Dee's Gift

The blades of grass recoil from her bare feet. I watch with fleeting sadness as they blacken and shrivel. I follow close behind her trail of destruction. Our sisters will be waiting for us in the forest.

Sure enough, at the fringes of the wood I glimpse Thunder, absently twirling a dagger on its point with a dainty finger. Her head has been shaved clean. She insisted its long raven locks would impede her flight. No one dissented, but I’m secretly mournful to see her head bereft of its usual midnight tendrils.

“You two took your sweet time. Can we end this misery, please?” Sickness pleads. I start. Her ghostly pale form had emerged silently from the grove. She surveys my reaction balefully. She loathes the reaction she evokes from others. Even though I cannot contract any of her lethal maladies, her presence still unnerves me deeply.

“Apologies, Ness,” Dee murmurs, her voice containing no trace of sincerity. Dee comes and goes based on whatever elusive whim whispers to her. She heeds no one and we all know it. I most of all, considering my main task in this enduring life of mine has been to follow her ceaseless wanderings through the planets of sentient life.

Thunder fidgets restlessly. Her offspring booms ominously in the distance. The first step of the process, Thunder hates the waiting involved.

Dee will need at least a night to recuperate from our journey before enacting the final phase. I let my legs fold underneath me and settle next to Thunder. She regards me with glittering eyes, constellations moving steadily across her velvety black irises.

I watch Dee and Ness disappear into the grove to discuss the coming days. I have no care for such planning. I’m only a follower, and a relatively purposeless one at that.

“This place feels different,” Thunder remarks. I had noticed it, too. Usually the worlds we were summoned to felt on the verge of collapse. Vegetation scarce, starvation rampant, misery a daily staple. The world here feels a trifle more self-sufficient, if deeply flawed. Are we really about to doom it?

“I like the green,” I add softly, toying with a surviving blade of grass between my toes. She doesn’t bother to look down. I know she’s more entranced by the sky. She had made her wrath known when it was continuously tainted and polluted, ratcheting up the temperature until the land became unbearable and steeped in famine. This wood is one of the few still intact. Her presence had diluted the smog, but only just. It would take a long time for it to recover. I watch her will the clouds away. The puffy gray fixtures glide hurriedly to the west. She’ll allow for no rain tonight, not here. She knows better than to upset Dee.

“Where will you go tonight?” She asks. My lip trembles.

“I do my job. I don’t see how that’s any business of yours.”

Thunder barks out a gravelly laugh. “So touchy! I don’t plan on telling Dee. My daughters have whispered about your illicit trips in past worlds. You’re a creature of habit, as are we all.” The taste of disappointment sours my tongue. My secrets are public knowledge, it seems.

“I do no harm,” I protest. She grins humorlessly.

“You do more harm than the rest of us put together. I twist their skies, Ness their constitution, Dee their bodies. You twist their souls.” I stand abruptly.

“I think I’ll take my leave. If it’s so anticipated, I suppose there’s no need for stealth.” There’s a teasing twinkle in her eye as she nods solemnly and shoos me off before Dee and Ness return.

My maroon dress tickles the ground, hiding my exposed feet. I walk until the grass turns to gravel, then pavement. Hastily rendered tents filled with sick bodies mark every street corner. There’s barely a soul left to tend to them. The smell of putrid flesh is nearly overwhelming. I slip through the back entrance of one of the shelters. The smell amplifies, accompanied with extended coughs and pitiable groans. I look around. Most of them are delirious and will not remember me. I spot a young man in the corner. He looks relatively lucid, pain warring with his quickly sapping strength. I see the battle on his colorless face, and I know the outcome as surely as I know my name.

I approach him, pulling a stool closer. He stares at me with emerald eyes. They remind me of the grass. My stomach rebels at the prospect of Dee taking his hand, imparting the same “gift” she had bestowed upon the shining blades underfoot.

His face instantly relaxes a bit as I inch closer. I cannot heal him entirely without making Ness aware of my misadventure. Any interruption of the progression of her disease would be swiftly noted and rectified with extreme prejudice.

I settle next to him as close as I dare, relieved to see the pain begin to edge out of his bloodshot eyes and clenched jaw.

“Who are you?” He asks quietly. I repel feelings like alarm in a way I’m unable to turn off. He won’t be able to feel much fear in my presence, save for a dash of healthy suspicion.

“My name is Peace. I’m a Kindness, meant to follow the final Unkindnesses.” I tell him everything. The fate of his world and people, my sisters, our mission, all of it. By the end, his face is stained with tears.

