of Soma and Psyche

Teachings of the Ichorians

To leave the confines of the body, one must die. There are no exceptions, not even for a Psychopomp. This will be the three-hundred and fifteenth time Ewain will die, and by the Ichorians’ mercy, it will not be his last, not yet. Deep in the earth beneath the mission, hidden from light and civilization, Ewain lies naked upon a freezing metal bed. Tubes embed into the disk in his arm while metal cables suspend the bed above a glass chamber filled with water as cold as its brilliant glowing color. Its chill traces across his back with icy fingertips, and auroral lights oscillate on the cave ceiling around his shadow.

Share nothing of yourself, every Psychopomp is reminded before each Catharsis.

Incense billows densely as priests stand around him, chanting in lightly woven melody while they toss fiery sun-gold petals into the water chamber. Petals of the phoenix flower, lively and majestic in summer to wilt in winter and return to life again in those sunshine months. Drums beat in a percussive rhythm exactly as his own, turning the cave into a subterranean ventricle.

Nearby a polished Ashwood pedestal roots into the ground, its top surface carved flat with the Mermera and cylinder of Norma’s remains perched inside it. The cable which penetrates his arm runs into the pedestal’s base, and the spectral illumination within it pulsate to the drumbeats, to his heartbeat.

All the priests raise their voices in this primordial chant, heeding the drums and Psychopomp’s heart to follow:

Resolute in life!

Embark now to death resonant, brother!

Guide the Khymyno Beyond!

To halls of gold and fields of bronze!

To the arms of our fathers!

Return only with victory or remain in death.

Be Worthy!

Morrius watches e’er over us!

Then the drums, as his heart, recede ever-so-slow to the sound of silence. A solitary voice follows his descent in the quiet, subsuming every sense into its bellow, into a dark that hums, a dark that churns, a dark that bites with teeth of frost.

“I shall see you when you return,” Art bids.

To Death!

To Death!

March with no fear

Along the blizzard’s trail

The Raven’s Eye watches

In the beginning, there is only a freezing senseless void. A bare yet bursting emancipation in which endless possibility duels with hopeless oblivion. Mind commands no body, it drifts and drifts as a nebulous cloud of memories, thoughts, and dreams. Hums of unceasing currents reach out to him, pull him into their midst, surround him with their chorus. Floral chains of blue-white lights dangle above, hanging from profound, multi-armed branches by the thousands. They weave a broad, willowing dome through which only the slivers of the night sky can be spied and cradling this all is a towering trunk with bark like pearlescent scales. Nascent embers manifest on their edges, forming a radiant pink web of heat.

His senses separate, manifesting parts of his body from the ash that encases him. He feels his grave shift with his movement, and his hands effortlessly exhume him. A small ashen island that clings to the base of the tree welcomes him. Tidal envoys of the river lap at the island’s fringes and carry innumerable boxes with fiery halos by. All around, through the thinning chains of the canopy nearest the river’s surface, he sees trees just like his. Some of them are bulbous beacons of light and others emaciated husks now imprisoned in their spots, forsaken by their islands and canopies long ago.

Cinders multiply upon a nearby tree, consuming its body in patient, blazing dissolution as the island around it erodes little by little with each passing current. Pained, awakening screams echo from beyond sight, near and far.

Norma is here, still interred. He finds her close, a fertile mound of ivory ash radiating as fledgling embers by the tree.

He approaches with haste and drops to his knees beside it. She will not remember the moment that brought her here, not as memory, thank the Gods, but the feelings will remain as echoes and will be the first sensations to greet her once she is exhumed.

With the tempering of a hundred repetitions, Ewain removes layer after layer of ash in gentle wiping motions. Only a thin film covers her when he stops. With one hand, he covers her forehead and eyes and with the other, he gently takes her petite hand. She stirs slightly now, those gentle pink lips tremble and whimper and her body squirms. Each movement brings a gasp…then screams to split hearts asunder. So, so tightly her hand grips his, transferring every defibrillating feeling into him.

His heart steals the air from his lungs, thrashes within his ribs, seizes and boils his blood. Scream, his body compels, scream as she does, yet he keeps it caged behind clenched teeth. After many greedy moments, a deep, shivering exhale discharges the agony, their quaking hands still clutched together as Norma sobs, tears pathing through the ash on her cheeks.

“Remember my voice,” Ewain exhales, “Remember my voice, Norma.” He feels his body shiver like hers, feels utter exhaustion hollow him. “You are safe. We…we are at the watery edge.”

“The…the watery edge,” she so sweetly repeats again and again. “I…I…I am….,” the realization punctuates with a dreadful exhale.

Ewain removes his hand from her head, releases her hand which she promptly uses to cover her face.

“No, no, no, no,” she does not want to open her eyes, “Please tell me this isn’t real, please, Gods, please.”

“It…it is.”

She shakes her head, ash catching in her now straight auburn hair.

Ewain says nothing, surrendering the moment to silence for her to reach her own terms at her own pace. Her cries wither with the breeze that carries it from shore.

