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.”
What a comfort she is, this Helena person.
Breathing and eating and dieting and exercising and taking vitamins and rubbing age-defying creams all over ourselves ... that’s all so obsolete now. It’s unnecessary to maintain our dead selves. So last-season, says Helena, the idea of dieticians and trainers and doctors.
"But if you absolutely need one," she says, pointing down the street, "there's a clever pair of men who run a gym. One of them had their Waking not too long ago, discovered he was a bodybuilder in his Old Life. The other was a surgeon—his name is Collin. So depressed he became, when he realized all his knowledge of health is for naught in this dark new world … Darling, please pretend to have a heart attack at some point, or perhaps a little summer cold. Indigestion. A rash. He would so very much appreciate the attention, even if it’s not real.”
Life was so unnecessarily difficult. Only here in death, she explains, is anyone truly at peace.
Sorry Helena, I feel anything but peaceful. It must show on my face because she looks particularly annoyed as she presents me to a cluster of houses at the west edge of town. “This one,” she says with a little nod, “is yours.”
And then we’re standing on its creaky little porch. I peer around, afraid to touch anything. It all looks so old.
“You can try to smile,” Helena suggests stiffly. She puts a calming hand on my shoulder. I shrug it off. “You should rest,” she tells me, peeved a bit by my rudeness. “When you wake, you’ll see how happy we are. You have no Earthly burdens anymore. Like a job, or a husband, or a family, or—”
“How’s that mean anything to me,” I argue, “if I don’t even remember the family or husband or job I might’ve had? What if—What if I was happy with my life?”
“Oh, please,” she snaps, her whole tone going sour. “Who in their right mind would turn down an eternity where you own a house, no responsibility, no bills to pay, and enjoy endless time to do whatever it is you desire? Seriously, girl, open your cold dead eyes.”
I return her tirade with a blank stare. I’m silent as the so-called heart housed in my chest somewhere ... the one that doesn’t pump blood, cold as a stone, no purpose being there at all as far as I’m concerned.
Seeing my forlorn expression, she huffs irritably and says, “Have it your way. Enjoy the scenery of Trenton, your new hometown, or don’t. Meet some people or keep entirely to yourself. Return to your grave and rot, I haven’t a care. My task here is done.” She turns away and descends the porch steps in her clicking jet-black heels.
“Your task?”
Without missing a step or turning back, strutting away she calls out, “You may someday be chosen, miss Winter, and you’ll be made to do your first Raising whether you like it or not. Then you’ll know the pain of bringing a sniveling ungrateful girl into this wonderful world. It’s like childbirth, but infinitely more regrettable.”
Her black locks of hair swinging, she disappears into the misty city.
I drop into a rocking chair, thankful it’s there to catch me. Had it not been, I would’ve fallen clean to the ground. Not that it matters. At this rate, I might as well drop dead into a hole. Words don’t fool me … Undead is still dead. There is no convincing me otherwise. I’ve kissed Life goodbye without a flinch of my cold dead lips.
Sniveling ungrateful girl, she called me.
I look out from the porch of my forever-home, only to witness two people break into dance in the middle of the street for no reason. Maybe I should smile, but the sight of them annoys the hell out of me. I look away and see three middle-aged women taking a calm stroll together. If I take for granted that all of this may actually be happening to me, that I may truly be Undead, that this world is really the world I’m to live in for the rest of time, maybe longer, then I must realize that all these crazy people are my new forever-neighbors, in my new forever-neighborhood. Trenton, she called it. My new forever-home.
The place I now live. Forever.
I don’t remember entering the little house I was told is mine, but I’m relieved to find it in better condition on the inside than it appeared on the out. The front den opens to a small kitchen area that I’ll supposedly never use. Why it’s there, I’ll never know. A cockroach scuttles across the floor, disappears into a crack in the wall. That must be my roommate, a fellow survivor of the end of the world. Further in, a short hallway opens into a quaint bathroom on one side and a bedroom on the other. And there you have it. In less than thirty seconds, I’ve given myself a tour of the place I’ll spend the rest of forever.
Welcome to your new, roomier coffin. Comes with a kitchen.
I suppose that’s what inspires me to run. From the house I bolt, not knowing where I’m headed. This dress I was put in, it snags on the door as I flee, the sleeve torn straight off. This hair of mine that was cured from the earth, white as winter, it bustles behind me like a cape. My reconstructed legs thrust forward, to where, who cares. From the house I would live in forever, the town I would live in forever. From this strange new life, from my Icecap eyes, my death I can’t remember, my beautiful life, I just run, run, run.
I run until there’s no town around me anymore, until there’s no person or soul or breath in sight, until even the dead trees have fallen scarce, and before me only a cliff’s edge grows closer.
That’s when I stop running.
At the edge of the cliff.
I peer down into the misty valley below which looks nothing like a valley at all. It’s as though this place, the deadwood forest, the town, as though it were aloft in the clouds somewhere. The mist down below, perhaps that’s the planet from which I’d died.
YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF.
I’m going to jump. That sounds like a brilliant idea. I lean over the precipice. All I see is a world of mist below, a world below the mist where maybe I lived a life.
The. Only. One. Left. To. Blame. Is. You.
I’m going to do this. I close my eyes.
“It’s a beautiful sight, isn’t it?”
I spin, startled by the voice, but my foot has already slipped and I fall—then catch the edge of the cliff with my hands, clinging on for life, hanging on for death.
