Reaper of Souls by Rena Barron

Author:Rena Barron
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperTeen
Published: 2021-01-09T00:00:00+00:00

The Unnamed Orisha: Dimma

I’d seen countless deaths on countless worlds and still hadn’t found a cure for Daho’s mortality. I grow resentful of the Supreme Cataclysm’s compulsion to create and destroy. It’s the reason Daho will die one day. Not ready to give up, I visit a world called Uthura. I sit on the roof above a city, watching its people wading through blankets of mist. Twin voices curl around me in a cool embrace that tastes of inevitability. “You seem to have an affinity for death, Dimma.”

They are light and dark, night and day, chaos and order, the sweetness of a first breath and the moment of death. One half of them glows, and shadows swathe the other, together shaping symmetry. They tell me their name and nature in the shift of the wind around us: Fram, the custodian of life and death. Koré is writhing energy, the calm before the storm, the storm itself. Iben is secrecy. I would soon learn that Re’Mec is heat and rage and nurture. Of the four, there is something in Fram that calls to me most, a kinship, a likeness.

“Why are they not immortal like us?” I ask as two bodies materialize beside me, four legs dangling over the ledge. I don’t mean only the Uthurans; I mean all mortal kind. I asked Iben a similar question, but perhaps Fram is more suited to answer it.

“Death is our gift to them,” Fram says. “Our offspring will never have our immortality, but they have an advantage over us. They will bear children of their flesh. We can only shape what the Supreme Cataclysm creates into some semblance of our image—they are only a shadow of who we are.”

“It seems more like a curse to me,” I say.

“You’ve fallen in love with a mortal, have you?” Fram asks pointedly.

I think of Daho’s lips against mine, the curve of his back, his laughter. “How do you know?”

“None of our kind ever cares about death until it affects someone they love,” Fram answers.

“Are the Uthurans your children?” I ask, hiding from the truth in their words.

Fram falls still, their voices silent for a long pause. “My children are too dangerous for the mortal world, so I keep them inside me.”

The Uthurans in the city below perform a ceremony to honor twelve people who died in an accident. They place their dead in a circle on a platform. Their heads form the inner ring of the circle, and their appendages form the outer. Twelve Uthurans lean to touch the deceased. They close their eyes, and energy begins to hum around the people on the platforms. Soon the dead Uthurans’ bodies start to flake away, like burned leaves careening on a breeze. They fade until there is nothing left but their souls. Gray mists rise from the platforms and float to the living. They open their mouths, their jaws stretching, and they eat the souls.

I startle beside Fram—surprised and confused. “This is death for the Uthurans?”

“Death and an extension of life,” Fram says, indifferent, as if the act isn’t extraordinary.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.