Becoming

Lily felt the pull of the thread before the constellations in her eyes began to spin. She let it draw her where she needed to be, disappearing just as Azrael came through the front door.

“Hello?” he called.

No one answered.

Azrael leaned against the doorframe and closed his eyes. He had intended to go straight to Anamnesis after leaving his sisters, but their conversation had given him more to think about than he'd expected.

A knot. An ancient thread that had begun to pulse. Three Fates who suddenly had questions of their own.

And Atropos telling him to be careful. That was irritating enough on its own.

Kenji had already asked Anamnesis about the awakened thread and received no answer. Azrael wasn't particularly interested in repeating the experience.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Wonderful,” he muttered.

He needed to sort through what he actually knew before deciding what to ask the tapestry. A few minutes at his desk might help him put the questions in order.

Azrael pushed away from the doorframe and headed toward his office.

By then, Lily had appeared in a stairwell that smelled of antiseptic and plastic.

“Going up,” she announced, skipping up the steps.

She had just reached the door marked Maternity when a code was called over the hospital speakers. It came from somewhere on the fourth floor, sending nurses and doctors hurrying through the halls. Lily waited for two people to pass before slipping around them.

“Sorry. Excuse me,” she murmured, moving between a nurse and a rolling cart.

By the time she reached the room, the code had ended.

“The rule is: room, people, child. Breathe,” Lily whispered to herself. “Get your face on.”

She stepped inside, deliberately keeping her eyes away from the table. Instead, she focused on a tiny hospital bracelet lying near the edge of a tray. It was blank.

Lily looked down at the floor. A pair of discarded gloves lay beside the table, one turned inside out. A suction line hung loose, dripping onto the tile.

“Okay, okay.” She closed her eyes. “Give it a minute.”

The smell of iodine and adhesive tape filled the room. Someone had left a cabinet open, and torn packages covered the counter. No one had bothered to straighten anything before leaving.

Lily opened one eye and looked around.

Then she heard the crying.

It came from somewhere down the hall, a woman's voice breaking around sounds that weren't quite words. Lily closed her eye again, but she could still hear it. She had heard that sound before, more times than she wanted to remember, and it never became easier to listen to.

She turned toward the tray. Torn packages and lengths of tubing covered most of its surface, but another plastic bracelet rested near the edge, tipped toward the lamp.

This one had a name.

A mother's last name was printed across it in black ink.

“Oh,” Lily whispered.

She looked toward the table, then away again.

At home, Azrael had settled behind his ancient desk. The thread hovered above its polished surface, turning slowly as names appeared and disappeared beneath his fingers. He had been working for ten minutes without interruption.

A retired welder in Duluth. Ninety-one.

Azrael almost smiled. Ninety-one was a good, long life, and he had always appreciated the ones who reached their end without much unfinished business. He cleared the name with two fingers and moved to the next.

Another name appeared, then another. Azrael worked through them, occasionally pausing over one before allowing it to disappear.

The familiar pressure returned behind his breastbone.

He shifted in his chair and took a breath, but couldn't quite fill his lungs. It wasn't painful. It felt more like someone had placed a stone behind his ribs and forgotten to take it out.

Azrael looked down at his hand.

He had been rubbing the spot with one knuckle.

He raised an eyebrow and lowered his hand, staring at his chest for another moment before returning to the names.

Whatever this was, it was becoming irritating.

At the hospital, Lily finally moved closer to the table.

She caught sight of the baby's hand first, a tiny fist curled against the blanket. Some kind nurse had combed her hair, and the blanket had been tucked neatly around her shoulders.

The baby was six hours old.

Lily swallowed. She had collected infants before, but she had never learned to look at them without having to prepare herself first.

The newborn's silver soul had already begun to rise from her chest.

Lily steadied herself, waiting until the constellations in her eyes slowed. She held out one hand to receive the soul and caught the thread with two fingers of the other.

The thread went taut.

Lily frowned and pulled gently.

Nothing happened.

“Well, that's strange,” she murmured.

She had encountered frightened souls before, particularly children who didn't understand why someone unfamiliar had come to collect them. Some needed reassurance. Others wanted to wait for their parents, or asked questions Lily couldn't always answer.

This soul wasn't behaving like any of them.

The thread hummed against her fingertips. A high, thin note settled into her teeth, and she winced.

Above the baby's chest, the silver shimmer shifted away from her hand.