“The watery edge…,” she utters with looming realization, keeping her eyes closed, pressing her lids tight. “How…how do you know those words? Who are you?” She demands.

“A Psychopomp,” he pauses to let the word settle, “Cornelia…she told me. Told me it is where you two went as kids.”

“Now I’m…I’m here. It happened, then….” She says hollowly, “I did this…. I did this…. I brought this on myself. Oh, Gods…the Ichorians, they will despise me….”

“They will not,” Ewain says confidently, “You chose life. You did not want this.” He sits with his side to her, his face toward the burning tree beyond, watching it slowly crumble.

“How do you know?” she lies paralyzed with turmoil of wanting to see whom she speaks to and being terrified to look at him.

“I saw it. You spoke to your mother…realized you made a mistake and that you wanted life.”

“Gods,” she clasps her mouth as she remembers, “I want to go back. Take me back, please.”

His eyes remove their fixation from the burning tree and gaze down at the ash between his feet, “I wish I could make that happen…but I cannot. Once our eyes close out there…and open here, there is no going back. The past is set.”

Through her closed eyelids she sees warm, velvety blue light blanket the dark. “And here…here is the Eye?” Its utterance alone requires the little strength she has.

“As only the divine and the dead can see,” Ewain softly validates over his shoulder, “the precipice at our world’s edge.”

Her breaths grow shallow and shake, “I don’t want to see it. I want to wake up and see…see home.” Her mother’s face, Cornelia’s face are there in her mind, waiting for her.

More screams he hears in the air, heard only by him. “This is the path home we all must walk, Norma. This is the Long Sleep we all take, the first dream of our lives, and the only way we wake is forward.”

“I just…I just…I never lived…. I destroyed my life.”

“Your life is here. You just need to open your eyes and see it. If you do not…you will never know what lies before the watery edge.”

She struggles, her chest and mind in arresting fever pitch. Seeing it all…it will be real, undeniable, yet no matter how hard she presses her lids, tries to cover her eyes and run through the dark, this place finds her. The babbling water, the feel of powder against her skin, the light that seeks to reach her eyes are inescapable. She takes a deep breath, and when she opens her eyes the air clings to her lungs.

In that moment, her eyes behold the sight around her; creation simplifies into this serendipitous willow. Helixes of memories bound with cuddling warmth hang above her, reaching down, beckoning her to recall the times of beginnings and ends. Inside, in the empty dark confines buried so deep within the heart, light bursts, and in that evanescent twilight, she feels eternity.

“My life it’s….” she knows not what to say.

“All here,” Ewain completes, marveling again at the inside of the wispy, luminary dome around them. “Bright and beautiful.”

“Why is it burning?” Norma asks, looking at the embers upon the scales.

“It is preparing to surrender to the waters. Take you to rest.” He steals a glance at the trunk and sees her before it, her back to him, bare.

“I’m…I’m not ready,” she mutters, then twists her body to look around, seeing all around her, the river flowing between the endless islands of trees, the hundreds of boxes floating along like seaborne suns. “The boxes…there are so many.”

Ewain looks at them pass by. There must be hundreds. “All ashes seeking return to souls long waiting. You will not have to wait long.”

Norma sniffles, cups her mouth, “And the trees…they are all…people?”

“All of them,” Ewain affirms.

“So many of them are burning….” She looks now at the enkindled trunk beside her, “Will this all disappear? These parts of my life?” Cylindrical flowers bloom upon the chains of light, no petals on them but layers of gem-like buds. All hang low, within reach, if she but stood.

“They will burn but not fade,” Ewain admires them, “They have been a part of you, they are you, and they will follow you Beyond. They will live within you forever so long as you sing them.” He looks back down, at his shoulder, “Will you sing them to me before they burn? Tell me their songs?”

“Why?” She looks at this man to her side, before her, seeing the long, dark gold hair and scarred, fair skin of his back. “Why do you care? How do I know you are who you claim to be? I…I don’t even know your name.”

You remind me of someone once in my life, words Ewain thinks but cannot say. Share nothing of yourself, not even your name. He sits silent, ponders for an answer as his eyes turn once more to the burning tree whose island sinks below the water.

“’We are our memories,’” he begins, “Lykos said that to his wife before his death. They are all that come with us Beyond. What good is a life lived if it gifts you with nothing worth reminiscence? Trust me when I say that…there is nothing more regrettable than a lost memory. In sharing them with me, you keep them alive a little longer so that when you see your loved ones again, you can recall them together. Of course, I will not coerce you to do so. You are free to do as you wish. If you wish to recall them yourself, you need only touch the flowers. If you wish to sit in silence, we can do so until your tree fades and the water takes us. If you wish me gone, you need only say so. Whichever you choose, I will wait here.”

She studies the scars on his back, and feels from his voice…sincerity, “Your-your name. You didn’t tell me.”

