"Do you know now what you're going to do

"Do you know now what you're going to do?" Sandi asked.

"Those were nice people during the tornado, were they not? I hope to correspond with Casey particularly. It was a shame she could not produce any sound from the clarinet either." Sandi raised an eyebrow. Charity sighed. "I would rather not be rushed."

"Only we are in Wisconsin now, in a residential area, and your charm is pointing towards that house over there."

It was a run-down neighborhood in a seedy town, the sort that can be found in pretty much every state. Every third window said CONDEMNED or FOR SALE in peeling paint. The only sign of life they had seen was a woman passed out on a doorstep, surrounded by beer bottles. It wasn't actually frightening, except in the sense that no one wants their home to turn out this way. A horror movie would not be set here; it was too pathetic. A documentary about social injustice or teenagers who sniff gasoline would be appropriate.

The house looked no better and no worse than any of the others. Most had unmowed lawns. Most had graffiti. Most had clogged gutters. The pink light fell upon the front door.

Kris appeared by the side of the road, smoking yet again. His pupils were dilated but he otherwise seemed normal. Calm. Sandi almost hit him as she parked.

"I will be one step behind you," she said.

Charity barely heard her, for when she opened the door Kris asked, "Is it okay if I borrow your body for a few minutes? I know it sounds creepy, but -"

"It will be a relief. I know not what else to do." They touched hands for the first time since he died.

Sandi shrieked. To her, Charity had morphed into a six foot six young man, pale, with raccoonlike eye shadows and dusty black clothes. He looked emaciated and otherworldly. "I have her permission," he said quietly.

"Um, okay…" Sandi whispered, edging away.

"Some of this is my job and some of this is hers. You got my back? I mean, her back?"

"Yes…"

Kris took a final drag on his cigarette; then crushed it under his shoe. "You know, once you're dead, you're not actually addicted to anything anymore. I just do it from habit."

"That's nice…am I going to get my daughter back? Please? Sir?"

"Don't worry. Suicides don't generally demand coming back to life. And call me Kris. It wasn't what I was originally named, but it serves. " He knocked on the door. "It's not obvious for someone looking at us, but Charity is giving me all her courage right now. She's still in here."

Kris knocked again. The man who answered it was terrifying - because he looked completely normal. He hadn't shaved for a while and his shirt looked like food had been eaten off it, but every bit of his appearance seemed forgettable and nondescript.

"Are you here about the bills?" the man asked. The voice was also very normal.

"I don't know your name and you never knew mine," Kris said slowly, in measured tones. "The last time I saw you I was eleven years old. Now, as for remembering your face, the light was always fairly dim…"

The man backed up. "Oh shit."

Kris backed him into the living room and pushed him - not shoved, pushed, but with a stern sense of authority - onto the beaten up couch. "I need you to hear my big speech. I know you're going to sit there and listen, because my friend here will rip your throat out if you do anything else."

Sandi changed her head to a wolf's. The man yelped. She closed the door behind her. Whatever justice or vengeance was meted out, she was ready.

"You don't care who I am - more accurately, was, before you changed all that - and I don't know much about you. Did you go to jail?"

The man nodded, speechless.

"Not very long, was it?"

"Please…don't…"

Kris folded his arms and started pacing. "I just do not comprehend. I don't know what I'm supposed to say. "Damn you" feels inadequate. And when I think about a stronger alternative, well, you did that already, didn't you? Several times. For years, in fact." Kris strung of a series of the strongest curses possible, and pointed out how each one had already happened to Kris himself.

"But what you don't know and I think will matter to you," Kris finally said, whipping around, "is that you killed me. Yes, you did. I'm dead. This is what I looked like before they came to clean me up."

Both the man and Sandi screamed at the form he took for about two seconds. It was barely recognizable as a human being. It looked like something that had gone through a blender. Jumping out of a window in a skyscraper will do that to what was a person, whether Enigma or no.

Then the corpselike apparition became a young female Elf, yet something more than that, on her knees and sobbing. Her cries spoke deeper than mourning for a loved one. They were the cries of one condemned to be both a symbol of Ultimate Good and to be mortal; to have seen cosmic justice and known that cosmic mercy was the only option she could possibly give; to be in tune with universal morality more acutely than any living being and be expected to handle it without breaking beyond repair. But too many had broken. She was the one to repair.

