Book of Life Read Free

you found your love . . . ?” My voice trailed.
    Eliza giggled. “Certainly not in my last life. I died too young.”
    “Why haven’t you gone back, then?”
    She bit her lip. “It’s all so hard. I’m just not ready yet. I’m not ready for that next life challenge.”
    “But surely your other half has come to the Ever After too. He has to die as well. Wouldn’t you find him here?” I assured. I guess the exception would be if he were an angel, pixie or something of the sort and hadn’t chosen to die yet, but that didn’t seem to be the case as far as I could tell.
    She looked me in the eye. “But it doesn’t work like that. You have to meet your true love in life in order to know who they are in the Ever After. I simply haven’t found him yet. Truthfully, I’m scared to.”
    For as sure as Eliza seemed before, she now had a vulnerable side that I could definitely relate to. I was scared also. “How many times have you died and gone back?”
    She shook her head. “Who knows? As soon as you are reborn, everything starts over. Your mind is wiped clean.”
    “A clean slate,” I nodded.
    She didn’t seem to know the slang, giving me a confused look.
    I just ignored her. “I take it you’ve been here a long time,” I looked at her clothes once more.
    She nodded, but again it was a vague sort of nod. “Yes, but it doesn’t feel like it. I know it’s been a long time because I always ask the new ones what era they’ve come from. Things really lose perspective here. There are plenty of others like me, working out their fears and reflecting on their past lives before building the bravery to go back.” She shuddered. “Time becomes lost.”
    I desperately wanted to know what kind of life she had lived before, but I was afraid to ask. Her visible discomfort suggested it was a horrible one. Only that reason could explain her hesitation. I’m sure she was afraid to live it over again. I know I would be—I know I am.
    “It’s a gamble not knowing what your next life challenge would be, or what you’d look like. What if I came back a child in the Amazon jungle?” she went on, smiling mildly.
    I thought about this. Max would never find me there. I began to see why Max was right. I shouldn’t try to go back on my own. There were endless combinations and endless lives between us. It’s a miracle we found each other at all. It’s a miracle that anyone ever does.
     
    STELLA:
     
    I flew back to the rock and landed, quickly changing into my human form. I had grown ever more comfortable with life in this human figure, but I still didn’t understand who I was beyond a name—Stella. I set the rabbit I’d just caught on the rock where I’d been born into this world. Once the rabbit was laid to rest, I pulled on some clothes I’d managed to steal from a nearby hunter’s cabin—an old sweatshirt and jeans. Still, it did little to keep me warm in this blooming winter weather.
    Sliding my palms against each other, I made quick work of skinning the warm rabbit. In my mind I wanted to cook it. I’d watched the man at the cabin perform the task of skinning a rabbit and making fire a number of times now, but I’d not yet attempted it on my own. I was curious, though. As an owl I knew I could survive the winter just fine on instinct, but I craved the chance to be human.
    I picked up an arm-length stick I’d stripped of its foliage. With a length of string, I tied it to each end of the stick, making something that looked like the bow the man in the cabin hunted with. I looked at the bow, wondering how it was I knew what it was at all. I must have lived a human life before this one, but I couldn’t remember it. All I could remember were things like words, and general skills like walking, running, and jumping, just not speech beyond the simple line of ‘who am I’. That wasn’t going to get me very far.
    I grasped a bit of foliage and made a small pile. Picking up a second stick that was half the length of