The Harvesters

When Jim Blake opened his eyes, he was once again lying on his back staring up at the familiar canopy of Chickamauga Creek – but the forest was not the same. Everything surrounding him was a stark, bright white, and purely motionless. He sat up and wondered at this alabaster Chickamauga Creek. Grass was the same shade of colorless ivory as the trees, and the leaves of the trees bore the same shade of nothing as the bark. The only color to be seen was the bright blue of the sky, which Jim had a hard time believing was really a sky at all. There was no sun, and the bright blue did not belong to the sky as he knew it. It belonged on petticoats worn by fine city women or painted toy trains, but not on a sunless sky that somehow illuminated the world.

He turned toward the rattling of armor and saw that the Harvesters were gracefully landing next to him. Mortem reached out a hand to help Jim stand.

“It’s so…”

“Dead?” Mortem offered.

“Well, yes. But… quiet. Where is the wind?” Jim asked. His voice echoed off the trees around him. He reached out to a giant oak with alabastrine bark and was disappointed he couldn’t know how it felt. The bark looked smoother in this strange world of the dead than it would have been in the world of the living.

“Come, we have a long way to go,” Letifer called from the edge of the forest. The Harvesters stood with their leathery grey wings outstretched and flexed, ready to fly.

***

Vita, the Sower, sat at her desk in the corner of the Sowing House and set her quill down in the inkwell. She had been writing fates for eternity and was starting to tire of her task. Her and her sister’s ambitions of creation were finally weighing on the Sower, and she wondered if at some point they had planted too much.

She leaned back in her chair and looked over their hard work so far. In this giant glass hall, rows of tables lay before her holding thousands of tiny terracotta pots. The pots glowed with the brilliance of seedling souls ready to be planted in the mortal world. The northern-most table of the Sowing House, which faced the Purgatory St. Elias Mountains, glowed brighter than the others. These were seedlings from previously harvested souls, and these were the souls on their last trips to the mortal world and ready to go to the Beyond, whatever that may be.

Her sister, Animula, picked up a pot on the southeast end of the room and cooed at a little sapling. It shimmered in response to her warm words and easy smile, and Vita couldn’t help but smile as well. Her sister was saved from the task of designing fate, so her manner was warm and playful, which brought levity to Vita’s existence. She knew she would be nothing without her precious Ani.

Vita stood and stretched her arms and back. She never thought she’d miss the days of non-feeling, but here she was aching and cursing the gift of touch.

“Writer’s block?” Ani asked as she picked up her watering can, a gift from Mortem from Mortal Year 1886 after he caught wind of a sapling soul named Haws.

“I suppose you could call it that,” Vita straightened her shirt and ran her fingers through her long silver hair. She looked down at the scroll she was writing and sighed. The details of this particular soul were so small and inconsequential in the period of time it will live in, but to get one detail wrong in any small life could tip the scale, and her hard work would be for nothing.

“Step away from your work for a moment. Come help me with these saplings,” Ani demanded as she picked up another small pot, “Gregory Thomas here needs some attention, don’t you? I still think it’s going to be rather lovely giving him eight children, and all of them live!”

“Hopefully Gregory Thomas doesn’t mind being wifeless and penniless after the eighth one,” Vita picked up the poor soul and peered down. It dimmed at her words, or maybe her mere presence. Even she couldn’t cheer herself up.

“Now, there’s more to existence than pennies, and those aren’t even worth much yet,” Ani quickly plucked the pot out of Vita’s hands and gently set it back down on the table, “Which is going to be loads of fun, I can tell. Trading sweets for small pretty brass circles!”

“Copper,” Vita corrected.

“Nuance,” Ani retorted, “I don’t know how after all this time you still come up with such pleasant ideas.”

Vita paused and stared at Gregory Thomas. She didn’t know how she came up with those ideas either, but the penny is going to be a much bigger problem than it will be a blessing. If only Ani could see the reality. She remembered the moment as a panicked one. She fought the muscles of her hand with all her might, even tried to stop it and erase her work with the other hand. But from a force that wasn’t her own, her hand and quill kept scribbling out the fates a coin alone created.

“Sister mine,” Vita felt Ani’s hand on her shoulder, shaking her out of the unpleasant memory, “Let’s make some pie. I think that is and will always be your best idea.”

A chuckle surprised itself out of Vita’s lips, “You might be right.”

A few moments later, Vita was hauling their lime green KitchenAid out from the pantry, something she tasked Letifer to retrieve from Mortal Year 1919, and Ani started sifting the flour when they both stopped in their tracks. The smell of human flesh hit their noses and Vita’s face blanched. Something was terribly wrong.

