Would they die for him, if he asked it? Death wondered idly.
Then he turned and went to the end of the Starbucks line. They ran out of coffee before he got halfway there.
But the twins had attempted another experiment, which Death did get to try: cookies. He sat at one of the small tables in the crowded cafe, and peered dubiously at the plate that Lise had set in front of him.
"They're good," she said.
"They're green," he replied.
"That's because we made the flour from crabgrass seeds," she said. "It makes them a little bitter, but otherwise they're good. Look, real raisins."
Wild grapevines had overrun Brooklyn Heights. "Ah. As I recall, Mawu did make passable wine for libations, once."
"Yes, the bottles that didn't explode or turn to vinegar. He's still working on the technique. But raisins are easy. Grow some grapes and ignore them. Try it."
Death picked up the cookie and nibbled. It was, to his great surprise, good. He said as much, and meant it.
"You don't have to sound so shocked," Lise said, annoyed. She stormed away behind the counter and resumed work on some contraption that she must have rigged to bake the cookies. She and her twin brother, Mawu, were good at creating new things. Almost as good as people had been.
"I need to talk to you," said an angel, coming over to sit across from him. She did not ask to sit, but angels did not ask permission.
"Of course," he said. Lise glared at him from behind the dusty old counter, and he remembered the ritual of sitting in a cafe. Small talk was necessary before business could be conducted. It was respectful to treat the twins' endeavor in the spirit it was meant. "How have you been? Is, er, is life good for you?" He had not meant that the way it came out. Hopefully she would not think he wanted to kill her.
"The life of mankind has passed on, and we are but shadows in its wake," she said truthfully, ignoring the polite fiction that the ritual demanded. He winced. At the counter, Lise sucked her teeth. "I came to tell you that the Lex has overflowed its banks. I talked to Ogun; the pumping system is completely unsalvageable. Took everything he had to keep it going this long. He thinks the entire upper east side will be underwater within a year."
Death spat out a raisin-pit, and fished in his mouth for a bit of grass-seed hull that seemed to have gotten stuck in his teeth. He did not have to have teeth, he supposed, but he generally liked them, except at times like this. "Why is that a problem?"
"The English Nursery Rhymes. They all live on the upper east side."
"Why can't they move?"
She looked at him with annoyance, though this was mild, her being an angel. He thought she might be Gabriel; the rest were less tolerant of those outside their circle. "There are more kindergartens and schools in that part of town than any other."
Which explained why the Rhymes had claimed that neighborhood. Death considered. "What about Park Slope?" This was a neighborhood in Brooklyn not far from his home in Williamsburg. He remembered visiting there often, in the old days. It had been a hotbed of gang activity once, but later, before the people had gone, there had been many children.
"They can't make it that far. They're not like the rest of us that had thousands of years and dozens of cultures to strengthen them. To get to Brooklyn, they'd have to travel through several neighborhoods that didn't have many kids, and across the East River. It's too much for them."
Death frowned, a slow suspicion eating into his enjoyment of the cookies. He sat back, silent for a long moment, and gazed at her until she sighed and said it out loud.
"You need to help them," she said. She spoke softly. A rarity. "It's worse to wither away. You know that."
"My help is always available. To those who ask."
"They're children! They sing and rhyme and bounce around — they don't know to ask!"
He remained silent, not bothering to point out the obvious. The Nursery Rhymes weren't children, any more than he was a man, or she a woman. There were no more children.
"It isn't right." She looked away. Her hand lay on the table. Her fingers tightened into a fist, then relaxed, then tightened again. Her wings, which dragged the floor behind her chair, fluffed and settled. "Letting them suffer when they don't have to. You know it's not right."
It was not. Inadvertently he thought of the Bodhisattva he had seen, shambling its way toward survival. "They might want to try."
"They don't think that far, Death. They're full of nonsense. But they suffer as much as the rest of us. It's amazing they've managed to hang on this long."
He shook his head slowly, but sighed. "I'll speak to them," he said at last. "I'll try to make them understand, and then ask what they want. Life — even its shadow — deserves that much consideration." He leveled a hard look at her. "And I will abide by their decision."
She nodded slowly. "That's all I ask." With a heavy sigh, she got up, and finally yielded to propriety. "Thank you. Er, have a nice day." At this, Lise looked pleased.
Death finished his cookie and got up. He walked uptown, which took the rest of the day. By the time he reached the upper east side, night had begun to fall. He traveled more slowly along the banks of the river, because the sidewalks and streets were treacherous here. The water flowing through the subway lines had undermined the whole area, and it was obvious that this part of the island would soon be reclaimed by the sea. But at 66th street he found a downed Victorian turret fetched up against several cars, which formed a precarious bridge. After climbing over this, Death made his way further north, following the old sense that had always led him to wherever he needed to be.
He found the Nursery Rhymes in the garden of an ancient school. Though it was pitch dark, they were still running about and playing, chasing fireflies, their peals of laughter making Death feel lonely and nostalgic. There were peacocks and peahens in the garden too, some of them roosting sleepily in the trees as he passed underneath. They cooed challenges at him, less indifferent than his building's cats. But then he stopped, surprised to find one peacock down on the ground, directly in his path. As he stared at it, he realized it was not blue and green like the others. Its head was a fierce, iridescent red, shading to gold on the neck and below. When it suddenly fanned and shivered its great tail, he saw that all the eyespots were a baleful, white-rimmed black.
Then, as if satisfied that he had noticed its strangeness, the peacock dropped its tail and flew away.
When the children ran over to Death, still giggling and delighted to meet someone new, he could not help noticing how thin they were.
One day Death began to feel restless, which was strange. He was Death, the inevitability of all living things. He should never have felt restless. Yet he did.
He wondered: was his dissolution beginning, as had happened to so many others? But there was still death in the world, all around him, every day. The cats in his building. The rats and mice and birds that they fed on. The plants that grew from cracks in the concrete. His own kind, when they faltered. Yet he also knew the truth: that death might exist in the absence of humankind, but not Death.
He felt no weaker. There was no perceptible thinning of his substance. But something troubled him, nevertheless.
He began to walk, picking a direction at random. South. The streets in Brooklyn were less damaged and flooded than those in Manhattan, but there were other problems, especially in the poorer neighborhoods. He had to go slowest in Flatbush, which had been in a state of disrepair long before the end of humanity. The sinkholes and downed facades got so bad that eventually he simply willed himself over to Kensington. (He preferred to walk, but physicality was not always convenient.) Strolling along tree-lined streets and gazing at brownstones that still looked as beautiful as the year they'd been built was marvelous, though it felt a bit like cheating.