There was something peaceful about the flow of water. Even the rush of water over rocks inspired a sense of fulfillment. The lazy river that swung into his grandfather’s property only to disappear into the forest did not run fast. Fintan pulled a tuft of grass from the ground and threw the leaves into the water, observing them bob as the slow current drew them away.

  The boat was gone. The mooring post was empty, and his grandfather was missing. He’d spent weeks preparing Fintan with a watchful eye toward the water.

  But you couldn’t pass along a lifetime of knowledge in a few days. By his account, his grandfather had spent hundreds of lifetimes.

  His grandfather didn’t have a map for the afterlife, only words of advice to watch for “changes.” The afterlife was as fluid as life. As fluid as the water, all things returned to.

  With the old man missing, changes were coming for the landscape. Fintan saw seedlings sprout in the mists near his feet. Their small leaves were a reminder that this place was a product of his grandfather’s vision, and he hadn’t shared with Fintan how he had done it.

  Maybe that was one of his grandfather’s Skills.

  In a few days, the clearing would return to the forest. In a few weeks, it would be impossible to find the cabin behind the weeds. The logs would remain for a time, but they would crust over like a white filter applied to a picture. Eventually, without contrast, the picture would fade away.

  Should I go after him? His grandfather gave Fintan explicit orders not to follow when the time came. The leaf disappeared around the bend. His grandfather could be miles away.

  Fintan returned to the cabin. He packed all the metal in a backpack and tried to commit pictures of times he didn’t remember to memory. His grandfather’s sack of gilders was hidden under a rock. He buckled his sword to his side and manifested a cloak reminiscent of his grandfather’s lab coat.

  He divided the gilders and hid them in slots in his boot, in his belt, and even a few inside a wide-brimmed hat he manifested for the heavy band around the base.

  His last defense almost buckled his knees. He manifested a poinard. His grandfather spent some time talking about various swords and knives. The old man didn’t like any of them.

  Fighting and killing was unheard of in the Union, and Fintan hadn’t wanted to admit to him there was a knife with which he was most familiar—the dispatch knife.

  The Union didn’t use chemicals in cases where animals had to be put down. The environment was already full of hostile chemicals. They weren’t going to add to it.

  Instead, he carried a knife as long as a knitting needle with a sharp end and a handle. With one gloved hand, he would hold his target behind the neck, and with the other, he punctured the skin under the jaw. A quick thrust and the hollow point would hit the top of the skull. He’d take the brain sample out of the dispatch knife and return it to the Union scientists carefully bagged and tagged.

  The knife was surgical-grade titanium. After each use, he cleaned it carefully inside and out. It was the least favorite tool of his trade, and after manifesting it, he hid the poniard inside the sleeve of his long coat.

  Fully packed, he walked back down to the river. It was the easiest way to go. His grandfather told him all things change. He would follow the water, and if the old man changed his mind, maybe Fintan would catch up with him.

  The river disappeared into the forest, but there was a healthy sand bank beside the water. The white sands were tiny pebbles, and he walked on top of them easily. In his hand, they felt gritty, almost sharp like sandpaper, but they didn’t leave a mark when he rubbed them between his fingers.

  His education taught him that river rocks and river sand should be round. The pounding of the waves and running water smoothed the sharp edges.

  He couldn’t count on his education from the living world, but he could count on what his grandfather said. People feared the water, but they couldn’t get that far away from it.

  If I traveled down the bank, I should find a town or village. After the village, he would try to find a map. With a map, he would learn more about the afterlife and hopefully find a portal back to the real world.

  There were beings of power in the afterlife. They might be able to send him back. The Adversary was a concern, but if his grandfather was correct, he could avoid the nefarious god. Fintan wouldn’t deal with the Adversary unless he found no other way.

  With sound logic on his side, his footfalls in the sand marked his path deeper into the afterlife. When he peered back, the lapping water ate his trail, and in the distance, the crystal clear water flowed oddly and sparkled with a glow that belied the sunless sky.

  He walked for miles, and the forest thinned. After hours, he lost hope of finding his grandfather. He cast branches into the water, sure that he was walking faster than the slow-moving current. The branches disappeared below the surface. He should have been able to see them since he could count the rocks on the bottom, but after a few moments, they were gone. His grandfather said the water was corrosive, but the boat lasted day after day.

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  The day grew dim before the river turned again. He lost sight of the sparkles from the water in the distance and considered a night without shelter. He could manifest a tent, and he packed several of his grandfather’s special candles.

  The old man had tried to teach him chemistry, but either they didn’t have enough time, or Fintan couldn’t muster enough belief in what his grandfather said. He could only produce a regular candle, but that should be enough to keep the darkness at bay.

  As he considered stopping for the night, he heard voices carried over the water.

  “She’s a bad witch!”

  The voice was clearly from the other side of the water. The river wasn’t large and had narrowed and deepened. It was about twenty paces across.

  The voices that shouted were numerous, and Fintan was afraid this was exactly the kind of crowd his grandfather told him to avoid. He was on the right side of the river to avoid it, and he could cut across the clearing to the remaining trees and stay on the low ground until he passed by these people. Tomorrow, in full daylight, he could observe them from a distance if he wanted to.

