WHAT I REAP

 

     “Take courage,” I told the young human next to me. “They can smell fear.”  I readjusted my grip on my scythe, wiping a sweaty palm on my Reaper’s cloak. 

     As I looked back, the boy’s terrified face shone white in the gathering darkness.  “How can they smell if they don’t have faces?”

     I swallowed and turned back ahead without answering, scanning the plains below for movement. The Shadowkin shouldn’t be able to eat without faces, either, but that didn’t stop them from devouring every soul they could find. 

     The wind whipped at us from the north, cutting through my cloak. If it was cold for me, the fragile humans huddled behind me on the rocky crag must be frozen through. I hadn’t given them much time to collect their weapons and shoes after awakening them, and one man hadn’t even had the foresight to put on his winter furs.

     I didn’t regret routing them out of their beds, however. Better cold than dead. 

     As a Reaper, I’d spent my seventeen years telling humans just the opposite: Nothing to fear in death. It’s just as much a beginning as it is an ending. But I’d seen the empty husks of humans and Reapers alike left behind by these demons. They didn’t just kill the body, they consumed the soul. Just thinking about it made me tremble.

     A flicker of movement in the plains below caught my eye, a small figure sprinting through the growing shadows. It was hard to see in the fading light, but it didn’t look like the smoky, shapeless vapor of the Shadowkin. This runner was solid, all right, and as he began climbing up the hill, I saw a long grey cloak billowing behind him. He was a Reaper.

     He almost reached us before I recognized him. It was Pat, seven years old, his black eyes wild. His curly hair was damp with sweat.

     “Ewan,” he gasped as he reached me, falling to his knees. “You’re still alive.”

     A large bearded man behind me made a gesture to ward off spirits. “And why should that surprise you? What’s coming for us, boy?”

     Pat shook his head, unable to speak.

     Pat was young enough that he still couldn’t travel between the spirit world and this one without aid. He must have run the whole way from the battlefield. 

     “How fares the battle?” I asked. “Do they need me? Marcus told me to hide the humans, but if we’re losing I’d be more useful to them there.”

     Pat made as though to start speaking, but as soon as he opened his mouth he was sick all over the rocks before him. 

     I jumped back in surprise. Even in our earthly forms, Reapers didn’t get ill. Our mortal bodies breathed and sweated and bled, but we weren’t susceptible to illness or disease. Not diseases of the body, at least.

     One of the human women knelt down next to Pat and laid a motherly arm around his shoulder. With her other arm, she used the corner of her shawl to wipe the sick off of his face.

     These humans. Trapped by sentiment and compassion.

     It was my favorite thing about them.

     I gingerly made my way toward Pat, avoiding the soiled stones. I knelt down next to him.

     “Pat?” I inquired again, my voice softer this time. “How fares the battle?”

     This time he managed to speak, though his voice trembled and his face was white as bone. “It wasn’t a battle,” he croaked out. “It was a massacre.”

​

     They’re all dead. 

     The Reapers, the great guides of humans for ages, all dead in a single hour. No wonder Pat had lost the contents of his stomach.

     It had taken nearly ten minutes to draw the devastating story out of him, piece by piece. They’d sent me off to gather the villagers, hide them in the hills. Marcus, the Eldest, had told youngling Pat to hide in the trees, and then gathered the rest of the Reapers to face off against the mysterious foe. No one knew where the Shadowkin had come from, and few had even seen them. Most who had the opportunity to witness their rippling, gaseous skin didn’t live long enough to speak of it. 

     The battle had taken place on the Tarkin Plain, and I could picture the other Reapers there as clearly as if I’d seen the gathering myself: tall, grim figures in dark robes and uncovered heads, scythes clutched in their long, bony fingers.

     The only sound that pierced the night was a low battle horn. Other than its eerie call, the approaching army made no noise. 

     The Shadowkin hadn’t marched onto the field. According to Pat, they didn’t even look like they had legs. They’d poured onto the field like a gas cloud, their black bodies blending together into one encroaching wave.

     One of the humans had broken into sobs at that point in Pat's story, and the gentle mother who’d comforted Pat pulled the younger humans away, out of earshot.

     “As they approached our people,” Pat said, his high voice breaking on the words, “their bodies started to ripple with flame. The wave of them was like an ocean of fire, sweeping across the plain. And once they’d passed our line, they sizzled into nothing, receding back like an ebbing tide. The bodies of the Reapers weren’t burnt. They looked intact, just…” he lost himself in a sob.

