Chapter 49 Helena
I floated down and down, through an arid atmosphere of pure nothingness—like outer space but without a single twinge of light.
Keeping the urge to panic in check—as much as possible—I let myself sink through a soundless abyss absent of color and shape.
When I reached a certain depth, the sense of gravity grew stronger.
My form stretched, elongating from an orb back into my normal, human-shaped spirit body.
An instant later, my feet connected with solid ground, and the world gained shape, gray stone walls rushing in to meet with and join the matching floor.
A giant black throne—empty of any occupant—loomed ahead, flanked by Gothic wrought iron candelabras with onyx tapers lit by black flames.
The shadows this ominous candlelight threw galivanted along the rear wall, taking on phantasmal shapes that seemed to possess clawed hands, teeth, and eyes.
I swallowed down my building terror and peered behind me, searching for any sign of anyone or, perhaps more importantly, any way out of here. Wherever here was…
A slow look around confirmed what I already suspected. That no door or window interrupted the stone walls that now imprisoned me.
I did discover, however, that I had company.
An enormous crowned figure now occupied the throne, his black gauntleted hands gripping the armrests of the obsidian chair.
Glowing red eyes, a pair of angry slits, beamed at me from behind the mask lost within the darkness of a black hood.
“You do not belong here, soul,” said the man—the entity—with a voice like an undead Gregorian monk, deep and melodious, but somehow corrupted, as if produced by tattered vocal cords.
“Um,” I said, offering the tiniest of curtsies because, well, he was wearing a crown.
“Hi. Uh, I’m here looking for someone. Are…
are you like… the supernatural equivalent of a Walmart greeter?
I’m sorry, I’ve never done this before.” I cleared my throat.
“Descended into an all-consuming void of dreadful nothingness, I mean…”
“You have no darkness that binds you here,” said the man—the creature, who must be one of The Few. “You cannot be admitted.”
Oh. Well. That sounded like a good thing. Sort of…
For me at least.
“I’m looking for my friend,” I admitted. Honesty being the best policy and everything. “My boyfriend,” I amended, then quickly added, “Actually, I’m… pretty sure he’s… the love of my life.”
“Love?” asked the figure. “Life? That cannot be. For you were not meant to find love in this life.”
I stiffened and scowled, arms going rigid at my sides. “Who says?”
“Sir Black,” replied the figure as he rose. “Ruler of this realm. Warden of Wraiths. Guardian of Shades—those souls whose darkness weighs them in regret and paints them in the impenetrable shadows of despair.”
“Right. W-well,” I replied, lifting my chin, refusing to shrink, Grim’s words about turning up my song returning to strengthen me. “I’m Helena. Children’s librarian. Avid reader. Musical fan. Pancake maker. Dad joke enthusiast. Unapologetic Swiftie. And girlfriend to the Grim Reaper.”
Might as well give him the full rundown so long as we were comparing résumés.
“I know who you are,” said the figure, Sir Black, as he started toward me with a slow and measured stride, armored boots clanking against the stone in a way that made me gulp.
He… did?
“Th-then you know I don’t fit the description for tenants of your world. At all. So I don’t see where you get off making judgments about me or declaring things over my life.”
“But your friend,” said Sir Black, coming to a halt right in front of me. “Does he fit the description?”
I frowned and tilted my head at this bleak sentinel, confused. My thoughts whirred as I tried to resist the nearly overpowering urge to step back from him and put distance between us again.
But now that I was here, what did I have to be afraid of? If the worst was going to happen, at this point there’d be no stopping it.
As Grim had said, in for a penny, in for a pound.
“I think that description could fit him,” I allowed. “But I also think that, as would be true with anyone, it doesn’t have to.”
“That you know that,” said Sir Black, peering at me through that mask embellished only by those two downward-aimed slits of glowing crimson, “underscores what I said before. That you do not belong here.”
“But he does?”
“His darkness binds him. For him, there is no hope.”
I shook my head. “What if I don’t believe you?”
“That matters little,” said Sir Black. “It only matters that he does.”
“I… I want to see him,” I said.
“Then you must go through me.”
Well, that sounded iffy. Not to mention impossible.
He didn’t exactly look ticklish.
Shoot. I knew I should have stayed in tae kwon do.
I might have even gone on to earn my orange belt if that one overly aggressive purple-belt lady hadn’t kicked me in the boob so hard.