"GOD - GOD - GODDESS - LORD AND LADY - WHOEVER IS THERE - BEAR WITNESS! I AM CHARITY AND I HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO FORGIVE YOU. GO IN PEACE AND MEET YOUR OWN JUDGMENT ON YOUR OWN TERMS!"

She had to do the hardest thing anyone has ever asked of a feeling creature, and she did it. People, and people who were more than just that, had done it before on different scales. Though it was not an entire country, an entire race, all humanity, all life, or the universe itself, like it had been for others, it was no easier.

She had mercy. Even though it nearly killed her, she forgave.

The man clutched at his heart and fell back into the padding of the couch.

Charity crawled towards the door, wailing. Sandi, now a woman again, pulled her up and led her out. "Oh, sweetheart," was all she said.

Charity got into the car, crying harder than she ever had before, and for any Elf and especially her that was saying a lot. Sandi let her, pulling out of the sad, sad lot and driving in silence. After about twenty minutes, when Charity had entered the nose-blowing stage, Sandi said, "I didn't check to see if the shock killed him. Nearly killed me. What you said - did you mean he would be judged now?"

"It was not up to me. My duty was to say and feel what I did. Whether his body is found in a day or so, whether he awakens and wonders what he is supposed to do now - that is out of my hands. I did what I had to do. Kris can go now; he faced his demon."

Kris cleared his throat. "Um, Charity?"

Charity gasped. "Please stop the car. I must go into the backseat."

"I'll ask later," Sandi said, doing so.

"Kris, Kris, we took care of your burden. You can leave. Nothing is keeping you here."

Kris took a deep breath. "I think you're finally ready to know the truth. You've been very fragile lately and I didn't want you to snap."

"What? Are you condemned to -"

"Oh, no, not like that. I'm here for you."

Charity stared into his eyes. "No. No. No. I am the mature one. I am the one who copes well."

"He wasn't keeping me here. I liked scaring him a bit - that was fun - but it wasn't necessary. You can't un-Enigma a person by getting revenge on who ever Enigma-ted them. Hmm, the grammer's a little difficult."

"But when Demetrius -"

"Demetrius didn't let his sister go because he felt like he had a debt to her. Unfortunately he felt shooting his father would solve the matter. If he had known that all he needed to do was stop being so damn clingy…I'm kidding, in case you can't tell."

Charity sighed. "It seems Kris is haunting the world on my account, Sandi."

"I was wondering when you'd figure that out," Sandi said.

Kris cupped her chin in his hand. "This was a good thing for you to do. It showed you who you are. It made you ready for the real solution. First, you gotta let me go. If you want to do something formal about it, that might help. You're going to a new school with Taran next year. Make new friends."

"But I do not wish to forget you."

"The second part is you help more people, and hopefully you'll catch a lot of people before they off themselves. There's one Enigma Person in the making, and you've been so wrapped up in me - I'm flattered, of course, but you know - that you've barely noticed her. And the last thing is to tell people about me. You said your adoptive grandmother was writing the saga of your extended family and close friends, right? Could you ask her to stick in a footnote about me, maybe?"

"A great deal more than a footnote," Charity said, voice cracking. She put her arms around him, not worrying about why she could feel him, why he smelled of hazelnuts.

"And please do let me go, because some authorities want me to help in finding your sister. I don't know why they think I'd be helpful, especially since she'll be alive, unless she isn't born yet…"

"Then perhaps shall I sense you again?"

"You knew that was going to happen no matter what." He gave her a squeeze and got out of the car at the next red light. He didn't open the door first, so it didn't look suspicious to anybody. The last she saw of him, he was walking down the sidewalk and getting more transparent with every step.

A few days later…

"I don't see why we're doing this. He's been dead for quite a while, you know," Jess said. They were back at the cemetery where Eric was buried. Taran had just made his weekly visit to put flowers on the grave. Fortunately for today's purpose, the cemetery also featured a little stream running along the far corner.

It was a muggy day in late summer. Jess had broken out in heat rash and now had pink splotches where she had slathered on Calamine lotion. Though it was early evening, the sun felt bright and assertive still.

