A Little Bird Told Me
PAT CADIGAN
Everybody in the flat is dead. Even the plants are dead. Welcome to Croydon.
I’m a big girl; this is nothing I haven’t already seen like a thousand times, except for the plants—I mean, jeez. I want to turn around and go straight back to central London. Instead, I take the iPad out of my shoulder bag and make a walk-through video before I photograph individual faces. Getting full-face photos can be tricky because I’m not supposed to touch them. But if there’s no other way, I have these things like oven mitts so I won’t mark them or vice versa. Eight people in the room, six on the sofa or in chairs, two on the floor. One of the latter, man about forty, forty-five, trickle of blood drying on his upper lip, is staring right at me. I hate that. I leave him for last.
The iPad doesn’t lessen his stare. Changing the angle a little doesn’t help, either—he’s like one of those creepy portraits where the eyes seem to follow you around the room. I try looking at a point past the edge of the iPad but his gaze keeps pulling at mine. This is partly because the soul is still in the body and partly because, like everyone else here, he’s a cheater and all cheaters are tenacious bastards. This guy, however, seems to be especially bad and I think I know why.
Recognition software confirms it: Staring Guy was a double dipper. You don’t find a lot of people who can cheat Death twice, but they aren’t as rare as they used to be. This is the third one I’ve had in less than a year. Feh. Damfool didn’t have a clue how much trouble he caused. Cheaters never do. They’ve got this idea they’re badass rebels, striking a blow against the one thing no one’s supposed to be able to beat. Like, Death be not proud, I kicked your ass.
Only they’re wrong. Cheating isn’t kicking ass and it isn’t winning. It’s more like dine-and-dash. I step over the double dipper and head down a short hallway, stopping at the first door on the left. It’s the bathroom; occupied. Damn.
If people knew how often the average mortal dies while on the toilet, they’d all probably hold it till they exploded. I’m not grossed out—it ain’t plutonium, just waste. What gets me is the total loss of dignity. Even when it’s a cheater, it bothers me.
I do my job—video, then head-shot. Recog software IDs her as the owner of the flat and the facilitator for this little group of cheaters. She showed them how to slip by the Big One. Not for free, of course; judging by the size of the flat and the decor, she was doing better than okay and still managed to elude Death for an exceptionally long time, longer even than the double dipper.
Still, I feel sorry for her. I mean, isn’t it enough she’s freakin’ dead? Why does she have to be found on the floor in her own waste with her pants down—to teach her a lesson? Like what—“Cheaters never prosper”? “Nobody lives forever”? “When you gotta go, you’re gonna go”? Kinda late for that.
Additional notations are coming up on her photo. Before Death caught up with her, nothing was going the way she wanted despite her being so sure that all she needed was more time and she’d get everything right. That’s the story of every cheater’s stolen life. It never occurs to any of them, maybe things don’t go right because they’re cheating. She probably thought all she was doing was helping people live longer and even if she charged for it, that was a good deed and not a serious violation of the natural order.
Well, she didn’t know better, but ignorance of the law is no excuse—any law, any place, any time. But I linger for a few seconds and think good thoughts over her while the soul is still in the body.
Back in the hallway, I’m just closing the door behind me when I hear a noise and I freeze. I shouldn’t be hearing anything. The place is under wraps, complete insulation—nothing in, nothing out, other than me, not even sound waves. The movers don’t come for the bodies till after I leave.
I don’t know how long I stay there, listening to nothing. I mean, I really don’t; time is all messed up in a place under wraps. It still passes, but it runs very slowly and not at the same rate from one moment to the next. Maybe, I think (hope), it was just some noise I made that got caught in one of those temporal inconsistencies.
Then I hear it again. It’s a whispery whirring, the kind of sound that should actually be too soft to hear. I force myself to head down the hall toward an open door at the end. Maybe I’m imagining it, I think, but I know I’m not. I never imagine anything.
When I reach the doorway, I freeze again, unable to move. Whatever’s still alive in there, I’m no match for. What if I can’t even see it? I’m remembering that myth about the native people in North America unable to see Christopher Columbus’s ships because they’d never encountered anything liked them before. It’s bullshit—if it’s visible and you have sight, you’ll see it. I’m just scared to look.