The person emerges over the brink of the cliff. His pale face peers down at me as I hang from the edge, my legs dangling, far below me the mists of unknown, far below me where my second death waits patiently.
“Can I help you?” he offers kindly.
His face is handsome and gentle. Of course I’d notice something like that at a time like this.
“I don’t want to be helped,” I cry out, breathless.
“Then why are you hanging on at all? Let go.”
He’s my age—I assume—with short black hair cutting partway down his forehead. I must’ve had the fashion eye when I was alive, or else the Refinery girls already rubbed off on me, because I notice he’s garbed in a fitted black button-down and slim jeans, clean, well-dressed and sleek. He smiles when our eyes meet, lighting up his whole tortured, dark demeanor. I even see blush in his cheeks, as though blood actually flows through his veins, just as it totally doesn’t in mine, such a liar even a cheek can be.
“This is the first day of my life,” I explain.
“Careful,” he warns me very seriously. “It’s a crime here to count days.”
“Are you serious?” I ask, then realize at the sight of his chuckling eyes that he’s teasing me. Or maybe not, I can’t tell. Dead people aren’t the easiest to read. “What’s it matter, anyway? What’s the point of all this …?”
“Many people have come to this cliff,” he admits, looking off into the mist, pensive. “Many have also, like you, considered throwing away this opportunity.”
“Opportunity??” I blurt out, while simultaneously marveling at how light my body is … how easy it is to just hang here from this precipice, just as easily as I could let go. Is strength another quality that accompanies this new body? Or is it that I now weigh less than a person?
What does that say?
“I’ll make you a deal,” he says. “Let me help you up and I’ll give you a kiss.”
“That’s your offer?”
“Yes.”
I fully realize I can pull myself up. Somehow, hanging effortlessly as I am, I know I can do it without his help.
Or his kiss. “You need to offer more than that,” I tell him, my eyes narrowing. “I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask for any of this. Why am I here? Wasn’t I—Wasn’t I peaceful enough, happy enough being left dead and in the ground where I belong?”
“You tell me,” he says teasingly, that snarky smile curling his cheeks into dimples again.
I hate that cute, snarky smile. “What will happen if I let go? Will I die? Can the dead die again?”
“No,” he admits with a hint of sadness in his voice. “If you must know, you’ll likely have a hard landing on the rock lands below, and your body will break into pieces. Shatter. Like a statue. Or a mannequin. A very pretty mannequin,” he adds. I look away, annoyed. “And you will remain alive, mostly in your head. The rest of you won’t be animated anymore, as I understand it.”
I regret asking. I sorely, sorely regret asking.
“Or you could let me help you,” he goes on, “and I could show you the town. Show you what you have in your Final Life. If still you’re not convinced, feel free to jump into the sky.” And he extends his hand.
Helena’s last words resonate with me, that I was a “task” for her, and someday I may be chosen to Raise my own poor soul into this world. Not to mention that some unassuming moment, I may recover all my lost memory at once. Snap, it’ll all come back, shocking me like an “unwelcome enemy” ... and I wonder if the anger and unhappiness I’m harboring is just my Old Life locked away in my skeleton somewhere—a prisoner. Maybe it’s something that, if I remembered it, I would be glad I was freed from. Maybe this new life is something I’d secretly begged for, wished for. Maybe I really am ungrateful.
Or maybe I’ll never remember the person I was.
Maybe she’s gone forever.
“Okay,” I agree emptily, taking his hand.
In one short little effort, I’m standing on the edge of the cliff again, no longer hanging on for dear death. I look into the eyes of the person who saved me from a certain shattering—or postponed a certain shattering.
“You look better on your feet,” he tells me.
He doesn’t kiss me. I don’t ask his name and he doesn’t ask mine, not now. We just cross the sandy plains together and on through a range of dead trees, making our way back to my new hometown Trenton.
I’m not sure what to talk about. What do you say to the person who just saved you from kinda-not-really dying? “Is it always so overcast?” I ask, deciding to point out the eerie silver wash that is the sky.
“Has to do with our eyes,” he explains, stepping over a tree branch. “Undead don’t regard darkness the same way the Living do. Something about being stuck in the End of Time, I guess. But hey, listen, if you squint real good, you can make out a sharp spot in the sky, slightly more silver than the rest ... That’s the sun.”
“Oh.” I look up. All I see is grey and grey and grey.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you’re keeping track of days.” He smiles again, warm, welcoming. “I’m not the police or the Deathless King, so help me.”
“We have police in this world?—and a King?”
“No. Not exactly.”
“How are we alive?” I can’t stop the questions … They just pour out. “How are we carrying on without heartbeats or blood or—or anything?”
“How did we carry on with them?”
I sigh. “Please, is there a single concrete thing you can tell me about this world? Something useful? Anything?”
“Yes. My name’s Grimsky.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m Winter, I guess.”
His expression breaks at the obvious dejection in my voice. “Winter … The name they gave you. I understand. Someday you’ll remember your original name, though by then I’m certain you’ll not identify with it in the least. You have beautiful hair.”
The compliment comes so suddenly, I have to cover my face with a hand, like I’m blushing. Reminding myself that nothing runs in my veins, I drop the hand and say, “Thanks.”
“We’ve arrived.”
The tall iron gates of Trenton loom ahead, awaiting my timely arrival from the cliff for which it surely knew I’d be headed, at which it surely knew I’d meet this fetching person called Grimsky, by whom it surely knew I would be somewhat saved, and with whom it surely knew I’d once again return.
Now if only I can keep from killing myself again.