"I still think you should have poked out the guy's eyes," Taran said. "Or had Sandi give him a new face. But that's why you're what you are and I'm just your friend who's a bad influence."

"Not that bad," Charity said. She knelt before the bank and crushed the clear portion of the pendant that had pointed the way for a few days. The paper hat fell out and grew back to its original size. "Candle, please, Gloria."

Gloria silently handed her a birthday candle. She still wore clothes as dark or darker than her skin, but she had gone easier on the eyeliner than when they first met.

"Lighter, please, Taran."

He lit up the wick and melted the bottom slightly so it would stick to the peak of the hat. "Aye-aye cap'n."

"Jess, would you please play the harmonica?"

Charity placed the paper hat in the stream with its one candle flickering, and Jess sent it off with fanfare that would have made Kris smile. Charity hadn't seen him since that day. She supposed he was doing better things.

When they dispersed, Charity put a hand on Gloria's shoulder. "Gloria?"

Gloria faced her, expression blank.

"I have never seen any teacher call on you, either."

Gloria shrugged.

"I have never seen your parents."

Gloria sighed.

"Has anyone ever finished the sentence that begins with your name?"

Gloria raised an eyebrow.

"You know, the one the Christians and many others in this culture sing at their grand festival."

Gloria shook her head.

Charity took off her headband, put her arms around Gloria, and sang very softly, "Gloria in excelsis Deo." She projected all the love and healing she could.

When she pulled away and put her headband back on, Gloria clasped her other hand, too many emotions to name shining in her eyes. "I will follow you forever."

"I suppose you are wondering why I asked you to come to my house on such short notice," Rowan said.

She was lovely, but so were all dryads once people got past the moss growing all over their bodes and the streaks on their skin. She was a bit more melancholy than the average. Charity's tears when she was a child had fallen on a tree trunk and brought Rowan into being, so Rowan's only aims in life were to protect her tree and assist Charity. Now that the tree had been felled, she was only kept alive by her continued responsibility to Charity. Some people who had dryads living only for them wore tattoos to that effect: "You kill me, you kill two."

The house was nice, too: a three-bedroom two-story with restful green and brown coloring. The place smelled of loam, with plants growing up and down the walls and claiming portions of the staircase and floor. Rowan kept a pair of pet giant snails in a terrarium. Puffin chuckled and waved twigs at their eyestalks.

"We enjoy your company," Sandi said.

Rowan sighed. "That is very kind of you. I enjoy no company since -"

"I have lost my tree," everyone in the room said, Sandi with the most weary resignation.

"I wish to propose to you that we swap dwellings," Rowan said.

"Why would we want to do that?" Puffin asked.

Sandi said, "Well, the apartment is pretty cramped at this point, and since Charity can hear us through the wall and we don't want to traumatize her…"

"Ah."

"What is this you are speaking of?" Rowan asked.

As far as Puffin knew, dryads didn't even have the necessary parts, and he didn't know how much they knew about... "What my wife is saying is that perhaps, if we took you up on your offer, we would have more privacy."

"Interesting. I had not thought of that. The reason why I say this, though, is that another young Elf is in need."

Charity stopped breathing for a moment. Could it be?

"A member of Charity's tribe has been manifesting signs of mental illness. Our friend Ladamus believes it may be the more severe form of Bipolar Disorder."

"Can you believe that Ladamus ended up marrying a long-haired Russian trumpeter who wears a partial mask because of the huge scar around his missing eye? That is some story right there - ow."

Sandi had pinched him. "Not now, dear. Does this Elf need a home?"

Charity could feel emotion emanating from behind a door to another room. Unable to contain herself, she jumped to it and flung it open. There stood a young male, about her age, with a slightly more prominent nose than was usual for Elves, deep eyes, and a visage troubled and in need.

Charity kissed him. "Wylfber!"

"It has been so terrible without you," he said, clutching onto her.

"Wylfber!"

"No one else understands me, and my emotions have terrorized the village."

"Wylfber!"

"I think we had better let him stay with us," Puffin remarked.

"Good thing your place has three bedrooms," Sandi said.

"Delpinet -" Wylfber was saying.

She shook her head. "I am Charity."

"You mean they call you that?"

"No, that is who I am. You shall see soon."