I actually have to grab either side of the doorjamb and pull myself into the room. A weird little scratchy voice says, “What kept you?” and I jump right out of my skin.
Fortunately, safeguards pull me back in before my skin knows I’m gone. My eyes go every which way before they focus on a brightly coloured something moving around on top of the chest of drawers in the far corner.
A parrot. A freakin’ parrot. It’s a little smaller than a football, mostly blue and yellow with a small patch of green on top of its head; around its eyes are circles of white with thin black stripes. I gape at it while it picks a seed out of a silver bowl and cracks it with its big black beak. Jeez, who lets a parrot walk around on their furniture scratching it up with its claws?
Finally, I find my voice: “But even the freakin’ plants are dead.”
“I know, right? So excessive.” The parrot helps itself to another seed. “Death is such an asshole.”
No way I’m taking that bait. “What are you doing here? How are you here at all? Answer that first.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” says the parrot. “I’m a bird.”
I wait for more but that’s it. “And?” I prod.
The parrot turns its head to look at me sideways. “Don’t you know anything about birds?”
“Not much about parrots. Except you guys talk a lot.”
“Only when ‘a lot’ is appropriate, actually. Tsk, they really don’t teach the service underclass anything these days, do they?” The parrot stretches upward, flapping its wings. “Never mind. Give Death a message from us.”
“Who’s ‘us’?”
“Not your concern. Just tell that asshole mortality isn’t what it used to be.”
“Shouldn’t I be hearing this from a raven?” I say. “Like, the ‘never more’ thing?”
“One more time, with feeling: Mortality! Isn’t! What it used to be! Got that?” Before I can tell it I don’t ever come into contact with Death personally on the job or otherwise, the parrot turns and flies straight at the nearest window. It’s closed, but the bird passes through the glass like it isn’t there.
I run over to the window, open it, and lean out as far as I can. All I see are a few wood pigeons gliding in big, idle arcs above the street as if they’re too bored to flap their wings.
As I pull my head back inside, I get a very bad feeling. I mean, really bad, the worst thing I’ve ever felt. Maybe this time, I really am imagining it, I think. Then I realise I said it out loud. “Or maybe I’m sick,” I add, turning to look at the bureau.
The silver bowl is gone, seeds and all. Son of a bitch; now I have to go back to the living room to find out what I wish I didn’t already know.
The bodies have begun to go bad, like they’ve never been anything but dead, soul-less meat. Staring Guy isn’t staring any more; his eyes are clouded over and grey. The cheaters managed to cheat Death one more time. But . . . with a parrot?
Everybody has to be photographed again, and let me tell you, it’s far more unpleasant with the souls gone, especially her in the bathroom. I send the photos to my supervisor and then hide out in the kitchen to wait for the movers because I’m not sure it’s safe to leave. The concealment was formulated to include souls still present; now the only soul here is my own. If I leave, the encryption may not hold. I don’t want to stay—the bodies are decomposing at an accelerated rate, which happens with cheaters—but it’s the only thing I can think of that can’t possibly make things worse.
When the movers come, my supervisor Madame Quill is with them. The movers are supposed to relocate the bodies to where they were originally supposed to die, or as close as possible. I doubt this crew’s ever handled empties before. They’re all suited up head to foot so only their eyes show, but I can tell all of them are feeling green around the gills. At least they don’t have to move the one in the bathroom; she died right where she was supposed to.
While they’re mopping up the remains and trying not to yack, Madame gives the bedroom a thorough inspection. After palpating the windows, tapping the walls, and stomping around the floor, she strips the bed, shaking out every sheet and blanket. Then she guts the mattress with a nasty-looking switchblade. I didn’t know she had one but I’m not surprised either.
Madame is quite a character and not the lovable eccentric kind. You could mistake her for the kind of sweet little old lady who used to teach etiquette at an old-time finishing school but that could turn out to be your worst mistake if not your last. She’s got more in common with a trained assassin, sans the whimsy. Even when she doesn’t scare the shit out of me, she scares the shit out of me.
