Sunday, September 25, 2005

   Chapter 8: Down the Acheron River (part 4)
“I don’t know any stories.”
“Fine. Then tell me something about yourself. We’ve known each other for a while, but I still don’t know anything about you.”
Pen could tell that Lucifer, too, was all ears. The angel was also stowing away his paddle. He sighed, deciding that there was no escape this time, and started to talk. “I’m an orphan who grew up in the Archives. I have no memory of my parents. I don’t even know if they’re alive or not. I’ve been under the care of the wisepeople my whole life.”
Lucifer was staring off into space. “What was it like living in the Archives?” he asked, almost carefully, as if he didn’t want to scare Pen away from the topic.
“I dunno,” Pen shrugged. “I’ve never had another life, so I wouldn’t know what it’s like.”
“Did you have friends?” Sasheeta squeaked, intrigued.
“No. I was always alone, training on the grounds or reading in the library. Once—“ Pen cut himself off, remembering.
“Yes?” Lucifer asked. Sasheeta wiggled encouragingly.
“Well, Tory used to be around sometimes,” he filled in. “But she, too, left me alone.”
“Why was that?”
“She got scared of me,” he said. “I killed someone, and after that, she didn’t talk to me again for a really long time. I don’t have any kind of connection to her anymore.”
“You’ve been alone that long…” Lucifer appeared lost in thought.
“Being alone hasn’t ever bothered me,” Pen added quickly.
“Who did you kill?” Sasheeta squeaked, her voice split between excitement and dread.
Pen shrugged. “It was just a stupid village kid who picked a fight with me.”
“A…” Lucifer studdered, nearly disbelievingly. “A-a kid? You… you just killed a kid?”
“Well… yeah. What’s wrong with that?”
The black-winged angel wasn’t sure what to say. He hesitated several times before he spoke again. “You’re not kidding?” he almost whispered. “You don’t know what’s wrong with that?”
Sasheeta looked disgusted. She sprang out of Pen’s lap, climbed up Lucifer’s cloak, and disappeared in his hood without another word.
“No,” Pen said honestly. “Why?”
Lucifer seemed pained. He scratched his head, trying to make sense of the strange new friend he had made. Something was matching up about Pen, but Lucifer did not want to make himself believe that it was the truth. “Pen, do you not know what life is?” he asked, already knowing and dreading the answer.
“No. I hear a lot about it, but nobody ever told me what it was.”
“Life is everything that lives and grows around us,” Lucifer explained. “The trees, the bugs, and angels and elves are all alive! It’s everything that has a soul, that can feel things around it, everything that has some kind of heart beating inside it and some kind of blood flowing in its veins.”
“Heart?”
“A heart is what keeps us alive. You see, life has an end. Everything dies at some point in time, whether you like it or not. And yet, most things try to survive for as long as they can.”
“When you kill something, you take its life away?”
“That’s right. You ended that boy’s life.”
Pen thought for a long time in silence. It had never occurred to him before that he had ended something when he killed things. It was just second nature to him. But if they had souls just like he did… then was it right to take that away?
“Lucifer?” he started quietly, feeling something heavy inside himself that he had never felt before.
“Yes?”
“What is a heart?”
“It’s that drum inside you. It beats to keep you alive.”
Pen looked out over the river, his whole being burning with a horrible, incredible knowledge; one that he did not want to face. And, yet, he said the words, knowing finally what he was.
“Lucifer, I don’t have a heart.”
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