He does not answer immediately, did not want to lie…despised the thought, yet he must tell her something to work to her trust, “Zollern…. Call me Zollern.”

Many more trees burn and boxes pass when finally he hears the ash behind him crush beneath petite feet. She sits a foot from him, her back to his.

He hears her voice, yet cannot make them out from the muffle, “I cannot hear you.”

She sighs and shuffles back, now a delicate finger’s length from him, “Zollern, how do I know I can trust you? That you aren’t just trying to trick me in some way I’m to stupid to know?”

“By oath, for every death I attend, I must, too, die. I have attended much death. Many of those I meet here are not good people. They simply reaped the seeds they sewed, yet some, like you, are innocent and deserve much better. I must guide you all the same, ensure Deliverance for all, regardless of sin, corrupt and innocent. I wish I could do more to help those like you, but all I can offer…is to ask of your life, ask who Norma was, is, and will be.”

She looks at the canopy, at the flowers, the back of her head ever-so-slightly brushing the back of his, “Who Norma was, is…and…will be,” the thin, cool air inhales deep into her lungs. She stands and goes to one of the flowers, waiting, peaking at him from her peripherals but refraining from direct eye contact.

He slowly approaches, and as they stand a breath away, Norma looks down, still not ready to see him. Tears come to her eyes, yet she keeps calm, attempts a smile, “What do I do?”

“Pluck whichever one you wish and tell me what you see.”

Norma gently takes one. “I…I see….” She sees her father, Arlow, who came home every day tired yet happy to see his family. She remembers him holding her above his head and spinning around with laughter, holding her in his arms as they watched TV, eating with her mother and her at the table as they asked her how she was…what she did that day…what she liked to do. “He tried so hard. He was such a loving man…,” Norma whispers, one who died too soon. The same cancer that kills her mother now is what claimed him when she just turned nine. She sees the cremation, putting his remains in a Death Box years later, and saying goodbye upon the Stygian.

And her mother, she loved her even more since then. Every moment they could, they spent together. She sees them cooking together in the kitchen, how they laughed at the mediocrity of their food. “It was so awful, sometimes we spit it all out,” Norma laughs and wipes tears from her face. They always tried to figure out how to make it better for the next time. She sees how her mother listened to her sing, helped her pick out clothes and learn to dance…was so supportive when finally, Norma told her of her dreams.

She sees Cornelia…how they were inseparable as teenagers. They snuck into theaters to see the newest motion pictures, talked of the patricians they liked and wanted to be like. She remembers climbing to the rooftop of the building where Cornelia and her family lived, where water reservoirs poured into the pools of the courtyard below. There they would lie down together, hold hands, listen to the waterfalls, and talk of dreams. She remembers being there when Cornelia’s family died, how she never let go of her hand through it all, and how later Cornelia would do the same for her.

Norma falls to her knees and through her stuffy nose laments. “I should have spent more time with them. I wish…I wish I could be back home…I wish we were all young again back at the dinner table…on the rooftop. I wish things didn’t have to end.”

Ewain kneels before her, “I do, too.”

“Why do they, Zollern? Why do they have to end?” She looks down at her hands.

“Death is life’s end…but it is not ours.” He gazes at the flowers she preciously clutches.

A terrified breath leaps from her lips and she closes her eyes, “I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Look at me, Norma, please.”

Her body tightens, her every breath and being tremble as she lifts her face and opens her eyes.

She gasps at what she sees, drops the flowers in her hands, yet it is he that gives himself to the orbit of her eyes, letting her pull him into her ether to crash into her earth.

“Norma,” he breathes, “you can be strong now, be the person that you need now. The past is set, we cannot go back, but it is not our end. We are here, you…me. Do you feel this?” Ewain tender takes her quaking wrist, “Do you feel me?” his hand then takes hers, fingers tenderly holding her soft palm.

She covers her mouth with her other hand as tears fall in torrents from her eyes. She nods, “I…I do.”

“Then there is hope,” he squeezes her hand, “So long as you fight, so long as you strive for every breath, Norma. You are your hope. There will be more to you than your life, and now the Ichorians have the chance to see that for themselves.” Ewain sits now, next to her, as the flames consume more of the tree and the water inches closer to their feet. “You will see them all again.”

She takes the flowers from the ash and drops them into the encroaching current.

“Do you hear that? In the distance?”

Norma hushes her breath and listens. Her lips curl. The roar of immense waterfalls rumble from beyond the trees, to where the river flows. “It’s like Cornelia and I thought.” She pauses, watches the water reflect the fiery scarlet of the inferno behind them, watches it nip her toes. How warm the water is. “Zollern, please tell no one of what I did. Please do not gossip of my shame. Please make sure my mother never learns of it. Can you promise me?”

“I…” he hesitates, stayed by a moment of uncertainty before relinquishing it, “I promise.” His words ease her.

She lies down, and through the burning canopy sees the stars, “Cornelia and I…we used to think that when we passed, we’d be like the stars.”

“In many ways,” Ewain says, “we are.”