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[The Keeper]

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The mists faltered and shifted to black for a moment. The Keeper frowned, knowing that something epic had happened, something terrible.

He scanned the Ether, searching for the trouble, and came upon a small town just outside of a sprawling city. His focus settled and the quaint little town flashed into view, its white dusted rooftops glistening beneath a wonderfully full moon.

“Why!” a man screamed in dreadful agony.

The man wailed. His bone-white fingers knotted in the bloody bedclothes that barely covered the ashen form of a birth-worn woman. The man’s wife gasped for breath, shifting only slightly and the Keeper watched, trying to find the reason this event had summoned him.

The man fought through despair and pulled himself closer to his dying wife, cupping her sallow cheek in his hand. She whispered words of love and he was wracked with sobs, holding her tightly and pressing urgent kisses to her face.

The Keeper left them there, moving slowly away as the woman exhaled for the final time. Her name went into his book just below a blank space - Moria. The Keeper stared for a second at the unfilled slot above that name.

He was the Keeper of Names; the names of new life and of life lost. For some reason, there was a name missing from this page. He could do nothing more than puzzle the empty space for a moment longer. He glanced then back at the scene where the man still clung to his dead wife’s cold hands, whispering his promise into her hair that glistened with his tears. The three of us will be together this night, my love. He kissed her for the last time, and thrust his dagger deep into his chest.

The Keeper turned to his book again and the name Jaerl appeared beneath his wife’s name.

Three. The man had said three. The Keeper of Names focused again, moving through the manor house until he heard voices.

“The mother has died and the father took his own life,” a woman said tearfully.

“They didn’t give the child a name,” another replied.

“She’s dead as well, what need has she of a name?” Remarked a third.

“She can’t be sent to the next life nameless.” Was the reply.

The Keeper ignored the women mostly, focusing instead on the peaceful face of newborn innocence. The child lay in a bundle of soft cloth, unmoving. To The Keeper, she was neither alive nor dead. She had no name.

He turned then to the women and pushed with his will, an unspoken command – Name her.

“Mourn,” one of the women said, “A fitting name for this poor child.”

The name appeared in the blank space on the Keeper’s page and the Keeper glanced from his book to the lifeless form. The child seemed so peaceful, as if the events of her tragic birth were of no matter to her. She was quiet and cold; simply a name in the book but the Keeper was drawn to her side. She seemed to sleep; yet she drew no breath.

The Keeper touched her cheek impulsively, then turned to depart. He had the names now and his work was elsewhere. He drew slowly away from tragic scene, but the sound of a baby’s cry drew his gaze back to the page of his book. In an instant, the name vanished from its place above the mother’s, and then appeared again, this time beneath the father’s.

A new life… recorded.

[The Keeper]

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Names, whispered in a million voices, echoed around him in a barely perceived constant murmur. The sound didn’t bother him; it had always been so. His senses were so attuned to the recording of names that, if he wished, he could hear each individual name even as it wrote itself into the massive tome he carried.

He had never questioned the value of his duty until recent years. Never before had any of the names etched themselves into his mind like one had done. Mourn.

The child’s name still whispered to him, stealing its way to the forefront of his mind and making him lose track of his task. This caused him great worry at times but lately he had begun to wonder why the task had been given to him in the first place.

He never really did anything with the names. No one ever came to question him about his tome. What was the purpose? Why did he need to record the names of everyone born and everyone who had passed? He couldn’t figure it.

The names continued to echo ethereal in his mind and he opened his book, flipping easily to the page that held her name as if it were marked. Even her name was beautiful to him and he gazed at it often.

He had traveled to see her many times and he had shed tears over her situation in life even though he knew it was beyond his power to aid her. He shifted through the mists constantly just to look at her and even as he thought about those trips and how it must be wrong, he went there again.

The room was dark and beds lined the walls. Dozens of dirty-faced children slept there on those beds, dreaming of a better life he supposed. He floated silently past the sour faced night woman as she marched the length of the room, checking in on her charges. She, however, didn’t see him. He wanted to see her name in his book.

The girl child slept in a bed slightly apart from the others because the fools claimed evil spirits brought her back from the dead. They hated her and subjected her to a life of isolation despite the number of children that the orphanage held. She was alone in the crowd and the Keeper of Names hated them all for her plight.

As he neared her little cot, she sat up and smiled.

“Have you come to take me home?” She whispered.

He couldn’t answer her. The shock of being addressed by a mortal took from him his voice. Something else was not right, though, and he began searching for the trouble. Her face was beaded in sweat and her breathing was labored.