     “Empty,” I finished for him. 

     He nodded his head, weeping. 

     “Those creatures ripped the souls right out of them,” one of the humans muttered in a dark voice.

     I looked behind me at the terrified crowd. They were all looking to me, waiting for a response to Pat’s gruesome tale. The Reapers had always been their guide, and Pat and I were the only ones left.

     It was just the two of us, now, the two youngest Reapers against the entire Shadowkin race. Another Reaper wouldn’t be born for another three years, and that was only if either Pat or I were still alive to greet him.

     It seemed unlikely, at this point.

     Pat hadn’t even been to a Reaping. He’d barely started to learn the spirit world, and now even if we did survive, there’d be no one to teach him. No one but me.

     “We’d be better off dying, wouldn’t we, Reaper?” said one human, tall and thin like a piece of stretched canvas. “If we all killed each other, at least we’d keep our souls.”

     “Oh hush, Llewyn,” a woman clucked, glancing back at the children, still out of earshot. “We aren’t that desperate yet, are we?” 

     They all looked back at me, waiting for my answer.

     The Reapers’ role was to guide humans, to protect them. I couldn’t be the means of their extinction. “We aren’t that desperate yet.” 

     It was almost a lie, but I savored it on my tongue like the richest of truths. 

     One boy, around my age, hugged his knees with shaking arms. “I don’t want to die.” His hollow voice matched the emptiness in his eyes. 

     I hooked my scythe onto the back of my robe and knelt down before him. “Death is a beautiful thing,” I said. “Someday you’ll see. But not today. Not tonight.”

     He shook his head, deaf to my words. I wished I could show him. There was a softness to death that always surprised me. While the surface of it was violent, heartbreaking, and cruel, the underside of loss was a shining river. It wound silver and silent as it drifted to the Valleys of Rest.

     My first Reaping, I’d been only a few months older than Pat, still slipping and sliding between this life and the spirit world like a fawn on ice. I’d needed Marcus’s help to use my scythe to travel there, to plant my feet on the misty shores of the afterlife. 

     I hadn’t liked the spirit world at first. The air was thick and warm, rich with power, but I missed our village, the bright sun and crisp, cool air. 

     Then they’d come.

     It was a fire in one of the homes, a whole family. They were frightened of us at first. We’d guided them through their lives, lived by their side, but in death we were made strange to them. Their youngest, a girl, hid behind her mother’s skirts. Crippled from birth, the girl had the use of only one leg. By the time she reached the end of the river, she would be able to dance.

     “There should be a boat coming soon,” I’d told them, trying to sound more confident than I was. “And then I’ll ferry you to your rest.” I looked up to Marcus for approval, and he gave me a solemn nod.

     It might have been my age, the same as their middle child, or perhaps the hope I promised, but the father softened at my words. He gave me the smallest glimmer of a smile, and from then on, I’d reveled in my sacred calling. The Reapers were a great race, the ancient guardians of the eternal gateway. We were lights, leading humans to their final, glorious destiny.

     Until the Shadowkin came, and the lights went out, one by one, on the Tarkin Plains.

​

     For the next few hours, we waited in silence. The air grew colder, our spirits dimmer. 

     Finally, I couldn’t stand the helpless waiting any longer. “It seems the shadow beasts are sated for tonight. We should return to the village to warm up and get some sleep. Tomorrow we will prepare.” 

     “Do you think it’s safe?” Pat asked. 

     “I’ll keep you safe,” I said. Surveying the clumps of frozen villagers, I muttered, “I’ll keep them all safe.”

     We trekked back to the village in silence. The cottages loomed in the darkness as we approached, but none of the humans split off to find their own warm beds. No one wanted to leave the group tonight.    

     Without a single word to signal their consensus, they crept toward the village hall together. 

     The hall had stood for generations, hewn from timbers and carved by artisans of centuries past. In the middle of the hall was a large hearth for roasting animals and warming frozen fingers. A few of the men stuffed strips of fabric under the door and covered the windows before we lit the fire. 

     There were no cots, but it was a foolish notion to think anyone was going to sleep tonight. A few of the youngest babes curled up on their mother’s cloaks in the corner, but even the children Pat’s age huddled with the rest of the village around the fire.

     The flame chased the shadows into the corners of the room, up to the wooden rafters, but we all knew they were still there.

