I have never seen anything like it in my entire life. The only thing that exist here is a stone platform carrying a line of hundereds of doors. None of them - nor the corridor - have a single wall. Everything beyond this platform is coated in darkness. I cannot see where it starts or ends – if it even has an ending, maybe it's just as infinite as the universe is said to be.
Clover barely has any shadows in his face, if anything he seems more illuminated than what he had been in Blomst's office. My hand is just as clear and light. The doors are the same, like we and them aren't affected by the darkness.
I study door after door. None of them looks exactly the same, but they are divided in groups. Some of them are covered in colors. One reminds me of and orange and pink sky, another of a winter storm. There are doors made of wood, some of which have crooked and twisted branches growing out of them. We stop when we reach the last set. They're taller and white with purple and blue crystalized veins in different patterns. The first door of that kind has the number one hundred eleven written on the top of it.
Clover continues down the corridor with his hands in his torn pockets. It's quiet here. I've never realized what total silence is, how deafening it is to hear nothing at all. I can't hear my or Clover's footsteps, I can barely hear myself breathe. I'm scared of talking, at the same time I want to scream to make this unpleasant place be heard.
Clover stands in front of a door with the same crystalized veins as before, at the top it says eleven. We're almost at the end of the corridor where the stone platform stops abruptly, like a part of it has fallen down into the darkness. He walks the four steps up the stairs that leads to the door and this time he doesn't knock. We're met with the same whirling darkness as always. I don't know why I expected that we would see what was behind door eleven.
Clover steps through the darkness without hesitating, I follow him through the gate.
I had been wrong. The strange corridor almost seemed normal compared to what I just stepped into. The difference is that the Eleven is beautiful.
"Welcome to the Eleven," Clover says and takes a step down.
We're standing at gigantic stairs shaped like a crescent moon over the ground. The grass is dark blue and is shimmering like the night sky's stars. Below there are black stones, they reflect the dark blue grass and the pink sky that is marked with a black glow peeking through the colour. They remind me of sunlight forcing their way through trees in a dense forest. It looks like glass, like this magical world is inside of a black-pink speckled glass globe.
The trees are wide and sturdy, their branches grow upward and encircle large round objects. If I didn't know better, I would have thought it was the very moon that was shrunk, multiplied, and placed in the trees. I can see several white roofs peek through the forest. But in the distance lays the strangest and most astonishing structure I've ever laidmy eyes upon. An endless white spire reaching beyond the glass-covered sky. A blue, glowing liquid comes flowing down like two slow waterfalls, one on each side. Thet tower is surrounded by circular platforms that hangs in mid-air, each of them carrying hundreds of doors. I wonder where they lead? If they lead anywhere, this place so far hasn't had any clear rules. Hundreds of doors on halo-formed platforms leading nowhere would not surprise me here. I might even prefer it.
"What is that?" I ask Clover and point at the tower.
"The well."
Clover doesn't seem impressed by the large waterfall.
"Don't wells' waters usually come from underground?"
"Not this well."
He walks down the last steps and continues over the shiny stone pathway. I can't stop staring at the blue waterfall, or as Clover called it – the well.
When we get closer to the forest I realize it's filled with large glowing mushroom, and the trees with moon have a quiet melody.
"Soul wanderers are not the only ones living here."
"What do you mean?" I ask and imagine spirits floating around in the air, but I don't see spirits nor birds on the black-pink sky. If anything, it seems lonely.
"They're not spirits," he says. I can't help but to wonder if he can read my mind or if it's a normal thought to have when you get here the first time. "They aren't humans either. They've never lived on the other side like we have, they live here their whole life and will do so until they fade away."
"Fade away?"
I forget all about the forest and put all my attention on Clover who's walking one or two meters in front of me.
"Dies. They don't leave a body like we did when we were alive, they just sort of stop existing," he says unaffected.
It sounds vulgar to just stop existing. I thought that was how it was before I died, that you fade away. But there was still a body left, evidence that you've existed.
