Where is death's sting?
"Mmmf," sighed Ethan, stirring a little from his sleep, but not opening his eyes. He wrinkled his nose. "Sarah?" he muttered, "I hate to break it to you, but you smell really bad."
"Ethan?" called Sarah, with a laugh in her voice. "You're not talking to me. Again. But thanks for the tact, though. I'd really have appreciated it."
"What?" murmured Ethan, confusedly, while opening his eyes. The world was sideways, and Sarah was sitting cross-legged next to Rory, a little distance away. "Huh?" He raised his head, feeling his hair brush something just above him. He looked at what it was, and flushed as he realised that it was, again, Benny that he had been sleeping next to.
"Oh… Not again! This is getting embarrassing." He tried to quietly move away from Benny's shoulder without waking his friend, but, with a small whine of loneliness, Benny, still sleeping, put his arm around Ethan and pulled him back in.
"No…" said Benny under his breath. "Come back to –"
Here, instead of waiting for Benny to complete his sentence, Ethan hurriedly poked him sharply in the ribs. Benny woke with a start, and the two of them sprang apart, flustered and very red. Opposite, Sarah and Rory were falling about laughing.
"It's as funny as you said it was, Sarah!" exclaimed Rory, doubling over with sniggering.
Terrifically embarrassed, Ethan and Benny looked carefully away from each other and then, still scarlet, sat down at right angles to Sarah and Rory, who were still finding the situation hilarious. Eventually, Ethan managed to drag his eyes back to Benny.
"Let's not talk about that again. Again."
Benny looked confused, and narrowed his eyes at Ethan. "Why again? Has this happened before?"
"Er… No, no, never!" said Ethan quickly, blushing again. Benny looked at him suspiciously. Silence fell over the little group, broken only by the occasional snort and chuckle for either Sarah or Rory. Most of the time, Benny just looked bewildered, but then a familiar expression crossed his face.
"I'm hungry…" he said, looking down mournfully at his stomach..
Ethan looked up, deep in thought. "What?"
Benny held up his hands. "What else can I say, Ethan, I'm hungry!"
"You're always hungry," commented Sarah.
"Yeah, well, it's been, uh, I guess, an indeterminate amount of time since I last ate. And even then I was sick right after, thanks to Chef Ethan there." As if on cue, Benny's stomach rumbled.
Sarah looked around. "Rory and I managed to fill up pretty well on a river of blood back in Hell –"
"Eww," interjected Ethan, screwing up his face. "That's disgusting!"
Sarah raised an eyebrow. "You dribble in your sleep. You can't talk."
Ethan looked away, and Benny put a hand to his shoulder. "I wondered why it felt wet!"
"Anyway," cut across Sarah, "this is effectively a really big garden. Maybe there's some fruit. Apples, maybe?"
The early morning sky seemed to darken, and a little tremor ran through where they were sitting.
"OK, OK!" said Sarah, looking nervous, "No apples! There's bound to be other fruit, though. Oranges, grapes, hey, maybe even bananas!"
As she said it, the trees that they were sitting next to suddenly bloomed, seeded, and developed fruits. Rory put a hand to each one.
"An orange, a grape, and a banana! Cool!"
"Hang on," said Ethan, "grapes don't grow on trees."
Sarah frowned at him. "Well, I guess that's more mysterious than them just producing fruit on demand." She leaned over to Benny. "There you are. Take your pick."
He screwed up his face. "What?" asked Sarah. "You wanted food, now here's food!"
"Yeah, but fruit? You couldn't have asked for chocolate bars or pizza?"
"Like they were ever going to grow on a tree!" retorted Sarah, but then her eyes widened as, behind Benny, a tree went through exactly the same process as for the oranges, except that it dropped a pizza into Benny's lap.
He smiled smugly at Sarah, the edge of which was slightly dented when he was hit on the head by a bar of chocolate. When he'd picked it up, though, his smile was wider than ever. "See!" He said, already munching on his food. She sighed and rolled her eyes.
Ethan, meanwhile, was looking at an orange thoughtfully. "Why?" he asked aloud.
"Why what?" said Rory, frowning at his friend.
"Why is there all this stuff?" replied Ethan, digging his fingers violently into the orange and ripping the peel off. Sarah raised an eyebrow in amusement at his actions. He studiously ignored her. "I mean, I thought Purgatory was a place of repentance, but this seems more like –"
"Heaven!" said Benny, with a little moan of delight (slightly muffled by his pizza), choosing to re-enter the conversation as he swallowed the last bite.