He scanned the room, sweeping past bed after bed to check each slumbering form. All of them were sick. The room suddenly stank of sickness and death. The names had been tumbling into his mind and his book all along and he had been so wrapped up in visiting the child that he had failed to notice. He rushed back to her side but she was wracked with a fit of coughing and could no longer see him there. Blood marked the froth on her lips and fear gripped him tightly.

He bolted from her side, following the sour faced woman’s path earlier. He found her on her hands and knees in her private chamber coughing up blood. Death was all around him and the names were flooding in. He listened for one name in particular even as he raced back to the child’s side.

When he reached her she smiled at him again.

“Can you take me home now.” She asked.

“No, little one.” He replied somewhat confused. “I do not know where your home is.”

The child merely nodded and whispered, “That’s alright.”

Her fever broke, her color returned and she climbed from her little cot. She walked down the long hall between the beds of the dead and dying, pausing only to glance back at the Keeper and wave before she stepped through the big double doors and out into the world.

[The Keeper]

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She walked along the alley, stepping over unknown puddles and crinkling her nose at the stench of unwashed bodies and refuse, both of which littered the cobblestone path. The air reeked of filth and decay but she had grown as used to it as one can to such things.

Her twelfth birthday was due any day now, which day she didn’t know but soon. It could even be today, she thought absently as her steps carried her from the alley’s muck and onto a clean street. Vendors shouted the quality of their wares to passersby and folks stopped to purchase various items. They were all oblivious to the foul world of waste and heartache she had just left as if some wall blocked the alley from view.

She marveled at how the happy people could disregard such depravity only a head-turn away from their sight and she wished she could learn that skill but somehow she could see the wretched and the homeless and the children wallowing at play in filth no matter where she turned.

She moved through the masses, just another invisible child. They mostly ignored her unless it was to turn their noses up in disgust as she neared. She never troubled them and tried to avoid looking them in the eye. They were the happy people and she was Mourn.

She reached a small shop and scurried inside. The place was empty save an older man that seemed like he could see the alley. She thought that perhaps he had seen it up close at some point in his life. Geoffrey smiled at her, looking up from the slab of meat on the table before him.

“Well if it isn’t the prettiest little girl in town come to visit me!” he exclaimed jovially. “Just in time too. I have a package for you to take to Thessy – you know her, right?”

Mourn, nodded. She knew the widow well enough. Thesilia Roget was a kind old woman confined to her house for severe problems with her lower back. She didn’t get around well and spent most of her time in a chair with wheels that Mourn thought would be fun to sit in but never asked.

“Good, good.” Geoffrey said, ruffling her hair and handing her something heavy wrapped in thick plain brown paper and tied with twine. “Take this to her. She’ll be looking for you to come.”

Mourn curtsied as she had seen the happy children do, she so wanted to be like them, then slipped back out of the shop and onto the street.

Thessy, as Geoff called her, lived just past a large old willow tree to the sunrise side of the town and Mourn wished often that one day she could live in such a place. Fields of wild flowers on rolling hills and behind it all the sun was birthed every morning in a dazzling display of beauty. She was sure that the Keeper would be able to find her in such a place and carry her home at last.


Marshal… Dawn…

She spun to see who had spoken but no one was there.

Denis… Fredrick… Ellen…

Mourn nearly dropped the package in fear, twisting this way and that but whoever was behind that voice was no where to be found and she began to run. Vines snatched at her feet, nearly tripping her up but the voice kept whispering names no matter how fast she ran. The house came into view at last and even though her lungs burned she continued to run. She paused at last to shift her bundle so that she could undo the latch on the white picket gate.

Thesilia…

The voice went silent and Mourn glanced over her shoulder, breathing heavy and trying to calm herself. There was no one there. She began to think it was all in her mind and her fear subsided enough that she could work the gate latch and begin the short trek to the front porch.

Thessy was napping in the porch swing as she often did. She looked so peaceful there, relaxed and comfortable. Mourn approached her slowly, not wanting to disturb her since the woman never seemed to have a moment without the signs of pain on her face and now she seemed to smile there in her sleep. Mourn set the bundle on a small table beside the swing and climbed up beside the old woman to rest with her a moment, laying her head gently on the withered shoulder.

“You don’t have to pay me today, Thessy.” She whispered softly. “I didn’t mind the walk.”

The old lady didn’t reply but she still wore that peaceful smile.

“I’m twelve today, ma’am… It’s my birthday.”