Lily followed its movement with her eyes. It wasn't moving back toward the body. It was leaning sideways, toward the empty space beside the baby's head.

She pulled again.

The shimmer moved a little, then stopped.

At his desk, Azrael reached for the next name.

The thread resisted.

He stopped moving his fingers and watched the line tighten above the wood. The next name should have appeared immediately. Instead, the thread remained stretched between his fingers, humming faintly.

Azrael sat forward.

He tried again, moving his fingers through the familiar motion.

Nothing.

The pressure in his chest deepened, and he glanced down at himself before returning his attention to the thread.

“Now what?” he muttered.

He held the line between two fingers, studying its movement.

It wasn't broken. He could still feel the other names moving beyond it, but something was interfering with the next one.

In the maternity ward, Lily felt cold spreading through her stomach.

She pulled her shoulders back and blew out a breath.

“Come on,” she whispered. “It's okay, sweetheart. It's time.”

The crying down the hall stopped.

Lily looked toward the door, hoping the silence would last. She had barely turned back when the woman's voice rose again, louder than before.

“Oh, please,” Lily murmured, closing her eyes.

She wrapped the thread once around her fist and braced her heels against the tile.

Then she pulled.

The line burned into her palm as the silver shimmer moved toward her. For an instant she thought she'd managed it, but the soul stopped short of her hand.

The thread snapped back, dragging Lily a full step across the floor.

She caught herself against the table.

“What in the—”

Lily stared at the silver soul.

It hadn't struggled against her. She was certain of that now. The shimmer had followed the thread until something pulled it back.

Something was holding on.

“No,” Lily whispered.

She loosened her fist, leaving the thread wrapped around her hand, and bent closer to the table.

Lily let her eyes go loose, the way Kenji had taught her years ago. She had never been particularly good at the exercise when he'd first shown her. She kept trying to look directly at the things he wanted her to see, which usually resulted in an irritated lecture about looking through something rather than at it.

Now she understood why he'd insisted.

The air beside the baby's head began to change.

A pale smudge appeared, so faint Lily nearly lost it when she blinked. She adjusted her focus and waited for its edges to become clearer.

“I see you,” she whispered.

The smudge drew closer to the silver soul.

There was something else there, another small shape curled around the first, holding tightly.

Lily searched for a thread.

There wasn't one.

She looked again, letting the constellations in her eyes turn slowly while she searched for a mark, a number, anything that might identify the second soul.

Nothing.

No thread. No mark. No name waiting in a ledger.

No one had ever come for her. No one had known to.

Lily raised her hand toward the pale shape.

It flinched.

“Oh, sweetheart.”

She lowered her hand, not wanting to frighten it further, and glanced at the baby on the table.

The tiny fist was still closed.

Lily stared at it for a long moment.

It had never been closed on nothing.

Someone had been holding the other end.

“You can let go,” Lily whispered, looking back toward the pale smudge. “It's okay. You can let go now.”

The thread tightened.

Lily frowned and watched the two shapes. She could see the pale one curled around the silver, holding it close whenever the thread moved.

She tried to understand why it was refusing to release the other soul.

Then she realized that wasn't what was happening.

They weren't stuck.

Nothing was wrong with the thread.

The sister with a thread was ready to leave. The sister without one could have gone at any time. There was no ledger holding her here, no summons waiting to be answered.

She had stayed.

Lily looked at the tiny fist again.

She had stayed through the dark and the noise, through the hours after birth and the quiet that followed. When her sister's six hours came to an end, she had been right beside her, still holding on.

Lily looked down at the thread wrapped around her hand.

Pull one, and she dragged the other. Pull harder, and she could tear them apart.

Neither of them wanted that.

They hadn't asked to stay. They hadn't asked to avoid whatever came next. They only wanted to leave together.

Two babies, asking Death for the only favor they knew how to ask.

Leave us together.

And Lily had been trying to take them apart.

She stared at the burn rising across her palm.

She had wrapped the thread around her fist and hauled on it. She had pulled hard enough to drag herself across the floor, never once considering that the soul wasn't refusing her.

Lily opened her mouth.

Usually, when a collection became difficult, she giggled. Sometimes it was nerves, sometimes it was the only thing that helped her finish the job. Kenji had once asked her why she laughed at such strange moments, and she hadn't been able to explain it.

She had been doing it for a hundred and nineteen years.

Now she couldn't.

Lily swallowed and tried to draw a breath, but her chest felt too tight.

She remembered the children.

