Him-with-the-big-square-toes

Part 1

The house atop the great cliff was quiet for a time. Often it would get this way, still for years on end until a letter would arrive, slipped under the door and into the cozy home.

On a bleak day, though no bleaker than any other, after an unusually long wait, a letter slid under the door and floated to rest calmly on the welcome mat.

The man inside peered over the book he was reading and, upon seeing the letter fluttering to a stop at his door, released a deep sigh from the caverns of his chest. Setting his book open and facedown on the table beside his chair, he slowly removed his glasses. He folded the crescent spectacles neatly and placed them gently on top of the book. With great effort, he heaved his tremendous corpse from the comfort of his chair and made his way slowly towards the door. Sitting in that chair for as much as he did, he had warmed it with the heat of his body and, in turn, it had kept him warm. Now, as he shuffled across the floor, he felt the chill of his icy home. He ruffled his feathers in discomfort. Reaching the welcome mat, he stooped down and plucked the letter from its place on the ground. He calmly and expertly broke the wax seal and opened the envelope. On the parchment inside were two lines of beautiful letters. The top line was a name. The bottom line was a place. The man nodded as he memorized the location, then placed the letter back in the envelope.  Tucking the letter in the waist pocket of his vest, the man ambled to the fireplace. Mounted above the darkened hearth was a gleaming silver sword with black stones fixed on the hilt. The blade gleamed in the low light, shined so that the man could see his reflection in the cold metal.

He saw his own eyes staring back at him, distorted by the shape of the weapon, and he hesitated.

How long has it been, he thought to himself, since I’ve seen my own face?

He could not recall a time when he knew he had; all he could remember was a different face staring back at him. Could it really have been long enough that one face had transformed into another?

His memory was a tall, broad-shouldered man with angular features and a strong body. He remembered his hands, how big they had been, how strong they had felt. He remembered his eyes, a brilliant blue, like tropic seas. He remembered his hair, black and wavy, short and thick. And he remembered his wings, majestic wings with feathers of deep blue, gold, and red. He remembered how strong they had been, how far they had taken him.

As he peered into the blade now, he spoke aloud, “Who are you, old man?”

His body had shifted greatly. He no longer stood as tall as he once had. His shoulders hunched and his angular features sagged and drooped. His hands, while still large, were knobby and gnarled. His eyes had turned the color of slate, his skin an ashen gray. His hair had thinned and turned white. His wings. The color in his wings had withered and faded, the feathers had frayed and tattered.

“Where have I gotten to?” he said.

With a sigh, the man retrieved the sword from above the mantle and, holding it low, walked from his home.

Standing at the edge of the cliff, the man retrieved the letter from his pocket once more. Holding the sword under one armpit, he checked the name and place one last time before putting the letter away again and stepping from the cliff side.

He fell for a time, his eyes closed and a smile beginning to creep across his face. He felt himself pass through the clouds and he felt the wind rushing past his face. He could feel himself nearing the ground and, before it was too late, he spread his wings and arced. He moved just so he could fly parallel to the ground and continued on, flapping his great wings when his momentum fell.

It took a while for him to near the place detailed in the letter. He passed over rivers, fields, cities, forests. He passed over a great wasteland of red dirt and he flew over an immense ocean. Finally, he grew close to the place. He could feel it approaching and he tipped his wings just so he’d slow down enough. Throwing his legs beneath him, the man effortlessly transitioned from flying to walking. Carefully, he searched his surroundings for the man he was looking for.

Around him was chaos. A war was being waged and, as it often was with wars, the man could not tell who was on which side. They all looked the same to him. He watched a soldier get run through with a bayonet and he smiled thoughtfully. He remembered this one. It hadn’t been too long ago that he’d come for him. As the human slowly fell off the blade, floated towards the ground, the man saw himself kneeling beside the falling soldier. The man watched as he took the sword from under his wing and placed it on the ground beneath the human. Slowly, the soldier fell from one blade to another. As the life slipped from the soldier’s body, the man raised his head to glance into his future. He met his eyes and the two of them smiled ever so slightly. Then, just as he remembered, he stood and flew away.

