Ereshkigal’s Umbrella

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Ereshkigal’s umbrella was covered in dead leaves.

She had bought it on a Tuesday, although there were no Tuesdays in the underworld. The salesman had thrown one in for free.

“It’s good against rain,” he said.

“What about everything else?”

He looked at his shoes.

Her hair was red, the color autumn becomes when it remembers something embarrassing. She walked beneath the umbrella through a city whose stairways had been built by people who had forgotten where they were going.

They were still going there.

A goldfish passed her shoulder.

“Excuse me,” it said. “Is this the sea?”

“Eventually.”

That seemed to satisfy the fish. Most directions do, if you have nowhere particular to be.

In a gilded mirror, Ereshkigal saw her sister’s absence standing beside her. It was wearing a beautiful dress. She turned around, but there was only a black cat sitting on a cathedral.

The cathedral fitted beneath the cat quite comfortably.

At the seventh gate, an old man was reading a book about a summer afternoon. He had been on the same page for three thousand years.

“Anything happen?” she asked.

“Someone is about to bring out lemonade.”

She let him continue.

The leaves on her umbrella belonged to trees that had died before anybody invented names for them. Sometimes they rustled in languages no mouth had ever spoken. Sometimes they sounded like someone searching a coat pocket for a house key.

Ereshkigal understood that sound.

People arrived carrying it.

She went into a little café between two enormous deaths and ordered tea. The waitress brought an empty cup.

“Fresh today,” she said.

Ereshkigal held it in both hands until it became warm.

Outside, a ship sailed across the moon. Nobody aboard knew they were dead. They were arguing about breakfast, which delayed the discovery considerably.

She left a small gold coin on the table.

It was the sun, but the waitress was busy.

When Ereshkigal opened her umbrella, one leaf fell onto the pavement. She bent to pick it up.

For a moment it was her sister’s hand.

Then it was a leaf again.

She stood there longer than necessary.

There was plenty of time.