  That was the best plan, but when he heard a high-pitched scream of pain. He abandoned the rehearsed plan. The scrub around the river wasn’t much cover, but he manifested a camouflaged tarp and pulled it around his body before ducking into the weeds.

  A full camouflage exosuit would have been better, but he hadn’t used one of those in life, and he didn’t have time to learn about it in death. In his field, they’d often used blinds to spy on the animals. In death, he created his own blind and wore it like a cloak.

  As he crept closer he realized his strategy was good, but he needed not have bothered. No one was looking at him.

  Across the river in the distance, he saw a wooded barricade with torchlike sconces at regular intervals. In the fading light, they were already lit. The village did not look large, and he suspected most of the people were crowded around a crane they had constructed out of wood.

  The crane dangled a cage over the river, and in the cage was a woman. She didn’t seem much older than Fintan, and she wore clothing he recognized from the Union. Like his tarp, her single suit was camouflaged, but unlike a Free People exosuit that blended into its surroundings, her single suit was patterned in fixed greens and browns. Fintan didn’t know how to produce a battery, and high-tech gadgets were meaningless without electricity. Her exosuit faired little better.

  One of the villagers had manifested a bow, and he shot an arrow at the woman. She screamed as it lodged into her leg. She pulled it out and threw it into the river. She wasn’t fighting back, but perhaps they’d threatened to drop her into the water. The river wasn’t that wide.

  His grandfather had mentioned only the weak and foolish remained this close to the portals. The village he found might not be a representation of the best of the afterlife.

  A white-robed figure emerged from the crowd. He was an old man who wore a mask of benevolence that disappeared as his eyes were caught by the river. He carried a large book adorned with golden lettering. While he struggled to look at the witch, a villager in a frayed tunic caught his arm.

  To his credit, he didn’t pull away as the dirty hand left a smudge on his white robe, and he listened with earnest.

  “She’s a bad witch,” the villager said. He had one lazy eye and a mouth full of yellow teeth. He pointed to a large wart on the center of his nose, crying foul. “Look at this.”

  “It’s still there,” the robed figure responded with a shake of his graying head.

  “She promised, she did, to remove it,” the villager said. “She cut it off, she did, and applied a poultice, but still it remains. I traded fair and square as always, I did. A stock for a gilder and a gilder for a memory. She slept on my floor and ate my supper, but never did she return in equal measure.”

  “She promised to cure my gas,” another villager burped.

  “She said she could make me clothes,” a bare-chested villager said. She scratched at her potbelly, and a small dislodged lizard ran from one bosom to the next, hiding out of sight.

  “Promises made and payment delivered,” the leader said, “and the Lord asked us to show mercy.”

  “In life, he did,” the lazy eye villager said.

  “But in death, he left us with The Adversary,” the leader concluded. “Equal life and equal gain, life beyond death is equal pain. Return what was given to the river.”

  “Wait,” the witch said. “I can do better.”

  The villager pulled a lever, and the trap door was released below the cage. The witch didn’t fall willingly. She gripped the wooden bars and dangled. Her black boots fell off as she danced feet above the water.

  The crystal clear river couldn’t have been more than six or eight feet deep and slow moving. Most people in the Union didn’t know how to swim, but even the worst swimmers stood a chance.

  The villagers treated it as a certain death, and Fintan’s grandfather warned him about the water. Even now, he felt peace in those depths, but his purpose kept him motivated.

  If the witch fell in that stream, could she get out on her own?

  He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. He’d seen enough. The villager’s leader had extolled equality, but the finality of a dunking wasn’t worth a few failed home remedies. He looked along the shoreline, spying an enormous outgrowth of jagged rocks, and that gave him an idea.

  He needed to be as close as he could to save energy.

  Tossing aside his camouflage that disappeared in a puff, he ran forward, startling the villagers and the witch who had quit bargaining for her life.

  Below her, he manifested a dock. He knew enough about the water to avoid placing support in the current. Instead, he made engineered beams woven together with synthetic rope. He put a support in the center and a large stone as a counterweight on the very end, an equal distance away on dry land.

  The manifestation appeared instantly, faster than ever before, but something felt wrong about the wood as he ran to the edge of the water on the stout beams. He manifested composite two-by-fours, but the wood felt hollow to his feet.

  The witch didn’t speculate on her good fortune. She dropped onto the dock and lunged in his direction, trying desperately to get to the safety of dry land.

  The robed leader would have none of it. He’d raised his book with the golden lettering. Below the unknown words were two overlapping lines also in gold.

  “The Lord’s will shall not be denied,” he intoned.

  The crane beside him dissolved, and the heavy cage hit the end of Fintan’s dock. The weight of the cage flipped his counterbalance stone off the end, and the dock tettered into the river.

  Before Fintan could do anything about it, the cage had sunk below, and the other end of his dock had followed, disappearing as the water lapped on the wood. In a few more seconds, the witch would be lost in the current.

  In desperation, he manifested the largest boulder he could, dropping it on the end of the teetertotter.

  From the center, he felt very little, but the witch was flung into the air on his side of the river. She landed headfirst onto a pile of jagged rocks. Her bones crackled like snapping wet sticks as she bounced and slid down the escarpment to stop in a heap near the sandy bank.

  The light continued to fail, but the leader raised the book once again. The gold lettering seemed to glow in the twilight.

  “Do not return!”