A Matter of Life and Death
A snippet about Ignado, my Moros mage from a Mage: The Awakening tabletop roleplaying game.
My back kept itching where Caleb's hellhound had batted me around. Stepan's healing was good, but not perfect and it seemed my body was bent on going through all the annoying itching it would've seen during normal healing. Between that and the questions chasing each other through my head, I just could not sleep after we got back to Blanding, so I slipped out of my room sometime between late night and early morning and padded down the darkened third-floor hall to another bedroom door.
Sadie Throckmorton's Antebellum mansion was where Teofila and I stayed when we happened to be on-base. I knew Teo hadn't left yet since the party a few days ago, but standing before her door in the shadowy hall, hand raised to knock, I hesitated. Nothing inside the room was amiss; though I couldn't sense life the way Stepan could, or the displacement of space like Gus, I knew by the weight pressed against the cotton sheets on the bed and in the crib that Teo and Maritza were asleep in there. (Maritza was really too old for a crib, but Teo hated staying here, so she never got one suitable for a toddler.) Surprisingly, Maritza was actually still in her own bed.
I told myself I hesitated because I didn't want to wake the baby. Really it was the enormity of the question I had to ask.
I knocked, lightly, with one knuckle.
The sheets shifted aside and the mattress springs compressed. Then it was the crush of carpet fibers and the sensation of the door handle turning. Magically detecting matter was like looking at the outline of a person or reading the descriptions of everything next to them. Teo stepped out into the hall, her mane of black hair a wild tangle around her face. "Iggy, what?" she said. "What's up?"
I opened my mouth, but became distracted by the fact that the pajama pants she wore were on backwards. I said, "Your pants are on backwards.” "They weren't a second ago, when I was in my bed, not wearing them," Teo hissed. Rustling and snuffling sounded from within the bedroom at which Teo leaned her back against the closed door, listening. Maritza quieted and went back to sleep. "So I know you didn't wake me up to talk about my pants."
I tossed her a candy bar, one from my personal stash. Chocolate caramel.
Teo caught it and her smile was a flash of white in the dark. "Ohhhh, you need advice." This was the Sibling Trade Agreement - candy for help.
As she unwrapped the foil, I leaned against the wall next to her. Crossed my arms, uncrossed them, shoved my hands into my pockets. At last, I blurted, "If you could bring mamá y papá back to life, would you?"
"What, like a zombie?" Teo asked around a mouthful of sticky chocolate. "That would be gross, so no."
"Not like a zombie," I said. "Real, actual life."
"Well, there's always a catch, so..." --Teo popped another square of chocolate-- "depends on the catch."
"Seven years with them before being conscripted into the armies of hell?" I scratched at my back again. Damn itching.
"Wait, who gets conscripted, you or them?" she asked.
"That part was unclear," I said. "Definitely me, maybe both?"
Teo paused in her munching to narrow her eyes at me. "What exactly have you gotten yourself into?"
"It's just a philosophical question," I countered, fighting to hold a neutral expression. "Would you do it or not?"
I blinked, losing all attempts at neutrality. "What? That easy? Why not?"
"Escúchame, hermano," said Teo. "I miss my parents as much as the next orphan, but I am pretty sure if they are not already in hell, they would not trade heaven for seven years of life here followed by forever in hell. Even if they got to skip the hell part, they would not want their own son going there." She paused, tilting her head thoughtfully. "I sure would not want Maritza to do that for me."
I let out a breath. "Oh." That wasn't the answer I was expecting and something in my gut loosened a little. "Thank you."
As I started back down the hall, Teo whisper-called out to me. "Hey, does this mean hell is real?"
Back in my room, I considered the open book on my bed.
I'm not sure if it was always red, or if the cover became blood red with night black page edging just because I thought it should look that way. Most of its contents I couldn't read, written in every language under the sun, but right now the book was opened to a page in Spanish. A prayer to Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte, Our Lady of Holy Death. I could read this one.
My parents had long ago warned Teo and me not to pray to Santa Muerte. They were Catholic only in the most technical sense, but church-recognized saints still mattered to them, I guess. Santa Muerte was not one of those. I touched the page, noting how the thick material seemed more old-fashioned than normal paper. I wondered whether the light, thin handwriting was Caleb's.
I wondered whether Caleb was really Santa Muerte.
There I sat on my bed, staring at that prayer until almost dawn, missing my parents so much, wondering if passing on this deal would make me a coward. Would they do this for me? Would they want me to do it for them?
Finally, when the lettering had begun to squirm before my tired eyes, I closed the book and laid it on my nightstand. The decision would keep for tonight.
After all, I had seven years to make up my mind.