"Exactly," said Ethan, delicately removing a segment of the orange and bringing it his lips. He frowned a little with distaste as he saw Benny reach up for another pizza and start tucking into it messily. "This place seems … perfect."
"Yeah, but wouldn't it get a bit boring?" asked Sarah. "I mean, just sitting here for ever and ever. This certainly isn't Heaven. It's more like … a really nice waiting room."
Ethan looked around. "Yeah, I guess so…" All the distant figures did seem pretty motionless. "I wonder how long they have to stay here…" With a long breath, he finished his orange and wiped his hands on the lapel of his weird black uniform, and then stood up. "But we're not here to wait around. We've got a mountain to climb!"
Sarah and Rory sprang up, while Benny groaned. "Must we? Right now? Can I at least finish this?"
"Eat it as you walk," replied Sarah, starting off in the direction of the gate. Shrugging resignedly, and pulling off a few bars of chocolate from the overhanging tree, Benny reluctantly followed suit.
A cool breeze bore them along the fertile valley as they walked along, while the weak first rays of the dawn warmed their backs as the sun made its way over the ridge. Soon, they approached the little gate. Unlike the gate of Hell, which had been vast, yet forbidding, this tiny gate could only have let one person in at a time. If Sarah had given that much thought, she probably would have been struck by the significance of it.
Fortunately, she was spared such melancholy thoughts by the emergence of a small man from the hut by the gate. He looked oddly familiar. He looked them up and down, taking in the black clothes of Ethan and Benny and the grey robes of Sarah and Ethan.
"Do you seek admittance?" he asked, frowning.
They nodded.
"This is most irregular. Two of you should be in the depths of Hell. Two of you have no souls at all. Three of you are not even dead! How do you explain this?"
Ethan, cheered somewhat by learning that he was not, after all, dead, stepped forwards.
"We don't know how we ended up in Hell. We were walking home when this mist came down. The next thing we knew, we were in Hell. We made our way out, though."
The man stroked his beard, thoughtfully. He didn't seem particularly angry with them. "You, though," (here he addressed Rory) "are dead."
Rory nodded. "Yes, but I'd very much like not to be…"
"Hmm…" He looked searchingly at the other three. "You are not dead, and therefore you are beyond my jurisdiction. I can cast you back to the mortal world, and you can leave this place. You have, though, been given a rare glimpse of what awaits you. Prepare to return to your lives –"
"No!" the three shouted at once.
"We're not leaving without Rory!" said Ethan, determinedly. The other two nodded.
The man looked confused. "But he is already damned! He must return to his torment."
"I can't let that happen! Rory can't die! He was protecting us!" exclaimed Benny.
"He must. This is how things are."
"But, if we get him to the River Lethe, then he can be resurrected," argued Sarah.
The old man paused. "Yes, that is true, but the spring of the Lethe lies at the summit of this mountain, and I will not allow you to climb it. Now, leave, or you will never return to your mortal bodies!"
They drew close to Rory. "No," said Ethan, simply. "We're not going without him."
"Then I have no choice. You choose to be damned." The man lifted his hands and began to mutter something.
Suddenly, Sarah lunged at him, knocking him to the ground, and knelt on his chest. "We will take Rory to the top of the mountain!" she snarled, baring her teeth.
The man remained very calm, but something unreadable changed in his face.
"You are prepared to suffer the worst of torments for attacking me all so that this vampire may be restored to life?"
Sarah nodded grimly. Gathering around her, so did Ethan and Benny.
"He's our friend," said Ethan.
Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, the man smiled. "Then, I think, I might be able to help you. If you would kindly release me?"
Frowning, Sarah got off him, and stood up, looking at him cautiously. "Why would you help us now?"
The man shrugged. "You are prepared to sacrifice everything – life and after-life – for him. I cannot ask for anything more admirable than that. There is a condition, however, if I am to let you pass."
"Go on," said Benny, warily.
"Each level purges a different sin. When you reach that which is most appropriate for you, you must endure it, and then, which his hardest of all, escape it."
Sarah glanced at the others, and then nodded. "Deal."
The man smiled kindly at them, and, producing two keys, one silver, the other gold, unlocked the little gate. "Go. Save your friend."
They passed through it, one by one. Rory was last. As he walked through, struck dumb by the actions of his friends, the man put a hand on his chest to stop him.
"You have three very good friends here, young man. Do not let them down."
Nodding silently, Rory too passed through and took his first step on the marble staircase of Purgatory, following the others up the mountain.
The old man locked the gate behind them, and watched them disappear out of sight. Had he done the right thing? He wasn't sure. He hoped that the four would survive, though.