The front door opened and closed. Vita could hear the familiar sounds of the Harvesters’ jangling chainmail and clopping boots against the wooden floorboards, but all she and Ani could do was stand frozen at the smell of a human soul walking in their house. It wasn’t until the visitors rounded the corner into the kitchen that Vita dared to move. She met the green eyes of a vaguely familiar soul, another relatively inconsequential piece to a larger puzzle, and shuddered.

“This cannot be happening,” She whispered. She felt Ani’s warm hands on her shoulders and arms, but all that mattered was this naked form in front of her. The soul shifted on his feet back and forth, and crossed his hands in front of his genitals, a very human response. Too human for Purgatory.

“Did you write this?” Letifer asked, he did not bother hiding the accusation in his voice.

Vita shook her head, unable to speak.

Ani walked up to the soul and circled around him like she was inspecting some interesting sculpture. At least the soul had the good sense to keep his eyes cast down.

“He’s quite green still,” she noted. She reached out her delicate fingers to the soul’s jawline and brought his gaze up to hers. “Jim Blake, how did you die?”

“I slit my own throat after…” Jim Blake trailed off; entranced by Ani’s incredible gaze. Whoever wrote Animula into existence poured beauty and mystery into her. She was more stunning than any creature on Earth will ever be, with raven hair that defied the laws of gravity and moved around her as if underwater and skin the color of milk. She chose to wear regalia of the ancient Greeks, claiming any other era of human existence was too restricting, and it was clear Jim Blake was lost in the total effect of Ani’s presence.

Mortem chuckled at the shell-shocked human and clapped him on the back, bringing him back to the present, “Believe me, when you hear her start signing, you’ll be less enamored. Don’t ask Alexa to play La Traviata, you’ll wish you’d die again.”

The soul cleared his throat and shifted his hands again, “You folks don’t happen to have… uh…” he looked away from her, “Something I could wear?”

“Let me see his scroll,” Letifer interjected, clearly not giving a damn about Jim Blake’s discomfort.

“Come with me friend,” Mortem wrapped a bony arm around the poor soul’s shoulders and led him out of the kitchen, “It won’t be a good fit because you’re so tiny, but I have a pair of MC Hammer pants I borrowed from the 1990’s you’ll find quite fantastic. Really lets you feel the breeze – Well when you can feel again that is.”

Mortem’s yammering trailed down the long hallway and eventually left the kitchen in uncomfortable silence.

“Vita,” Letifer rumbled, “The Blake scroll.”

“I did not write this,” Vita whispered when she found her breath, “The Blakes are supposed to support the Champion in the end, I would never –”

“- Clearly you wrote something wrong,” Letifer took two steps and closed the gap to Vita. His skull snarled in her face. “So, find it and put it to rights.”

Vita nodded, too dumbfounded to speak or even retaliate like she normally would. She turned and led the way back to the potting hall.

When the trio entered the potting hall, the sapling souls shuddered in response to Letifer’s presence, the sound of tiny leaves clapping rippled through the entire glass room sending Ani into a tizzy consoling the souls closest to the Harvester. Vita knew that if Letifer had eyes, they would roll with annoyance at the response.

She glided past the disgruntled saplings and pulled a secret lever behind her writing desk. The floor below them groaned as a trap door shook itself awake and opened its maw. Clapping the lights on, she walked down a wrote-iron spiral staircase into the giant cavern below.

Part cave and part root cellar, Vita was satisfied to hear Letifer’s sharp intake of breath to behold the work that took her eons to create. Hundreds of acres of shelves were dimly illuminated by Edison bulbs, and jam packed with scrolls from floor to ceiling. The Library of Alexandria was an adorable neighborhood bookstore compared to Vita’s life’s work.

“We’ll never find it,” Letifer sighed with a breath.

“Luckily for you, I’m almost all knowing,” Vita retorted and held out her palm. Rustling could be heard from somewhere down the long cavern, and she felt the Blake scroll zooming towards her at break-neck speed. It landed gently in her palm.

***

Jim Blake felt ridiculous. Fashion in the future would be undeniably more comfortable if he could feel the fabric, but he decided that whatever idiot thought up tie-die should be shot. Jim hardly recognized the man staring back at him in the looking glass wearing unreasonably baggy red pants and a tie-die shirt with a dancing bear on it.

“Do you have anything more… erm… from my time?”

Mortem stopped rummaging through his collection of clothes retrieved from the living world, “Why? Your time is incredibly stuffy. This is much more comfortable, don’t you think?”

“I can’t feel anyway.” Jim snapped.

“Alright, alright – be boring.” Mortem pulled out a white tunic that tied in the front and a pair of slacks made of a near-future material called “denim.” Jim couldn’t help but sigh in relief at his own reflection after donning the garments.

