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Tea fields (Will Ellis) 2008-07-06 via Wikimedia Commons

I was dozing on the side of the hill watching the sunset with a bottle of Jameson whiskey when I first saw her. She was a new arrival to the land of the dead and was heading into the woods. That was where everyone went once the night had started. I drained my glass and started on walking down the hill. In the woods I gave the bottle of whiskey to Bertrand and ask him if he’d seen a new raven haired girl. He shook his head and poured himself a glass.
“Maybe you should go looking by the kitchens. Most new people are hungry. When you got here you spend three nights just eating pasta,” said Bertrand.
He was correct in telling me to look there. I found her heaping salted fish onto a plate.
“Hello,” I said. “Are you new here?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I’m Jason.”
“I’m Hildur. I’ve got some questions about this place. Can you help me?”
“Sure,” I said.

Hildur had been here for a year now and still hadn’t adjusted fully. We often spent hours on the side of the hill. In the day we’d watch people go about their business. Attending to vineyards and fields in the day and at night we’d watch the stars. She still hadn’t grasped everything about how the underworld works.
“Is that a satyr I see over there?” I said pointing at long grass in the distance.
“Do they have those here? Oh, I think I see it moving.” She said as the grass swayed in the wind.
I smiled. She looked at me. “You’re making fun of me aren’t you? Next you’ll be saying that the woods are full of fairies and goblins.”
“There are,” I said.
“You tell some terrible white lies.” Hildur laughed. “Now pass me the wine.”

“How come the season hasn’t changed since I got here? It’s been summer for a year,” asked Hildur as we sat under the trees in the forest drinking gin.
“The year’s longer here. About a century in the land of the living is a year here. I got here in the winter and it was magical,” I said.
“You did? How long have you been here?”
This is the hardest question to as a citizen of the underworld. Almost as sensitive as asking how someone died. “Sixty-one years.”
She stopped to think. “Do you know when I was born?”
“No,” I said.
“Twenty Fifty. You died forty years before I was born. Can I ask how you died?”
“Sure, there isn’t much to the story. It was a few days after President Obama had been elected.”
“I remember him.”
“Well I was crossing the street and then I was here. Veles, god of this place said I’d been hit by a car and died instantly. Not a big deal really. I didn’t even notice.”
Hildur looked away from me.
“Can I ask about your death?”
“I’d rather you didn’t. But I have to tell someone sometime.”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” I said.
“I’ll tell you. Just don’t ask more questions beyond the basic facts.”
I was getting worried that it was something ugly.
“I was murdered,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. She’d died a few years younger than me and it always made me feel guilty to meet dead people younger than me. Hearing that she’d been murdered made that feel worse.
“Don’t be. That was when I was alive and the land of the dead is better.” Hildur finished her gin.

The leaves of the forest had changed into gold and scarlet paper and the gentle summer rains became day long deluges. It was Autumn and I was sitting under a canvas canopy with a bottle of whiskey and a book. I hadn’t seen Hildur for weeks. She’d grown sick of my drinking. Not because I was drinking too much, because this land of the dead is for those that love liquor, art and discussion. She drank as much as me in the end. But where she decided to never get drunk and only keep a mild tipsy buzz so she wouldn’t slur her words. I’d falling into a habit from life. I drinking until it hurt me and those around me. I tried to explain that was who I was. Hildur just shouted at me and said that was why I’d been ran over. That hurt because it wasn’t true and because I’d decided to quit drinking the day I’d died. She didn’t believe me. Called me a lying drunk before walking off beyond the forest and the green fields claiming she was sick of this pastoral bullshit and that she wanted to be in a city.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that underworld was all like this. Ten perfect square miles of green fields and idyllic forests tessellated over infinity. It reminded me of my first and only break down. I’d been sober for ages and was starting to become a real bore to those around me. It was Bertrand who told me that I was ignoring my essential nature by not drinking. He’d spent his life trying to be rational, and always attempting to have a explanation for everything. When he’d died and found himself standing next to Veles, the snake that encircles the world tree he decided to accept it. He then carry on as he had before. Edmund, who in life had been a great mountain climber had confided in me that at first he thought the low rolling hills to be a terrible place to spend forever explained that he’d started making wine to distract himself.

Hildur wrote me a letter once. I sent a short reply back wishing her luck in finding the edge of heaven saying no more. I went back to drinking, waiting for the world above to be reborn and waiting for someone to spend the middle of winter with. But mostly I spent my time drinking under the trees and arguing with Bertrand.

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