He watched his former self in flight until he was merely a speck in the sky. Sighing, he continued on, picking his way through the destruction. No one saw the square-toed footprints in the dirt as he made his way through the great tumult.

Finally, he saw.

In the slow-motion world he lived in, the man watched as a bullet rippled through the air.  A minute went by as the man watched the bullet. Slowly, but surely, the small hunk of metal made its way across the emptiness and straight towards a soldier’s chest. The soldier was reacting quickly, but not quick enough to escape the bullet. Not quick enough to escape Death. The bullet bore into him, ripping and tearing at his insides. In slow motion, the man with the great, blue wings, Death, watched as the soldier hurtled to the ground. Quietly, Death went to the dying man, the falling man, the floating man. He knelt down and held out his arms for the soldier to fall into. Softly, gracefully, his weight poured into Death’s arms and, for a moment, he could see the great winged man.

“Are you an angel?” he asked. Death smiled and shook his head. Picking up his sword, he placed the tip on the soldier’s chest.

“No,” he said, sinking the blade through the corpse. Slowly, the human smiled.

“I think you are,” he said. Death said nothing, just pulled the sword from the soldier’s body. With one last look at the creature standing over him, the human spoke his last words.

“Thank you.” His voice was drowned out by gunshots and explosions, screams and cries.  No one around him heard. Though the man died in a war, he found peace in his final moments.

His body was stepped on in his comrades’ haste to carry on the bloody acts of war. His head was pushed deeper into the dirt and his ribs were cracked. His blood stained the shoes of his enemies for days. It would be two months before his wife and daughter learned of his death.

Death returned to his home atop the cliff, tired from a full day’s work. It would be at least several months before he was called upon again. Maybe it was because of the sadness of bringing the end of so many people that his jobs were so far apart. Or maybe it was because, at the rate he lived, that’s just when the next person died. He contemplated it as he walked towards his door, but a strange feeling beneath his feet interrupted his thoughts.

Looking down, Death spied a dull, blue feather sticking out from beneath his foot. Cautiously, he raised his foot and peered at the feather, bringing his face inches from the ground. It was one of his own dull feathers. Curious, he picked up the feather and held it against the sky.

“When did this get here?” he asked no one in particular. As he worked at that thought, another, more important question arose in his brain.

“How many of these have I dropped?”

In a small village, where the world was flat and the sky was round, a girl stooped low to get a closer look at the strange object on the ground. She scrunched her forehead in confusion, looking between the heavens and the red dirt beneath her feet. Indeed, the sky was still in its place, but then, how could there be a piece of it sitting on the ground?

“Amali!” Her head spun to see a tall figure approaching. “It’s almost supper!” Amali snatched the sky-piece from the ground and rushed to the figure, a silhouette against the bright sunshine.

“Sky-piece, sky-piece!” As the young girl drew near, she could begin to see the figure’s features. Dark skin and big eyes, her sister smiled as Amali raced towards her.

“What are you saying?” The little one raised the sky-piece too her sister and showed her the brilliant blue in her hand.

“I found a sky-piece, Eshe!” The woman’s smile grew as she plucked the sky-piece from her sister’s hand.

“This is no sky-piece, Amali!” she said, kneeling before her. She brought her sister close, so their cheeks were touching, then held the object at arm’s length against the distant sky.

“It’s a feather,” she said. Amali furrowed her brow. “Like from a bird,” Eshe explained. Amali brightened and clapped her hands.

“What kind of bird, sister? What kind of bird?” Eshe peered at the feather, again holding it up to the sky. She could see why her sister thought it was a piece of the sky. They were exactly the same color. In her mind, she went through a list of birds with blue feathers, but none of them fit. This was from something she’d never seen before.  She turned to her sister and a look of wonder came over her face.

“It’s from an angel,” she said. Amali’s eyes widened and she shot from Eshe’s arms. Running towards the cluster of houses nearby, she jumped up and down in excitement.

