Look at the time it's taken me to get away from what was said
I'll never leave, I'll always love
It had been a long time since anyone had called Aura sanekhu, ‘the life-giver’. The ancient epithet seemed to ring with an almost humorous irony now.
There might have been something frightening about the scene if she were still alive: a mother recoiled, backed into a corner, providing a physical barrier between her child and Death. That alone would have been warning enough to any predator, but the presence of strong magic added another layer of danger. Aura had thought, at first, that it was just Mallos she – or the scythe? – was sensing, but this was different. Similar to divinity, almost as strong, but not quite the same.
Aura moved slowly, as though face to face with a wild animal. She unfurled the arm holding the scythe and carefully leant it against the wall beside the door. As her fingers broke contact, her floaty blue death-robes vanished, replaced by the greyed clothes she’d died in: a pair of shorts and a tank top, ideal for exploring the centre of the Earth. Her shoes were long gone, traded to a ferryman for passage between the zones in the Realm of the Dead. Her blue-and-silver star-shaped pendant, which had once been carefully hidden with layers of magic, now hung on full display around her neck.
“Just visiting,” she reassured Croe, holding out her palms as the universal code for, look, I’m unarmed and harmless. “And ‘Aura’ is fine. It’s Croe, isn’t it?”
It seemed a fairly good guess, under the circumstances. Keeping her movements slow and deliberate, Aura skirted around the coffee table – and the baby – in a wide arc and collapsed into the armchair opposite the sofa. She left the scythe by the bedroom door on the opposite side of the room, confident that it would come when called.
It was the first time that Aura had actually seen the baby. Her eyes followed it with a neutral expression as it completed another lap of the coffee table, thumping the white rug with its caramel-brown fists. Regularly, it glanced up at its mother as thought to reassure itself that she was still there. Aura supposed that she should stop thinking of it as an it; it was quite definitely a she.
Now that she was here, it was difficult to know what to say. When Mallos had told her about Croe, Aura had conjured a mental image of a hardened pirate with an eyepatch. Confronted with the reality of a very real woman made it harder to find the words.
Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was because she’d never been any bloody good at talking to people.
“Thought it was about time you and I made acquaintances.” She pulled her feet up so she was sat cross-legged on the armchair, watching Croe with her penetrating blue eyes. “Sorry for dropping in unexpectedly. Shall we start again? I’m Aura. I’m…” she shrugged, “Mallos’ sister. Mum. Teacher. Carer. And the one who bangs his head against the wall when he’s being stupid.”
me and you, we are ghosts
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