For a long time, he did not speak or move from the grave. He just lay there in the dirt. It was as if his thoughts had overwhelmed him and he’d collapsed there.
She moved closer to him, her chest rising and falling, slow and steady, with every breath she took, and she knelt down beside him.
She could see that his hands were trembling.
She studied his face, and his closed eyes. When he squeezed his eyes shut even tighter, she watched a tear roll down his cheek, fall, and drop into the dirt. Tiny specks of dust floated into the air around where it fell.
She pulled in a sudden, heaving breath of emotion, and tried to let it out with a measured calm, but her sigh was ragged.
When he finally lifted his face, he looked up at the stone angel. “I gave her to you,” he said, his voice shaking. “But what have you done?”
Serafina felt a storm of dizziness passing through her. Tears welled up in her eyes.
As she looked around the gravesite, she noticed that the mound of dirt he was lying on seemed strangely undisturbed. She was surprised that the broken boards of the coffin weren’t sticking up out of the ground where she had crawled out.
“What do you want me to do?” Braeden shouted desperately at the angel. “Tell me what to do!”
She wished she could reach out to him, somehow touch him, somehow talk to him. “I’m here, Braeden,” she said. “I’m here!”
She put her hand on his. She could not truly feel the living warmth of his hand, and it was clear that he could not feel her, but the closeness of her spirit seemed to rack him with new grief. His face contorted with a dark and terrible sorrow.
Horrified by what she was doing to him, she quickly rose to her feet and stepped back. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice weak.
“I’m not going to leave you, Serafina,” he said, getting himself up onto his feet. “I’m not going to abandon you!”
He hadn’t heard her words, he was still speaking to her in the grave, but it pulled at her heart. She desperately wanted to show him a sign that she had heard him. No matter what had happened, they were still friends, they were still together. Her death wasn’t going to be the end of them. It couldn’t be.
She looked around her, determined to find a way to communicate with him.
Dust to dust, she thought. Of earth they were made, and into earth they return. That was what was happening to her. She was returning. But for the moment, there was still a little trace of her that lingered in the world.
Harmless as a fly, Serafina thought. But even a fly can do things. And now she had an idea.
Wanting to make as big a movement as possible, she stepped onto the mound of the grave and spun around in a circle, shouting and kicking, jumping up and down, trying to make every kind of wild commotion she possibly could.
But nothing happened. The dirt didn’t move.
She was useless.
But then she remembered. Play the flute…
She got down onto her hands and knees, leaned down, pulled some air into her lungs, and blew out a gentle, perfect breath just like she’d practiced.
Suddenly, a tiny flurry of dust swirled up into the moonlight in front of Braeden.
She cheered with a great shout. She’d done it just the way she’d practiced, and at just the right moment!
But Braeden did not see it.
She had accomplished nothing.
More discouraged than ever, she flopped to the ground. The whole thing was hopeless.
But then she noticed that Gidean had sat up and was looking in her direction. His ears were perked and his eyes alert. He wasn’t looking at her, but at the dust she had stirred.
He was staring straight at it.
He tilted his head quizzically.
“It’s me, Gidean!” she shouted.
She blew into the dirt again, and another little cloud of dust curled up.
Gidean rose slowly to his four feet. He tilted his head, trying to understand what he was seeing.
“I’m alive, Gidean!” she shouted.
Finally, Gidean barked in recognition. And then he started digging.
Serafina pulled back in surprise, startled. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but she definitely didn’t think the silly dog would dig! But she didn’t know how to stop him.
Gidean dug furiously with his front paws, throwing a rooster tail of dirt behind him.
Startled, and spitting out the flying dirt hitting his face, Braeden scrambled out of the way.
“What’s going on?” he asked in confusion. “What are you doing, boy?”
But Gidean just kept digging straight down into Serafina’s grave, throwing dirt like he was a steam-powered digging machine.
“Stop, Gidean. Don’t!” Braeden commanded him. He grabbed the dog by the shoulders and tried to hold him back, but the boy was no match for the dog’s strength.
“What are you doing?” Braeden demanded, his voice filled with worry and fear. “Don’t do this! We can’t do this!”
Serafina knew he was scared of what anyone would be scared of digging up a grave, that he’d find her grotesque, putrefied body.
But Gidean didn’t stop. He just kept digging.
Braeden stepped back, obviously unsure what to do. He watched as his dog dug a deeper and deeper hole.
Serafina could tell by the horrified look on Braeden’s face that he didn’t think he was prepared to see what he was about to see. And yet, at the same time, there was something tearing at him, some macabre curiosity, some overwhelming desire for Gidean to keep going. They had to change the dark and terrible world they’d been living in, they had to do something, and now Gidean was doing it!
Braeden dropped down to his knees and started digging at Gidean’s side. He clawed rapidly at the earth with his bare hands, throwing the dirt behind him.
Serafina didn’t know what they were going to find in the grave. Would there be an actual body? But she’d crawled out! She’d been walking through the world. There couldn’t be a body in the grave! But was there? Were they going to find her corpse rotting in the dirt? She could imagine her gray, decaying skin hanging from the broken white bones of her earthly remains.
When Braeden and Gidean finally reached the coffin, Serafina was surprised to see that the lid was unbroken and still in place. Brushing aside the last of the dirt, Braeden pried the coffin’s lid away.
Serafina gasped in astonishment at what she saw.
Her body was lying in the coffin. She knew she should have expected it, but there was no way to prepare for it. She closed her eyes and shrunk away from the sight of it, bending at her waist and grabbing on to a tree to keep from falling over or collapsing to her knees. She covered her face and eyes with her other hand and struggled to pull in steady breaths of air—but with what lungs, what air? It felt as if her whole world was collapsing in on her. How could this be? How could she be in the grave?
She didn’t want to look at the body, but she knew she must.