“An angel, everybody! There’s an angel watching over us! We have an angel!”

Smiling and shaking her head, Eshe looked down at the feather in her hand again.

“Are you from an angel?” she asked, half expecting an answer. When none came, she laughed to herself and, tucking the feather into her pocket, headed towards home.

Death turned the final page in his book and let out a satisfied sigh.

Closing the book, he stood and stretched. His joints were sore and his wings ached. He needed to walk around a bit. He’d been sitting for too long. He trudged to the bookshelf and placed his book with its brothers. He watched it for a moment as it slowly changed colors to match the other books on the shelf. Then, turning to the door, he went outside. He stood on his doorstep a moment, then took a deep breath and started walking. He shuffled along, his feet barely leaving the ground, dragging in a way that left light trails between each footprint. As he walked, he took in the fresh air, breathing deeply and closing his eyes. Though the landscape was barren, the air was clean and invigorating. Death didn’t know a single place on Earth with better air than his home. The cities smelled of metal and smoke, the deserts smelled of sand. When he soared over the oceans, he’d fly high to avoid the smell of the salt and fish. But here, above the clouds, apart from the rest of the world, things were different. He would take a breath and feel strong, powerful. With every breath, his aches faded and his sore bones began to feel better.

As he walked, his eyes closed, he extended his wings and reached his arms above his head. A yawn escaped his mouth as he stretched and the air drew into his lungs and seeped into his every fiber.

Back at his door, Death looked at the fenced enclosure that was his yard. The fence itself was dilapidated and shabby, the paint chipping and the wood rotting. Outside the fence was not much different from the inside; both areas were made up of the same grey dirt, almost a silvery sand. For the most part, the only difference was the tracks Death had made around the perimeter of the fence on his walk.

Satisfied with his stroll, Death opened the door and went inside.

Eshe held onto the feather for several days. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, but, somehow, she felt it was important.

Amali exclaimed for a week that an angel was watching the village. Finally, the people got so annoyed with her that they begged her to stop saying it so much. Though her words subsided, Amali still believed that little harm could come to the village under the angel’s watch. As such, she continually reassured people, helped them by telling them everything would be all right. Over the years, Amali would take comfort in helping others with their problems. She eventually left the village and went to a city nearby where she studied at a university to become a psychologist.  She would help many people and win many awards.

Eshe would have been proud to see her sister grow up to become a doctor, but she never did.

With each night that passed, she felt the feather drawing her away from her village. She felt it pulling her somewhere, somewhere far away.

On the third night, she awoke to a noise. A footstep, or so she thought. She heard someone walking just outside her hut. She waited for a moment, lying in the dark, studying the noise as it repeated. It was rhythmic enough to be footsteps, but it sounded like nothing she’d heard before. A slow drag was followed by a strange, heavy step. Silently, Eshe rose from her bed and moved to the door. From her place in the shadows, she could see a great lumbering beast move towards a hut nearby. The creature barely fit into the doorway, its massive body stooping to make it in. The hut was that of Ekai, an elder with many stories of his adventurous youth. Making sure the monster didn’t see her, Eshe followed it. She stepped carefully, her feet slowly stepping on the ground so as not to make a noise. As she neared the hut, she stopped, her bare foot feeling something strange in the dirt. Looking down, she saw the monster’s footprint. It looked like a human’s foot, a rounded heel, an arch and bridge, but the toes were different. They were square. The feather throbbed in her pocket and Eshe pulled it out. It pulsed in her hand and Eshe could feel its energy. It was powerful. And it was leading her into the hut. Slowly, Eshe entered.

Ekai lay on his bed, a sword through his chest. The creature stood over the corpse, his hand on the hilt of the blade. As Eshe entered, he slowly looked up and their eyes met.

