A deluge of memories fell. He snatched one like a lifeline to prevent himself from getting swept away. The memory he held on to was of him reciting a poem:
Deep in the forest there is a tree
Beautiful and fragrant it attracts many bees.
Still young it has to live through many snows
Many springs and summers will come and go.
Then Mia’s grown voice overlaid his and finished the poem:
I will be there forever to protect this tree
This is the promise I give to thee.
The memory generated a vision.
Murphy watched as he turned and confronted a grown Mia. She was talking… What did she say? He concentrated hard and remembered.
“Funny thing about promises… they’re rarely kept,” she said, kicking at a dirt clod on the ground.
“Why are you here?” he had asked her.
“I came to ask you if you were a keeper or a breaker of promises,” Mia asked.
“I’m an honorable man,” he insisted.
“But in being honorable, does it mean that you keep promises?” she prodded. “Do you cut a tree down the first sign of disease?”
“No.”
“Do you leave the tree without water?”
“No.”
“Then why are you treating me this way?” Mia asked him.
“You know why.”
“I absolutely don’t!” she snapped.
“You’re not who I thought you were.”
“Gee, I haven’t really morally changed since I was fourteen. Physically, I’m a mess. I don’t know from one day to the next what’s going to sprout. I’m like that tree they grafted all the different fruit trees on. I’m like a Stone Fruit Tree.”
“Those are an abomination,” he had told her.
The vision faded. “I called her an abomination.”
“Gee, I haven’t really morally changed since I was fourteen,” she had told him. Which meant that they originally met, what, two years from now? He pushed himself to open another door in his mind.
He was in a strange house attacking Mia. She held a sword but didn’t use it. She instead used her shield to keep pushing him away. She was bleeding but still managed to stay on her feet. Why didn’t she use her sword?
“Snap out of it, Murph!” she yelled as he connected with her shield again and again with his axe.
There was a horrible little girl ghost in the room who shouted instructions in his brain. It was as if he had become her puppet, her mercenary.
Mia took a step backwards and wings grew out of her back. She screamed as she charged him. He was too startled to move. She picked him up and flew him past the controlling ghost and sliced its head off as she went. They crashed through the window and ended up outside.
They landed on a snow-covered lawn. Mia tossed Murphy on the ground, put her foot on his chest, and took away his axe. “I promised you that if you went rogue on me, I would dispatch you myself. Look at me, Stephen. Tell me who I am.”
It took a few moments for the influence of the entity to leave him. He lay there not moving, his eyes on the woman he had just tried to kill.
“Please, Murphy, don’t make me do this,” she said, her voice breaking. “Who am I to you?”
“Crazy Cooper,” he said, lifting an eyebrow.
“Wings?” Were these the things Mia mentioned sprouting? Was this why he had ceased their friendship? He couldn’t quite remember. He walked away from the ice house and out into the woods. The forest had changed since his death. Although, nothing really grew where the tree had fallen. He knelt down and remembered his death, and then he remembered Mia, a giant, and an angel named Sariel.
Mia appeared by Sariel’s side and watched the large man, he remembered as Ed, approach bearing a cedar coffin on his shoulder. Mia stared down into the open grave where he had been digging and removing the frozen earth.
“I see a coffin bearer and a gravedigger. What is my role here?” she asked the archangel.
“You’re the mourner,” he said simply. “Stephen Murphy has unearthed his own grave. He faced his own death. Now he will return his body to where he died. There is a reason that nothing grows here. The forest has been waiting for Stephen Murphy’s remains.”
Mia bowed her head as the casket passed her. Ed laid it beside the grave.
Murphy moved upward and planted the spade, blade side down, in the pile of loose dirt. Sariel opened the coffin.
“Stephen, your remains need to be returned to the earth. You promised the forest, and it has waited all this time.”
Mia stepped forward. “I’ll do it.”
“No,” Murphy had said. “It’s my chore to complete.”
Mia nodded and stepped back to allow him room. He picked up the open coffin and poured the contents into the grave. He then set it to the side.
Sariel turned to Mia. “Burn it.”
Mia open her eyes and nodded her head. The coffin burst into flames. In minutes, it was nothing but hot embers smoldering in the deep snow.
“Misfit, your hand,” Sariel ordered.
Mia held out her hand. Sariel drew his sword and sliced her palm. Mia walked to the grave’s edge and squeezed her blood into the grave.
“She has given you her heart, her allegiance, and now she gives you her blood,” Sariel told Murphy.
Mia stepped back. Ed wrapped her cut hand in a leather band.
Sariel spoke a strange language. Mia knelt along with Ed in reverence.
Murphy began to fill his grave with dirt. With each shovelful, he relived his death and that promise he had made. When he had
