Part 5: Grey Ghosts

"Dead?" Amber gasped in surprise, but she was eager to hear more, not afraid. "Why am I dead?"


"It depends how you define life and death," Alex answered, "I think modern doctors would say you're dead. No brain activity, or the separation of the soul from your body. It all comes to the same thing in the end."


"That's pretty cool. So I'm like a ghost now, but I go back to my body after you've finished?"


"Something like that," Violet was almost laughing. "They didn't want to tell you because they thought you might be scared. Or upset or something. I thought you could deal with it."


"So we're all like ghosts haunting your dream? Does that mean you could be anywhere in the world, and we can all meet like this and chat without going anywhere?"


"That's pretty much it as far as I understand," Arnie nodded. "I'm in Birmingham. How about you guys?"


"Not quite the whole story," Mel interjected. "Some of us are ghosts in a more traditional sense. See, we've got this destiny thing that means we stay around after we died, and we come back after a hundred years to see if we've achieved our destiny yet."


"Oh. That's kind of sad, I think. You're supposed to be sad when people you know die. And I've only met you like twice, and you're dead already. But I guess that's okay, if I can still talk to you."


"You're taking this pretty well," Jack shrugged, "I'd heard that kids these days didn't understand death properly, like they've decided to keep you out of the real world or something."


"How long have you been dead?" Arnie piped up, "'Kids these days' makes you sound like my grandad."


"Long enough. It's hard to measure time, but I think it won't be long before I'm joining you three on Earth again."


"We're the only ones alive?" Arnie seemed to be getting a little angry now, "You didn't tell me any of this before you asked me to join. I thought it was weird when you said you were dead, but then that doesn't seem like such a problem. A ghost, compared to all the other weirdness, isn't too bad. But... all of you?"


"We come back alive every hundred years," Violet explained, "I know that much. The problem is we don't always stay alive for the same length of time. So like, I met Mel in school. He was like a year older than me. But then I died, so I'm this fourteen-year-old ghost for a hundred years. And if Mel dies when he's like sixty, then next time round he'll be born fifty years after me or something, so I'll be an old woman before we can meet up in the real world again. It's got all messed up, so we're not alive at the same time when we're meant to be."


"Wow," Amber muttered, "I thought you were still alive. You're like, almost the same age as me."


"Yeah, I've been this age for a while. Maybe since before you were born, even. That's the trouble."


"Okay, so we're supposed to all be the same age? Are we like a team or something?"


"And finally, we get to the crux of the matter," Jack sighed theatrically. "We've been trying to orchestrate matters to get ourselves back in sync. But it's harder than it should be. The miracle that ensures we're born close to each other only works if we're born at around the same time, as well. We've been trying to get ourselves back in sync so we can regroup, even if the only reliable way to achieve that is to orchestrate our own reincarnation."


"You what?" Amber couldn't follow that at all.


"He means," Alex explained, "That last time we were around, he killed me and I killed him. It hurts, but we know it's the only option. It means that a hundred years later, we'll be born the same age. Hopefully, if all of us can be born on Earth at the same time, we can herald the return of the Princess like we were supposed to."


"So the deal is that you guys all have to be alive at the same time? Wait, does that include me too?"


"Something like that," Jack grunted, "We're quite sure you are the third, though we can't be certain. That means that you three need to make contact in the real world. When one of you dies, the other two can deal with each other. Then we have three born in one cycle. If we're lucky, Alex and I will incarnate while you're still around. But from the best guesses I've got, we'll probably be infants when Mel is old enough to be in declining health, so there's every chance he won't survive that long. In that case, if we can work out the dates, it could be worth you two..." Green light glinted off two fingers, just enough to see him pointing at Amber and Arnie, "You could wait a few years for us to be born. Then you can send us back here, and yourselves too. So next cycle the four of us are born together, with Mel a few years earlier. And we hope that Violet's next cycle lasts long enough to apprise us all of the situation."