For a while, she surveys the mess she made. Then she turns to me and says, very gravely, “We should have been prepared. Birds are highly motivated little creatures. They don’t want to die. What’s more, they don’t want to die out. Of course, that’s a priority with all species, but it’s more muted in humans; they think in terms of self-preservation rather than species preservation.” She’s staring at me so pointedly that I wonder what she’s really looking at. But I do the safe thing and nod to show I’m paying attention. “Who would have imagined the bull-goose predator—no pun intended—would even consider an alliance with a class that includes species it eats?”
This time I don’t so much nod as dip my head and shrug a little, like, Yeah, people—who knows what they’ll do?
“Still, it does make sense,” she continues. “Humans and birds have much to offer each other. Humans have the intellect and longer life span, birds have the freedom of flight, the wider range of vision, and a sense for magnetic fields. I guess opposable thumbs aren’t everything.”
Madame grabs my shoulders and, holding me at arm’s length, gives me an intense once-over. Actually it’s a thrice-over, like she’s searching me with X-ray vision. Uncomfortable in excelsis deo—I don’t know whether to make eye contact or squeeze my eyes shut and try to pass out till it’s over. It could be two minutes or two lifetimes before she lets go. “You can do this,” she says.
“I can do what?” I say before I can think better of it.
“There are feral parrots all over London,” she says.
It’s not just the non sequitur that throws me; something’s happened to her face. It looks so weird. I’ve never seen it like that before—oh shit. She’s smiling.
I am so doomed.
On the train back to central London, I look at the instructions Madame put on the iPad. They’re embedded in an ebook called Twitching: The Observant Lifestyle, which I have to keep reading to find them. So far, I have learned 1) twitching is a kind of birdwatching where people concentrate more on just listing the birds they see rather than learning anything substantial about them, and 2) Madame threw me into the deep end. Well, I have only myself to blame.
Listen, if you ever start screwing around with necromancy and someone just happens to mention that it’s maybe not the best idea you ever had, take it seriously and stop. Most of what passes for any kind of sorcery in the material world is completely harmless, rituals meant to blow off a little steam and dissipate the urge to act out in a more self-destructive way. That’s most—not all. Every so often, some clueless civilian has the bad luck to hit on a live one and that never, ever, ever ends well. Trust me, I’m the voice of experience here.
Violating natural law in the material world is the Crime; do it and you’ll find yourself answering to an authority called the Continuous Realm of All Things. Claiming you didn’t know won’t cut it, and there’s no first offence thing or mitigating circumstances or pleading insanity because there’s no trial. You did it, you’re guilty, the end. And don’t bother asking why live magicks are just lying around in the open where mere mortals can trip over them. You’ll only get a long lecture about free will. I mean, a real lecture; you’re stuck to a hard seat in an auditorium with hundreds of other people, most of whom seem to be grad students in philosophy for two hours. The q-and-a at the end, which you also have to stay for, goes almost that long and you’re expected to take notes—lots of notes. If you don’t, you have to sit through the whole thing again. And you’ll still have to serve your sentence, which is for life, possibly longer, depending.
The Continuous Realm of All Things sentenced me to work as a census-taker of the recently deceased, both regular and cheaters, although lately I’ve had mostly cheaters. To the rest of the (natural) law-abiding world, I look like a meter-reader or a survey-taker or a door-to-door salesperson—if they even notice me, that is. The normal, un-enhanced, non-magical human gaze slides around me like oil in water and I blow past them like air. It’s impossible to draw attention to myself. If I try, everything just gets very quiet and far away, like I’m straitjacketed in a soundproof room, staring down the wrong end of of a telescope
Anyway, I figured I’d be like a sort of coroner-cum-secretary, without any heavy lifting. I’d go to people who had just died, match faces with names, and check them off. Yep, they’re dead all right; next case. I didn’t know much about mortality.
I thought I did. I’d spent plenty of time with my mother when she’d been in hospice care. At the very end, she seemed to float away like a little boat on a receding tide. I talked to her for a good half hour after the nurses said she was gone; I had this very strong feeling that her little boat hadn’t quite drifted completely away over the horizon.
