Gina Grant: Scythe Does Matter

I chewed in silence as Dante scribbled away. Since I’m very much the patient type— not —as soon as I’d taken a couple of mouthfuls, I tried to read his chicken scratchings upside-down. No luck; it had to be in Latin or Italian or something. I had a couple more bites and then I asked, “muff fu iting?” He looked at me oddly but didn’t answer. I swallowed and asked again. “What’re you writing?”

“Nothing, really. I’m just toying around with the idea of updating something I wrote a long time ago.” The tips of his ears pinked. My Reaper was hiding something.

“And?” I prodded.

“And setting it to music.” He looked down at the paper again. “You’re from now, right?”

“Yeah, from now minus ten months or so, but I try to keep current.” I took another bite. “Au courant,” I added, thinking of Lord Seiko Kobe, the time engineer. We’d become friends once I apologized for tricking them. He seemed to understand I’d had no choice. I should call him to let him know our coffee date for next week was still on, although by now he’d have heard about my reanimation interruptus. Nothing moved faster than gossip, in this world or any other.

Shoving the food into one cheek with my tongue, I said, “Though it’s hard to know when now is, what with time being so weird.”

“What would you think if I redid my epic poem to music? Maybe the kids stuck studying it today wouldn’t hate me so much.”

He looked nervous. Along with my mouthful, I swallowed the flip answer I’d been ready to give. I considered what I knew of his poetry, which wasn’t much. I’ve never read any of it, but I figured I knew what it was about: death, misery, punishment and suffering. So I asked him, “You mean like a funeral dirge or a country-and-western song?”

“No!” He did that squinty thing with his eyebrows that he does when he’s not happy. “I mean rap. Hip-hop.”

Hip-hop? His fourteenth-century epic redone as rap? I found it difficult to get my head around that. “Are you telling me that in all these centuries it’s never been set to music?”

“Well, yeah, some guy in the sixteen hundreds wrote a symphony inspired by it. I met him once when he came through here. Nice guy. I think he’s an accountant now.” He moved his chair forward to yank his Reaper’s robe out from under one of the legs. Then he sat down again, brushing dust from the hem. “It didn’t catch on at the time, though.”

I grinned. “You know what they say. If it ain’t Baroque, don’t fix it.”

He glared at me. “If you don’t want to hear it, just say so.”

“No, I do. I really do want to hear it.” Well, I did now that he’d roused my curiosity. I never could make much sense out of the classics. Maybe a rap version was just what I needed—just what the modern world needed.

“You’re not thinking of going back, are you?” It was out of my mouth before I thought. And with real fear in my voice. There was a pretty good chance I wouldn’t get my life back if, when the time came, I was off saving Aunt Carey’s life instead of showing up for my last-chance appeal. I really didn’t want to be stuck in Hell without Dante. He was by far the best thing that had happened to me since I got here. Or possibly ever.

“Nah. I’ll find a deserving rapper and let it leak through.”

“Leak through? I’ve heard of divine inspiration, but Hellish inspiration?”

“Just listen, okay?” He looked around. The cafeteria was nearly empty, with only a being or two remaining, chowing down on their mystery food of choice. Using his index fingers as drumsticks, Dante beat a 4/4 rhythm on the table.

Twisting up his lips, he did a fair imitation of those scratching noises DJs make by moving a record back and forth. I grabbed a couple of clean napkins, wiping half-chewed ectoplasm off the table. Keeping the beat, he began to rap:

“So I’m cruisin’ thru de woods one day,

Da year is thirteen-ten.

I’m huntin’ me a leopard,

Or maybe a dragon.

“I’m gettin’ kinda tired,

’n’ wandered off da path,

I fell into a valley

And landed on my ass.

“I felt a little queasy,

From fallin’ an’ from fear.

I saw in great big writin’,

‘’bandon hope when ent’rin’ here.’ ”

He stopped drumming and flipped over the napkin. Would this thing never end? Wait, why could I still hear drumming? I looked around the cafeteria and saw three or four beings keeping time with their . . . appendages. Maybe Dante was on to something.

“I know that I was chosen,

I ain’t gon’ tell no lie.

Lucy Phurr does like me,

Cuz I’m a way cool guy.

“I found myself a mentor,

He wore a homespun gown.

He led me to the center,

And we went down, down, down.”

His voice went lower and lower and lower as he repeated the last word. I realized I too had been keeping the beat. It was really rather catchy. I found myself wanting to know what happened next.

“Hey, that’s pretty good. You’re not such a bad poet, after all.” I grinned to show I was kidding.

His cheeks flushed. He looked down, toying with his watch. “Grazie. It’s just that—oh, for the love of . . . We’ve got to get you to class. Colin is going to be furious if you’re late on your first day.”

We grabbed our stuff and raced through the unhallowed halls.

DANTE LEFT MEat the classroom doorway with the whispered instruction to grab a seat. I stood there a moment, panting heavily from my run, out of the breath I didn’t actually need. I watched him stride to the front of the room where Professor Schotz was writing something on the chalkboard.

Did my Reaper have to be so far away?

I threw myself into the empty seat next to Kali. Some teacher’s pet at the front of the class turned around and gifted me with a withering look. As if I weren’t nervous enough already.

The classroom reminded me of a dungeon. Although the common areas of the building were formed of concrete blocks painted institutional gray, our classroom appeared to be much older, constructed of rough-hewn stone set in crumbling mortar. Some of the bricks seemed damp and slimy. Fungus and spiderwebs adorned the room. At least there weren’t any chains or actual implements of torture hanging from the walls.

Unless you count the fact that the professor had just finished writing tonight’s readings on the board. Three chapters? In addition to all the catch-up work I had to do? Could I ask the time lords to make time for me? Could they do that?

“Welcome to ‘Reapage 101,’ Ms. d’Arc. Perhaps you could express to our friend Reaper Alighieri that next time he should get you here before we begin.”

“I think I can safely say, Professor, that next time I’ll be getting myself here. And I’ll make sure it’s on time. Sorry.” The further I went along with that explanation, the more I felt like a schoolgirl. One of the reasons I always hated the idea of going back to school was how powerless teachers could make me feel. Well, I was an adult now and no one could make me feel like a stupid kid again. I sat up straight and checked out my classmates.

Three young women in cowboy hats in the back row giggled. The one in the middle flicked her blond hair back over her shoulders. She snapped her gum and swung her cowboy-booted feet up on her desk.

A nearly identical girl on her left—same blond hair, same cowboy-esque fashion sense—copied the gesture, her own boots clunking onto the work surface in front of her. “Like, that’s so rad, man.” She brushed her overlong bangs out of her eyes and I realized she was Asian, which made the blond hair look very exotic.