Page 23 of In Death's Hands
“You cannot be serious,” says Turan. “We’ve never evenseenthem!”
“As far as we’re aware. Which is not saying much.” My sister, or the person who is as close to one as I could imagine having, is right, of course. We’ve never seen them, never even seen anything written about them apart from human myths, which are like looking through a distortion mirror on the best days and watching a three-headed peacock take over the world to establish the trading of butterflies on the worst. We’ve long abandoned looking into human stories for answers. So how do weknowthe Fates are as real as we are? We just know. Deep in all of us, we know. And I guess I have more reasons to be sure than the rest of us since I can see their threads. Every human, every conscious being, is wrapped in their colourful lifelines.
That’s one thing the humans get wrong all the time in their grand, egotistical theories: they are not the only ones guided by the Order. Dogs, ants, whales… they all have a part to play.
Except Liv, it would seem.
Liv
“How do you know they exist if you’ve never seen them?” I ask, not sure what’s got Nathan so thoughtful.
“Just like you know your heart is beating. The thudding is faint, but it’s there.” That’s all the explanation I’m going to get, it seems, as he finally turns back to face us. Face me. “Trust me when I say this pains me as much as it does you, but we must go and search for them nonetheless. Together. The Fates are the only ones who will be able to explain why these accidents keep happening to you, and how we might fix it.”
There is so much to focus on in his sentence, and yet I find myself slightly hurt by his statement that it would pain him to be with me. To go on that trip—journey,quest? I wonder, almost snorting out loud—with me. I guess it would make sense for him to be tired of rescuing me, I knowIam. “Do you really think they can help?” I ask instead, ignoring my pathetic train of thought.
He nods. “I do.”
“Can’t you go search for them alone?” asks Turan, wariness making her features tight and tense. “She should stay here, under guard.”
“You know as well as I do that there is no safer place for her than at my side,” he says, his body shaking with barely leashed violence.
Turan’s eyes widen for a second before she relents, nodding once. “Yes. I am realising that, brother.”
“Then it’s settled, we leave tomorrow morning.”
“Wait a minute,” I interject, jumping to my feet. “Nothingis settled. I may accept all too willingly your stories as truths, but I can’t just pick up and leave. And go where exactly?”
“Would you rather stay and wait for the next car to crash into you?” Nathan asks me, his voice surprisingly harsh. “Or maybe for the next time you stumble into an alley to be quickly murdered by a member of the Novensiles?”
I ignore the hair jumping up all over my skin at the temperature drop. As if his ire made my flesh react instinctively. “I would rather understand what thefuckis going on!”
“Then come with me,” he growls, his breathing ragged, his eyes wild.
“Nathan!” thunders Turan, and it seems enough to allow the tension suffocating the room to lessen.
“Come with me,” he says, his tone almost pleading now, “and help me figure out what happened to you. Whatkeepshappening to you.”
“Why do you even care?” I wonder, my voice barely above a whisper.
It’s like watching a room magically clean itself—the crumpled clothes picking themselves up and folding themselves neatly before willingly going into the waiting arms of the open wardrobe—as his face neatly clears itself up of all emotion. Any clue that could have told me what he was feeling suddenly disappears, leaving me cold and alone standing before Death’s assistant. “We need to know how you escaped Death.”
Escape?I didn’t escape anything. I was freed from it. A present I did not—donot—deserve. “So you can prevent others from escaping it too?”
He looks at me deeply but does not answer. I wonder what he thinks of me. If he believes I escaped Death, does he believe I cheated his boss? Does he see me as a wrong that needs to be righted? As a broken cog that needs to be removed to ensure the machine works as expected? No. He saved me, I remind myself. He did, but that seemed like instinct. Maybe once he has his answers, he’ll need to rectify what clearly went off the rails twenty years ago. I wonder if I’ll feel something then. Mostly, I’m excited by the prospect of meeting Death again, even if it is for my final journey.
I am back at work. No one is more surprised than I am, although I shouldn’t be since it’s my life and I should get to make my own decisions. But leaving Nathan was tough. Not only because hemadeit hard by explaining how it wouldn’t be safe and how there were far more urgent things that needed to be figured out, but because itachesto be without him. And that is not a word I ever thought I would use, for anyone. Ever.
But here I am. With worried messages from my guitar teacher on my phone, of all things, and co-workers that are far too concerned with my well-being.
“I amfine.” Isaiah is off today, and Leela is the one taking orders while Joana harasses me with questions.
Leela only started a week ago, replacing Ibrahim since he graduated from his MBA and was quickly poached by a fancy company, and is clearly in need of guidance as she fails to explain to a customer that he can’t ask for a refund on a half-eaten pastry. The nineteen-year-old art student throws me a pleading look and I quickly sidestep my overbearing colleague. What’s up with everyone lately? If Death’s assistant couldn’t keep me contained, Joana certainly won’t be the one to succeed.
After I’ve successfully handled the client and reassured Leela that she did just fine, Jo is back on me like a piece of hair stuck on my lip gloss on a windy day. “You’re fine, but you need to leave for a while.” Not a question, so I don’t answer.
I get that it’s a hard pill to swallow. It is for me too. But even I have to admit Nathan isn’t completely off-base saying I’m not safe. So, after many back-and-forths, to Turan’s exasperation, we compromised.
I agreed to figure things out with him as long as I could settle things in my life first. I don’t know how long this shitstorm will last for, if I’m even going to survive it—Nathan didnotappreciate my saying that—but I won’t disappear without a trace. I need to have a life to come back to when all this is done, after all. Sure, it feels more like a placeholder than an actual life, but I’m sure I’ll figure things out for myself soon.
