Chapter One: Keira
Capturing the souls of children has never been on the list of Keira’s favorite responsibilities, and she did not see it ever making that list as she followed seven-year-old Mariah Kelly. Seated on a shaded picnic table in a small park in Clarksville, Tennessee as the sun pulsed heavy and high above, Keira’s eyes strained against the bright lights to follow Mariah across the crowded playground. The child moved swiftly and efficiently across the jungle gym, climbing and swinging from bars, ledges, and alcoves. A small girl attempted to follow Mariah but was obviously not as skilled as her friend. Mariah laughed as she called for her friend to keep up.
A weight settled painfully in Keira’s chest, sweat gathering on her palms as she took a steadying breath. She would always follow Death’s rules, no matter how uncomfortable it made her. And reaping children made her very uncomfortable.
A blonde woman in a sundress, sunburn settling on her shoulders and arms, walked towards the picnic table Keira sat on to set her basket right on Keira’s lap. With a wave of her hands, shadows erupted from beneath Keira’s dark cloak and swept the hat perched atop the stranger’s head along an invisible breeze.
Just because the humans couldn’t see her didn’t mean that setting things through her body wasn’t an uncomfortable sensation.
Mariah’s laughter rang out across the park, and Keira resisted the voice in her head saying to let the girl live another day. Though she had been an Assistant to Death for well over a thousand years, she hadn’t started reaping children till about a hundred years or so ago. And while she did everything she could to make their deaths quick and painless, it still didn’t stop her from wishing she could collect their parent instead.
But Keira knew there was no arguing with Death. His word was law, and his Library demanded to be filled with the stories of everyone who had ever lived.
As well as proof of their deaths.
Rising from the picnic bench, Keira walked closer to Mariah and pulled the hood of her cloaked dress tight around her face, effectively keeping her blonde curls from obscuring her view as she moved amongst the screaming young.
Timing was everything in these moments. A stray curl in the eye could be the difference between a quick death, and a slow, painful one.
As she approached Mariah, the child was giggling with her friend at the base of an enclosed slide. The other child breathed heavily from the exertion of keeping up, and Mariah was more than a little amused. Unseen, Keira leaned down to whisper into the young girl’s ear.
“You’ve conquered everything inside the playground,” Keira’s voice seemed to sing, even in this quiet state. Her throat felt tight, but she continued. “Why not try to climb the outside of it? It couldn’t be that hard. If anyone can do it, it’s you, right, Mariah?”
Mariah’s eyes instantly lit with the idea, before turning to her friend and boasting, “Bet I can climb the outside of this slide!”
“You shouldn’t do that. It’s too high. Our moms said not to go up there,” the friend replied, hands on her hips.
Keira took a beat of irritation. These things were always harder when a friend interfered, and there was more risk for error. She whispered again in that hypnotizing voice, “I bet she’d be proud.”
“I bet she’d be proud cause I’m the best climber on the playground!” Mariah exclaimed, her confidence unwavering.
Mariah turned and made a mad scramble up the outside of the enclosed slide. Her little pink light up sneakers glowed with each step, marking her confident footing.
Keira’s mouth twitched downward a hair before returning to its neutral state—the only outward sign she would allow herself to show she disapproved of what was going to happen.
“Mrs. Kelly!” The friend took off running towards an older woman, reading on a park bench. “Mrs. Kelly, you have to stop Mariah!” Keira stepped back a few paces from the slide, as Mrs. Kelly dropped her book before racing across the playground toward Mariah.
“What have I said? Get down from there before you fall!” her mother cried.
Mariah’s foot slid out from under her. Sticky hands grabbed at the lip of one of the joints.
“No, Mom!” she huffed out, pulling herself up the last few inches of the outside curve before she reached the smooth top. “I have to show you.”
“Mariah, get down! You don’t have to show me anything except you safe, on the ground!”
Mariah gripped the top of the slide, a smile bright on her red face as she pulled her light up shoes underneath her. Mrs. Kelly reached up with her hands, almost as if to catch the girl should she fall.
But it was far too late for that.
Mariah stood proudly at the top of the slide, smiling and cheering, stomping her shoes to light them up in her celebratory dance. A lump formed in Keira’s throat as she watched the beautiful moment of cheer from the child. She could never understand why Death demanded life so young.
But the fact was Death made the choice, and she had to follow it. No matter how much her conscience screamed otherwise.
Keira reached into her sleeves to remove a small black bag, adorned only with a single Latin phrase in gold stitching: Finis mors est.
Death is the end.
She raised her dark blue eyes to watch Mariah, the child’s hair whipping around her in the breeze as she giggled. Keira raised her hand to send her shadows toward the child, and they lightly wrapped around Mariah’s ankle from the side opposite her mother’s outstretched hands, and pulled.
Mariah’s foot ripped out from underneath her, and she began her violent fall to the ground. Her head knocked against the slide in a hollow bang that shook the frame. Her nails ripped against the plastic, but it couldn’t stop her downward plummet.
Keira turned her back to the sight before she saw the full descent. Metal rang upon impact. A thud in the distance. Screams erupted across the playground. She felt a burning behind her eyes, the pressure close to spilling out but she blinked it back.
Without turning around, Keira sent the shadows to sink into the small girl’s broken body, tugging until a small blue, pulsating light lifted from her and drifted inside of the dark tendrils, floating to appear in her hands. She looked at it momentarily, taking a slow, deep breath, before placing it inside the velvet bag.
Keira walked to the shade of a nearby tree, waving her hands in a small series of motions that changed the once dull shadows into a portal to the Library. She could see the various Assistants and their Librarians rushing through the central hub, and the moment’s hesitation cost her another piece of her own immortal soul.
She heard Mariah’s mother’s anguished cries and pleas for help amongst the scattered screams of children. Mariah’s friend’s screams rose above the rest, and Keira saw the sunburnt mother from earlier race towards the playground and wrap her child in her arms.
Mrs. Kelly was on the ground, rocking back and forth and holding Mariah’s body. Keira knew then she shouldn’t have looked back. That moment, that image, would forever replace the triumphant child standing atop the slide, now seeing her crooked neck and unseeing gaze staring into the sky.
Her little pink shoes, lights going off round-and-round in mocking cheer.
Yay, Keira took a life.
Yay, Keira did her job.
Yay, Keira would carry another scar on her soul.
Keira could tolerate capturing adult souls, but children? Keira hated capturing children’s souls more than anything else.
Briannica Lynn Briggs 