Sean Traver - Graves' end

Los Muertos went nuts as soon as they were loose, too overwhelmed and overjoyed not to celebrate their liberation. The blue sky above was a miracle to them-even if the bright sun, which was currently facing a different hemisphere, was nowhere to be seen within it. They hardly noticed such a trifling detail as that after having endured the tedium of Mictlan’s never-ending gray for so long. Their raucous behavior freaked out the living (who were having a hard enough time dealing with the improbable daylight as it was). It looked as though a sepulchral spring break had been declared on the streets of LA. The dead were on holiday, and they meant to make the most of every second they had.

On paved avenues that had once been dirt roads, ranchero skeletons riding pale horses fired their guns into a blameless blue sky. Tribal bones wearing tall fans of feathers performed wildly whirling ghost dances in intersections they remembered only as crossroads, while dead musicians carrying instruments of every stripe gathered together to make as much lively noise as they possibly could. Skeletons in the costumes they remembered best from life danced and twirled and laughed and sang, all of them intoxicated by their unexpected taste of vitality.

Many of the living (who were still horribly confused, but starting to get over that first, debilitating shock that always accompanies an experience of the impossible) began recognizing ancestors. Joyous reunions broke out everywhere, in yards and in stores and on streetcorners, as the liberated dead sought out children, grandchildren, or descendents too far down the timeline for anyone to reckon. Even expired pets, cats and dogs by the skeletal score, hurried home to check up on the friends they’d loved so well in life but had to leave behind.

For one moment, unique in all of time (like every other moment, of course), the living and the dead celebrated together, and all of them believed wholeheartedly, if only for a little while, in the glorious future of their kind.

After what felt like well more than an hour Lia and Dexter hopped down from the roof of Mictlantecuhtli’s temple and crowd-surfed back into the world. Lia had to coach Dex on how to do it, as he’d missed out on the era in which the practice was born by a number of decades.

Celebrating skeletons obligingly bore them across the two rooms of the office suite, then on down the stairs and out through the lobby’s double doors, finally depositing them right on the cadaver-crowded street in front of the Silent Tower.

Hannah Catrina and Riley’s well-dressed bones were dancing a sprightly jitterbug together, and they both waved a cheerful hello.

“You like what I did here, dollface?” Dexter asked, grinning his biggest lopsided grin when he turned to face Lia. “It’s the Day of the Dead. I uncorked the otherworld for you!”

“I love it, Dexter, I really do,” Lia said, and cast her wondering eyes around at the cheekbone-to-jowl crowds packed into the narrow street before them. When she looked up at Dexter again, his silly smile only widened. “I think it’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen!”

She touched his thoughts and was humbled to know that Dex had pulled this incredible trick because he believed she would’ve done the exact same thing, had the power been hers to use.

His eyes told her the same, and his lips confirmed it when he seized her and dipped her in a deep, triumphant kiss.

Skeletons all around whooped and applauded, whistled and cheered, many of them reminded powerfully of a famous old photograph of a sailor kissing a nurse that had once, for so many, symbolically sealed the end of their world’s great war.

Dexter straightened up and set Lia back on her feet, ending their breathless moment. The crowds all around fell silent, and they both looked up to see Ingrid Catrina, the new Queen of Mictlan, smiling down upon them.

Ingrid’s bleached skeleton wore a regal costume now: a long-skirted suit and a broad-brimmed hat pinned over her lustrous, dark red hair. To Lia she seemed to embody everything that was dignified, elegant, timeless and wise, like the Elizabeth of the Otherworld. The dusts of this world swirled about her before settling down onto her bones in a flawless facsimile of flesh. After a few moments her face looked as smooth and radiant as it had in life, and her occluded eyes cleared to a blue as bright as sapphires. She was one of los Muertos now, as well as their Queen, and on their day she could walk the worlds beside them, on her own recognizance. Unlike her imaginal predecessor, this was a Death who had lived .

“Ingrid,” Dexter said, taking off his hat in the presence of royalty. “Or should I say your majesty?”

“Ingrid’s fine,” the new Queen offered. “Or mom. If you like. Not ma, though, please. That’s a sound a sheep would make.”

“But…” Dexter started, then hesitated. Lia looked up and saw that his eyes were full of need and a brand of pain she understood all too well, being an orphan herself. She also knew that the world’s mythologies were rife with tales of semi-divine parentage, and of progeny hidden away by human mothers until such children could come of age to claim their birthrights from otherworldly fathers. The pattern was a classic one, reiterated time and time again.

“Is it really true, what you told me about being my… you know, my mother?” he whispered. “How can it be? I mean, look at us. I’m older than you are.”

“Dexter…” Ingrid explained gently. “I had you in 1915, back when I’m originally from. I left you in the realworld to keep you safe from Mickey, but then I jumped to 1950 to meet you. To see what sort of a man you’d become. I jumped to now to find Lia after Mickey tracked me down again and wouldn’t let me go till I promised I’d deliver you. I’ve taken trips all over time. Any point in human memory is accessible from Mictlan.”

She brushed his face with fingertips of dust-sheathed bone.

“I’m sorry I was never a parent to you,” she said. “I had no idea how to be. I was never very good at normal life. Maybe now… I can be of a different sort of use.”

“Yeah, you’ll make that otherworld a better place, I just know you will,” Dexter said. His voice went hoarse with emotion when Lia unobtrusively took and squeezed his hand. He held on gratefully. “Get out there and liberate those mythologies,” he suggested.

“That already has been done,” pronounced the Queen. Her gaze was growing distant, her focus already turning inward, toward the otherworld’s eternal mysteries.

“Well all right,” Dex said, beaming. He pushed his hat back on his head and looked around, at the dead who still crowded the streets, milling about and chatting. “What about the rest of the mess I made?”

Queen Ingrid shrugged. “The dead will return when their day is done,” she said. “And the living will recall this only as a dream. The realworld defends its boundaries too well to let this be remembered. Nyx, I believe, remains your prisoner?”

“Back at the Yard, yeah,” Lia said.

“Free her as it pleases you,” the Queen instructed. “Until then… let the dead enjoy their day.”

Queen Ingrid Catrina, the new Reina de los Muertos, bowed to her son and to Lia before she turned back to her building, the Silent Tower, the thin facade worn by her ancient temple in that patch of the actual currently known as Hollywood. The torrent of still-exiting skeletons parted before their new sovereign to let her enter the building, all of them kneeling and bowing their heads when she passed. No longer out of fear, as would’ve been the case with the previous monarch, but rather as an expression of adoration, admiration, and genuine gratitude.