ETERNITY'S ECHO

Darkness.

A moment of disorientation—familiar. Ellie realized that she knew this feeling well enough, had felt it every day for her lifetime; this was the pause between flicking a light switch and coming back to herself in the dark. A freeze-frame moment. As though not being able to see anything had made the world disappear. She needed to wait to realize she was still there and still alive. Even now, in her own way, her death was a form of life.

And so in the darkness, they waited. Ellie did not breathe because there was no air, no need for breathing. She could feel the warmth of Niles standing beside her, knew that if she leaned a bit to her right then her shoulder would nudge his. Comforting. She was not alone. This was what being in the womb was like—constant companionship in the dark.

Beyond the two of them were the other reapers, though the stars were gone and so not even a speck could be seen. Ellie felt she was not the same person she had been no more than a few moments ago. Former Ellie would have stood worrying in the blackness—worried that there would be nothing more but the dark, forever. Except now she was weightless. Free.

Beside her, the softest whisper from Niles: “Astounding.”

He sounded enraptured. But—at the same time—frustrated with longing. Ellie had never heard someone speak in quite this way and yet somehow the tone was also familiar. As if she had been waiting since birth to hear a voice like his.

“What?” she whispered, hardly able to hear herself. Her lungs had no air.

“I can hear it,” said Niles, audible despite the vacuum. Or perhaps they were speaking without words. “The song… from Heaven.”

“Song?” Ellie quieted, strained her own ears. But there was nothing—just the ringing echo of silence. Maybe if she stood in the quiet enough, she could hear the silence as words.

“Every time a world ends, He sings to us,” whispered Niles, as though relaying a secret. Ellie did not need to ask who he was talking about—but was startled nonetheless. She had been a pastor’s kid and so had known that the pop culture references to Heaven were unlikely, with the floating on clouds and harps. But there was mention in scripture of singing in Heaven.

She just had not expected the singer to be God.

“I can’t hear,” she said, after listening even to the absence of her own heartbeat. Ellie leaned a bit to her side, to feel Niles’s elbow knock against hers, suddenly wanting reassurance, and his arm came up around her shoulders again. She could feel him trembling faintly.

“I couldn’t, until now,” said Niles.

Well, thought Ellie, that is a perfectly mysterious way to say that he had tried to hear before. And what he just said now—‘every time a world ends’? Ellie was brimming with questions, some she had for a long time, but never asked, and new ones that sprouted like fully formed flowers. But she could only ask one at a time. The most pressing one.

“What does it sound like?”

“I can’t say,” Niles said. “I… I’m trying to think how to describe, but…”

Ellie felt a brief rise of humor flutter within herself, that Niles with his dictionary of rare and unusual words was speechless, searching for a word that perhaps did not exist. All at once she realized without needing to be told that many of her questions had something of an answer already if she just thought them through. That Niles had somehow been through the end of the world before seemed obvious. Perhaps multiple times. Was this not what the Commission stated—being a reaper was an eternal sentence, without pardon or parole?

What happens to reapers when there’s nobody left to reap? She had asked herself the very question this morning. And now she knew: there would never be a time with nobody to reap.

Only needing to confirm, she asked, “Will I be able to hear someday?”

“Oh, yes,” said Niles. He sounded certain. “I used to wonder if it would ever happen for me, so many worlds passed. My own mentor could hear so I clung to that. But nobody said that sanctification was a smooth or quick process. We are justified by the cross, but within us are all the lingering darknesses of our lives, which we amplified with our last act. And so we have farther to go, filling up a valley with grains of sand to build a mountain.”

Ellie considered the metaphor. “But everyone’s done bad things. Some get to go to Heaven straightaway.” She felt rather than heard Niles sigh in response.

“Ellie, we are murderers. Our lives are not our own—we did not build them, make them, sustain them, choose them. Our very being is a gift. And we—you and I, and all reapers—threw it all away. We killed a human being. Ourselves. Of course we are fallen far down.”

“But some people killed people, too, and they went up.”

