“It consumes me,” she says, her voice only a whisper. She reaches one finger through the wire and strokes my wrist. “My little girl,” she tells me. “Do not forget my little girl.” Tears slip out of her eyes and I hear the Guardian shout behind me and then my mother slumps to the ground, her fingers slipping away from mine.

In the moment between my mother's death and her Return, I stop believing in God.

The Guardian quickly grabs the end of the rope tied to my mother's left ankle as I scoot away from the fence. It is anchored over a system of pulleys lashed to branches high above and he heaves against it, the other end of the rope dragging my mother to the edge of her pen. The Guardian pulls a lever, a gate rises and her lifeless body slides into the Forest of Hands and Teeth. He cuts the rope, reverses the lever and the gates grind shut. For a heartbeat the world is silent around us, the sound of our own breathing muffled by the mist.

His duty complete, my mother's body given fully over to the Unconsecrated, the Guardian places a hand on my shoulder. Whether it is to comfort me or to hold me back does not matter.

I imagine that I can feel his pulse through his fingertips. We are both so alive in that moment surrounded by so much death.

I can't decide if I want to watch my mother Return. If I can bear to see it. But I can't help but wonder what that moment is like. Is there a spark or an instant where she will remember me?

Where she will remember her old life from before?

My mother used to tell me stories about how, long before the Return, the living used to wonder what happened after death. She said that whole religions were born and evolved around this one simple uncertainty.

Now that we know what happens after death, a new question has risen up to take the place of the old: why?

Suddenly, regret screams through me. I wonder if I should have dressed her in something different. If I should have put her in warmer clothes or better shoes. If I should have pinned a note to the inside of her dress telling her that I love her. I wonder how long it will take for her to find my father and if she will recognize him. An image of the two of them holding hands at the fence line flits across my mind.

She is on her feet before I even know what's happening. She stares at me and for a moment all I can think is Mother and then she opens her mouth and my world shatters with her screams that fall off into moans as her vocal cords give way.

I cannot bear it and I start to move toward her, struggling under the weight of the Guardian's hand, but then I hear my name being called out in warning.