THE LORELEI SIGNAL
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Written by Melissa Mead  / Artwork by Lee Kuruganti
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Second Judgment






















I never saw the taxi. I never even felt the impact. One minute I was halfway through the crosswalk, and the
next I sprawled in red sand.

I’d been walking past the Tandoori Palace, savoring the aroma of onions and coriander. Now the air was
empty. No scent at all, not even car exhaust. I remembered this nothingness.

“Wonderful. I’m dead. Again.”

I lay there a moment, grit clenched in my fists, my eyes closed. I didn’t want to open them, for to
acknowledge that glimpse of red sand meant realizing I really was dead, this time for good.

“Welcome home,” drawled a voice I’d hoped to forget.

I sighed. No point in keeping my eyes closed now. I opened them, taking in red sand, white pillars, and the
looming, transparent figure of a man in a feather cloak.

“Raxi.”

The Lord of Illusion bowed. “If you’ve finished your nap, Lord Muro is waiting for you.”

“Expected me back sooner, did you?” I watched the god wipe the flash of irritation from his face and grinned.

“You’ve gotten flippant, my girl,” he muttered. He marched over the sand, and I followed. I had nowhere else
to go.

Muro, God of Justice, had been sleeping the last time I saw him. This time he turned as I approached. Though
I was no longer a girl, I still stood barely level with his knees.

“And where did you come from, my dear?” He fixed his distant gaze on me for a moment. “You look rather
familiar.”

“Third Avenue...I mean, Scrivi...I mean...” I stammered to a halt. Behind me, Raxi chuckled.

Muro leaned over and peered into my face. “You look like a Scrivi girl,” he murmured. “Odd. I thought that
whole village passed through a few centuries ago. Never mind. You’re welcome to go where you wish. Scrivi’s
corner is through those pillars.” He pointed.

I hesitated. The last time I’d approached those pillars, they’d blazed up in flame. I’d never figured out if it was
Raxi’s mischief that caused it, or my own rage at seeing my village massacred. Raxi laughed.

“What, two lives weren’t enough for you? You won’t get another from me.”

I straightened. Raxi had expected me to despair once before, and I hadn’t. I’d tricked the God of Deception
himself. Smiling, I marched between the pillars.

Red sand became green grass. I could smell the grass...and the wood smoke rising from the chimneys. In a
valley below me, just as though it had never burned, lay Scrivi.

My hometown had never looked so bright, so perfect. The silver arc of the river cradled emerald fields. I picked
out the low, sloping shape of the Headman’s house, the beehive dome of the temple, even the draggle-
crowned willow tree I’d played in as a child. I started to run downhill, and then stopped short.

Each house had flowers in the window.

When I was alive, there were no flowers in Scrivi’s houses, unless we brought a handful of daisies and
goldenrod in from the meadow. We had no time, and no space, to grow anything but vegetables,
grain…necessary crops. While I stood wondering, someone came up the river path toward me. A tiny, wrinkled
man, hobbling on two canes. His indigo robe dragged on the ground. He stopped to hitch it up, saw me, and
broke into a delighted smile.

“Renata!” he called. Twice. I no longer recognized my former name.

“Pandrin?” The little man’s smile widened.

“Where have you been? My, you’ve grown! Your mother will be so excited. Come on, child, this way.”

He herded me into the village, calling at the top of his reedy voice. People poured from the houses. My mother
threw her arms around me, kissing, scolding, and crying. When she let go for a moment, my father wrapped
me in a hug. A boy with my father’s dark eyes and my mother’s curls clung to my leg.

“Johann’s grown since you left,” my mother said, her voice quavering slightly.

“But how can he have?” I stared at my baby brother-a baby no longer. “We all died!”

Complete silence fell. No one, even little Johann, met my eyes.

“We’ve been here...forever,” my father said.

“Do I look dead?” my mother asked.

“_You_ went away.” Johann turned away, pouting.

That was the beginning. At first, it was bliss. I forgot the lost years, wrapped safely in the cocoon of my old
home. Then I found myself looking for a telephone to call my best friend Liz, or waking up ready to go to work
at the museum, only to find myself starting another identical, perfect day in Scrivi. Realizing nothing I did here
mattered.

I spent more and more time by the river. Only the river felt right, flowing past me to somewhere just out of
sight. Moving, Changing.

“But where does it go?” I wondered aloud.

“You know, no one else has asked that.”

I jumped. Raxi leaned against the trunk of the willow, the beginnings of a mocking smile glittering in his eyes.

“Well, I’m asking. It should empty into the Atlantic, eventually...but are there oceans here? Is America out
there somewhere?”

“Of course. Not in the way you’re thinking, though. Would you like to see?”

Raxi, being civil, even kind? This was wrong. Still, I wanted to know.

I followed him to the riverbank, where a raft bobbed in the shallows. He handed me aboard with exaggerated
courtesy, and poled the raft into the center of the gentle current.