“They had time in their lives for more repentance. And I should point out that I do not know what the other side looks like—perhaps the souls above, too, need to go through processes. It would not surprise me. There are doubtless reapers further up who know more.”

Ellie felt her eyes smarting in the dark, as though the absence of light was bright and piercing. She said in a voice so small she could not hear herself, “How many times?”

Though she did not specify, Niles must have understood anyway. “Eleven.”

The bruises around Ellie’s neck prickled. All at once, as if in a brief flash to reminder her that they were there. And then she was wondering what Niles had done—for he had to have done something to himself, to end up a reaper. But she had never seen his wounds.

“This is your twelfth time?” And she felt his weight shift as he nodded.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and felt him jerk in surprise.

“Whatever for?” Niles sounded bewildered—and she realized then that her behavior had been frustrating and strange to him for what, in his experience, was probably months on end, though for her had been less than a day—but only now she had genuinely surprised him.

“Twelve universes… that must have been a long time.”

Niles was silent for a moment. Then he said, “It must have been how long I needed to grow.” And then, “Time does not have meaning the way you think, Ellie.” A beat. “That is a lesson that I have learned, and you will, too.”

Three years, Ellie thought, suddenly. An old complaint, though the time frame changed: when she had been new, she had thought to herself in months, not years. What had she thought with Keith Smithson, as he argued with the red-haired girl about the end of the world—hadn’t she thought how strange it would be to live to the end of the universe?

Yet it had come, and she existed beyond it.

She would live past the next universe, too. And the next.

Isn’t that what so much of this was about? She wondered. Eternal life.

“Don’t people worry that existing forever will be boring?” she asked.

Niles shrugged. “Boredom is merely a negative feedback response to tell someone that he is not being productive. When you work, you produce, and have no boredom; you get tired, and rest. But rest too long, boredom sets in, as a signal that you should work.”

“Work?” Ellie echoed, and for the first time saw how the Reaper’s Commission might not be a curse, after all. She would always have some kind of work.

“Everyone works,” said Niles. “I don’t know what they do, but even the souls in Heaven work. Somehow, at something. I suspect they work even harder than us. But that is only because one finds fulfillment through work—and so they, living in a better paradise, work more.”

Ellie surmised, “And rest more.”

“Yes, probably,” said Niles. “Though I am able to report I am further along than I was, when I just started. You were sixteen when you died—and three years as a reaper makes you nineteen. That is hardly anything. When one begins to lose count of one’s years, only then does living in the present truly become possible. Every moment becomes enjoyable.”

“So what you said before…” Ellie trailed off, remembering how she had first tried to ask Niles for help, for him to fight to stop the universe from ending. “Death… gets better?”

“Oh, yes,” said Niles. “Everything gets better with age.”

“But what is the end? What do we reach?”

“Ellie,” Niles chided, and Ellie realized the foolishness of the question.

And so they stood quietly in the dark for some time. She did not know how long. Ellie knew, on some level, that time perhaps was not passing at all. They were between universes—there was no time to move through. Outside of everything, they waited.

She said, at last, “I wish I could hear.”

Niles said, “I wish so, too.”

Twelve universes, she thought. Will it take as many for me? Or more?

And then Niles said, “One day, you will.”

He seemed to be speaking at much to himself as to her—a reassurance. Ellie realized then that what he had clung to, she would need to keep close as well: the knowledge that if he could hear now, one day so would she. A far off day that seemed like an eternity away.

“Your mentor,” she said, having never heard of this person, though she had surmised from early on that Niles had once had a mentor of his own. “Have I met him?”

“No,” said Niles. “She moved onward long ago.”

“How?” Ellie said, feeling all at once a panic rise. If Niles’s mentor had left somehow, perhaps entered some new realm of the afterlife, then one day Niles would leave her. But Niles again must have known what she was thinking, for he patted her arm. “Don’t worry. I myself still see her from time to time. She just does not appear to any of my own students.”

“You still see her?” Ellie said, as bewilderment set in—how could Niles see her, but Ellie had never? And an idea occurred to her. “Is she invisible—to us, like to living people?”

