Mary

Bright green leaves the size of his hands rustled overhead. Spanish moss swayed lazily as if there was a breeze. They were draped over the massive branches of an ancient oak tree this kid managed to conjure. He was impressed. The entire scene was incredibly detailed. Unlike the typical blurry color blocks and vague shapes people usually created, content to add the minutiae in their own minds. Bugs moved in the dirt, the leaves had shapes and veins, and the tree itself was tall enough to block out where the sun might be. He couldn’t quite tell if she’d actually made one of them, or if the presumption of it was doing the heavy lifting in lighting this whole thing up. There were miles and miles of flat green fields, complete with crops of wildflowers, as far as he could see in any direction. It was more of a shock than it should have been, given why he was here at all. He guessed she would have had some training, but it had been some time since he saw anyone from there so accomplished in staking their claim here. 

“Hey,” he called up, hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. “Are you alright?”

The girl, hidden in some alcove of thick twisting branches, replied shortly. “I’m fine.” 

He huffed a sigh. Of course, she’d be giving him an attitude, like she belonged here. Teenagers. He wondered if wherever she’d come from had put her through the wringer learning how to do it, or if she was a natural talent. For his sake, he hoped it was the former and that she’d wear herself out before long. 

“Come down from there,” he said. “We need to have a little talk.” 

“Not interested,” she declined. 

She wasn’t giving him much to work with. If she’d been back and forth as much as it seemed, she’d probably blown off plenty of ghouls and spirits passing through. She wouldn’t know he was any different. That’s why he preferred the ones who didn’t know anything. They saw a friendly face after being out here on their own and were usually more than grateful that he was willing point them in the right direction. 

“I’m not asking,” he said, hoping that might drive the point across. If she were half as smart as she thought she was, she would realize that she’d never come across anything on this side that talked to her that way before. He gave her a few moments to think, but his patience wore thin. “Come on, honey. I ain’t got all day.”

There was a time he would have just made the tree vanish, watched her fall on her ass, taken her by the arm, and dragged her on. She would be better off where she was going, that’s what mattered. It was all this mess about free will that had come up. The second humans gave it a name and leveled it with the concept of predestination his job got about a hundred times harder. He couldn’t say how many eons he’d wasted, having to save face over that. He struck his bargain as a courier and nothing more, and now he spent all his time talking people into doing something they didn’t have a choice in either way. He grumbled low under his breath as the girl in the tree sat firmly in her decision to ignore him. 

“Look,” he called up to her. “That tree isn't going to help you if something bad comes by. It's not safe for you to be out here alone. You need to come down.”

“You’re out here alone,” she retorted harshly, unconvinced. “And the only something bad that’s come by me so far is you.” 

He scoffed and looked to the ground she crafted, pressing the toe of one worn brown boot into the spongy dirt that held up the thick tendrils of root stretching out from the oak. The leaves danced idly, some thick and deep green, some translucent, nearly yellow in the center with the light filtering through them. The girl stayed up in her spot, planted as firmly as the oak itself. “You’re good at this,” he said finally. “You must’ve been taught well.”

The leaves rustled where she hid, tucked just on the other side of the trunk. “Pros of being the savior of humanity or whatever,” she replied sarcastically. “I have like eight old ladies harassing me all the time and can’t eat sugar because it’s impure or whatever, but at least I can make a tree.” 

That made sense, he thought. A teenager brought up by some religious sect or another. Being a part of one that got anything right was a lucky stroke for her. Most kids he got that way never knew what was coming. They show up scared and confused, asking questions he didn’t have answers to. She seemed comfortable, or at least confident enough in where she was. Hopefully, that meant breaking the news wouldn’t go over like a lead balloon. 

He took her response for the leverage it was and tried to draw her out before getting into it. “I bet it’s an awful lot of work. I know when - I knew a girl who said it gave her a headache after a while, if she kept it up too long.” 

The silence stretched on and on, the low rustling of the grass and the girl herself thinking about whether she’d talk with him or just stay put. Finally, she replied, “If that’s what you’re so worried about, I promise I’ll go home if it gets too bad,” she said. “Deal?”

He bit his tongue to keep from asking what she was thinking saying something like that. Trying to cut a deal was right next to the dumbest thing anyone could do on this side, she should know that much. A quick glance around the open field proved it to be as empty as when he’d appeared there. She’d be alright as long as he was around, he thought, no sense scaring her over it. Still, now that she’d gone and said it, he wanted to get her out of there sooner rather than later, and the urgency took root deep in his chest. “If you slip up and lose that tree you’ll break your neck. Come on, the weather’s nice down here.”

She groaned so dramatically that he almost cracked a smile, a phantom tug at the corner of his lips, before he remembered why he was there. 

“Dude, what are you?” She asked, annoyed, “No one has ever bothered me before.” 

“I’ll tell you if you come down,” he offered.  

“I don’t care that much,” she dismissed.

“I’ll show you if you come down.” 

Her head appeared from around the side of the trunk, eyes wide. “Really?” Suddenly the tree was alive with a flurry of movement as she scrambled toward him. She reached the lowest branch between one blink and the next, and he lunged forward to catch her as she dropped from it, “Jesus Christ, kid - “

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” she interrupted. “What are you?”

Standing in front of him she barely reached his chest. She was rail thin, too small, too young. The kids who came the way she did weren’t usually kids, just kids to him because when you live so long all humans start to feel that way. It was usually older teenagers, young adults even, old enough to understand what they were in for even if they didn’t realize how they were going to end up. He stumbled back a step, “How old are you?” 

