October 27, 2008, Evening

The InBetween

In the InBetween, I am more than a bird. In the InBetween I, like everyone else, have no real body, merely the spectral form of what I am on Earth. In the InBetween I am my full potential. Sometimes I want to stay here forever. But there is always so much work yet to be done.

I see her before she sees me, and I slip sideways, hiding, wondering if there is any way I can slip by her unseen, unmolested. I am here today on illegal business, and I don’t want to make small talk with the Virago. I realize I am nervous. I swallow and look around, but I can see no way to slip past the Virago without contacting her.

The InBetween is little more than a long corridor with two exits: one labeled Arrivals, and the other labeled Departures. My business normally lies at Arrivals. It is here that I bring the souls I have nabbed from the world, and deposit them with the other freshly arrived. In the InBetween, they are not our “dearly departed”. I guess everything comes down to proper perspective.

But today I am not dropping off someone’s beloved to be united with her ancestors and forebears. Today I am a smuggler with a silver package tucked carefully under my wing. Today I must go left instead of right, and take this package straight to Departures where the other soon-to-be-babies line up to be assigned mother sand families. This is the end of the golden road Lily was supposed to follow: she’d gotten lost on her way to Departures, which made me wonder what it was like on the other side of the InBetween, in actual Heaven. I should have asked Lily! Would she remember?

I put it on my to-do list for when I returned home. Find Lily. Find out what lies beyond the InBetween.

But now I must focus on my task, for between me and Departures is the Virago, and as I cannot avoid her, I must engage her. She is in grand form today; she is the color of twilight and she smells like wine and amber. I fluff my feathers, double check my package, and approach her.

She sees me now, and as I expected, she swoops down and lifts me up, nuzzling my feathers against her face. “Raven!” she exclaims, her color shifting from rose and indigo to the soft pink of spring. “You’ve been gone so long! What have you been doing? How have you been? Have you come to stay for a bit?”

“You know that whether or not I stay is no choice of mine,” I chide her, puffing my chest in indignation. “There’s work to do and few of us to do it. But I have been well, thank you. Austin is agreeable, though the weather is taking a turn for the worst. Sky’s been lacking color, wind won’t blow, rain won’t fall. Bleak days with nothing to show for it. Is it too much to ask for a bit of sunshine or, failing that, a good storm to shake things up a bit?”

The Virago laughed her terrifying laugh. “Still a curmudgeon, I see,” she says, stroking my feathers which, although demeaning, feels quite nice. “And the work?” she asks.

I frown at her. “How’s your work, Virago?”

She sighs, setting me back down. “You know I can’t talk about it,” she says. She looks sad. I have never seen her in conversation with anyone else. I imagine she must be quite lonely. “Won’t you just tell me a little? What brings you here today?”

“Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy as it turns out,” I say matter-of-factly. “It’s morbid the way you carry on about my work. Let’s just nip it, shall we? Each do our jobs without all this idle chatter? This is my busy time of year, you know. All the suicides.”

Virago’s color shifts again, back to her twilight hues, and though I do feel bad for being so curt with her, my nerves are growing more frazzled, and I have to drop off this package and be done with it. I need to see Carrie’s face. I need to know that all this work has paid off.

“All right, then,” she says, shaking her head. She looks so doleful, her downturned eyes full of tears and sadness. “All right, Raven. Come back when you have time to talk. You know how much I do love your stories.”

Despite her name, I have never seen the Virago in one of her furies, though I am told she is partial to them. I only ever see this sad Virago. Perhaps she reserves all her sadness for me, knowing I can handle it. I must, after all, bear the deepest sadnesses of Earth.

She is too desolate to notice that I take my leave of her to the left instead of right. I duck in and out of small, chatty crowds and make my way to the end of the corridor. Before me are the tall doors marked “Departures”. Embracing both the anxiety and the excitement, I go inside.

It isn’t what I expected.

As I step into Departures, my breath catches in my throat, and I am paralyzed with surprise. I had expected another corridor, something nondescript but functional. Arrivals is both these things--just a bright room with lots of hugging and kissing and crying. But this is unlike anything I could have imagined.

It is the ocean. It is a beach, and docks, and seagulls overhead, and rocks and large ships docked at the harbor. There is sun, and blue sky and in the distance, the twinkling of that golden road Lily had spoken of.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be here,” a voice says behind me.

I spin around, surprised to see a long-legged stork. His feathers are gleaming white, his eyes a piercing glass black. He is tall and stately, such a beautiful specimen that for a moment I can do nothing but stare. After a beat, I shake myself and cleared my throat, stammering a bit. “Sorry,” I manage, “I just wanted to check on...on an old friend. That’s allowed, isn’t it?”

The stork narrows his eyes at me, lowering his thin, elegant neck to meet my gaze. I feel small and homely compared to this magnificent beast. He examines me closely, and I wonder how I tally up in his estimation. “It’s just that I’ve never seen you before,” he says finally.

“Ah, well.” I cannot say that my business usually lies in Arrivals. Death is not supposed to mingle casually with Life, this much I know, or have known, but have never really understood. But now, standing in Life’s shadow, I realize my own absurdity. Here is Life, elegant, shining, utterly beautiful, and here am I, small by comparison, dark, ignoble. He is great; I am meager. He is dignified; I am gauche. He is beloved; I am reviled.

