The Whispers (20 page)

Chapter One: Winter

I came into this world like most people do: screaming.

“Don’t worry,” a kind voice tells me. “You’re just dying.”

Everything hurts. My skin is all icy and bitter. My heart’s a heavy stone the earth is trying to wrench from my chest and my vision is an angry haze—I am blind.

“Your eyes are adjusting, girl. Just relax.”

Dying?—Did she just saying I’m dying?

“Undying,” she amends. “You’re undying. But really it’s sort of the same.”

I’m reaching out for my mom. I want to find my dad’s hands and pull them toward me, they should be there somewhere. I’m furious that no one seems to be helping me, that no one’s there.

“No use in screaming on, you’ll just break your voice. You might need it.”

Why would I need a voice if I’m dead? And for that matter, how’d I die? When did that happen? Shouldn’t I know?

“No use trying to remember,” she murmurs sadly, her voice strangely accented. “That was your Old Life … a nothing life.”

I can’t picture my mom’s face. Or dad’s. There’s a strange vacuum in my mind now, like I can’t even remember having parents. The idea of anything existing before this moment, that simple idea seems so difficult to understand suddenly.

“You’re the worst I’ve ever heard! This awful screaming! Really, you should quiet down. You’ll wake the dead.”

I don’t remember the last word I uttered. I don’t remember the last meal I had. I don’t remember the last hour I saw on a clock. I don’t remember …

I don’t remember my name.

“That was a little joke of mine,” she says with a squeaky snicker. “Wake the dead. You’re not laughing.”

I’m panicked by the silence in my body where a heart should be racing. I’m gasping for air that isn’t there, with lungs that stubbornly refuse to fill. I’m in agony, I think.

“Let go of my hair!—You’ll pull it straight off!”

Her soft hair clenched in my fist, it’s the first sensation I have that isn’t horrible. It grounds me like an anchor. Suddenly gravity makes sense. My position of lying on cold hard ground makes sense. I’m aware of my ears for the first time and the information they helpfully lend … the ambiance of howling winds and whispers … the distant rumbling of thunder … the precise location of the strange accented voice that’s been speaking to me …

“You’re coming to, at last. I feared there was no hope for you, screaming as you were. Now please, a finger at a time, let go of my hair.”

My eyes have been open, but they only just now discover how to work. The furious haze of earlier releases me to my new world. Hovering over me is the face of a twenty-something-year-old with wide-set beady eyes and curls of black hair that gather atop two sharp shoulders.

“Really, I’d hoped for a prettier Raise, but you’ll have to do. Oh, your skin is so tragic.”

Who is this person?

“My name is Helena Trim,” she tells me, “and yours will be—Oh, I hadn’t noticed your hair! It’s so … white. A snowdrift in a dream. Almost makes up for your face. I’ll call you Winter.” She smiles for the first time. It sits oddly on her stiff, pointy face. “There, that was easy. Now are we ready to try standing?”

I push myself off the damp ground. Curiously, I find all the pain and torment I’d only a moment ago felt is gone, leaving an empty ringing in my ears that echoes down my body like a bell. I feel hollow. I feel weak. I feel like a vacuous shell holding nothing, not even air.

“Where,” I say, startled for a moment by the sound of my own voice, “am I?”

“The Harvesting Grounds,” this person called Helena informs me. “This is where the dead are Raised, girl. This is where everyone’s Final Life begins … if this can be called a life.”

“I’m—I’m dead?”

“Undead.” She delicately moves a strand of hair out of my eyes, wrinkles her face in pity. “We should get you to the Refinery straight away. Death hasn’t been kind to your—ah, never mind.”

I don’t remember leaving the murky field. I don’t remember being guided down a winding road that cut through an endless array of dead trees and into a city. I don’t remember walking crowded streets or being steered into a squatty pink building, but now I’m leaning back on some kind of doctor’s table and there’s a large flush-faced woman with green eye shadow looming over me.

“Her hair is just exquisite!” she squeals, taking a handful of it into her puffy palm. “I’ve never seen hair like this, the color of pearls. And coming straight from the earth, no less! Her skin, however … oh, help us all.”

“Will someone,” I whisper quietly, “please show me a mirror?”

“Not a chance, sweetheart. Roxie, dear precious, hand me my Chromo and a two-inch carving blade, will you?”

I’m not sure what is happening, but it reminds me of prom night. The large lady starts working on my nails while gossiping sweetly with the others. Another girl who couldn’t be more than twelve years old starts scrubbing my legs for some reason. The one called Roxie takes to my hair, combing it and applying some pungent formula that makes my nose recoil. Helena keeps stealing my attention away, talking her little head off and, I suppose, trying to distract me from looking at myself. Despite her efforts, I catch a glimpse of what looks like an arm missing half its flesh, the bones of the hand visible. Of course I don’t recognize it as my own hand because, well, denial’s a powerful thing. And I’m still pretty sure I’m dreaming, except I’m not sure where I’d wake up. The idea of having a bed, or even a home to return to seems strange.

“Have I lost my memory?” I ask finally. “For good?”

“Oh, here we go,” the large lady sings.

Helena faces me quite seriously. “Yes and no. Your Old Life is gone. Your memory of it and all the memory you had in your previous life is no longer. It’ll come back someday, sure, but it’s best not to think of it at all. Just let go now and never again look back.”

“But—But I remember how to speak, obviously. I know language. I know how to walk. I remember concepts like … like prom night!—of all things. How is that possible if I lost all my memory?”

“Some things stay, most things go,” the large lady chimes in, working some tool into my foot. “It’s not ours to decide. Do you prefer cherry or coral toenails?”