"Watch the shore," he said. I watched. At first, I saw nothing but birches and willows, fields and the
occasional stray sheep. Then the grass began to turn gray. Not winter-brown. Gray, like ashes or trampled
snow. The trees faded. The water beneath us turned terra cotta, then rusty, and suddenly we were standing
ankle-deep in red sand, studded with broken pillars.

“America...America...Third Avenue, you said?” Raxi pointed toward one pair of columns. “Try that one.”

I stepped through.

* * *

Blaring traffic. Neon and billboards. Coriander. He’d dropped me right in front of the Tandoori Palace! I rushed
inside, and the little old woman behind the counter looked up with a smile.

“Rita, dear! Where have you been? Sit down. Have lunch. You look like you need it. And I haven’t seen you in
weeks!”

“It’s been a while,” I murmured. Years, in fact. Nana had died only two years after I met her. Now she kept
her eagle eye on me, making sure I did justice to a plateful of her lamb biryani while she clucked her tongue
over my stained, sandy tunic.

“Such an outfit! Have you been to a costume party? Do you good, to get out of that dusty museum.”

I let her ramble on, while the food made a cold lump in my stomach. No, I didn’t know if my computer was
fixed yet. I hadn’t gone to the movies last weekend.

Last weekend I...well, I hadn’t needed to keep track of weekends. The river flowed the same way on
Saturday or Monday. And nothing I did, or didn’t do, mattered. I could leave and come back a day from now,
or a year, and Nana would have no idea how long I’d been gone.

I left the Tandoori Palace feeling more lost than ever. “Out of synch,” they’d call it here. “Off my rhythm,”
they’d call it in Scrivi. It wasn’t the place that was wrong. It was me. As Renata or Rita, I didn’t fit in either
world now.

“Nothing like coming home again, is there?” Raxi, lounging against a street sign, looked up and winked at me.
I ignored him. He shifted to bird form.

“Didn’t you once tell me that thirty foot tall white ravens in a city attract too much attention?” I snapped.

“In living worlds, certainly. This realm is mine. I come and go as I please. You, on the other hand, have no
way out of this world. Unless you come to me for help, of course.”

“I don’t want your help.”

“But you need it.”

I ignored him and kept on walking. Like a mouse with a hawk shadowing it, I moved in furtive steps, shooting
glances first one way, then another, looking for a trace of red sand, a shift in the air, something that marked
a boundary between this Afterworld and the others. Reality stayed frustratingly solid.

“Face it, my dear. You’re human. Less than that. You’re a former human. One world, one life—well, in your
case, two—is all you get. Shall I take you home now? Or haven’t you decided where that is?”

“Get lost, O Lord of Deception.”

“Impossible. Remember, I belong here.” Still, he swept a mocking bow with one enormous wing, and
vanished. To plot more mischief, no doubt.

Once he was gone, I grinned and jumped feet-first into the rain gutter. I was wearing sandals, and the water
felt clammy and gritty, but it flowed in the same rhythmic swirls as the river near Scrivi. I sloshed downstream.
People turned to stare. My ankles went numb. I began to wonder if I was crazy. Humans only got one life,
one world.

Except me. And Lord Muro had said I could go where I wished. I slogged on.

The noise of traffic began to lessen. The water turned warmer, pinker, and became crimson sand.

I took a deep breath of scentless air and laughed.

* * *

The girl shivered in the red desert. She looked back at the slumbering form of Muro, God of Justice, then at
the cracked pillars in front of her. She took a step forward, and walked into a wall of ice.

“Not much of a doorway to Paradise, is it?” Raxi said. The girl jumped.

For a fraction of a second, I felt sorry for the Lord of Deception, lounging against a pillar in his most alluring
human form. Was this how he spent all of Eternity, waiting for new innocents to beguile and trick? Then I
looked at the girl again, and my sympathy vanished. I stepped out onto the sand.

“That’s because she needs a guide,” I said. I smiled at the girl. “I’m the Welcomer, and I’ve seen your home.
In the American Adirondacks, right?”

The girl nodded, and sniffled. “But he—she pointed at the still-sleeping Lord Muro—said I’m dead!”

“I’m afraid he’s right. But your home is here. Everyone’s is, even mine. I’ll take you there, and we’ll see if we
can find someone you know. All right?”

I held out a hand, and she clutched it. As we approached the pillars, the ice melted, and a scent of earth and
pine wafted toward us. Raxi’s jaw dropped.

“You can’t do this!” he shouted, all the music in his voice cracking. “How...?”

“I smiled sweetly. “Practice. Now, if you’ll excuse us? I’ll be back. I just need to take this young lady home.”
Make a donation to this artist:
Melissa Mead is a member of the Carpe Libris Writers Group.

Her stories have appeared in Sword and Sorceress and various magazines.
Several (including “The Mighty Quill,” which tells about the “first judgment,”) are
available at AnthologyBuilder.