Turns out I could have talked to her for another couple of days. Removing a soul from a body is done exclusively by Reapers, and that doesn’t happen for at least twenty-four hours. The average time is somewhere between thirty-six and forty-eight hours, although it can be longer, even as much as a full week. It’s got to do with the soul needing time to adjust and willingly accept release from the body, which makes reaping easier for all concerned. I can see how it might take a day for a soul to come to grips with such a drastic change. But leaving a soul in dead flesh longer than that seems pretty callous. And a week—! That’s inexcusable; sadistic, even. And, as I’ve been told numerous times, not my concern.
When I’m not on the job, I wait for Madame to call me. I wait at bus stops, train stations, hospitals, clinics, government offices—anywhere there’s space enough for me to blend in, most often with uncomfortable seating, crappy fluorescent lighting, and poor ventilation. Don’t ask me what I do at night; I haven’t seen a night since this started. The closest I get is dusk, and only now and then. Mostly one day slides into another. If I sleep, I don’t know about it.
I don’t know if my punishment is standard, or more severe than usual, or less. Like, maybe they’ve got someone on permanent night shift. I don’t even know how many others are doing this kind of time, but I do have a theory about Reapers; I’ve never met any, but based on what I know from my own experience, it’s not so farfetched to think Reapers are doing time for the Crime. Once I made the mistake of sharing this idea with Madame; only once. I ended up back in the auditorium listening to an incredibly esoteric lecture about ethics. I don’t know why ethics. Maybe free will was full.
Back when I lived a regular material-world life, I would have thought all this, what I see, what I do, was magical in every sense of the word—astonishing, breathtaking, wondrous.
Now, I know what it really is: a lot of work. And it never ends.
When I get to King’s Cross in London, Twitching: The Observant Lifestyle opens to a new chapter containing directions to something called the Macmillan Cancer Centre. That seems a little on-the-nose, I think. I find my way to the Underground. Easy journey, only two stops. For a moment, I’m seriously tempted to make a quick side-trip to Track 9 and 3/4, just so I can say I’ve seen Harry Potter’s luggage trolley sticking out of the wall. The only person I could ever say it to is myself but so what? It would just take a few minutes, what have I got to lose?
It occurs to me I was thinking something similar when I got into trouble. This is followed by the realisation that no, I certainly don’t know what I’ve got to lose and the last thing I want to do is find out. Maybe on the way back.
While I’m on the tube, Twitching gives me basic information about the Macmillan Centre—cancer patients go there for chemotherapy and tests, and there’s all kinds of support and information. There’s also a lovely roof garden, which is where I’m supposed to go. I wonder if the seating will be uncomfortable—outdoor furniture leaves a lot to be desired. On the other hand, without crappy fluorescent lighting and poor ventilation it’s probably as close to paradise as I can hope for.
No one gives me a glance when I walk in, not even the greeters, a couple of older guys stationed near the entrance to give people directions or help them check in. I take a minute to survey the lobby. From the ground floor, you can look straight up five stories and see the tiny little feet of people standing on the translucent floor of the roof garden. They’re like cartoon footprints. Something about the sight sort of tickles me; I could stand there all day watching people’s feet wander around.
The iPad chimes softly. I find a place to sit and check out the latest update to the observant lifestyle:
In the distant past, birds carried the souls of the dead to the afterlife. Unfortunately people caught on at some point, either because they somehow figured it out or (more likely) some self-important popinjay couldn’t keep a secret. Residents of the natural world must by law know only natural-world phenomena; therefore new protocols had to be established. There have been many, many adjustments and refinements over the centuries; some were major improvements, some made little difference, and others were total snafus.
I have to take a moment to appreciate that Madame Quill or someone like her used the word snafu.
Our current system has been in place in more or less the same form for longer than any other. It has been the cleanest, safest, and most organised method of postmortem processing. The average rate for errors, anomalies, and malfunctions combined comes to only 0.003% per calendar decade.
Jeez, I think, who let the bean counters into heaven? (I know it’s not really heaven—not Heaven-heaven—and this proves it. 0.003%; Jesus wept.) Then I reread the first part. “Clean”? What does that mean? “Safe” is an easy one—safe from humans. But make that was safe, past tense.