I move my eyes back to Helena. “But you said it would come back someday?—my memory?”

“It’s called a Life Dream,” she answers. “Or Waking Dream. Or the Dreaming Death. It has many names, but it’s when everything rushes back all at once, the memory of your Old Life returning to you in an instant. It will happen someday, but I assure you, it will be like an unwelcome enemy arriving at your doorstep. It’s best to forget it and leave it in the dust behind you, girl.”

The large lady murmurs agreement, kneading something gritty into my skin like I’m dough. The one called Roxie winces in her own form of concurrence. The twelve-year-old just purses her lips, like the idea of remembering her life tastes bad.

“That looks like it should hurt,” I point out, staring at the large lady and the tool she’s poking into my foot. “I feel it, but I don’t. Is that normal?”

“Perfectly,” one of the girls behind me mutters. “Now keep still.”

The questions start coming like a wave of nausea, I can’t help it. “What are you doing exactly?—Where’s half my arm?—Are those my bones?”

“Helena,” one of them grunts, annoyed.

“Listen to me,” says Helena, pulling my face toward hers and away from my own innards. “This new life you’ve been given, your Final Life, it’s all that matters now. You’re one of us.”

“One of us?” I ask. “One of what?—A zombie?”

Wrong word. The large lady drops the tool she had in her hand. Roxie steps away from me so quickly I might as well have burst into flames. An icy hush has covered the room. My gaze moves from one horrified set of eyes to another. “I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong?”

“We,” Helena says, steels herself, then finishes, “are not zombies. We are people, and we have standards, and we have flesh, and for the love of God we do not eat brains! We are a dignified people, all of us. Even you.”

I look around the room, my eyes meeting each person before I speak again. “I’m sorry. This is all very new to me. Obviously. I didn’t mean to offend anyone.”

After a very lengthy moment passes in which I’m pretty sure the ladies in the room would gladly toss me back to the foul earth from which I’d been yanked, the large one finally sighs, if just a little, takes up her tool again and says, “It’s okay, honey. I’m sure I said something equally as awful on my first day, which was far too long ago if you ask me. Which you didn’t.”

“You’re all dead,” I whisper, like I’m just now discovering this.

“Undead. Every last one of us,” she agrees. “I doubt there’s a Living left in the world.”

Looking at each of them, it’s dawning on me what world I’ve been brought into. A dead world. Ageless. No one breathes here or ever will again. Souls being fetched from soil and made up into fake-alive people, like me. A world full of … silent chests.

“Now,” she says, gripping my foot tight, “hold still while I make you a new pinkie toe.”

I don’t remember what else she or the Roxie girl or the twelve-year-old do to me. I don’t remember having my right ear reshaped, or my nose reset, or color fused into my lips by some weird kind of gun-shaped mechanism. Even though Helena claims otherwise, I don’t remember choosing Icecap Blue for my eyes.

“And now, girl, meet Winter!” Helena’s guided me over to the first mirror I’ve seen since my Raising. The maybe-twenty-year-old face in the mirror is one I should probably recognize since it’s my own, but I don’t. She has eyes like arctic pools. Hair that falls like a soft mist, veiling half her face. Her skin is a sea of satin. Her nails are little polished glass shards. Her lips, a subtle pink, with cheeks gently blushed the same. The person in the mirror is a person I do not know.

“What do you think?” the large woman asks me, obviously proud of her work. “Can you live with this?”

My left hand falls off.

“Roxie!” the large woman yelps. “Adhesive, honey! Proper, level-four-grade adhesive!—I do swear!”

A lot of shuffling, a slight shove from my left side, and I’m whole again. I wiggle my fingers and they seem to work. For how long, who knows.

“Should we try another blush?—another eye color?” the large-in-charge offers sweetly. “We have enough time before our next appointment.”

“This is fine,” I say, defeated somehow. “Icecap Blue is fine. My name is fine. Whatever.”

Winter. I didn’t even choose my own name.

And so this is where Winter was born, and how. Whoever she is.

Then I’m given a tour of where I’ll live for the rest of forever. The heart of the city is the Town Square, surrounded by rings of streets that hold businesses, stores, tall apartment complexes. It’s all very downtown. Then on the outskirts of the city you’ll find clusters of trailers, shacks and little houses. One of them is mine, apparently.

Helena tells me living here is entirely free. No bills or rent will ever be collected because, in her words, “money is a bother.” Consequently, no one is required to work or hold a job, even though many do. Some people form pretend-families with one another, maybe for comfort, maybe for fun. Fun, they call this.

Oh, and yes, there are children here. A short girl, maybe twelve or thirteen, lives somewhere among my circle of houses with another lady who pretends to be her mother. This is all very normal and accepted. The girl has long black braided hair and Helena tells me I’ll be happy to meet her someday. I would never wish this on a child, but I guess I didn’t have a choice either.

Trying for some levity, I ask where all the stray city cats are. Helena replies, "What's a cat?" I ask her, where are all the birds in the sky. She’s like, “What’s a bird?”

I think maybe she’s joking, but it occurs to me that every tree I’ve seen is dead. Every blade of grass, a browned, yellowed, or otherwise lifeless fleck of paper it may as well be. Litter is all it is, the remnants of a world that once thrived, now so very unalive.

To my surprise, she tells me there is electricity, but nothing seems to work very well. Especially when we draw near anything electrical. She wouldn't elaborate further. Oh, and she says there's running water more or less, but it isn't good for our kind. I ask what she means and she says, “Think, like magnets of opposing poles. Whatever you might call natural, we are its opposite.”