NO REST FOR THE DEAD
PASHIM
The wind tears at my clothes and stings my eyes. Strange that I feel such discomfort considering that I’m dead, but then this place is an in-between land that follows its own rules. Rules that I’m only now beginning to understand. I’m forced to walk at an angle, leaning forward to battle the elements intent on halting my journey while Priti walks beside me, her stride straight and easy, untouched by this unnatural weather.
She looks across at me and smiles. “We can rest soon. There is a waypoint not far from here. How are you feeling?”
Her voice reaches me clearly over the shrieking wind, but I have to shout to be heard.
“Tired! Is that normal?”
Her brow furrows slightly as she considers my question. “Yes. It’s normal. The farther we go toward the conjunction, the more this place will try and pull your soul back. But it can’t keep you. I won’t let it.”
The wind drops suddenly, and the world falls into blissful silence. Thank the gods. I stand tall, my pace picking up now that I’m no longer having to fight for each step.
“Priti, how are you here?” Have I asked her that question? I feel that I have, but I can’t recall her response. A fist squeezes my chest.
“It’s all right, Pashim. Memory will be spotty while we cross the sands.”
I look down at the sand beneath my boots. “How…When…”
She takes my hand and squeezes. “Focus on me. On my voice. I’ve got you.”
“But how? How will you…” Why was she here again?
“I can get you out. You’re connected to her. You have a bond and a destiny that was cut short by forces that shouldn’t have sway over life and death. But we’ll change it. We will fix it.”
“Priti, how are you here?” Have I asked her this before? Have I pondered asking her before? My head aches.
“We’re almost at the waystation,” she says.
I glance about, and the world is a gray, shifting terrain that makes my stomach twist and my head spin.
“Look at me,” she says, her voice in my head now.
I fix my gaze on her face, on the shimmer that wreathes her and the stars that bloom in her eyes. The world steadies.
The ground beneath my feet stops shifting.
The nausea ebbs then vanishes, and the fog that’s clouded my mind dissipates, leaving me suddenly clear and sharp.
I remember.
My eyes fly wide, and Priti beams at me.
“There you are,” she says.
And theresheis. Yama…the new death.
I’m notsure how long we’ve walked since Priti pulled me from the hollow in the forgetting tree. Yes, that’s what she called it. The hollows are where souls go to become dormant. To simply…stop. And according to Priti, this place…this in-between limbo is one of many pockets like it.
“Yama is gone,” she tells me. “He left a long time ago but not before sending out a seed. I came from that seed.”
It explains why she was not given an anchor, for her death would make her Yama. And Yama needs no anchor.
Now as we walk down a winding cobbled road toward a stone tower in the distance, my mind is clear enough to learn more. “You told me that you are the new god of death, the new Yama. But if Yama has been gone all this time, then who has been managing the dead?”
“Yama was his name; my name is Priti,” she says. “But I suppose that doesn’t sound very death-like, does it?” She taps her chin. “I’ll have to think up something more…forbidding. And as to your question…well, no one. Which is why so many in-between pockets have opened up. Nature has done its best to manage the spirit world. I suspect Yama expected his replacement to arrive much sooner than I did. But time doesn’t always work in the way that even gods expect. So now it’s up to me to gather the dead and get them to Pitru loka or Naraka, depending on their deeds.” She sighs. “It’s a process, and both realms are a mess right now. Not ready to open to new admissions, so…Yeah. I’m working on it. But we have to get you where you need to be first. Back to the land of the living.”