After careful study and consideration, it has been determined the most likely explanation for recent episodes of birds taking custody of souls postmortem—
Episodes, plural? This is news to me. Seriously, nobody tells me anything.
—is that a bargain has been struck between birds and humans. It seems unlikely that birds would initiate such a thing given their position with respect to humans in the food chain. It also seems unlikely that this could be a single overall bargain, as the resources required for such a thing are far beyond a single unit, even a unit containing thousands of members.
After careful review of the situation, it has been decided there must be an investigation, conducted by agents indigenous to the natural world but bound in service to the Continuous Realm of All Things.
So now I’m an agent. Am I working alone? I sneak a brief look around and spot a few people engrossed in something on their phones but that’s nothing out of the ordinary. Still, I wonder if they’re learning about the observant lifestyle or just checking email.
The next page comes up blank on the iPad screen. A faint circular animation twirls for a couple of seconds before the words fade in. Is Madame dictating this directly?
There’s a high probability of people in this facility being favourably disposed towards making a deal: overt bargaining is associated with their particular physical pathology. The roof garden is accessible to birds. Remain alert and aware to the possibility of hearing, or overhearing, something pertinent. Chance always favours the prepared mind.
I feel sleazy before I even get on the elevator. So much for “clean.”
For the next three days, I hang around the roof garden, moving casually from one seat to another. They aren’t that uncomfortable, not until after the second day, anyway. People come and go, a lot of them dragging IV poles with long bags dangling above them, liquid dripping through long plastic tubing into a cannula or an unwieldy-looking plastic port stuck in a place that must make getting dressed awkward. Most of them wear hats or scarves; some leave their bald heads bare. Many have a friend or relative with them; some come back later by themselves, obviously wanting to be alone. Almost all of them have phones they check at least briefly, although most spend a fair amount of time engrossed in whatever is on the screen. None of them notice me, of course, even when I’m looking over their shoulders to see what’s so fascinating. Usually it’s a cat video or a game, nothing that suggests they’re in the process of making a deal of any sort.
After a while, I can’t help feeling like all I’m doing is killing time with busy work, hoping for a result while running the clock out to zero, either mine in particular or everyone’s in general. I’ve been through the entire text of Twitching so many times that I can recite most of it from memory. (The term “twitcher” comes from the original guy who collected bird sightings, because he was twitchy; his name wasn’t Twitcher or anything like it. You’re welcome.) Of course, no other programs on the iPad will open because I can’t get distracted. Madame Quill and her ilk want me alert, with a prepared mind that chance will favour. I’m pretty sure they’re capable of embedding messages in any text or game or even video, but they won’t. It’s probably part of my punishment, just like the monotony of hanging around a roof garden on the off-chance that a bird looking to do some business might show up—excuse me, a talking bird.
If there really are feral parrots all over London, I think, they’ll be in places with lots of trees, like parks or Kew Gardens. They’ll be roosting in some big leafy oak, having a good laugh at the hapless drone stuck in a cancer clinic roof-garden. If jays have taught them to chuckle, they’ll really sound snide.
Halfway through the third day, a green bird swoops down, circles the garden, then lands on the bench beside me. It stares at me for a couple of seconds before it hops onto my thigh, digging its claws in.
I yelp and swat at it reflexively, almost dropping the iPad. The bird launches itself out of the way, then lands on me again, this time without the claw action. It’s pretty, like a feathered jewel, mostly bright green with a blue-grey head, orange beak, and pale yellow-green belly. On either wing is a patch of reddish brown that makes me think of military rank on epaulets.
“Sorry.” I hold the iPad against my front to hide what’s on the screen. Then I wonder if it can see a tablet screen at all. Its eyes are on either side of its head—not an arrangement for 3-D binocular vision. “That really hurt.”
The bird looks at me, tilting its head from one side to the other. How does it see? I wonder. It’s really bothering me now.
“So, what’s the story—is my hanging around all day putting a crimp in business?”
The bird continues to look at me silently. There’s nothing in its beady little eyes that indicates it understands what I’m saying. Maybe it doesn’t speak English. If it speaks at all—maybe it doesn’t. It’s smaller than the bird in the Croydon flat, not so much parrot as a parakeet. Do parakeets talk? I have no idea.