He was no creature at all. He was an old man with white hair and stony eyes. He had pale skin and hunched shoulders. Oh his back were great wings that, even in the dark, shone brilliant blue, gold, and red. They stood for a moment, gazing at each other. Slowly, the angel shifted his eyes to the feather in Eshe’s hand. He cocked his head, and then he was gone. It was as though the shadows had swallowed him up; one moment he was there, the next he wasn’t. Paralyzed, Eshe stared at the body, waiting for Ekai to wake up, but she knew he wouldn’t.

When dawn came, the village was called to his hut and the people buried him. When he was deep beneath the ground, women and children sang songs and danced. The men built a fire on his grave and they cooked meats on it. While everyone was eating and laughing and celebrating Ekai’s life, Eshe was far from the village. She walked all day, taking several days worth of food for herself. She didn’t know how long she’d be gone. She didn’t know where she was going. She held the feather in her hand and followed where it led her.

When night fell, the villagers built the fire higher and danced wilder and sang louder. Eshe curled up beneath a tree and slept.

The feather tight in her hand, she dreamed of angels.

Death slept for a year after collecting Ekai’s soul. And high up on his mountain, he dreamed of a dark girl curled up under a tree, a feather in her hand.

When he awoke, a letter was at his door again. Heaving an immense breath, he shuffled off to complete his duties.

Eshe awoke with the sun and began walking again. The feather pulled her across the world, herded her towards an unknown goal.

Days passed. She traveled when the sun was up and slept in whatever shelter she could find at sunset. It was strange; she’d seen maps of the part of the country, heard stories from men who had been adventurous enough to go far past the limits of the village but not adventurous enough to stay, but this land was nothing like what they told of. They spoke of mountains and hills, oases where trees grew into the sky and there was the cleanest fresh water they had ever tasted, but Eshe saw none of that. The ground she walked on was flatter with every day and color appeared to seep from everything, leaving the world a dusty, gray plane. The sky was nearly the same color as the ground and looming clouds gathered directly overhead, obscuring the sun from view. Occasionally, Eshe would turn to look behind her, only to see the flat, gray world stretch into forever, just as it did in front of her. Every way she looked, the way looked the same; the only way she knew which way to go was the feather, clutched tightly in her hand. Day after day, it pulled her, stronger some days and weaker on others.

After several days, there were no trees anymore. The sky didn’t get very dark at night, so when Eshe got tired, she would just lie down and sleep. When she woke up, she would stand, dust herself off, and start following the feather again.

She lost track of days after a while. She simply forgot how long it had been since she left.

So the day that things changed was nothing special to her numerically. She had no idea that it had been exactly fourteen days since she left home. All Eshe knew was that, when she woke up after an unspectacular day of walking, she was confronted by a cliff.

She screamed and shuffled backwards, staring at the colossal wall of rock that had seemingly sprouted beside her in her sleep. It stretched towards the horizon in either direction and faded into the sky somewhere miles above. Standing, Eshe inspected it, placing her hands on it and feeling it. It was rock, sure enough. She couldn’t explain it. A solid cliff had just appeared in the night. A thought occurred to her and Eshe reached into her pocket for the feather. Holding it tightly in her hand, she waited for the feeling, the pull from the feather.

It was pulling straight up. Eshe looked up to where the cliff met the sky again. The feather wanted her up there, wherever that was. She couldn’t even see the top. Eshe closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The air was clean at least, not like in the city or by the animal’s watering hole.

It pulled upwards. Looking in either direction, Eshe closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and started walking towards the right. Maybe there was a way up somewhere.

Death finished another book and softly closed it. This one wasn’t too special, just some manuscript that had never been published. He thought about how the writer’s life would have been different if someone other than Death had even looked at it. Remembering the sorry fellow, Death sighed to himself. He probably wouldn’t have hanged himself.

“A shame, really,” Death said, lifting his frame from the chair. “Maybe he could’ve written more.” He moved to the bookshelf, the manuscript in hand, and placed the bound papers in the only empty space. Slowly, dusty, red paper grew from the pages and enveloped the sheets of aged paper. After a moment, the manuscript looked just like all the other books on the shelf. Death ran his fingers over the identical books and letters flashed on their spines.

