Read Online Limbo's Child by Jonah Hewitt - Free Book Online

crushed their bodies as they passed.
    In snatches of conversations between these new arrivals he had overheard how men now moved about in strange, fast-moving carts – metal and glass carriages powered by steam and fire without horses. How these conveyances worked was a mystery to Nephys, but it was certainly some sort of evil magic, because they extracted a heavy toll. Never had so many mangled souls entered the Gates of Erebus before. The Children of Limbo referred to them as “death-carts” and were convinced they were a conspiracy on the part of the Great Master to speed up the work. Nephys had never seen a whole one before, but this mangled metal thing stuck in the tree had to be one of them.
    “Phlarnk!” Hiero nudged Nephys’ leg, hooted and gestured with his nose trumpet. Nephys could see a woman struggling frantically at the base of the tree. She was desperately trying to climb it to reach the metal carcass of the death cart, but she instead clawed helplessly at the bark, sliding back down to the ground. With each failed attempt, she became more desperate until she collapsed at the base of the tree, sobbing hysterically.
    “Fhwooootonk!”
    Hiero was right. They had to put an end to this right away. All that crying was bound to attract some shades. There were certainly shades nearby, and Nephys didn’t want to meet up with any way out here. Touching a single shade was like thrusting your hand under ice water for several minutes. If several shades surrounded you, it was like falling into an icy lake, and release only came when you managed to escape or became a shade yourself.
    Nephys quickly padded over to the sobbing woman. Hiero splashed alongside him in the puddles like a lame, but excited, dog. When he got closer he could see that she was tall and thin and dark haired, but not young. Middle-aged he guessed. It was hard to tell her age exactly; after a while all of the dead looked the same to Nephys. She was dressed in the strange, tight-fitting pants that so many souls wore now, but they looked uncomfortably binding to him. Nephys stopped just a few feet short of her and didn’t know what to say or do. Hiero looked from Nephys to her and back to Nephys again.
    “Haaaarnt!” Hiero hooted exasperatedly. Then he shoved Nephys hard behind the knees until he nearly fell over.
    “Stop that!” Nephys muttered hoarsely.
    “fhun, fhun, fhun…weeeeeeenarn,” Hiero bleated sulkily. He hated dithering.
    “Alright then, fine.” Nephys took a few cautious, small steps forward. Nothing was worse than being less decisive than a demonic wind instrument. Nephys approached carefully and said nervously, “Hello.”
    The woman didn’t notice and kept on sobbing. Nephys tried a little louder, this time with some throat clearing as well. Still nothing. Nephys had learned many languages working as a scribe in the record houses of the dead. He tried various greetings in several of these, but still nothing. She couldn’t see him. She couldn’t hear him. It was like he wasn’t there at all. This was bad. A soul torn so swiftly and violently from the land of the living was often in such a state of shock, it couldn’t be made to understand the nature of its new reality. Most did not even know they were dead. If she couldn’t be made to see the truth, and quickly, she would be locked forever in a state of denial, forever clawing at the base of the tree, sobbing. That is, until she became a shade, at which point she would wander without a thought at all, clinging only to the memory of the terrible sadness that had consumed her.
    Persons who fell so far from the Gates of Erebus were rarely recovered. Their numbers were so small that the bureaucrats of Death could hardly be bothered with them. Anyone lost out here would usually become a lost soul, a shade, a mere memory of their former selves, with nothing but hunger to guide them.
    Nephys wasn’t sure why Hiero kept dragging him out here to find these hard-luck cases.