"That's a hell of a plan," Arnie broke the silence after a few minutes' contemplation. "You're actually working out what order you need to kill yourselves in, so that you can control when you're going to be reincarnated? And they law doesn't factor into this at all?"


"We've got a dozen plans like that," Mel groaned, "We make them every time, and it never works right. Either one of us is born on a Polynesian island when they haven't even been discovered, or someone's too poor to travel, or one of us is as thick-headed as usual and doesn't believe who they are. There's always some problem."


"But you can keep on trying, right? If you come back to life after a hundred years, it would be like living in a whole different world. You must've lived places I can only imagine!"


"Nice thought, but it's not so easy," Jack took the lead this time, and the others just listened. "See, you don't remember being one of us, do you? That's always the way. When you're young, your brain is too small to hold all the memories of a dozen lifetimes. When you're a baby, your brain is too small to remember anything except how to stay alive. So you're starting over every time. Sometimes we can get some of our past memories back, but it's always like a dream, or a story. We can't really remember it. None of us properly remembers the original lives we're supposed to be repeating. All we can do is try to all be here when the Princess is reborn, and then everything will be right again."


"Mom always said you can't wait for someone else to save you," Amber waited for him to finish before she spoke this time, but she knew something about the story was making her uneasy. "There's no knight in shiny armour coming to save you, you've got to do it yourself."


"Yeah, well," Arnie shrugged, "I think that's the whole point here. We're the knights, shining or otherwise, and these guys are determined to be there when the Princess calls. I had this explanation last night, and I still don't get it, but it feels right. Like, this is what I was meant to do."


"It's our whole reason to exist," Alex said firmly, "This is all there is for us. Living our lives over and over, a hundred times or a thousand, biding our time until we are needed."


"What if we just live our lives for us?" Amber wasn't quite convinced, "Like, try to be famous, or invent something to change the world, or all those things? You're talking about killing ourselves so we can be born again at the right time, but how many great things have we missed out on doing because of that?"


The other four looked at each other. Eventually, Violet answered.


"We're not the only ones. We are the knights, the Rainbow, the Princess's bodyguard. We live every hundred years, to protect her, but she usually doesn't need us. The Princess is born again, too, but that's different. And there's an enemy who comes back just like we do. If the Enemy kills the Princess again, it's the end of the world. We'd be stuck as ghosts for a million years or more, until intelligent life evolves somewhere else in the universe. Until there's some kind of aliens we can be reborn as. I don't remember it properly, but I can still imagine the loneliness of waiting a million years for there to be people in the world again. Not being reborn because there's no new babies."


"I remember it," Mel nodded, "Not the actual events, but the isolation. The feeling of time passing, of knowing you should have been born already. I never want that to happen again, not for anyone."


"Mel can tell if dreams are true or not," Violet explained, "When I told him about that one, he was sure. We all hated it, I'm sure."


"We need to be there when the enemy is born," Jack said firmly, "We're sure of that much, at least. And if you want to live a selfish life, just thinking about what you could do in this cycle, then you're our enemy. I wish it wasn't like that, but we need to have the whole group. Or as close as we can. We need to be together when we're needed."


"It's a lot to understand all at once," Amber whispered. "It's an awful lot."


"You'll help us, though?" Mel raised an eyebrow, "You're one of us. We want to trust you. We want to teach you. To help all of us do what we were meant to do."


"Give me some time, okay?" Amber whispered, "It's a big thing. Let me think about it. And read about this being born again thing. I want to believe you, I just want to know a bit more before I say I can help you."


"You sound like Claude," Violet whispered. "I think that's proof enough for us that we got the right person."


"One of the ghosts," Mel explained, "If you want to think of them as ghosts. They came to us in a dream, just like we're doing for you. Told me and Violet what we were, back when we were both alive. Then Pedro stopped appearing, and then Claude. Because they'd been born again, and we knew we had to start looking again, try to find them. To find you."


"Can I see what you look like?" Amber asked, "If this is a dream, does it need to be as dark as my room?"


"I think she gets it," Jack answered.

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