Page 59 of Death

I find the courage to gaze over the edge of the dock again. The faces stare back at me, white and wispy just beneath the surface.

The dead.

“This…” I struggle within, somewhere between sympathy and shock. “This is what happens when we die? This is where we go?”

Ari nods. “Yes.”

I slowly shake my head, rejecting it — though I’m not sure why. I’ve never held any firm belief in an afterlife. It’s not something I ever thought too much about.

But to see it with my own eyes…

A tear falls down my cheek. “Are they happy?” I ask.

“They’re content,” he says. “It’s more peaceful than it looks.”

Deep down, I know he’s right. These faces, with their closed eyes and passive smiles. I can’t help but wonder what they’re thinking — if they even can think as I know it. Is the afterlife a neutral place of our own personal design; full of beauty and love in the eyes of the beholder? Some blissful, quiet contentment?

“You bring them here,” I say, thinking it through. “We die… and you escort us here.”

“Yes,” he says beside me.

One-hundred and fifty thousand people die each day, he said. Give or take.

And Ari carries that burden, alone.

I stand still, silently weeping for them, for him.

“Tannis,” he whispers after a while. “Please say something.”

I look into the void once again. The faces drift past, silent and cold, but content and peaceful as a deep sleep. I take another breath and the lump in my throat fades away. My tears dry and I wipe the evidence from my cheeks.

“It...” My voice breaks.

“What?” Ari studies my face, though I’m not sure what for. For acceptance? For rejection of everything he is?

I look into his dark eyes, unafraid. “It seems lonely,” I say.

Ari relaxes his shoulders and slowly nods. “Now do you understand why I cling to you, Tannis?” he asks.

My heart aches. I look down at our clasping hands as that ribbon of warmth slides throughout my chest.

This. This was why he made that deal with my parents.

A companion, as he said before. Not a slave.

A hand to hold. A shoulder to lean on.

An equal.

A queen.

“But why me?” I say aloud without thinking.

Ari’s lips twitch with that same amusement as always. “I saw you that night,” he begins. “Mere moments after your birth. Your heart had stalled. Your lips, blue and lifeless. Not the first time I’d seen it, nor the last, but sometimes... when a soul comes to meet me, I see a flash of something; some brief, beautiful moment of a life unlived. I saw you standing right here as you are now. Your heart, bold and wild. Lips and cheeks pink with life and I knew that you, young Tannis... you would be the one to save me.”

I blink. “Save you?”

“Being king of the dead, it…” he speaks slowly, “it comes with a heavy toll but when I look at you now… I feel.” He gives a short smile. “You’ve brought something out in me that I gave up trying to find a long time ago.”