“I’m wasting my breath, aren’t I?” I say. “You are as you were made to be, a model denizen of the natural world. You’d never dream of flouting the protocols of human mortality. Would you?”
The bird cocks its head to one side. “That depends,” it says in a scratchy little voice, “on whether you can make it worth my while. Which I doubt you can.”
“Then you know who I am,” I say, doing my best not to look surprised. I really thought it was just a bird.
“Well, not exactly who. But definitely what. And why you’re here.”
“And I know what you’re here after.” I’ve been waiting forever to say that.
“Good one,” says the bird. “What are you going to do about it?”
“That’s not up to me.”
“Of course it isn’t.” Its voice is less scratchy now, more human-sounding. “What do your bosses in the Concomitant Rendition of All Tessitura—or whatever they’re calling it now—think they can do about it?”
I get a weird sensation, like my brain went over a speed bump and everything in it was knocked all over the place. The concomitant what? Was that even the word? This is something I wasn’t supposed to hear, I realise suddenly. Not because it’s forbidden but because—because—
The only thing that comes to me is the image of tiny footprints the translucent roof-garden floor as seen from five stories below; bewildering. I surreptitiously turn on the iPad’s record function—I hope it’s surreptitious, anyway. The bird’s face gives nothing away. I don’t play poker, but if I did, I’d never play with a bird.
“You know,” I say casually, shifting the iPad so the microphone is closer to the bird, “I ran into someone not too unlike yourself when I was on a job recently. Different colour scheme but same general idea. Got any friends in Croydon? Maybe even a relative, like a cousin?”
The movement the bird makes with its wings is an unmistakable shrug. “We get around. Can you narrow it down some more?”
“Sure,” I say. “Bunch of cheaters, including a double-dipper, hiding out in a flat. Ringleader was quite the long-timer. Death was so pissed off the plants get caught in the blast.”
“Oh, that Croydon.” The bird makes a merry chirping noise and fluffs itself up. “They’re all long gone, either migrating or getting ready to. Humans go all wackadoo over flight. You don’t even have to say ‘wings’ and they’re lining up for take-off.”
“Not necessarily. I don’t think most people would line up to be pigeons, aka rats with wings. Or carrion-eaters like vultures.”
“Think again. There’s a very, very long list of things people would rather be other than deceased, and neither ‘pigeon’ nor ‘vulture’ are anywhere near the bottom.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not either—” I cut off as something occurs to me. “Okay, just between you, me, and the roof garden, who were you before you became a feathered biped?”
The bird stretches up tall and kind of rears back as it peers at me. I think I’m starting to learn some bird body language. “What would make you ask that?” it says, head tilting from one side to the other while I wish it weren’t so damned cute.
“You sounded so certain, I thought you might be speaking from experience.”
“Not human experience. I’m a professional like yourself, in a similar area. But without all the paperwork you’re stuck with.”
“There’s no actual paper—”
“Files and forms are the sine qua non of clerical drudgery,” the bird tells me loftily. “That’s paperwork in any medium.”
I do my best to keep my face neutral so it won’t know how much we agree on that. “You sure have a big vocabulary for a—what are you, anyway, a parrot or a parakeet?”
“I’m an Alexandrine parakeet.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Seriously? Ever heard of Google? Or do they block web access?”
“I’ll look it up later,” I say, sneaking a glance at the iPad to make sure it’s still recording.
Then a new voice says, “Hey, is that the new model?”
For the second time in under a week, I jump out of my skin; fortunately, the safeguards still hold.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” The woman standing in front of me with her IV tree is somewhere past fifty. She’s got a blue scarf artfully tied around her head; it’s the same shade of blue as her oversize T-shirt, which reads, SECRETLY HOPING CHEMO WILL GIVE ME SUPERPOWERS.
“I think your secret’s out,” I say, just so I know I haven’t lost my voice.
“So everyone keeps telling me.” She moves past me to sit down on my right. The wheels on the IV tree rattle loudly, as if they’re about to come off. I’m trying to think of a way to phrase Who the fuck are you and how the fuck can you see me? so it sounds like small talk, not panic.