“What should I read next?” he whispered to himself.

Almost as though it were cued, a letter slipped under the door. Death looked at it for a long moment before moving. He grabbed his sword from above the mantle before picking up the letter and reading its contents. Memorizing the name and location, he stepped outside and walked to the edge of the cliff.

“And again,” he said before leaning off the cliff.

Eshe didn’t feel the pull change as she walked along the bottom of the great cliff. She would have thought that it would pull towards a single point, but instead it was pulling directly upwards wherever she went, as though her destination was always above her.

She walked for hours and her scenery didn’t change. The cliff remained to her left and she never saw an end to the massive rock wall, not even a curve.

The day grew on and she began to feel tired again. Slowly, she came to a stop and looked in either direction once more. Both ways looked the same. Her possibilities looked bleak and the feather wasn’t helping her much. And then there was a pulse. The feather twitched in her hand and it wasn’t pulling up anymore. The pull changed directions, as though the destination was moving and then it was pulling in the way Eshe had come. The pull grew stronger and stronger and Eshe turned around, running towards the feeling. She ran as fast as she could, feeling the distance between her and her destination closing in. She was so close; she just knew it.

A blur sped down the side of the cliff and shot out above the ground, fading into the distance. The feather pulled in all directions for a moment, then was still in her hand. The pull was completely gone. For a moment, Eshe just stood. She saw something. But then it had gone. She leaned against the cliff and slid to the ground. Her elbows resting on her knees, she bowed her head and fell asleep.

Death hated fire. It itched. When possible, he preferred to keep out of the flames and simply throw his sword through. It was less personal than his usual approach, but he had never gotten any complaints, so he didn’t have to do it any other way.

Death could see the man burning at the center of the fire. He writhed on the ground and screamed in agony. Steadily, Death lifted his blade and held it at his shoulder like a spear. With great speed and accuracy, he hurled the blade at the thrashing man and his screams were cut short. His job done, Death relaxed a little. He didn’t have to go in the fire. His sword was still in there, but it would only take several seconds to him for it to go out.

Eshe awoke with a sharp breath, cold air infiltrating her lungs and filling up her insides. Clean, energizing air reached into the very pit of her and vitalized her body, sent feeling coursing through her being. Her eyes stretched open and her head spun at her startling surroundings. She woke at the edge of a great cliff, with a blank gray sky in all directions. She tried to scuttle backwards on her hands, to inch away from the edge and her foot slipped. Her heart dropped and an emptiness filled her. She could feel what it would be like to fall. With her foot dangling over the edge, she carefully pulled herself backwards until she was safe. After a moment, her heart slowed and she ventured towards the edge again, crawling on her stomach with her legs out behind her. Shuffling forward, she peered over the edge of the cliff and stared down into the gray abyss. There was nothing.  It was as though someone had simply destroyed the great rock wall that had been in her way and taken the world along with it.

“But maybe I’m not at the bottom of the cliff anymore,” Eshe thought.  “Though it sounds ridiculous, it’s more sound than a chunk of the world just disappearing.”

Taking a deep breath of the fresh, clean air, Eshe decided that she must be high up, high above everything else.

The feather pulsed in her hand and Eshe looked down at it. It pulled behind her now, a faint and light urge. Eshe turned.

There was maybe fifty feet of land before behemoth mountains, jutting into the sky like spines on a dragon. And, not twenty feet away from Eshe was a house. With a small yard with a rotting white fence, the house stood lonely and dejected. Its paint peeling and windows dusty, it looked like no one had lived there for years. Eshe stood, staring at the house in confusion. What was it doing there? As she stepped towards it, the door closed softly, tough Eshe hadn’t realized it had been open. She took another step towards the house and the feather throbbed. This was the place. This was where it had been leading her. She reached the yard and glanced at the shuffled marks around the edge of the fence.  Moving towards the door, she reached out her hand towards the doorknob. It was cold in her hand, sending prickles up her arm. Cautiously, she turned the knob, and opened the door.