Not one particular child, but all of them, arriving together in her memory without waiting their turns. Children sitting on bedroom floors, small hands reaching out of hospital beds, frightened faces looking up at her in unfamiliar rooms.

Is it going to hurt?

Where's my mom?

Will you stay?

She had answered those questions for a hundred and nineteen years. She had sat with them, held their hands, and tried to make each collection a little less frightening.

She had laughed when the work became too much, finished what she came to do, and gone home.

Then she'd done it again.

Lily looked at the two sisters above the table and tried to giggle.

Nothing came out.

Her chest tightened until she couldn't draw another breath, and when she finally made a sound, it wasn't laughter.

It came out of her so suddenly that Lily barely recognized her own voice. She heard the mother crying down the hall, and for a moment she couldn't tell which sound belonged to which of them.

Her knees gave way.

Lily hit the tile with both hands, her burned palm striking the floor hard enough to make her gasp.

The sound continued.

It traveled down the thread wrapped around her fist, carrying her cry through the weave and past the ledgers. Lily felt it moving away from her, following connections she had never known existed, but she couldn't make herself stop.

Far from the hospital, the thread above Azrael's desk stopped turning.

He had been watching the line's strange resistance for several minutes, trying to determine what had interrupted it. Now a vibration traveled through his fingers, sending a note up his wrist and into his jaw.

The thread didn't snap.

It went rigid.

Azrael stood so abruptly that his chair scraped against the floor.

He knew that note. He had heard it six times since the first death happened, and each time one of his grims had been standing at the edge of something.

The glow along the thread dimmed.

Azrael stared as a single word burned itself into the air above his desk.

Lily.

He read it twice.

The chair struck the floor behind him.

He didn't hear it land. The thread had already begun pulling him through the dark, and Azrael followed without resisting. Somewhere at the far end was his youngest, alone in a room he couldn't yet see.

Lily remained on her knees beside the table.

She couldn't stop crying. Every time she managed to breathe, another sob followed, leaving her shoulders shaking and her throat aching.

The thread remained wrapped around her burned hand, stretched between her and the two little souls.

She looked toward them and cried harder.

A door opened behind her.

The hall came in with it, along with the mother's distant crying and the squeak of shoes against tile. A nurse backed into the room, pulling a rolling bin behind her.

She was humming.

Lily recognized the sound immediately. She had heard nurses do it before, sometimes while cleaning rooms, sometimes while preparing equipment, and sometimes when they were trying very hard not to think about what had just happened.

The woman's eyes were red around the edges, but her face was dry.

She had probably cried in a supply closet before returning to work. Lily had seen that before, too.

The nurse didn't notice Lily kneeling beside the table. She moved toward the tray and reached across the space Lily occupied.

Her arm passed straight through Lily's shoulder.

Warmth spread across Lily's back.

She closed her eyes at the sensation. The nurse was alive, her body warm and moving, her hands already reaching for the next task.

Lily almost started crying again.

The nurse gathered the torn packages and tubing, dropping them into the bin. She picked up a discarded glove, then swept the remaining items from the tray toward her.

The bracelet slipped off the edge.

Lily saw it fall.

The little band turned slowly as it dropped toward the open bin, and Lily remembered the second bracelet she'd noticed when she entered the room.

Two bracelets.

Somewhere, someone had printed two bands because there had been two babies. Someone had entered their information, prepared the identification bands, and expected both children to be there when they were needed.

Now one of them didn't even have a thread.

By morning, the bracelet would be buried beneath discarded gloves and tubing. The chart would be marked, the bin emptied, and whatever remained of the baby's brief existence would be put away with the other hospital records.

“No,” Lily whispered.

She moved across the floor on her knees, reaching with her burned hand.

Her fingers closed around the bracelet just before it disappeared into the bin.

The plastic pressed against the burn. Lily winced but didn't release it.

The nurse stopped moving.

She rubbed her wrist and looked around, frowning at the faint movement of air beside her. Her gaze passed over Lily and paused.

For a second, Lily thought the woman could see her.

“I'm sorry, baby,” the nurse whispered.

Her voice cracked.

Lily looked down at the bracelet in her hand.

The nurse returned to the tray, humming softly as she finished gathering the remaining supplies.

Lily tucked the bracelet into her cardigan pocket and pressed her palm over it.

A grim collected souls.

Grims didn't collect things.

She knew that. They all knew that. Nobody had ever bothered making it a rule because nobody had ever considered doing otherwise.