“Something like that,” said Niles. “I have only recently been able to meet her own mentor, myself. I see him far less than her. But he knows me and she knows you—and I will know your own students, when your own time comes, but they will not know me. Not at first.”

And a strange understanding swept over Ellie, then. “It’s like… we’re a family.” She felt Niles turn to her, as though he could see her face in the dark. She tried to explain. “You know… each generation, the older people know those before them, but the kids don’t have a clue. I don’t hardly remember my grandparents, but they knew a lot more about me than I know them.”

“Ellie,” Niles said, in a voice that seemed pleased—but also exasperated. As though he was surprised that she was only realizing this now. “All souls are part of the same family.”

The life beyond is more than the life before, Ellie thought. I think I learned that lesson just now, just as the stars fell, but knowing isn’t the same as understanding. I know it, but I don’t understand the specifics yet. Now I can see: who I was before, that was only the seed. It needed to die to produce the real me… but I am more than that little life.

And all at once she realized that all the things she would have used to define herself were temporary and broken—that she liked a particular kind of music, or had a favorite film, or was overjoyed when she got a rare chance to eat pizza. Even things that were more important and which she had once thought fundamental were just small sparks in the darkness of eternity: that she was Robbie’s older sister, that her parents had been two specific people, that they had quarreled. And beyond that—that, for example, she had been American. That she had been born on Earth. That she spoke English or wore a particular kind of clothes…

Earth is gone, Ellie felt the words sharpen in her. There are no more Rocky Mountains. There will be other mountains… and in the dark, she glanced at Niles.

“Who were you, before?” she asked.

Niles was silent for a long time. She would have thought that she had offended him, except even now, unable to see his beaten and bruised face, she knew that was impossible.

“A man who spoke a language you have never heard,” said Niles, at last. “I will tell you, someday. But the story would sound strange now. You do not have another world to compare to your own, to put my younger self into context. It would be like trying to explain the colors to someone who has only ever seen black night. The rainbow just sounds like nonsense—”

Niles quieted abruptly. Ellie waited, ears straining, because she understood on some level that he was hearing something beyond herself. The centuries seemed so little, and yet so long, then. Whole universes to gain a small bit of sound. Yet as she sat and listened to the silence in the dark, she knew—all this would be worth it, just to hear what he had just heard.

“They are ready to join in,” said Niles, and Ellie did not dare ask who.

She did not need to—for in the darkness came a small swell of voices, soft and voweled, with no consonants, no words. Just the slowly growing note of humanity—of people, Ellie realized, of the saved in Heaven. They had listened to their Creator sing and were responding in kind. Perhaps God was singing with them, too, unheard by her own deafened ears.

Yet she could still hear them. Still, human to human, they were heard.

In the far distance, beyond where her vision blurred to mere impression, was a light.

Ellie could feel the pupils in her eyes contract to pinpricks, the wince of her own reaction muted in favor of leaning forward, leaning into the light, like a flower orienting to the sun.

Let there be light, she thought.

And what followed moved swiftly, assuredly, like the layers of imagination drifting through the eddies of a dream, breathing her from the sleep of death back to life. Something flung past them—air, she realized, and her lungs expanded, burning clear and clean.

Underfoot, something solid. She looked down and saw nothing, but could nonetheless feel a surface. Then something like a cloth without friction swept under her, covering the frame of the earth. The foundations of the new world, she realized. She was standing on a layer of water no thicker than an inch, and her feet puckered but did not break the surface.

Under that like a whale rising from the depths came a shadow that billowed up, pushing the water away until Ellie was standing on dry land. But it did not stop. Onward hurtled the new stone—granite, she could tell, from the little flecks of multicolor spewed throughout. Beside her Niles was rising on the same peak—they were standing on a birthing mountain.

Around them, the other reapers were on their own hills and dips and rises, all hefted up into the air. Still, above and around and beyond—the souls of Heaven sang.

