Graveminder

Chapter 56

FOR A BRIEF MOMENT, CHARLES THOUGHT THAT REBEKKAH HAD ACcepted his answers, but then she scowled at him. “No.”

“No?” he echoed.

“I just sentenced a woman to die because she wanted to be a Graveminder, but not your ‘servant.’ ” Rebekkah shook her head. “I didn’t sign a contract. I’ve been playing guess-the-rules, and you are withholding information. I deserve some answers, Charles.”

There was nothing that said he had to answer, no rule that he must reveal his failings, but he hadn’t lived for eternity without learning how to judge people. His Graveminder would be more sympathetic if she knew the truth. For Charles, that was reason enough.

“Once, almost three hundred years ago, a woman, Abigail, came here. Opened a gate and came to me. A living, vibrant woman had entered my domain. She really was an incredible woman, my Abigail. Spirited like you.” He gave Rebekkah a small smile. “There are other lands of the dead, but this one was still new.”

“Why?”

He waved his hand. “Space issues, mostly. They fill. New ones appear. I took charge of this one, was honored to, really. I’m not the only face of Death, my dear, but in some place before memory, I’d been something else. I know that. Nothingness given shape.”

“Oh.”

“It makes a man”—he offered her a self-deprecating smile—“eager to prove himself, I suppose. I had my new space, new dead, and I was arrogant. I fell for her. I know it sounds silly, but from nothingness to being a functionary being can be dizzying. Abigail beguiled me, and so when she asked to visit the other world, I said yes.”

He tried to gauge Rebekkah’s response, but she was silent and hard to read, so he continued. “Once the path was opened, others went back, too. Unlike Abigail, they were dead. They ravaged people, nearly decimated the fledgling town—and Abigail began dragging them back here.

“I cannot go there, could not help her in any useful way, so I made an arrangement with the town.” He took a deep breath, looked directly at Rebekkah. “I could not remove the gateway, but I could give the town other things, safeguards to help keep the world at large safe, protections so they would think that the change, the gateway, was their doing. If they’d known Abigail had been at fault for opening the door, they would’ve killed her, and then my dead would have overrun them. I had to protect her.”

“So you lied,” Rebekkah said softly.

“So I made a bargain,” he corrected. “If she died, they would all have died. That world—Claysville—would’ve become an extension of this one eventually.” He didn’t flinch from Rebekkah’s judgment. He simply waited.

“And Abigail?” Rebekkah prompted.

“She found a man, a living man, who protected her.”

“The first Undertaker,” Rebekkah murmured.

Charles nodded. “They helped make the contract with the town. The consequence of which is that there are new Graveminders and Undertakers who follow in their footsteps.”

“Because you made a mistake,” she said softly.

“Because I fell in love,” he admitted.