“I beg your forgiveness,” I gasp. “I don’t want to do this anymore. I cannot stop my sisters or myself any more than you can.”

He says nothing for a long time. Finally, he nods slowly. “I have sisters too. They can be a pain.” He cracks a small smile, and I’m aghast. He’s joking, after what I’ve told him? This world certainly is different. “Give Ness hell for me,” he calls weakly in parting. “And tell Dee to hurry up. This life’s not worth living.” His eyes have already reglazed with pain by the time I turn back to wave.

Dee is waiting outside the tent. My heart stalls. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” I ask stiffly. 

Her lips lift into a dangerous smile. “I wouldn't exactly call it a pleasure. I dragged your flightless body across the universe to bring this world to its knees. I have exactly seven precious hours to collect my strength, and I’m spending it looking for my wayward sister. Is it so hard to do as you’re told?”

“You could have sent Thunder,” I offer. Dee scoffs.

“That traitorous twit? Do you take me for a fool? If I gave her leave I’d be searching for the both of you before night’s end.”

She reaches for the tent’s open flap. I step nimbly in front of her, barring her way. Her eyes narrow.

“We should return to the others. You ought to get some rest,” I remind her. My voice is pitched as casually as I can manage but it trembles towards the end.

She lifts an eyebrow. “I’m already here. Let’s oblige this fellow. Didn’t he tell me to hurry up?”

“Death waits for no man,” I quote. “Does it speed up for man? How uncharacteristically subservient.” The ground trembles with her rage.

“What do you think his forgiveness means for you? Or anyone’s, for that matter? I see you, every mission, revealing our work to some doomed soul and begging for absolution. You tease out as much false light as I do darkness. Do you think they could be sincere in your presence? You disgrace yourself, affixing significance to the words of fleshy puppets.”

Tears spring to my eyes, but I don’t move from the entrance. Dee waits a beat before turning on heel and storming away.

I reenter the tent, heart pounding. The young man looks surprised but not unhappy to see me. Could he be unhappy to see me? Is it possible? I put a hand on his chest, uncaring of Ness’ displeasure. He inhales sharply, a healthy glow blessing his cheeks. A faint smile touches his lips.

“Say you don’t forgive me,” I beg. “Say you hate me.” He blinks, confused.

“Would that make you happy?” He asks. The tears slide down uncontrollably. I have my answer.

I sense Dee’s presence. She doesn’t admonish me. She merely looks at him with a certain softness I haven’t seen in a long time.

“We give you peace,” she whispers, pressing her lips to his forehead. His stare freezes, his chest immobile. The unrelenting smile lingers. I look away in shame.

I don’t speak to any of my sisters for days. On the third day, Dee beckons me to a nearby creek. We perch on the rocks and dip our toes in the steaming water. The moss on her stone crumbles to ash.

“I don’t see myself as an Unkindness,” she begins slowly. My head jerks upward in surprise.

“This world has a different kind of sickness. One Ness could never infect them with. Division. Pervasive sadness. An epidemic of isolation amid community, utter apathy for nature. Compounded by many more common problems. We’re not an end, Peace. We’re a reset button. We’re mercy. Civilizations burn and fall and rebuild just to burn and fall. One day, I believe a civilization will emerge that will not need to be razed. I yearn for that day with a passion I’m sure you can understand.”

She traces a nearby tree’s indentations with a fingernail. Once-healthy leaves rain down on our heads as the massive oak shudders and groans. “This wood has burned many times. The dead give way to life.”

I shake my head. “Recovery is no certainty. Growth, even less so. They will always perish if we wipe them out before they have a chance to sort out the solutions for themselves.”

She considers my words in silence. An errant fish splashes in the brook. I urge it along gently before it can collide with Dee’s flesh.

“It’s an interesting proposition,” she admits. “We’ve never waited for a planet to implode without intervention. Thunder won’t like it. The longer this world endures, the more her sky will worsen.”

I feel a flare of hope in my chest. “Thunder is a glutton for clear skies. Send her to one of our missions past. She’ll have her healthy air there.”

Dee taps her thigh with a long, thin finger. “You could stay here, oversee. Who knows? Perhaps Peace is good for more than helping Death.” I can’t help the huge smile that spreads across my face. I know I can help these people. I know they’re not too far gone.

“Of course, if this world ends, you’ll rejoin us. There will be no more argument.” Her dark eyes lock onto mine. She’s betting that I’ll fail. And soon. I will love nothing more than proving her wrong.

“Deal.”