Work Text:
CYCLE PUMP
Almost all psychopomps were older than the gods. They were, like gods, created from a human need, and they sprang forth in the very early times, before more organised religions could fill that great void of unknowing between life and death. Some of them become gods themselves, had whole religions grow through the bones of them like flowers and then wither away to nothing again as memory and tradition shifted and changed with the land and the sea and tidal swell of history. As a result of their outdating the gods, very few psychopomps knew that they were psychopomps. Most had no idea what a psychopomp was. All of them had been human, once upon a time, and retained their human fallibility, even in the face of their eternal responsibilities.
Robin was not the first. The first had taken on the role in what eventually became Ethiopia, 98,376 years before Robin was even born, and for all his hundreds of millennia, he would never know about her, or the many more who had come before and after him. He, like all psychopomps had, in a way, brought it on himself, by thinking too much while alive. He had always been good at thinking a step or two ahead, and sometimes that had extended beyond choosing the best spot to set a snare or dig a pit. Sometimes as he killed a creature, prepared it for the fire, he would think about what it was that turned a living, leaping thing into dinner. He would watch the light of life leave his quarry’s eyes and wonder ‘where it go?’ It didn’t bother him enough to become a psychopomp though, not until the night the wolf came. His mother threw herself on top of him to save him from the wolf and yes, he lived. He lived, and he spent until the dawn pinned by his mother’s weight, watching the agony leave what was left of her face, watching the life leaving her one remaining, staring eye. She looked peaceful for a while, and then she just looked… not there. It was the cold and hungry moons, and the wolf’s pack stole most of their meat reserves in the raid, so Robin’s mother became food. She was no longer in the meat that had once been her. And when after many suns he became so hungry that he too ate, he thought about the life leaving her and asked himself ‘where she go?’ He had no way to know, because back then he had no numbers, but he was seven years old when he marked himself out as a psychopomp. The older, bigger years only prompted him to ask the question more. He asked the moon, so many times. He went to the stones every time the moon was big, and looked the moon in its one big, staring eye, and cried out to it. The tribe lost babies so often, and some of them were his, and as they buried the meat that had once been a laughing smiling little person, he would ask himself ‘where they go?’ When one of his daughters got sick, he was allowed to cradle her while her mother rested, and as he held her he watched the life leave her eyes as with his mother before, until what he was holding was no longer his daughter, and he didn’t know where his daughter had gone. And then came the bad bad day with the bear, and he hadn’t had time to wonder ‘where they go’ when his brother and his cousin were mauled to death. He supposed he would think it later, and then there was no ‘later’ and also an eternity of ‘later’, and he died all wrong, all wrong, and the answer to ‘where I go?’ was ‘I go nowhere. I stay, outside of the meat. I stay, with the stones. I here.’
At first, it was just him, and the stones, and he would ask the moon ‘why?’
And then, more came. More died near the stones. He watched some leave, zoop, but some could not yet go up, zoop. So they stayed with him and the stones and the moon, but the stones and the moon could not help them, could bring them no comfort and no peace.
He had looked his mother in the eye as her pain had turned to relief, and then nothing. He had held his daughter close and warm as the sickness had left her, along with the life in her eyes. He could be there for the dead. He could look them in the eye, he could hold them close until it was their time. And then, zoop.
And then, zoop. And then, zoop. And then, zoop. And then, zoop.
Zoop. Zoop. Zoop. Zoopzoopzoopzoopzoopzoopzoop.
The living were always aware of electrical disturbances around the stones, and at first that was attributed to the power of the stones themselves, until he started being seen. Rare as his sightings were, if there was enough electrical charge in the air and something had upset him, it did happen. Some called him The Beast, or The Old One, or The Guardian of the Stones. At what point does local folklore blossom into a small religion? Hard to say, but he was, for several thousand years, a minor god, although he never knew it. His godhood was swept away as the Romans marched in from the south, with their own gods glaring from the tops of mediterranean mountains - mountains that he would not see for two millennia, and would only find interesting when he finally saw them in a nature documentary because of the goats climbing them. When one is older than the gods, one pays godhood extremely little heed.
The stones fell in time, and he mourned them even as he had resented them and their lack of answers. And still, he did not zoop, because the dead were with him, dead who had not yet found peace, and he would not leave them.
He had no cowl, no scythe, no boat, no great metaphysical river to lead the dead across because he, like almost all psychopomps, was older than all these things. Instead, he watched over. He listened. He spoke, learning a multitude of different tongues as the human language flowed and changed across the centuries in that scrap of land that had once belonged to the stones and now belonged to him. He would sing, to the little ones, who always went fast and peaceful in his arms, the way his daughter had, and then, zoop. It was mostly adults who stayed, and for them, he touched, he held, he played, he laughed, he let them laugh. He let them weep. He learned new types of language, without words. He learned to kiss. He could already fuck, and he could already love, and he did both of these things still, with the dead, even though the love part of it hurt so much, so much, he tried not to.