At first Ellie thought the mountain would be tall—but still it rose.

The sky seemed to expand over them. They raised above the point where she could see her own shadow on the ocean below—there was such an expanse between her now and before that Ellie felt like she was flying. Like she and Niles and the mountain would rise to the chorus singing above them, as if earth was no different from a cloud in the sky.

She had to look across the horizon, to where there were other islands growing, and into the distance—there were dark pyramid structures rising from the water, and it took her several moments to realize that she was looking at land. Floating land in the sky—like birds. Her own mountain was not just rising bigger and higher—she felt like she was flying because she was. It was a floating mountain. The laws of physics did not seem to be the same in this world.

Beside her, Niles’s bruised face was smiling.

Ellie did not ask how it was that stone and dirt could soar through the air—she knew, all at once, that there was some kind of explanation, and that the people of this world, whoever they would be, would one day find out the reasons why and have all the accompanying accroutrements—maps and charts and mathematics and analogies to those who did not understand the raw numbers. These people would not think the flying lands unusual. They would know nothing different. And if she told them of her own world, how solid it had been on the ground, maybe they would not believe her. They would think her spinning fantasies.

Clouds swirled into existence overhead—and their mountain rose to meet them. Ellie felt the dampness thread through her clothes, pressing them to her skin. The dew was cool against the wounds on her throat. Still rising. Cresting over the white. They were above and beyond the clouds, now. The unseen voices of Heaven pealed like clear bells—

Small sprigs of grey and blue-green sprouted under her feet, looking like the soil had gone mouldy, but Ellie soon saw that this was the barest beginnings of grass.

They were so high that the horizon looked like the mouth of a tunnel, with the rays of the approaching sun yet deep unseen in the throat. Ellie peered out onto the land, the sky lightening rapidly before her. The first day.

“There will be people, right?” she asked.

“Of course,” said Niles.

“But… flying land,” Ellie said. “They’re not going to be birds or something?”

“No,” said Niles. “You are thinking like your original world; that theory that if you just re-wound everything and replayed it all, somehow you would end up with dinosaur-men or something equally different. Sometimes it takes different ways to get there, but they will be people. Always are. Just like me and you—and you said the truth yourself, just moments ago.”

“The truth?” Ellie said, but trailed off, trying to recall. Then understanding as she whispered, “That we are a family.” For she saw dimly within herself that whoever walked upon this world would be brothers and sisters of their own kind, for they were all made by the same Creator. There would be people here to reap, the Commission was not over:

Ellie Sullivan, you are sentenced

to the commission of a reaper of souls.

You are to retrieve the immortal from the mortal,

consign the damned to Hell,

bring the saved to the gate of Heaven,

and comfort the dead.

This is an eternal sentence,

without pardon and without parole,

and worked diligently will be the sanctification of your soul.

“To comfort the dead,” she whispered to herself, and realized that would be her goal from now on—for surely the people here would be the same as she had been, and on some level still was, distracted by the momentary life in such a way that it excluded eternity, and thus excluded true enjoyment of the individual moment. She would be their reaper. And she would do her best. She would put up with their whining and crying. She would try to explain. Probably would fail—but as she glanced at Niles, recalling all he had tried to teach her, there was also acceptance in that thought. If Niles of all people had struggled with her, she could struggle for them.

Niles glanced down at her, the smile wide on his face. There was blood threaded through his teeth, and Ellie winced, but smiled back. He turned from her to look at the horizon, and Ellie gazed down at the grass, which had finally decided to raise itself to shin-height, and which was a curiously beautiful blue-green color with wide blades almost like leaves. There was no wind—a mercy, this far up, and Ellie dimly understood why, because winds would have been a torment to whoever would live up here, and the world was designed for their thriving, striving, and awe.

The song continued—Soon, Ellie thought. Soon they will be made. Probably animals first. Fish and birds, then mammals. If there are mammals. They will be people but nobody said that there had to be ordinary things like ants and deer and leopards. I can’t wait to meet them.

And Ellie looked up to see the first sunrise of a new world.