“Are you kidding me?” said Milo. “What, are they still mad about the whole fugitive thing?”
Hello? Where was Suzie?
“Hello?”
“I’m here,” came Suzie’s voice. She sounded frightened, uncertain, which wasn’t surprising. She had never died before.
There she was, on his left, grasping her head, looking sort of wild.
He took one of her hands and held it, waiting.
“We died!” she gasped. “I died! Wow. Wow. I used to be Death. I’m like a goddess. Omigod omigod omigod.”
It was a tall order. Most people got to the afterlife and remembered that they’d once been truck drivers or ostriches.
“We’re supposed to wake up by the river,” she said. “That’s where I always met you. Why aren’t we by the river?”
“They’re still mad about the whole fugitive thing. Maybe. Just a guess.”
As their surroundings came into focus, Milo saw that they stood in the middle of a library of some kind. Paneled in dark wood. A fireplace with a sculpted fox over the keystone. Leather chairs. A low table in the shape of a sea chest.
“Maybe it’ll be okay,” Milo ventured. He gave her hand a squeeze.
Suzie shrugged. “Maybe for you. It was like a betrayal, going off and doing what I did. Universals aren’t supposed to live. We’re supposed to watch people live and give them shit about it.”
Something was going on outside the little library. There was light of a sort, filtered through shuttered, deep-set windows. And voices…a dim murmur. Not unlike the sound of a crowd gathered on the other side of heavy walls. Not unlike the mob that had tried to carry him to the chopping block last time.
“I don’t suppose you have any of your cosmic powers left?” he said. “You could just whoosh us out of here, or…”
Suzie flexed her fingers. Blinked her eyes.
“No,” she said. “Nothing.”
Milo’s eyes widened then. Suzie was—
“Solid!” he yelled, grabbing her up and squeezing her. “You’re solid! You’re not fading!”
“I noticed that,” she said. “Neither are you. I don’t know what it means.”
Neither did Milo, now that he considered it. But if it meant that she wasn’t going to fade into oblivion, that was good. Is that what it meant?
A door at the end of a hall flew open, and Mama came charging in, between the leather chairs. Her great arms and mighty hands reached out.
Mama wrapped Milo up like a boa constrictor. He couldn’t breathe.
Suzie squirmed and fought beside him; Mama had captured them both.
They sank into her as if she were a warm, oozy version of the Europan Sea.
“I was wrong,” he heard Mama say. “I should have understood what you did with the Buddha. And then you went down and taught one of the most powerful lessons in history. Well done.”
Suzie’s grip tightened on Milo’s hand.
Had they done it? Had they been successful?
“Yes,” said Mama. She sprayed tears. Sprayed.
“You mean…”
“Perfection.”
Suzie gasped. Relief flooded through Milo, and he had to clench up to keep from peeing.
Nan’s voice came down the hall from another room.
“Congratulations,” she croaked. A couple of her cats wandered into the library.
“Took you long enough,” she added.
—
“Everyone’s waiting,” said Mama, spreading her arms again and ushering them toward a set of mighty oaken doors. “And I do mean everyone. You might even have a bigger crowd than the Buddha, believe it or not. You’re the oldest human soul ever, Milo. And, Suzie—if I can get used to calling you that—you’re a real original. In fact, no one’s really sure what’s going to happen with you. I mean, you came from the universal mind but not as a human, and now here you are going back, after being human—”
“I’ll risk it,” said Suzie. “It beats the alternative.”
Milo found himself slightly faint and wobbly. It was too much to understand. In a way, it was like a graduation, except not. It was like…he didn’t know what it was like.
Nan’s voice, behind him.
“I promise you,” she said, her voice low and warm, the voice of a mother or grandmother, “there is nothing on the other side of the Sun Door but joy and wholeness. You’ll see.”
She gave Milo a hug from behind. It was like being hugged by a well-meaning twig.
He believed her.
“About that,” said Suzie. “About the Sun Door.”
On the other side, the crowd hummed and roared.
Mama and Nan both said, “Mmm-hmm?”
“We’re going through together.”
Mama and Nan looked at each other. Conferred silently. Shrugged.
“You can try it,” said Nan. “It’s not how it’s done. In the Oversoul, everyone’s together, see—”
“We’re not asking,” said Milo.
Nan and Mama looked a little nervous, but they nodded.
Milo took Suzie’s hand, and they faced the double doors together.
The doors swung wide. Light flooded in, blinding them. Shouting and screaming deafened them.
There was nothing they could do but shuffle along as Mama, like a pillowy tugboat, herded them out into pandemonium.
Fingers touched them as they walked. Mama pushed. The multitude squeezed them along like peas in a tube of toothpaste.
Like the Buddha’s well-wishers, they were everywhere. The hill and the floodplain, the bridge—all seethed and crawled with waving, with singing, with colors and banners. In the town beyond, they stood on rooftops. Zeppelins and balloons floated and whirred.
They were in the river, too. Where it was shallow enough, they waded and stood, applauding, cheering. They were joyful, purely joyful, and it was like a tangible thing. They were joyful because they looked at the wonderful thing happening to Milo, to Suzie, and knew it would be their day someday.
The air above the river warped and shivered, as if an invisible someone had struck a great invisible gong. Shock waves of light and joy radiated, forming something like a tunnel.
They reached the riverbank and splashed through the shallows.
Suzie grasped Milo’s shoulder, and their eyes locked. They slipped arms around each other, trusting in the crowd to move them in the right direction.
Suzie, wild-eyed, didn’t speak. Milo leaned in to kiss her, saw her eyes close and her lips part— The door enfolded them, drew them in.
They were two swimmers in a flood. Milo felt their souls spreading out like peanut butter. It was perfect. Even sort of sexual, in a way. They flowed through each other, leaning in for a long, hard, wet kiss, and swam through the Oversoul together.
Together.
For about three seconds.
Imagine if you were an earthworm.
Imagine that you have an earthworm girlfriend, and the two of you have been together as long as your worm brains can remember. You love each other in a crazy, primitive, soulmate kind of way. You can’t even think what it would be like without her. You can barely think at all.