AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I bit the inside of my cheek. Those were wise words coming from a child. You have no idea…
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll be a Grim Reaper. It’s a pretty cool job.”
“If we find your father first.” She looked up from the papers. “I will find her for you, and then I will find him. You can count on me.”
“Thank you.”
After a while, Corri went back into the bag, and we ordered dessert. Between two bites, Yoli said something I would never forget.
“I’ve always hoped that someone would show up one day and tell me that I was special. That I had a gift or a superpower, and I could help save the world. I know it sounds stupid…”
“It doesn’t. I hoped the same thing when I was your age. And then later, a letter in a red envelope made it all real.”
She smiled. “You’re my letter in a red envelope. Sister.”
A vise clutched my heart and squeezed. It wouldn’t stop squeezing until all this was over.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
We started mapping the parallel universes together. Now that Yoli knew I was a student at Grim Reaper Academy and I could teleport, I’d just show up in her room with Stepan and Lena being none the wiser. After I finished my classes and she finished hers, I’d get food and snacks from the kitchen (Joel was such a sweetheart!), and we’d spend hours on the floor of my old bedroom that was now hers, creating a sort of map that only we could understand. Corri was at our disposal, ready to go steal more snacks for us. Sometimes, Lorna would join us. The mage wanted to be kept up to date.
It was one of those evenings when we were all gathered around a mess of papers, nachos, and guacamole.
“This is getting too complicated,” Lorna moaned. “How many parallel dimensions are there?!”
“No, look,” I said, pushing a bunch of papers over to her. They were filled with drawings and scribbles. “We’re dividing them by time. These are the universes that are slightly in the past compared to our time. And these are the ones that are in the future. My mom is in the future because I clearly remember Morningstar being older. Yoli will focus on these.”
“Right. Any of them in the present?”
“I think I only found two,” Yolanda said in her clear, childish voice. This was an exciting project for her. She was so busy sleeping, dreaming, and writing down what she remembered that I was starting to get worried about her grades. “I think. I can’t be sure. I usually try to find a store where I can check the date in the local paper, or I ask someone. But it’s weird to go around asking people what year it is.”
“Anything interesting?”
She shrugged. “In one of them, I’m still at the orphanage.”
“We don’t care about the ones where time runs parallel to ours,” I pointed out. “Katia is in the future.”
“Have you seen Morningstar?” Lorna continued her impromptu interrogation.
“A few times.” Yoli shuddered. “Sometimes he’s normal, but most times he’s scary, with that black cloak and his scythe… And I didn’t even recognize him once. He looked like a skeleton. Even his wings had lost their feathers.”
A knot formed in my throat. Lorna shot me a suspicious glance, then asked the question she knew I wouldn’t have the guts to ask myself.
“And how did this particular dimension look like? Where he was a skeleton…”
“I couldn’t see much. It was dark. Night, probably, but I couldn’t see the moon. There was no moon. The city was in ruins. Tall buildings crumbled to the ground, abandoned cars, nature taking over. I walked around, tried to find someone, but there was no one, as if they had all died a long time ago.”
“Did you see any bodies?”
Yoli shook her head. “That’s why I said everyone must have died a long time ago. I tried to find a newspaper or something, but the stores were empty. So, I walked some more, figured I’d either find something or wake up at some point. I saw him from a distance. He landed on top of a car. I hid because he looked so scary. It was as if his bones were glowing from inside his body. Then, a bunch of cloaked people appeared from inside the ruined houses and gathered around him in a circle. They were skeletal, just like him, little meat on their bones, but they didn’t glow. They had scythes, too. I got so scared that I woke up.”
“The future?” Lorna suggested thoughtfully.
“I’ll retire him before that happens to our world.” I hoped I sounded confident even though I wasn’t.
“Yoli, was he a version of our Morningstar, or was he… actually Morningstar?” That was a wise question, indeed, but I doubted Yolanda could answer it.
“I don’t know. I’ve never met him.”
