“What you need to do is look her in the eye. It will be easier if she's tired.”

The tale she would spin, the big lie she would tell, and Ant would let her leave like nothing was wrong. No worries, no questions, no insisting that she was crazy.

Could it be that easy?

“It is and that’s why it's so frightening to them. There are rituals tied to the practice, but I found them unnecessary. They’re gatekeeping with obscene acts that turn away all but the most desperate and perhaps they believe it's necessary now, as well. The real trouble isn’t attempting to get into a person’s mind, it’s the possibility of encountering someone with a strong will. Strong enough to notice what you’re doing and fight. Autumn here isn’t prepared for this intrusion on any level. She doesn’t even know it’s possible.”

“I think I’ve seen shows about the government doing things like this. The CIA.”

“No doubt they dabble. Mind control is a universal pursuit, I’m sure.”

“Isn’t that what propaganda is for? Brainwashing.”

“Yes. Torture can be used for this, too, but with magic, it isn’t necessary. As I’ve said, Society could be far advanced if they would unshackle themselves.”

Well, Luna didn’t care about that. They could live in the Dark Ages if they wanted to and it might make things easier for her if they did. She could live on both sides. Fast food and nuclear weapons in one hand, a wand in the other. Not that she needed a stupid stick.

When Ant was wavering on the border of dreams and reality she struck.

“It’s fine for Luna to go away when she wants to. It’s something I don’t talk about. It’s something I don’t worry about. Whether Luna is here or away, everything is fine. When Luna is away-” She stopped.

“Say it! Don’t stop now or you’ll ruin the spell!”

She took a breath and finished, “When Luna is away it’s like she was never here to begin with. When she returns it’s like she never left.”

There was light in Ant’s eyes, but not of awareness, and then she fell asleep.

“Now, Georgia.”

Her cousin had to be woken because she was already deep sleeping. Once she again hovered between consciousness and dreams, Luna said, “Whether Luna is here or not doesn’t matter. When she is away I don’t talk about it. When she is away I don’t think about it. When Luna is away it’s like she was never here. When she returns it’s like she never left.”

Originally, she thought it would have to rhyme and that she could use the same spell on both of them, but Donner intervened. It needed to be simplified for Georgia and a bit more in-depth for Ant and the results would be slightly different. There was no expectation of needing permission from her cousin to leave, for example, but there was from Ant and that needed to be overwritten.

As Ant’s eyes glowed, so did Georgia’s, and the spells were complete. Whenever she left they would be none the wiser.

It made life easy for her, but it still felt strange.

“But not repulsive,” Donner noted as she trudged to the tree of death. “Which goes to show that you aren’t normal. Anyone else would have thrown up after all that.”

“Did you?”

He was quiet for a while. “No, as I think of it. I suppose I was fine with it.”

“Why?”

“Because I am also not normal, though in a different way than you.”

She knew that already. Normal people didn’t want to live forever and take over the world. They also didn’t instruct children to tip over bookcases on other children. She realized that now. At the time she was following the lead of the adult in the situation, but looking back she could see it was far from a socially acceptable relationship. Still, she didn’t mind it, and that made her wonder how wrong she was when compared to someone considered normal.

Really super wrong.

“Knowing the end of everything is inevitable does things to a person, I guess,” she said as she prepared to hang. “How many times have I done this?”

“I have no idea nor am I interested in counting it up.”

Snowman would know if she asked him, but that felt like a morbid question and she decided not to.

“Snowman!” She’d resolved that no matter how old she was, she was going to run to meet him. He was the person who hugged her besides Ant and that was going to be awkward forever. Not that Ant thought so, but she did. It didn’t feel right somehow. Hugs from Snowman, though, were acceptable.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Definitely not from Donner. He would never try, but if he did she’d kill him.

“Well, I did the thing.”

During her last visit, she told him all about the plan. Her reservations and why she was going to do it regardless. He wasn’t supportive of the whole thing, but he didn’t try to talk her out of it either. Rather, he acknowledged that morality was different for people like them; she still didn’t understand that. Neither he or Donner would explain though and she’d stopped asking because did it matter?

“And what is the result?”

“I don’t know yet. Their eyes glowed blueish and Donner says that means it worked. I guess I won’t know until I leave for a day or something.”

“And if you want to know what happens when you're gone,” Donner interjected, “you’ll have to set up a camera to record. Don't go asking them about their days or anything like that.”

Lately, he’d been hanging around instead of striding into the fog of wherever this was. Luna suspected he was doing more than making conversation. Snowman wasn’t friendly with him, but she didn’t mind him being there and Snowman went along with what she wanted.