She offers her finger as a perch to the parakeet on my thigh. It promptly accepts. “Woo,” she says, “you’re heavier than you look. No offence, little buddy—you’re not so much hefty as I’m just weak these days.”
I manage to get out, “What. The fuck,” before I’m mute again.
This woman doesn’t hide her amusement. “I guess I gotta be the one to break it to you: you’re not quite as invisible as you think. Take it easy; it’s not like everyone can see you. Most people still can’t. Even a lot of the regulars here wouldn’t notice you. At least, not right away. But I’d guess you’ve been here for a while. Two days ago, I was up here with a friend; she described you perfectly but I couldn’t see you myself till I came back yesterday. But then, she’s sicker than I am. She made her deal last week.”
“Violating natural law is an extremely serious transgression.” I’m cringing inside at how stilted and nerdy I sound. “The penalties are severe—”
The woman throws back her head and shouts laughter at the sky. “Bitch, please! What kind of severe are we talking about? Twenty years of hard labour? Or—” She draws her free hand across her throat and makes a grating noise. “News flash: I don’t have twenty years. A couple of months, if that. You wanna kill me, stand in line. The Grim Reaper’s got dibs, and as far as I know, dying is one of those things you can only do once.”
Mixing up Death and Reapers is such a common mistake, I should be used to it, but it still gets me every time, even though there’s no way any of them could know better while they live. But she knows something, I realise and I blurt it out before I can think to stop myself, “You’re gonna cheat.”
“Is that what you call it?” The woman raises a nonexistent eyebrow at me. “I bet that’s another extremely serious transgression. If you want to hit me with one of those severe penalties, you’ll have to catch me. Which might be hard.” She smiles at the bird.
“Don’t worry about her,” the bird says, fluffing itself up on her finger. The woman has to rest her arm on one crossed leg and even then, I can see it’s an effort. “She’s working on an old business model she doesn’t know is obsolete.”
“Huh?” I say.
“It must kill you having to waste your wit on the dead,” says the parakeet. “Oh, that was mean. I’m sorry. I know you don’t have any say about any of this. You’ve probably been given the impression that mortality has always worked the way it does now, But it so happens—”
“Mortality isn’t what it used to be,” I say. “That message is actually for Death, but I figure I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.”
“You got it,” the bird says, and I could swear it sounds pleased. “At one time, we carried the souls of the dead to the afterlife—”
“Knew that.” I can’t help it being smug. The bird doesn’t care.
“We alone could move at will from the world of the living to the realm of the dead. No other beings of any kind had that ability, not mortals, not gods, not spirits or demons, only us. A god that wanted to make such a journey had to petition us, then wait at our pleasure for an answer. Death was a nobody, a servant employed simply to quieten the flesh and keep it from flailing or struggling and allow souls to begin the journey with dignity.
Self-important popinjay, I think, but with no conviction. I have a growing feeling that I’m in the deceptively small presence of something very old that, after a long sleep, woke up displeased with the current order of things and decided to do something about it. And those responsible for the current order have no idea what’s coming for them.
“Amazing,” the woman marvels. “Who knew? Live and learn.” Bird and woman laugh together.
“You can’t do this,” I say. “It’s a violation—”
“Enough with the violation,” the bird says.
“But the afterlife—”
“—is what comes after death,” say the bird, stretching itself again. “We transport the souls of dead people. Therefore, wherever we take them, that’s the afterlife.”
“That’s one hell of a loophole,” I say. “But doesn’t that mean you’re no longer the only ones who can travel between the land of the living and the realm of the dead? I mean, if wherever you drop souls off is the afterlife—”
“Whatever happened to the classical education?” The bird looks at the woman, who shakes her head. “The realm of the dead isn’t the afterlife. Dumbass.”
“Yeah, well, nobody tells me anything,” I say. Somehow I don’t feel too stung by a parakeet calling me dumbass, although maybe I should.
Holding onto the IV tree with her free hand, the woman pulls herself to her feet. “Are we done here?” she says to the bird on her finger.
“All set. Just keep watching the skies,” the bird says, and takes off, going up on a steep slant.
“Wait!” I jump to my feet. “What happened? What did you do?”