Second Self

Chapter 2

"Each forward step we take we leave some phantom of ourselves behind." John Lancaster Spalding

"Today is Jana's birthday." He stared past me for a moment before quietly adding, "She's nine years old, just like you."

His smile reminded me of sunlight glinting off raindrops. Chickadees in the caragana bushes, canola rustling in the field across the road, sheets flapping on the laundry line and the buzzing of a mosquito near my ear all threatened to overpower his words. I barely managed to hear him say, "She got her second self today."

"You don't look happy about it." I dropped my gaze to the mud-hole at my feet, scooped a handful of goop from the bottom and luxuriated in the sensation of the texture against my skin.

"Denny says Jana will pass away soon." His words pulled my eyes back to his face just in time to see him take a shuddering breath.

"What's going to kill her?" I asked.

Quicker than the time it took for the mud in my hand to plop onto the pile next to the hole, his expression twisted into a grimace. "Remember what I told you about euphemisms?" He asked.

"Remember what I told you about how I'm only nine years old?"

"Don't act like you don't remember," he said.

I sighed. "Fine. It's when people make ugly things sound nicer than they are."

"Go ahead and put death at the top of the list of things you should use euphemisms for," he said.

I paused for a moment, then carried on patting the top of the growing mud-pile. "I don't know what the point of that is. It doesn't change anything," I mumbled.

"It hurts less," he said.

"They're dead—"

"Only living people still have feelings that can be hurt."

"Why is Jana going to pass away?" I said in a softer tone.

"Denny says Jana's second self is the one that's killing her. He says second selves are a disease that inevitably kills us."

"You told me getting a second self is a blessing. Are you saying that's not true?" I mashed my feet into the muck, focusing on the squish of the goo compressing between my toes before it squirted out the other side. When I glanced at him again, he shimmered like water mist from a sprinkler.

"Perfect love is learned through Penitence. That's always a blessing," he said.

"Maybe this makes more sense to you because you're so much older than me," I said sarcastically. It was one thing to correct me, but I wasn't about to listen to a Sunday school lesson from someone only a few years older than myself.

"Three years doesn't make much of a difference," he said.

"Good point," I muttered. Slightly louder, I added, "I guess that must mean you think I'm smarter than I am. I suppose I should be flattered, but I'm going to need you to explain it better."

"Your world is full of suffering. We can be called upon at a young age to show Penitence through sacrifice...even the ultimate sacrifice." He squatted in front of me and enveloped my trembling hands in his own before carrying on. "The lives of Incepterrians are tied to our second selves. Their deaths cause us to die. Starvation and illness are common where Jana's second self is living. The child is sick. Without medical care to prevent it, the child will die."

I tried to force my face into the appropriate expression of grief but could feel the muscles twist into the grimace I'd come to think of as being like a dog trying to smile; its defining characteristics being my lips pulling away from my teeth and the corners of my mouth, not knowing what direction to point.