She knew Donner suspected him of lying or, at the least, being mistaken. He didn’t believe this was a place for the dead to pass through and she did wonder about it herself. She’d never seen anyone walking along the bridge and she asked Snowman every time she came if he saw anyone, but his single answer was, “Not yet.”

“Are you sure this is where the dead come?” she asked yet again. “I don’t know if that’s right. People are dying all the time, shouldn’t at least one have come through by now?”

The white-haired man looked to the entrance. Or, what they assumed to be the entrance. It was the side Donner came through when he first arrived. He wasn’t sure where Luna entered from. Or himself. “I truly believe it is,” he said. “However, I am aware that I could be wrong.”

“So, we have no idea?”

“I suppose you could say that.”

While she was away, living a life he could hardly fathom with Donner a fixture in her mind, he considered the state of the world he inhabited. He felt sure of its purpose, of its use by the dead to bring them to another life, to rest eternally. Or not. Whatever their individual destiny, he knew this was their passing point. This was where they walked to forget.

Yet, he’d seen not a soul. Luna’s age change proved time to pass, which was hard to comprehend here as it was unchanging, and he knew someone, anyone, should have come through. As he’d explained to her at the outset, the dead would walk and they would not see and they would continue until they reached their next destination.

So where were they?

On top of that, when Luna wasn’t here, he got the feeling that other things were happening. Things he couldn’t remember once she and Donner arrived. The days he spent alone were missing from his memory and the blank was becoming unbearable. He didn’t want Luna to notice, but he was sure Donner had.

What they were, they did not know, and he now questioned his own identity because too many things refused to come together.

Was he who he thought he was?

Did he come from the world he believed he did?

He was no longer sure of anything.

“Somethings happening,” Donner said as he grabbed Luna by the arm and hauled her backward, away from Snowman.

The light, the glittering, the manifesting of something in his hand. First a golden chain, loops that flowed unnaturally to hold an hourglass of the same gold. White sand fell steadily to pool in the transparent enclosure. In the other hand, he now held a scythe of full silver.

The man, still of snow, looked at them and smiled a bitter smile. “As I thought at the start, I cannot go with you all the way. Now here they come, the dead,” he turned to look at the entrance. “On their way once more.”

“Pink!” Luna shouted, breaking away from Donner’s hold to jump around her mother who didn't waver on her journey. She didn’t appear to hear or see anything around her, not Luna, not the other people, and neither, eventually, did Ungle.

It was gloomy, but she didn’t cry. It would have been sadder to never see them again. Instead, she knew they were walking on toward whatever came next and she didn’t plan to stay and watch them go, but she was glad to see them even for a few minutes.

There were bigger questions that needed answers now.

“Who the hell are you?!”

A guy with an hourglass and a scythe.

“Father Time,” Donner said, through clenched teeth. He stood near the exit, ready to make a run for it. “One of the gods of antiquity. Thought either myth or uninvolved by most people, whether part of Society or not. Well, I suppose this is to our advantage. We know something about the world that I doubt anyone else does.”

“A god?” She looked at him, but he still appeared to be Snowman. With accessories. “Really?”

“It is as he says.” His demeanor was all different, she noted, though he looked basically the same. He held himself taller, straighter, and she could no longer imagine him sitting beside the foggy road, waiting for her to come back and visit.

“Well, what were you doing pretending to be Snowman?!” she shouted as she stamped her foot. This was a betrayal of the highest order.

He, however, was undisturbed. “The same thing you are doing pretending to be Luna,” he turned to Donner, “and that you are doing pretending to be Helios. For a while, I was someone else.”

She scratched her head. “Who’s Helios?”

“Your companion.”

“Dammit,” Donner seethed.

“That’s your name? Your name is sun? And I’m the moon! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Is this the time for that conversation? It doesn’t matter. The real issue is that we’ve been in contact with a fucking god!”

She thought he was right about that, but she wasn’t going to let this slide. She’d find out more later. “Yeah, he’s right!” she whirled around to face the so-called Father Time again. “That doesn’t make any sense. If you’re a god, you can’t pretend to be something else. Or maybe you could because you’re a god? I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound right! And what do you mean I’m pretending? I am not! I wouldn’t pretend my mother died in a fire or that my uncle got shot or that some guy I don’t even know got his soul stuck in my head!”

“You would,” he said dispassionately, “and you are. You are more successful than I, which we already supposed would be the case. There is no harm in its continuation. Go, then, Luna, and play your game to the end.”

She woke suddenly on the forest floor.

The rope was broken and lay on the ground beside her.