You stood on the beach, on those bone-white pebbles that poked intrusively into your thin girlish white socks. You who measured to half the height of mist-shrouded figures around you, who could not see past the arc of the bloodred bridge.

They jostled you, they who were so eager to cross beyond without ever knowing what they left behind. How can you understand, when your end had been neither swift nor kind, when the last word on your lips had been your mother’s face? How could you have left so soon, when you have yet to finish the last two weeks of grade school, and you had not even seen what we got you for your birthday—the Hello Kitty backpack, the one with the pink bows? We failed you, and we’re sorry.

The pitiless wind stung you there, the cruelty that those perforated boulders of ash could not break. You must have been cold in your summer shirt and summer skirt, the flimsy yellow and greens first freckled by road grit, then blooming into red and later drying into hardened mahogany blossoms.

We failed you at that too, but is it so bad to say we would rather have sinned, because who thinks to let their daughter run to the park across the street dressed up in her burial clothes?

You tasted salt on your tongue, reservoirs of the shining tear tracks on your face, though you did not know why you had been crying. A thin plate of metal ground against your molars, which you had taken out to examine the moss-colored letters and the square cavity. Uncomprehendingly, you placed the bitterness behind your teeth.

God came to you then, or perhaps he was Death. Here where the spider lilies reached to kiss the red sky, the difference seemed infinitesimally nil.

God brought the light with him, first in the ring of firegold that encircled his bare head then in the black diamond nestled in his palm. And Death said to you: “Payment is unnecessary for children.”

He held out a hand and you folded your soft colorless fingers into the leathery skin. His prayer beads clacked as you walked, and for the first time in likely a long time, you felt at peace.

God led you past the bridge and the black, silent banks. The lanterns bobbing on the water’s surface drew you in, you who were always so close to the light until you burned your wings in the sun. You pointed mutely to the boats gliding across the river, the pairs of adumbral oars cutting through the water like daisho.

“Not there.” God led you away. “There is an easier crossing.”

He chose the gray steps that wound straight into the river’s inky depths. You dipped your toes into the water and gasped at the cold. It was not ice, it was not even death, but rather an absence of life.

“Do I have to go?” you asked.

“You do not have to go anywhere,” said God. He, you noticed, did not stand close to the water. “You may stay here with me and take up the vow. And then you will wait, and wait, and wait until all hells are emptied.”

Even to you, that seemed impossibly sad.

“Go on,” said Death.

You looked across the river, but you could not make out the far shore. Curiously here on the rocks where light could not reach, you could see the bottom. It was not deep. Was it all in your head, then, those wide ghost ferries and the bridge into nothing? Then did you only imagine the river, the sun, God?

You could smell the flowers on the kitchen windowsill, the thought of fresh roses and rising dough momentarily turning you around. You could hear a crackling sound, distantly, and with a sudden fright you realized you were hearing the flames. You looked again at the far shore. And then you waded into the water, away from us. We who buried you.