He could never not love, no matter how much it hurt, no matter how much he knew it would hurt. Perhaps this is the curse of the psychopomp. Perhaps this is the curse of the human condition that pushes a small man who lived a small life of brutality and pain to become a god of the dead. By the time the big house was built, he had been for a quarter of a million years, and he had still not managed not to love. Nine died and lingered at the big house, and, despite himself, he loved them all. Annie went zoop, and he grieved, and he loved her, and he was glad for her. Mary went zoop, and he grieved, and he loved her, and he was glad for her. He had to let them go. Of course he did, that’s what psychopomps do, even if he still didn’t know what a psychopomp was.
He didn’t even hear the word for what he was until 1999CE, when the late Julian Fawcett was discussing the end of the world.
‘World was supposed to end yesterday, don’t you know.’
‘Nostradamus,’ added Thomas, knowingly. ‘Farradiddle, obviously, I knew he’d get it wrong.’
‘Then why did you spend all of yesterday a-cowering in the bathing tub?’ Mary asked him.
‘I was not a-cowering, Madam, I was… writing a poem about how the world obviously isn’t ending.’
‘Be that so?’ Mary replied. ‘Then pray recite your poem.’
The other ghosts groaned. ‘Don’t tell him to recite a poem, woman,’ complained Julian. ‘You know it’ll only encourage him to actually tell us a poem.’
Thomas looked blank. Mary nudged Robin. ‘He has not written a thing, for he was cowering.’
‘Er,’ replied Thomas, ‘er…’
‘I’ll write one instead,’ announced Julian. ‘The planet we’re on didn’t end.’
‘Nostradamus was playing pretend,’ added Pat, cheerfully.
‘So don’t hold your breath, there’s no Angel of Death,’ piped Fanny, appearing through a wall as if summoned by the opportunity to indulge in wordplay and annoy Thomas.
‘If there were, then they’d be our new friend,’ finished Humphrey’s head, making them all jump as they hadn’t realised he’d been behind the piano all afternoon.
‘Woss Angel of Death?’ asked Robin. ‘Thought angels were all sparkly floaty pretty things?’
‘A psychopomp,’ Julian told him.
Robin frowned. ‘Cycle pump?’ Pat had told him about cycle pumps, but that wasn’t right, they weren’t angels.
‘Psy. Cho. Pomp, you stupid ape.’
‘Hey! you a pompous psycho.’
‘Watch it, Lucy.’
‘Why he keep callin me Lucy? And what Psychopumpy thing?’
‘A psychopomp is a mythical being said to guide the dead to their final resting place, Robin,’ The Captain told him, gently. ‘Although, alas, there doesn’t appear to actually be one, hence all of us being rather stuck here, and the dead that do move on very much having to do so by themselves.’
Mary sighed. ‘Have to do everything ourselves, as usual.’
‘Sorry,’ said Robin, and then wasn’t sure why he’d said that.
‘That’s all right mate, you weren’t to know,’ chipped in Pat. ‘Also, Lucy is a skellington. One of your lot. Well. Bit earlier than your lot, but similar ball park. It were on Blue Peter.’
‘’M not a skellington,’ grumbled Robin.
‘I think “Lucy” suits you,’ said Kitty, ‘and I am glad the world didn’t end and there’s no Angel of Death, because it means I get to stay and play with my best friends forever!’
Forever. Kitty will not stay here forever, but Robin might. Robin has already spent a forever here, since before the gods, since humanity looked into the eyes of death and asked ‘where they go?’ Some psychopomps have moved on, have taken themselves by the hand and led themself to whatever is beyond, their own bringer of peace and comfort. Others still linger. May linger for the whole of humanity’s time upon this earth, their work only ended when there are no more of the living and therefore no more of the dead.
Sometimes he watches Mike and Alison and wonders what they’ll be like when they’re dead, what they’ll need. Just as he did when he watched the village get sick, when he watched the soldiers come for Humphrey, when he watched them drag Mary weeping to the stake, when he watched Annie’s choked-down anger threaten to choke her body, when he watched Kitty’s loneliness, when he watched Thomas hide his terror as he picked up the pistol, when he watched Fanny’s betrayal by a man who did not love her properly, when he watched the Captain with his life so desperately teeming with the unsaid, when he watched Pat trying to die where the children wouldn’t see it, when he watched Julian screaming at his own lifeless body.
He still can’t say psychopomp, cycle pump. But, ever since that conversation, the ‘Angel of Death’ thing has bothered him, slightly. There’s a thought that isn’t quite there still, not even after a forever, but it’s closer now than it used to be. And sometimes, when the moon is full, he stands outside and gazes at it again, that big, round eye with no answers, with none of the protection or comfort in death that he’d hoped for in life. And, he does not see the lights of the house winking out behind him as he unknowingly sucks the electricity right from the cables. And he does not see the ten foot wings of the Angel of Death open behind him, wings of lightning, sparkling, floaty, pretty things.