“I asked you first,” she countered, “and you said - “

“I’m serious. How old are you?” He asked again, an ages-old ache pitting in his chest. 

The girl crossed her arms and met his clouded white eyes with all the typical confidence of a kid who knew everything. “I’m twelve and a half.” She replied. “Almost thirteen.” 

Twelve? It rang in his ears like she’d shouted it. “You can’t be twelve,” he replied dumbly. Usually, he could take some solace in knowing that her kind had gotten some sort of life under their belts before it was all said and done. 

Her nose wrinkled, and her brow furrowed in confusion, “What does that mean?”

“You’re sure?” He asked hoarsely.

She rolled her eyes and replied like he’d just asked her if the grass had always been green. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I know how old I am.” 

He was no stranger to the kind of divine rage that grew hot in his chest and in his ears and behind his eyes. He turned and snarled, “Humans.” They always took this kind of thing too far. Their sacrifices, martyrs, and saviors - using their own as scapegoats for things they wouldn’t figure out how to fix themselves. She was the youngest he’d come across in his time so far, he realized suddenly.  

“What do you have against humans?” She asked, still too curious about him to worry about what was happening to her.

She was out of the tree now and he had her attention. He shook his head, tried to quell whatever it was he felt about this so that he could bring her around. He wasn’t here to mourn the way all this worked or even to mourn her. He just needed her to understand. “I’m here for you,” he said. He cleared his throat and balled his hands into fists at his sides so tight he would have felt the ache of it up both arms. “This ain’t the astral plane, kid. They - you know, they did it. You did it.” 

He watched her face contort in confusion, the flash of something else that was replaced by a stubborn denial. “No,” she said immediately. “No, I’m leaving. I was just waiting for everyone to go to lunch. They - it was a meditation hour and…” she trailed off eyes distant. Memory returning. She swallowed hard and continued with a gradually increasing hysteria that made him feel sick. “I have a bag in my room, I was just waiting for everyone to leave me alone so I could sneak out. I’m supposed to be sixteen, so they wouldn’t have - not yet.” 

Not yet. So she had known. She was growing up there knowing what it was all for, that she’d never grow up. His job was being them across, to offer some small comfort. Not for the first time he wonders how anything could offer comfort for something like that. He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, but she startled away from him, heaving in quick panicked breaths. “Honey, I’m real sorry.”  

“No,” she shouted, furious, and desperate. “Send me back,” she growled through clenched teeth. “I can get out. I have a plan. Send me back,” she demanded. 

He shook his head and crouched down so he wasn’t towering over her, told her gently, “That’s not me. I’m just bringing you on. I can’t send you back.” 

“You have to,” she pled, swiping a crop of tears from her wet cheeks with the back of her hand, steadying her breath with the kind of practiced ease that no kid should have. “I can do better. Just - tell me what I have to do to go back. I’ll do it.” She was trembling now, holding herself together by a thread.

All he had to offer were platitudes and reassurances that he hoped to convince her weren’t empty. “You did good, honey. It’s over now. It’ll be okay.” He soothed. 

He saw in her eyes the second she gave in to his compulsion and started to believe him. He reached out his hand, ready to get this over with, for both of their sakes. “I’ll go with you. It ain’t bad, I promise.” 

Her shoulders hitched with a broken sob, but she nodded weakly and she raised her hand to meet his. He wondered how much longer he could do this.

The second their fingers touched her eyes snapped open. The familiar off-white popcorn ceiling of her bedroom came into a blurry focus, hot tears welled up in her eyes consumed her vision and poured over her cheeks. She could feel cool sweat pooling at the base of her neck and gasped in her first breath. It burned its way down her dry throat and into her lungs, her heart beating so violently it seemed to rattle her entire skeleton. 

She was alive. 

Her own tear stained face, pleading with whatever that man was, stayed firmly in her mind’s eye as she caught her breath. She pitched to the side, snagged the notebook where she was to write every detail of any dream she had and started furiously scribbling down what she could remember. The tree, the grief he carried when he thought about his role, how tired he was, and how much it hurt him to think about others like her. She wrote the word courier and underlined it twice in fast strokes. She wrote that he was worried about her making deals there and how it sounded like even saying it could summon other things that lived in the immaterial planes. He said that he had come to “bring her on.” To where she could hazard a guess, though it didn’t feel much like what Sister Stacy and the others talked about. A place of punishment or worship. It felt more like the endless green fields she built around her tree. Some of it she had an inkling of, hints from not so ancient texts pushed on her in lessons, but some of it was new. The excitement she might have had is swallowed by her fear. It didn’t feel prophetic the way other dreams had, but she’d been wrong about that before too.

Her eyes flicked to the clock at her side, flashing 2:43 in a glaring red, then to the window where her thin white curtains, colored the inky blue of night. She snapped her notebook shut. The rest of it would have to wait until later. The bed creaked lightly as she swung her feet over the edge. She slipped to the tile floor and reached under the bed to drag out the worn gray backpack she’d hidden beneath it earlier that afternoon. 

Faintly, she heard distant footsteps and muffled voices. She froze in place until they passed. Anxiety spiked in her chest. 

“Get it together, Mary,” she coached herself. If she possessed half of the power they told her that she did, no one would catch her. The man’s voice echoed in her mind. “It’s over now.” 

No, she thought. No, it wasn’t.