"Can you talk to them?" I ask.
"The ones that can talk, you can talk with, yes. They'll probably speak to you too, treat them like the rest of us. There isn't much difference between us, except their appearance."
"Okay, I understand," I mumble even though I'm not so sure I do.
I notice that the bark on the trees are vibrating, is that where the melody is coming from?
"We soul wanderers lives in one and the same building in the different worlds. We have one room – often with a bed. There's also a dining hall, we don't need to eat nor sleep but we like to continue with the things we're used to. There's a market further west, and of course the well in east. We don't usually go there."
"We can eat?"
I hadn't expected that. I had such problems moving my body, couldn't even move it a millimeter and I couldn't even grab my sister without my hands going through her, at the same time I was able to hold the brown card and touch the chairs in the waiting hall and Blomst's room.
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He looks back at me and wrinkles his nose. "Why wouldn't you be able to eat?"
"Cause I'm dead? When I tried to move my body, I couldn't."
He snorts and turns his back at me again. "You're not in the same world anymore, are you?"
I hate that, I haven't accepted that yet. That I'm dead and that there is a life after death. How could I accept this? No matter how beautiful and magical it seems.
"You can eat and touch anything in this world, as well as the others. If you try to do something in the living world it can be harder, but you learn."
I have a hard time believing that we'll ever touch living people the same way we did when we're alive, more likely we'll be like poltergeists.
I think about Emma, and I pray to whatever is out there that she is not dead. I'm thinking how she will handle my death, what I would do if I was there. They are foolish and unnecessary thoughts because I can't be with her, I can't say that everything will be fine. Because it won't. How the hell is she going to cope? How can she move on when she wasn't able to handle my dad's death? My death was a sudden accident. She'll blame herself. I hate every moment of it. I'm scared that I'll see her one day and not recognize her. Would she recognize me? How would she take it when I treat her like a stranger? Would I say that I don't know who she is, that I don't even know who I am? Who is Jonna? Will I think so one day, or more likely – who was Orchid, what was her name? How did she die and who did she love?
It's a curse, to known what's coming but not being able to do a thing about it. All I can do is wait to forget, for my memories to be devoured by my new name and my new "life". Blomst had told me that it would be like a new life, new memories, and new experiences. But as I've understood it, I'll slowly forget things. Memory after memory will disappear and I'll need to struggle with the fact that I can't do anything about it, while I cling onto the few memories I'll have left. It's not the same as being reborn. I'm stuck here. I'm dead.
"We're here," Clover says; I'm pulled out of my self-pity.
We're standing in front of a small town with large houses made of white stone. Dark blue vines that shimmers like stars are growing upon the walls and the roof. The reflecting black stone leads into the town and covers the whole street and upon them they walk – the creatures Clover spoke of. Some of them looks somewhat human, while others look like they've been taken straight out of a fairytale or horror movie. I can barely see the skin on one of the creatures, it's covered in white fur. The face is round with a flat nose, and two fully black eyes stares at us as it passes by. It's only around the big eyes, nose, and mouth that the creature doesn't have any fur. Another creature is completely transparent black and glides through the town like a ghost.
"They stare because you're new," Clover whispers. "They always do. The eleventh door is one of smaller place, there are rarely new soul wanderers."
I follow the furry creature with my gaze.
"Come," Clover says.
I walk closely behind, closer than what Clover would like but when the creatures stare I can't help but to attach myself to him like a leech.
"They're not dangerous," he mutters when I walk straight into him for the third time.
Clover stops next to a long building, which I believe is the resident for the soul wanderers, he pulls out a note from one of his jacket's pockets.
"Here. Your room-number."
He gives me the note. I don't ask when he got it even though I never saw Blomst give him any notes. Or it just showed up in his pocket, after everything I've seen it could be a possibility.
"Thank you," I say and I look at the note, room seventeen it says in the same beautiful handwriting that my name had been written in, "for the note and because you're explaining e–"
Clover holds up his hands and silences me, he frowns his forehead in annoyance.
