“Nathan…” whispered a voice in his ear.
He looked around. There was nobody there.
“Nathan…” whispered the same voice in his other ear.
“Who is that?” he asked.
A figure, barely visible, materialized next to him. It looked more like fumes than a person.
“Nathan, this is your father.”
TWENTY-ONE
“My…father?”
“Yes.”
“Are you a ghost? Or am I going mad?”
“It’s actually both. But don’t worry, Nathan, the madness will fade before long. Do not be ashamed of it. A man who spends eleven years in a block of ice and emerges sane was mad when he started.”
“What?”
“There are things you must know about this new world. It takes more coins to buy things than it once did. If you attempt to purchase a loaf of bread and hand them only a half-coin, as you would have in the past, the grocer will stare at you impatiently and await additional funds.”
“Are you in heaven?”
The apparition chuckled. “I’d tell you, but then I’d be killed.” What little of its face that Nathan could recognize turned serious. “No, really, I would. A strange thing to say since I’m already dead, I know, but you can also die in the afterlife, which is at least three times worse than dying in the regular life. They’re very big on keeping secrets here. I’ve already said too much.”
“Is Mom with you?”
“She’s right here. We’ve been watching over you. Not such an interesting process during your decade in the ice, but we’ve never left you. Not ever.”
“Am I…am I making you proud?”
“Very much so. Your mother and I have never stopped being proud of you. We’re up here with a lot of deceased parents who are watching over their children, and while I won’t get into the details, there have been many viewing experiences that were extremely uncomfortable, activities that were really never meant to be witnessed unless one was an active participant, and there will be plenty of awkward conversations when these children join their parents in the afterlife. But you, Nathan, have behaved heroically. You’ve been compassionate. I’m not going to lie and say that it was a good idea to bite that kid on the arm—obviously, your mother and I were up here shouting ‘Don’t do it! Don’t do it!’ and we both sort of looked at each other and cringed when you did it, but when you consider a lot of the other things you could have done at your age, the level of shame is comparatively low. Now, we do have to acknowledge that the teenage years are where most of the truly distasteful sights occur, and you either missed those years or just haven’t gone through them yet—I’m not entirely sure how that works with the whole frozen-in-ice thing, but to answer your question, yes, you are making us very, very proud.”
“Thank you, Dad. But what should I do now?”
“Go home. People there still care about you. They still miss you.”
“Are they still alive?”
“Well, most of them. It’s not as if you’ve woken into a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Go to them.”
“I will!” said Nathan, feeling more excitement than he had in the past eleven years. “I’ll find somebody with a car and beg for a ride immediately!”
“No,” said the ghost. “You must walk.”
“Walk?”
“Yes. This is a journey you must take on foot. It will be a time for personal growth and spiritual reflection.”
“I don’t think I need any of that.”
The ghost frowned. “All right, the truth is, with your skin that blue color, people are going to be somewhat squeamish about giving you a ride, and with your track record there’s very little doubt that you’ll end up strapped to a table in the laboratory of a mad scientist whose experiments will give new meaning to the word ‘invasive.’”
Nathan had to admit that the scenario sounded plausible.
“All right,” he said. “I shall walk.”
“Take in the beauty of the world as you do. Appreciate every leaf. Actually, no, leaves are best appreciated as a whole, but appreciate the sun, the moon, the stars, the soil, the mountains, the starfish, the art of clever merchandising, the rocks…anything that’s not foaming at the mouth and trying to consume you, you should appreciate.”
“I will,” said Nathan. “I promise I will.”
“Good boy. And now I must fade away as if I were never here in the first place, leaving you to doubt your own memory and sanity. But when you think you might have imagined the whole thing, you’ll need to merely gaze upon the lengthy scar I’m going to leave upon your leg, as proof positive that this whole encounter did indeed occur.”
“Given the choice, I’d rather not have the scar.”
“Oh. Okay, then. Fair enough. I’d practiced for months to be able to have that kind of influence over the physical plane, but no matter. Best of luck with your journey, my son. I know that you’ll make it home safely.”
And then he faded away, as if he’d never been there in the first place.
Nathan cried a little bit, because he desperately missed his mother and father. But he would be okay. He would get to see his new family and friends again.
He began to walk.
There are some tales that demand an epic length. Their complexity of storyline and depth of character are so immense that every detail must be shared with the reader, lest some crucial element be lost. These tales can go on for thousands of pages and remain enthralling for each and every one of them, and when the tale reaches its final word, the reader feels disappointed, wishing the experience could last even longer, perhaps immediately returning to the first page to begin the story anew.
This particular tale, however, benefits from some compression. Therefore, though it was highly eventful and ripe with adventure, we shall skip the majority of Nathan’s journey back home. Some of it was, quite frankly, redundant to other parts that have already been told. For example, there was a great deal of walking around in the woods that was not notably different from the section earlier on where he was lost in the woods for a year. Also, there was another chase on a horse. The circumstances that led to him overcoming his distrust of horses were fairly interesting, and the chase itself was a cavalcade of thrills, but again, it was remarkably similar to the horse chase wherein Steamspell, Kleft, and Mongrel lost their lives, and is best glossed over.
And so we will resume our story as Nathan walked onto the outskirts of the town of Giraffe Pool. His skin had indeed changed back to its natural pinkish color. And his teeth were loose. All of them.
He’d noticed this the same day he’d been thawed. All of his teeth were a little wobbly. He supposed that it made sense—if he was actually eighteen years old, then all of his baby teeth should have fallen out long ago, so this was his body trying to catch up.
By the time he reached the outskirts of town, half of them had fallen out, leaving several gaps in his smile. He gazed into a pool of water and decided that he looked even more horrific this way, like a fanged hillbilly.
He kept the teeth, and when he would sit down to rest he would add each new arrival to a necklace. Though it seemed morbid, it was preferable to keeping them in his pocket and constantly getting poked.
(Also, the moment in which he stole a new set of clothes from a clothesline was fraught with suspense—the dog almost got him!—but was ultimately too similar to the other moment in which he stole clothing.)
The town seemed somehow different. There was more mold than he’d remembered. More litter in the streets. More people breaking windows, ducking into stores, and leaving with their arms full of goods that were clearly not paid for. More screaming. More gunshots. More examples of the elderly being shoved to the ground and clubbed over the head.