It was a woman this time. It hadn’t been a car accident. She hadn’t drowned or fallen off her balcony. She had misplaced her foot and hit her head as she fell. A simple death that reminded me of how fragile our bodies were. Had been in my case.

A little fall and you were dead.

She had understood it the moment she saw Clover, accepted it without hesitation. It had barely taken a minute before he reaped her soul. Not a word had been said between them. I cannot understand how she was okay with dying so suddenly from something so normal that shouldn’t be dangerous. And least of all fatal. She had accepted it without questions, hadn’t demanded to know who we were or what would happen.

“What is it?” Clover asks when he transports some of the soul-dust to my stone.

As always the blue gleaming dust dances between itself.

“She accepted it without hesitating,” I say, accepting the stone once he’s done, “she didn’t say a word.

“They do that sometimes. They are always the easiest ones to handle,” he answers indifferently. “But that’s not what I meant.”

He figured it out. I had a hard time letting go of it after what Sun and Rampion had said. I overthink everything Clover says or does. It was only a question of when he’d notice.

“Out with it,” he says and doesn’t sound as indifferent anymore.

He crosses his arms and looks at me tensely.

I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to bring up the well, it might not even mean anything. Neither can I bring up what Artemis and Rampion said.

“How are you, really?” is all I can muster.

Clover hadn’t expected that question. I hardly expected myself to ask him such a thing.

It takes some time before he finds the words to answer, “I’m okay.”

It sounds unnatural when he says it.

“Okay... you’re okay?” I repeat like it would make more sense when I say it.

“Yes,” He frowns. “Is this what you’ve been worried about?”

We walk up the path in the forest even though it won’t lead us anywhere.

“Yes, I just think you’ve acted strangely.”

I bite my cheek. That was the wrong thing to say.

“Frankly, I don’t think you know me well enough to know that.”

He was right. Had Artemis not said anything I wouldn’t even have noticed it. It feels like I’m walking on thin ice. He must know that I know more than what I say.

“True,” I say

I want to add that Artemis knows him well enough to realize that something is wrong. But the chance of him pulling away from her is too big.

We continue up the path that leads us further into the woods and away from the body whose soul we just reaped.

We have one contract left. Meeri Heikkinen was the name written on the black stone. It would take us straight to Finland, and it would be the closest I had been to Sweden since I died. However, the cause of death left a deep fear in my stomach. I wanted to ask Clover to handle it himself. She would be suffocating from the smoke of the fire that set her house a flame. When I was alive I had thought that it sounded like one of the worst ways of dying. Now I had to stand eye to eye with it.

After two weeks I’ve gotten more used to seeing death. I’m still unsure and it feels heavy whenever I look at the poor souls we reap. Those who cry and plead, those who are angry and those who have nothing to say. I suffer with them, yet I’m also jealous. They get that eternal rest that I’ve noticed I pine for. They get an ending. To keep on living but not living is painful in a way I wouldn’t realize before. I avoid showing it the best I can. It’s like keeping your head above water and it gets harder the longer I’m here.

I stop once we reach the end of the hill. The dark forest looks real. I’ve noticed that the world I live in now looks like a lie. All that beauty I first saw when I came to the Eleven, becomes paler the longer I’m there. I can barely wait until the apprenticeship is over so I can leave and see something else but moon-trees and star-grass.

I understand why I’ve walked without a destination. It’s an attempt to cling to this place and remember how it looked like. I don’t want to go back.

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Clover stands next to me. I guess he understands why I’m just walking. Eventually he’ll tell me we’ll have to move on to the next place.

I make myself ready to say what has been floating around in my thoughts for a while now. “Do you remember how the world looked like when you were alive?”

He doesn’t move. “No. I don’t remember anything from when I lived.”

“But?” I ask when it sounds like he wants to continue that thought.

“I remember my visits to the living world after I died. How much difference it’s between then and now. I guess my first reaping contracts with the Raven was in the same world I once lived in.”

I study the moss that grows on top of the stones, the trees that only leaves small spaces between each other. It reminds me a little of the forest my dad and Emma visited when I was a child. I try to focus on all the details of the forest so I can use it once I get back to the Eleven. I wished I had learnt to paint, then I’d paint everything I see in the living world. It feels comforting knowing that Clover remembers the places he visited after his death. Then I might remember this forest, even if it has been a hundred years since I last saw it.

“How did you deal with it?”

“My death?”

I nod.

“I don’t remember whatever happened before, or the death itself. But it was hard to accept that I’d have to reap souls in hundreds of years. It didn’t help that the Raven’s area of death was murder.”