     “We should signal Shenoa,” one human man said. “Seek their help.” He had on a fine fur cloak that made me think he was the leader of the group. It was an odd notion to me, putting one man in charge. We Reapers had the Eldest, of course, but he wasn’t a leader, just a guide. And he was only the Eldest for his ten years, before he faded and a new Reaper came to be. 

     “The Shadowkin struck Shenoa four nights past,” I said. “They took Brightderry last week, too.” 

     A few of us Reapers had crossed over, just to be sure they weren’t there on the banks of the river, shivering with fear in the humid air. It should have been a crowd waiting for us, over a hundred souls in those two villages alone. But the riverbank was empty, not a soul in sight.

     Marcus had fallen to his knees and wept like a human.

     The villagers bowed their heads at my words, a few of them making gestures to keep demons away. 

     “But then, who is left?” a young pregnant woman asked. 

     No one but you. I didn’t say it out loud. I didn’t have to.

     “We’ll hide, then,” said the village leader. “They can’t kill us if they can’t find us. The young Reaper survived the battle by staying out of view.” He gestured at Pat.

     The villagers erupted at his words.

     “We’re no cowards!”

     “What kind of life would that be?”

     “I’ll die fighting, not quivering in some hole in the ground!”

     They were so spirited, these humans, and so foolish. What hope did they have against darkness itself? How could they hope to quench an insatiable flame that didn’t make light, but stole it? 

     And then, of course, came the words I dreaded most: “What do you think we should do, Reaper?”

     I was about to answer when a noise sounded from outside, a low horn calling mournfully across the hills. It was unearthly, prickling at the part of my soul tethered to the other side. No human instrument made that sound.

     Next to me, Pat stiffened. The humans froze in fear. 

     “It’s their battle horn, isn’t it?” I asked Pat. 

     He nodded, clenching and unclenching his fists. “They’re coming,” he whispered. 

     The village leader looked up at me. His face shimmered in the heat of the fire. “We’re desperate enough now, aren’t we?”

     I nodded. “Yes. We’re desperate enough.”

​

     The hall was quiet, the fire a smouldering heap. Around me, slumped figures littered the stone floor. I twisted my scythe in my hands, hoping I’d made the right choice.

     Pat, huddled next to me, winced as the horn sounded again. He could feel it too, the way that sound ground against the Afterlife like a blade. 

     “What do we do now?” he asked.

     “We make our stand.”

     He shuddered. “But they’ll kill us. Why don’t we hide on the other side? Maybe they’ll leave when there are no more souls to eat.”

     Because I’m a fool, I thought, but aloud I said, “Because I think I have a way to stop them.” 

     I’d been thinking about it since we’d heard their battle horn. They were silent, these creatures, except for that harrowing sound. I’d assumed during Pat’s tale of the massacre that the sound was made by an instrument like the humans’, made from wood or animal horn. But now that I’d heard it and felt how it vibrated with the other side, I realized my mistake. 

     I quickly told Pat my plan, divulging what I now suspected about the Shadowkin, and what I planned to do about it. 

     He blanched at my words.“You’re the only one left, besides me. I can’t lose you.”

     I gestured to the villagers around us. “They’re waiting by the river. They’ll need you.”

     He pulled his scythe from his back, shaking his head back and forth. “I can’t cross over on my own. It has to be you.”

     Maybe the humans weren’t the only ones trapped by sentimentality. I put a hand on Pat’s shoulder. “You’ll learn to cross to the Spirit World. You must. You are the last of us.” 

     The noise sounded again.

     They were here.

     Without another word, we left the hall. It was time to face the shadows.

     Walking through the village streets, empty and dark, I finally understood what humans meant when they described a broken heart. I didn’t have a heart, but remembering the sounds of laughter and life that used to belong here, something inside of me splintered. Like a water wheel with too many missing pieces, I couldn’t turn anymore. I was useless. 

     We crested the hill on the outskirts of the village, and there they were on the plain below, waiting. I stepped in front of Pat.

     I hadn’t seen them before in person, and I understood why Pat had so much trouble trying to describe them to me. It was like looking at a river of writhing shadows. Though the line held steady, there was constant movement among the ranks. Their vaporous bodies curled and undulated like billows of smoke. I could barely discern individual creatures, and if they had a defined shape, it was hidden by the indistinct cloud around them. 

     I sincerely hoped my suspicions were right, and they didn’t. 

     Letting out a shaky breath, I raised my scythe.