"You don't need to thank me. It's literally my job... because you're my apprentice."
I can't help but to notice that when he mentions apprentice his nose twitches. Most time I have something to say when someone doesn't like me very much. But now I don't have the energy for a snarky remark.
"I have things I have to do today," he mutters. "Tomorrow I'll show you the dining hall, the day after tomorrow Blomst will have a contract for me... us."
"Contract?" I ask.
He glares at me.
"A harvest-contract."
"So you know that someone will die before it happens?"
"The guardians do."
He seems stressed.
"The guardians?"
He rolls his eyes which makes me fold my arms.
"Blomst and the others. It doesn't matter, I can answer how many questions you'd like tomorrow, but I really don't have time for this now," he snaps, I raise one of my eyebrows. "Just go in now. You can ask your infinite questions tomorrow."
I don't get the time to answer, he hurriedly walks away upwards a small hill covered by the black stones. I'm left at the front door, and when I can no longer see him I step into the building. It seems like a normal house, and it's not hidden by a whirling darkness. The corridors are narrow and has three doors on each wall, when I get further in I realize that every corner leads into two corridors with six doors with different numbers. It feels like I'm going in circles, and it no longer seems like a normal house but more of a labyrinth that never ends. Yet it's not hard to find my way to the right room, the building is leading me where I'm supposed to go and shortly I'm standing in front of room seventeen. Just like the stone signs in the waiting hall the numbers do not have any rules and is numbered in such a strange way that you can't logically find them, you have to trust your intuition to find the right one.
This place gives me a headache. Everything is familiar but distorted, it makes everything bizarre and foreign. Like they built these places to look like our worlds but failed something so remarkably.
I open the door to room seventeen and walk through the whirling darkness. It pains my heart, but what's in front of me is my childhood bedroom. I remember everything. The bed, the wardrobe, and the desk. The large pinboard with the photographs, and letters and notes that mom and I hung up with thumbtacks.
I don't get it. Why would they give me my childhood's bedroom if I'm supposed to forget everything? Forget who I am, who Emma is, my friends and family. Blomst words keeps coming up in my thoughts. A new life.
I laugh bitterly, is this supposed to be a bad joke about déjà vu? Will I wonder one day what all this is? The only thing I'll feel is a strong feeling that I've experienced this before. Or is it supposed to comfort me? Will it make it easier to gradually forget everything, to have this as a reminder that I used to be someone?
I sit down at the chair in front of the pinboard. The photographs are eerily similar, I've seen them many times. I still had one of the photos when I died. It laid in my wallet, I had folded it and there was a white line over my dad's face, but you could still see his big smile. This photograph was newer, it wasn't folded a hundred times and I can see my dad's face clearly. I can see the blonde, curly hair that my sister inherited, I got my mom's hair color but it's just as curly as dad's and Emma's. On the photograph I'm showing of my toothless smile. I can't be old, eight at most. Emma is also smiling. Two people I'll never see again. Will I look at these photographs one day and not recognize them?
The notes on the pinboard are poems that I wrote when I was little, mom wrote down compliments on the colorful notes. On one of them it says she believed I would write poems when I got older. It never happened; I don't think I wrote a single poem after reaching my teenage years.
I look out of the window, it's the same view that I had when I was a child. The grass isn't dark blue and shimmering, it's green and is slightly glistening from the rain outside. The little part of the sky that peeks through the clouds is blue and infinite, not made of glass and the wind makes the trees move. There was no wind in the Eleven, the moon-tree's bark was vibrating but the somewhat high grass wasn't moving in the wind, the branches were glued to each other and didn't move a single millimeter. This world feels artificial, like it's not created the same way that the living world is.
I try to open the window to reach the rain, to see if I can feel the raindrops against my hand. I can't open it, I hit my fists against the glass and hope that it will shatter, but it's like I'm hitting steel. The only difference is that I can't feel anything. It doesn't hurt, I feel absolutely nothing.