Lily left the bracelet where it was.

Behind her, the room grew cold.

“Lily.”

Azrael's voice filled the room.

Every monitor went to flat green in the middle of its beep. The nurse froze with one hand on the bin lid, her breath caught halfway in. Even the mother's crying stopped somewhere down the hall.

A dust mote hung motionless beside the lamp.

Time hadn't stopped.

Azrael had told it to wait.

Lily turned toward the doorway.

He stood there in his black robes, the fabric moving slightly around his boots. The constellations in his eyes were spinning, and frost had begun to form along the glass in the supply cabinet.

Azrael looked at the table first.

Then he saw Lily.

She was still on her knees, her face wet, one hand pressed against her pocket. The thread remained wrapped around her other fist, leaving a red burn across her palm.

Azrael crossed the room in two strides and dropped to his knees in front of her.

“Lily?”

She tried to answer, but another sob caught in her throat.

“Baby, look at me.”

Lily shook her head.

Azrael pulled her into his arms. She grabbed his robes and buried her face against his chest, crying harder than she had when she'd been alone.

“I've got you,” he whispered, pressing one hand against the back of her head. “I'm here. I heard you all the way from the house.”

Lily held on tighter.

Azrael wrapped his other arm around her and pulled her closer. The cold that normally surrounded him began to change, warming where Lily pressed against his chest.

He didn't seem to notice.

He held her until she could breathe without choking, then drew back enough to see her face.

“Lily, what happened?”

She opened her mouth, but he had already noticed her hand.

Azrael took her wrist and turned it carefully beneath the lamp. The red burn ran across her palm, disappearing beneath the thread wound around her fingers.

“Who did this?”

“Nobody.” Lily shook her head. “It was the thread. It pulled back. I pulled and it pulled back, and I didn't know.”

She swallowed, trying to get the rest out.

“I didn't know, Azrael.”

Azrael looked from the burn to the two shapes above the table.

His fingers tightened around her wrist for a moment before he caught himself.

“Look at me, Lily.”

She raised her eyes.

“You did nothing wrong. Do you hear me?”

She nodded, wiping her nose against her sleeve.

“Nothing,” he repeated.

Azrael brushed the hair away from her face and pressed his forehead against hers. Neither spoke for a while.

Lily stayed close to him, her fingers wrapped around his sleeves, until he finally raised his head and looked toward the table again.

Two little lights remained suspended above the baby's chest. One was silver, the other almost too pale to see. They were curled around each other, their edges overlapping where the smaller shape held on.

Azrael studied them without releasing Lily.

For a long moment, he said nothing.

Then he helped her to her feet.

Lily watched his expression change.

The constellations in his eyes began to move through patterns she didn't recognize. He straightened to his full height, and the temperature in the room dropped.

The glass in the supply cabinet cracked from top to bottom.

Lily jumped.

“Az?”

He held out his hand.

She looked at it, then down at the thread around her fist.

“Azrael, I can do it.”

“I know you can.”

He took her hand and unwound the thread one loop at a time, keeping his thumb away from the burn.

“Step back from the thread, Lily.”

She reached for it again.

“No. I can do it.”

“I know you can. Step back.”

“Azrael, please. She's mine. I can do it. I'll do it right this time.”

“That wasn't a request.”

Lily stopped reaching.

Azrael hadn't raised his voice. He didn't need to.

She had heard him use that tone with Crash before, and with Finn when he'd done something particularly stupid. She couldn't remember him ever using it with her.

She stepped backward until her heels struck the table leg.

Azrael turned toward the twins.

Lily watched him close his fingers around the thread. It began humming again, the same high note she'd heard when she first tried to collect the baby.

He stood still for a moment, studying the two shimmers.

Then he drew.

The twin without a thread screamed.

Lily heard it despite the little soul having no voice. The sound pierced her ears, and she clapped her hands over them.

Above the table, the pale shape tightened around her sister's silver light. The thread turned white where Azrael held it, and a thin line appeared between the two souls.

Lily stared at it.

They were tearing.

Azrael released the thread so quickly that his hand remained open in front of him.

The sound stopped.

He stood looking at the two souls, his fingers still spread.

A sliver of glass broke free from the cracked cabinet and struck the tile.

Azrael flinched.

Lily had never seen him do that.

“Az?” she whispered.

He didn't answer.

The constellations in his eyes began spinning again, faster than Lily had ever seen them move. His lips moved silently, and she realized he was reading.