It feels like ashes fills my mouth once I understand the meaning behind Clover’s death. I had become his apprentice because he was the one that was supposed to reap my soul.

“You were murdered.”

“Yes. I don’t remember anything though.”

“I’m sorry.”

It’s not enough. Nothing I have to say can make this better.

He raises his eyebrows with an amused smile. “It’s fine. Like I said, I don’t remember anything. I was frustrated for a very long time. I wanted to know what I’d done - if I had even done anything - to deserve someone killing me. The Raven and other soul wanderers helped me. I was not the only one that had gone through an unfair and sudden death.”

He doesn’t smile anymore, but he doesn’t seem sad either. His face is calm and collected which makes me feel calmer.

“I think that’s why Blomst gave me the area for accidents, to make me able to go through the frustration and fear I felt. She couldn’t give me murder, that would have been too personal. But accidents are sudden and often violent - and I already understood such a death.”

I cannot understand how he was able to get through it by handling something that was all too familiar and personal. To me, it feels like it’d be more logical to handle deaths that weren’t sudden and violent.

“It took some time before I accepted it. First, I felt only anger over the injustice that had befallen me and the souls I had to reap. I hated Blomst for giving me accidents as an area of death. The Raven said something that made me think differently.”

“What did he say?”

“That she gave me that area for a reason. If I kept avoiding it, I would never get over the trauma of my own violent death. I called him a bootlicker, and that it was ironic coming from someone who gladly dipped their hands in buckets of blood for the guardians, to the point where it made them apathetic towards death,” he takes a deep breath. “Not my proudest moment. It was the first time I thought he looked hurt... And it was I that hurt him.”

He looks disgusted at the thought of what he had done.

“I hated myself for it, but I refused to apologize. Neither did I show that I regretted what I said. I knew he was right and it took some time before I’d admit it, even to myself. I would rather bury myself in sorrow and anger than do anything about it. I let it take over completely because it felt easier than to accept it for what it was.”

I swallow.

“Do you understand why I’m telling you this?”

He has seen through the false version of me that I’ve built up. The one that I want people to see. It’s easier to fake everything than accept the hardships and the emotions that are pushing against the surface.

I stare at the ground, on the green moss and the stones and the cones. I cannot look at Clover. I feel guilt and shame over how I feel. I hate that he saw everything I’m trying so hard to hide. He’d told me once that he played a role when he set out to reap my soul. He had seen through me then too, knew exactly what I needed. If he hadn’t noticed how I felt then he wouldn’t have seen these vile, self-pitying sides of myself.

“The cup will overflow eventually, and it will all spill out,” he says.

I avoid his burning gaze and hold my arms tightly around me. I cannot have this conversation now. He has no right to demand this out of me when Artemis tries to reach him and he refuses. Is this another game of his? To make me think of something else than whatever he’s hiding? If he’s even hiding something.

“We should go to the next place,” I say in the most stable voice I can muster.

He sighs. I hear him take the stone out of his pocket. Out of the corner of my eyes I see him extend his arm, the door folds out and he knocks a few times. I look at the gate when he opens it and goes through the whirling darkness. I stay, just for a few seconds, wondering if I should stay here until the door disappears. It’s a stupid and unrealistic wish, so I follow him.

It’s night on the other side and the area is lit up by the house coated in flames. It looks enraged, like it devours everything in its colors of orange and yellow. The windows look like fiery, burning eyes that stare right at us. A fire truck sprays water on the raging fire, and people outside are yelling. It sounds strange, I can hear it’s Finnish but as usual it sounds like we’re under water, and then there is something else that makes it sound even more foreign.

I don’t even dare to look at Clover, not after the conversation we just had. I don’t have much of a choice, I have to put it aside and focus on what we have in front of us. Which is easier said than done.

I don’t feel the heat of the wild flames when we pass through them. It feels like the ceiling - that is coal black and aglow - will fall down upon us. We continue up the stairs and into a room. Clover knows exactly where Meeri will be, like it’s written in his soul. How does it feel to be connected to those you’ll reap, knowing all their emotions and thoughts? I cannot feel what Clover does; I don’t have the same connection to his contracts.

It’s a bedroom. A woman sits on the floor next to a bed, on top of it lies the body. It looks like it’s sleeping but it does not have the blue shine Emma had. She’s dressed in a white nightgown and looks to be around forty - maybe fifty, but her white hair looks dyed.

Clover takes a few steps closer, and the woman slowly raises her head with a smile on her pale lips.