For a moment I have forgotten myself and my mission, and I turn to go when I hear her voice, soft but firm in my ear: “Please, Raven,” she says. It is Carrie’s voice. And wretched little thing or no, I must do what I have promised.

“How do I find, ah, the ship? For this woman? Her name is....”

And it occurs to me that I don’t know her full name. Carrie what, Carrie what? And is Carrie short for Caroline? Carolyn? And I beginto panic. How many Carries must there be in Austin? And how am I to find the right one?

But the stork bats his wings and stamps one foot. “We’re more sophisticated in these parts than that,” he says, his voice tinged with irritation. “There are millions of women on Earth waiting for babies. Surely you don’t think we have some kind of, what, filing system? Stand there, at that empty dock. Just take a moment and picture her. See her in your mind. We’ll bring the boat to you.”

It is both magical and impossible, and I hurry to the end of the dock. And as I close my eyes and listen to the sounds of the water lapping up on the shore, I see Carrie in my mind--Carrie, with her wild, copper hair and her bright eyes. I see Carrie on her hands and knees, sweating and crying, giving birth to a dying child. I see Carrie in prismacolor, bright and screaming and wondrous, a potential virago in her own right. And when I open my eyes, a small, portly vessel rocks into view. It is labeled simply, Caroline Peterson.

I hop in. The boat is empty, and seems to have been empty for a long time. It almost looks brand new, except that its insides are home to a thin layer of dust. It resembles an expensive toy that no one has dared take off the shelf.

I lift my wings, and the package falls to the floor. Carefully, I use my beak to unfold the delicate silver fabric. And when the package is opened, when the last fold of fabric drops away, the boat is filled with light: bright, prismatic light in every color.

I have done it. This is what she asked for. I have brought Carrie a baby.

Jumping out from the boat, I admire the shining vessel that rocks on the waves. It looks like an expertly wrapped Christmas gift, like a thousand stars shining in an inky sky. I have done all that I can do. The soul waits here, waiting in the harbor, for Carrie to conceive. My task is complete; now she must do what all mammals must do to coerce a child into their wombs. And this time, a soul will be waiting. And it will fill her up. And it will bring her joy. And I will not take it away.

Austin

Carrie is sitting on her porch, reading a book. I am high in a tree, watching her from my perch. She does not see me. She is drinking water from a glass. The day is still and quiet. She hears a car pull into her drive and looks up. It is a police car.

Smiling, she lays her book down, still open to the page she was reading. She gets to her feet and makes her way to the car. The door opens, and a man gets out. Carrie stops walking, her smile faltering a little as she tilts her head to the side.

“Oh, hello, Ryan,” she says, folding her arms across her chest. “I thought you were Jake. I was going to ask you if you remembered to bring my beer.”

The man closes the car door, but he doesn’t take his eyes off Carrie. His face is expressionless, his eyes veiled. “Hi Carrie,” he says. He twitches, fiddles with his watch. He can’t quite look her in the eyes. “Carrie, I got to talk to you. Listen. Ah. Carrie, your husband . . .”

Her eyes fly open and her hands jump to her mouth. She is shaking her head, squeezing her eyes shut. “What? Oh God, no, don’t tell me anything’s happened to him. Oh Jesus, Ryan, is he all right?”

The officer takes a step closer. “He was on a call, investigating a break-in down by Crockett High School...oh god, Carrie. He just--it was his heart--”

She cannot move. She’s holding her breath. The time passes too slowly between them, and finally the officer looks down at his feet. “He died before the ambulance even got there, Carrie. I’m so sorry.”

It is like watching a leaf fall to the ground. It moves slowly, drifting this way and that, suspended in the air by fluid dynamics, yet falling to its inevitable end by gravity. The full dawn of horror often takes a while to arrive, but the end result is always the same. “No. No no no.” Her voice is small and paper thin as she shakes her head, squeezing the officer’s words out of her mind. “NO!” she screams, stepping forward and slamming her fists into the officer’s chest. “He was FINE! There’s nothing wrong with his heart! NO! Oh God, NO!”

She falls apart.

The officer tries to reach for her, but she pivots away, screaming. Between the sobs and the hysterical, high-pitched cries, I cannot understand what she’s saying. Perhaps she isn’t saying anything at all.

And then it hits me: I remember the police officer at the break in. I remember the one they called Officer Peterson.

I remember, and I realize what I have done.

I fluff my feathers in preparation for flight. I don’t want to see how this scene plays out. But even in her delirium, Carrie hears me in the trees, and as she looks up, she sees me, and the horror of recognition and realization flash over her face, and she crumbles and falls. She, too, knows what she has done.

Our actions catch up with us in the end.

As I lift myself to the sky, I remember the shining light that filled the boat. I see it rocking gently on the waves, waiting in the harbor to be called to Carrie’s womb. But there will be no calling it now. Now that she has a soul ready, she has no way to call it to her womb.

I am sorry for Carrie’s loss, and I am sorry that I could not bring her the joy that she so wanted. But I suppose that is how it was meant to be. Perhaps Death simply cannot bring Life. Perhaps all I can do is what I have always done. After all, I am what I am, and I cannot become anything else by will or desire. I have meddled in Life and failed. I will return to doing what I know, and being what I am.

I am a raven.

And I kill people.

Did you like this story? Give me a review at Web Fiction Guide.