Every collection. Every ledger. Every death since the first.

He was searching for something like this.

Lily watched him, waiting for the stars to slow, but they continued moving through patterns she couldn't follow.

Then they stopped.

Azrael looked down at his hand.

He closed his fingers and opened them again, examining the palm that had held the thread.

“They chose this,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Both of them.”

Lily looked toward the table.

“The one who stayed picked first,” she said. “She stayed for her. I think.”

Azrael studied the two shapes again.

“Azrael, they don't want to be two.”

He looked at Lily, then back at the twins.

The pale soul had no thread, but it had never tried to leave. It remained curled around its sister, tightening its hold whenever either of them reached for the silver.

Azrael lowered his hand.

He had never needed to consider whether a soul wanted to go alone. The thread marked the collection, and when the time came, he drew it. There had never been a reason to do otherwise.

Now he had two souls and only one thread.

He reached for the line again, but this time he didn't pull immediately.

Azrael studied the place where the shimmers met, watching them move together. The pale soul was still holding the silver one, but the silver had begun to settle against it.

He closed his fingers around the thread.

Then he drew.

The silver soul began to rise.

Lily held her breath as the pale one moved with it, still curled tightly around her sister. The thread didn't tighten or pull against them. It moved smoothly through Azrael's fingers, carrying the weight of both.

The two lights rose together, their edges overlapping until they looked almost like one.

They slipped through the ceiling.

Nothing tore.

The thread sang one clear note and went slack.

Lily stood beside the table, staring at the place where they'd disappeared.

“They went together,” she whispered.

Azrael was still looking at his hand.

“Yes,” he said quietly.

He opened his fingers and watched the last of the silver glow fade.

Lily rubbed her burned palm against her cardigan, then stopped when she felt the bracelet beneath the fabric.

Azrael turned toward her.

She stood under the hospital lamp with her sleeves pulled over her hands, looking smaller than she had when he'd left her at home earlier.

He felt the pressure return behind his breastbone.

A hundred and nineteen years.

Azrael studied her face.

Collectors who worked with children rarely lasted eighty years. Some went flat, some became hard, and others eventually asked him to stop giving them those collections.

He remembered the ones who hadn't asked in time.

Lily had passed eighty years ago.

He had watched her return from collections laughing and talking, sometimes bringing him stories about children who had asked ridiculous questions. She was always quick to tell him when she'd managed to make one laugh before they crossed.

He had assumed she was handling it.

Azrael looked at the burn across her palm.

Apparently, he'd assumed wrong.

“Come here,” he said.

Lily walked toward him without arguing.

He bent down and picked her up.

She let him.

Azrael raised an eyebrow.

Ordinarily, she would have protested, insisting she was a hundred and nineteen years old and perfectly capable of walking. Sometimes she reminded him that she was a grim, usually when she wanted him to stop treating her like a child.

Tonight she simply settled against his shoulder.

He adjusted his hold and felt her hand remain buried in her cardigan pocket.

“Did it hurt them?” she mumbled into his collar.

“No.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“Then why do you look like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you're doing math.”

“I'm always doing math.”

Lily made a small sound against his collar.

It wasn't quite a giggle, but Azrael felt himself relax a little.

He carried her toward the door, allowing his hold over the room to ease as he went.

Behind them, the monitors resumed their beeping. The nurse finished drawing the breath she'd started, lifted the bin lid, and returned to her work.

Down the hall, the mother's crying continued in the middle of the syllable it had left behind.

The nurse wheeled the bin into the hall, humming quietly.

Azrael didn't look back.

He carried Lily down the stairwell, where no one would notice the air folding around them. Her face remained pressed against his collar, and she didn't ask where they were going.

The house received them a moment later.

Its stone walls shifted as Azrael stepped inside, shortening the hallway to the living room. He carried Lily to the big chair and lowered her into it.

She curled up immediately, pulling her knees toward her chest.

Azrael removed his coat and laid it over her legs. Lily tugged it up to her chin.

He tucked the hem around her feet.

Her hand was still in her pocket.

Azrael noticed, but didn't say anything. Whatever she'd brought home from the hospital could wait until she was ready to tell him.

He straightened and pressed two fingers against the bone of his chest.

A single pulse moved through every thread in the house.

Every grim would feel it.

Azrael never used that particular summons. There had never been a reason to gather all of them at once.

Within a minute, they had all come.