     I’d assumed they had bodies, to wreak the havoc they had. We all had. Creatures covered in mist and shadow, but not made of it. A creature who blew a horn had to have a corporeal form, after all. 

     But now that I’d heard the sound, I didn’t think they’d been blowing a horn at all. That was the reason they were so silent marching, the reason they made no other sound. 

     They didn’t have bodies.

     This whole time, I’d thought they’d been trying to consume souls. But it wasn’t the souls they wanted. It was the bodies that held them.

     With as much force as I could, I threw my scythe to the side. It flew far out of my reach. 

     “Shadowkin!” I cried. They couldn’t make noise, but it seemed they could hear it. At my call, the mass of shadows crested like an ocean wave. 

     “Be ready,” I murmured to Pat behind me. I could hear him pulling his scythe from the back of his robe. 

     I raised my voice to address the Shadowkin. “You’ve slain Reaper and human alike, but to no avail. You can’t take their bodies, can you? You need them to let you in, and that’s something no one has ever done. No one ever will.”

     I could feel their anger roiling on the plain like the vapor that made their form. 

     “How many worlds have you destroyed on your quest for a form?” 

     The horn sounded once more, the only answer they could give. 

     “I’ll make a deal with you, Shadowkin. Spare the boy, and I’ll give you what you want. You don’t have to search for a body anymore.” I took a single step forward. “You can take mine.”

     At my words, the darkness surged forward, racing toward me. I closed my eyes, waiting to be consumed, but suddenly I felt the rough wood of a scythe handle shoved into my hands. When I opened my eyes, Pat was standing in front of me with his back to the swelling Shadowkin. It was his scythe in my hands, a foot shorter than the one I’d thrown away.

     “No!” I cried, just as they reached him.

     His eyes widened, and he gasped out, “Save them.” 

     The Shadowkin poured into his tiny body, turning it to shadow. Dark rivulets snaked across his parchment-white skin, and his eyes rolled back in his head. I watched in horror as they consumed him, finally claiming flesh and blood for their very own.

     As soon as the last whisp of shadow disappeared from the air, I plunged my scythe into Pat’s heart. 

     The Shadowkin made their first sound ever, a broken scream from Pat’s throat that ripped right through me. I fell to my knees, dropping my scythe into the tall grass.

     With the haunting scream still echoing through the air, Pat’s body slumped to the ground and grew still.

     I pulled his head onto my lap. His sightless black eyes reflected the nighttime stars. Rocking back and forth, I cradled his empty body in my hands. 

     And for the first time in my life, I wept.

​

     They were waiting at the river.

     My humans, my fragile, sentimental humans. As I planted my feet on the shores of the spirit world, they looked up from their tense huddle and shouted in relief.

     There were no Shadowkin in sight. I didn’t know where they went when they died, if they went anywhere, but it wasn’t here.

     The village leader rushed up to me, a young boy balanced on his hip. “Reaper! We thought you were going to face the Shadowkin. Did you flee them?”

     I shook my head. “The demons are gone.”

     A shout went up through the assembly, hugs and tears and prayers. “They’re really dead?” asked a young girl. “The monsters are gone?”

     I nodded.

     “We thought they’d kill you both, and we’d be trapped on this shore forever,” the leader said. 

It wouldn’t have been forever. Living souls weren’t meant for the spirit world. They were too imperfect, too raw. Without a Reaper to guide them back, they would have eventually faded away, like the green from a summer leaf. Not as violent as the Shadowkin, but just as final. 

     I hadn’t told the humans that, when I’d told them my desperate plan.

     To my knowledge, no Reaper had ever brought humans that were still alive to the spirit world and successfully returned them home. When I’d carried the villagers to the other side, I’d barely allowed myself to hope. 

     But I’d been desperate enough.

     The village leader looked around me, realizing for the first time Pat wasn’t there. “And what of the young one?”

     “He defeated them,” I said, my voice tight. “But at great cost. Only I remain.”

     The villagers, their joy muted, bowed their heads. The village leader put a hand on my shoulder. The toddler in his arms wrapped his arms around the man and looked up at me.

     I placed a hand on the boy’s head, ruffling his hair. I loved them, these silly creatures. I always had. It had never occurred to me that they loved me, too.

     I would meet with each of them again on this riverbank, at the right time, and I would guide them to a new home. But not today. The silent village needed voices to fill it again.

     With a gentle sweep of my scythe, I brought my humans home.