“I feel I need to warn you,” Mortem started, “I really hate to ruin an adventure for anyone, but your soul…” Mortem switched into the MC Hammer pants Jim had rejected, the pants somehow clinging to the scrawny hip bones of the Harvester “… It’s not ready to be harvested. You’re still so green.” Mortem donned the rejected tie-die shirt and sat on what he called a “waterbed” to slip on some socks, “No other soul has seen Purgatory before. It’s not for humans, it’s meant for the powers that be like Vita and Animula. Let and I just come here to recharge and take time to ourselves, but none of us are sure what is in store for you here. I truly don’t think Vita would have written your circumstances into existence.”

“Did she write me killing my brother?” Jim asked, a lump he couldn’t feel was building in his throat, causing the words to come out hoarsely.

Mortem paused in the action of putting on a small knit hat, only the ever-moving water mattress was animating him. “Jim… Vita writes everything for a reason. I don’t know why you had to kill your brother-”

Jim had heard enough. He stormed out of Mortem’s room and stomped down the hall. A hint of anger licked his chest like flames, the familiar feeling of rage was dulled by death, but it was there all the same.

If Jim Blake wished to see past that faint flickering of rage warming his chest, he would have noticed the countless treasures that packed the Sowers’ giant house. He would have stumbled upon priceless jewelry and first edition prints of classic works of literature, he could have admired stolen but brilliant works by artists yet to be born and marveled at inventions that no one in his time could ever dream of – but he blindly stomped his way back down the long winding hall to the kitchen with Mortem protesting behind him. Nothing could distract Jim from the obsessive idea that Vita designed his brother’s death in such a cruel fashion.

He halted at the empty kitchen, the remnants of what must have been cookware were strewn about the countertops with an ugly green contraption that he thought looked like a torture device.

A voice coming from the French doors of the kitchen lured him into a huge, brilliant room made of glass. The snowy St. Elias mountains loomed over the house in stark brightness as colors of a pink and blue sunless sunset danced behind it. Jim had never been west when he was living, but he had heard of such mountains from some of the traders in town. The snowy white caps were even more beautiful from the ground than they were when the Harvesters carried him in the sky, and he felt infinitesimally small.

As gorgeous as the mountains in the sunset were, that’s not what stole his breath. A faintly familiar image was laid out before him in the brilliant glass room, and his memory struggled to place where he had seen this room before.

What had to be millions of glowing orbs sat in tiny terracotta pots on giant wooden tables and hung in more pots suspended by thousands of intricately braided ropes strapped onto giant log beams that supported the glass ceiling. The potted lights hummed around him and shifted color a bit from a warm amber glow to an earthy green as he slowly approached the table closest to him. He continued to wonder where he had seen something similar as he crouched down and studied one of the potted orbs more closely. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he made out two tiny eyes staring back at him in curiosity. His eyes adjusted to reveal the shape of a woman, her arms upraised with two small leaves instead of hands, her feet buried beneath the soil. The woman leaned closer to him as if studying him, sniffed the air and sneezed, which altered her color from a pure white to a splotchy light green, and sprouted two leaves from atop her once bald head.

“Be careful, Jim Blake!” Ani seemed to materialize from somewhere to his right and gingerly took the pot from his hands, “Be careful not to age the souls too fast! Nellie isn’t ready for planting for at least a hundred years.”

“I’m sorry,” Jim Blake muttered, the anguish over his brother all but forgotten at the sight of the tiny potted woman. He took in his surroundings again; trowels were strewn in all parts of the room next to watering cans, and millions of empty pots were stacked neatly upside down under each table. Colorful bags that read “Miracle Grow” rested against the legs of the tables and were stacked in a neat pyramid in one far corner of the room. The room itself had to be at least an acre wide and three acres long, he concluded, and every square inch, with the exception of a writing desk piled with scrolls in the northwest corner of the room, was dedicated to gardening.

“What is this place?”

“Oh! This is my potting hall and Vita’s office,” Animula answered, her hair animatedly swirled around her head and shoulders in excitement, “This is where I sow souls so they can be planted.”

She delicately stroked the leaves of the soul named Nellie, who shown brighter and cooed at Ani’s attention. The potted woman and demigoddess looked adoringly at each other, and both smiled sweetly.

“Ani weaves the fate Vita writes into souls,” Mortem explained and strode behind him. The souls nearest the Harvester shuddered and faint “oooos” could be heard from the poor scared creatures.

“Come on guys, I’m not all that bad!” Mortem threw his hands up in indignation and took three giant steps back into the kitchen. “There, is that better?”

The little souls calmed their leaves and settled back into their pots in disgruntled silence.

Animula chuckled and set Nellie back down into her spot, “You know it’s nothing personal, Mortem.”

Echoey steps drew Jim’s attention away from the souls and to the writing desk in the corner where Vita and Letifer emerged from somewhere behind it.

Vita held a scroll.

The anger flicked again, a little more controlled this time.

“Let’s spread this over the table,” Letifer said, terrifying the souls around him with every step. “There’s much to read.”