Maybe, if I was lucky, I could dart around him or even hit the dirt and scramble between his legs. And I might have even tried either one of those techniques if there’d only been an exit I could run to.
“Don’t suppose you could be tempted to settle this with a game of rock, paper, scissors?” I asked.
“You must answer my riddle.”
I released the ethereal breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and braced a hand on my chest.
“That’s all?” I asked. “Oh, this is just like Oedipus and the Sphinx, or Bilbo Baggins and Gollum. Not that I’m comparing you to Gollum.
I have to say, though, riddle answering is much better than hand-to-claw combat.
I’ve totally got this. Hold my beer.” I gave a nervous laugh that tapered off when he just kept standing there, staring at me.
“Um… I have to ask, though. What happens if I get it wrong?”
“I will hold you in my darkness forever.”
I blinked, eyes bugging. “Sounds fair… Um. If I answer correctly?”
“You will be free to pass.”
I frowned but nodded, ready. And if anyone could solve a riddle, wouldn’t it be me? Was there one I hadn’t heard before?
“Okay,” I said, “hit me.” Quickly, I held up a halting palm. “Figuratively, I mean. With… the riddle.”
Sir Black didn’t waste time.
“I am your dearest friend and your most ardent foe. Though you flee, I still will be wherever you go. I live in your shadow and dwell in glass. Armed with fear, I will never let you pass. If I am against you, you cannot prevail. But if I be for you, you ne’er shall fail. What… am… I?”
I gritted my teeth, my mind reeling anew with panic even as the cogs turned, working to produce an answer. The right answer.
I sort of forgot to ask how many guesses I got. Usually, this kind of test allowed for three, but Sir Black didn’t seem like the generous sort.
So, one it was.
Except, I couldn’t think of the answer.
Not until, as was true with most riddles, the solution surfaced—suddenly as obvious as daylight and bold as brass.
The riddle, though, was itself a riddle. In that it wasn’t meant to help me.
Also, Sir Black had dropped plenty of clues before this moment—right from the start of our conversation.
“I know who you are,” I told the ominous and intimidating figure.
“It makes sense that you would,” said Sir Black, “given what I said before. That you do not belong here.”
“Grim doesn’t, either,” I told him. “He just doesn’t know it. And knowing it… really knowing it… well, that’s what makes you free, isn’t it?”
“Who am I, Helena?” asked the dark figure before me.
I smirked at him, my fear of him falling away in a rush as I lifted my hand to take hold of the edge of his mask.
“You are him,” I said, “you are her. This one and that one. You are everyone. But the answer you are seeking is… that you… are ‘me.’ ”
I pulled free the mask, which, like Grim’s scythe had on occasion, misted away to nothing, revealing a face I would find in any reflective surface—in, as he’d said, glass. A familiar countenance that went everywhere with me because it belonged to me.
My best friend and my worst enemy. My supporter, my saboteur.
“You didn’t mean what you said before,” I whispered to him—to her, the woman who occupied that darkly cloaked and heavily armored form. “Did you? That I wasn’t meant to find love in this life.”
“Not if you don’t believe me,” Sir Black said, though he spoke now with my voice—right before he, she, I misted away, too, the entire being unraveling and dispelling to vapor.
A moment later, our surroundings did, too, the impenetrable walls unspooling to fog before evaporating, revealing a nighttime scene.
A strip of forest ran behind a small thatch-roofed hut stationed next to gardens planted with neat rows of cabbage.
A wooden cart filled with straw waited to be hitched again to a mare or donkey.
Weak candlelight the hue of tarnished gold flickered from the hut’s lone window, drawing me toward it—toward the house. Right along with the low murmur of voices.
One of the voices belonged to Grim: his human form.
But then… the other voice belonged to him, too. That one to his monster form.
Drawing up to the window, I peered inside to find both versions of him present within the humble abode.
“Grim!” I shouted to him—to them. But as if they hadn’t heard me at all, neither of them looked my way.
I almost shouted to them again, but I stopped, my breath catching when Grim’s reaper form, scythe gripped in one hand, lifted a bony finger to point at the child sheened in sweat—the tiny boy I hadn’t noticed until that moment.
The one breathing shallowly, his small hand draped across his belly.
The one sleeping, sick—and unaware of the conversation being held in his vicinity.
A conversation that continued to unfold.
One that pertained to him.
To the boy who could be only one person.
“Phineas,” I whispered.