Keturah and Lord Death

He stepped closer again to me. His limbs were powerful, graceful, his movements almost a dance.

“Not at all, sir,” I said, matching my tone to his. If I must lose Grandmother to him, I would not do so in silence. “They know what you are, and that you are near. We all know you. When it is winter and we must walk in the blizzard snow, do not our fingers and toes whisper death? And when winter is at last over but the potatoes are gone and the bacon is moldy, can we not hear our bellies whisper death to us? In the dark, don’t we know? And when we are paralyzed by nightmares? We know what you are. With our first cries we rail against you. We see you in every drop of blood, in every tear. No wonder they hate me for communing with you.”

He took another step toward me. “The story,” he said. “That is all I care to hear from you. Now there are two stories, and two endings, and I shall have them both, Keturah. My patience is spent.”

Yes, the story, I thought. With the story I would take my revenge upon him.

“And then one day,” I said fiercely, “Death did find love.” Of course, I thought—there could be no other ending.

“But you said it was hopeless,” he protested.

“It was hopeless, but in story, all things can be.”

“I don’t believe it. This is a most unsatisfactory ending.”

“That’s because it is not the ending.”

“What? Another beginning?”

“Death found his love, but the object of his undying love did not return his affections.”

“Astonishing,” he murmured wryly.

“He watched her all her life, watched her grow up, watched her become more beautiful by the day, and watched her become a woman. He listened by the common fire, in the deep of the shadows, as she told tales. And he loved her more every day. She paid him no attention, and lived her life as if he were invisible and not real at all. He sought a way to make his true love see that she was his lady, his queen, his consort. Desperately he examined every means—he could abduct her, but he wanted her willing. And so he lured her into the forest, and all but killed her, and then arranged to have her come to him each night to weave him a tale.”

I stopped, but he was utterly silent, utterly still.

And then he laughed—a great, deep, echoing laugh that made the branches lash as if startled and the black stallion shy and whinny. He raised his arms and spun in his high black boots and laughed again, and his laugh rang into the forest as if he would laugh all the trees down.

And then the mirth left his face and he said, “I will not hear this tale anymore. I will hear the tale of the girl. What of her, Keturah?”

I hugged my arms. How foolish to think that anger and cruelty and revenge could hurt Death. I began to shiver. Please, I begged in my heart. Please …

“Once there was a girl—who guessed Death’s secret … and she asked him—asked him for her grandmother’s life, knowing that he loved her.”

“And in this story,” Death asked, “what did he do?”

“He granted her this wish because—because she was the one he loved.”

The wind spun around me. Leaf dust stung my eyes and choked me. But Lord Death was not touched by the wind. All about him was still.

“And did she return his love?” he asked quietly.

“Ah, that,” I said most quietly, for the heart had gone out of me, “that is the ending, and I cannot tell it until tomorrow.”

After a long silence, he said, “Go. Your grandmother sleeps a healing sleep. In the morning, give her foxglove tea. I will see you tomorrow. Do not be late. And Keturah, I warn you—never ask again.”

It took me a moment to realize that he had given me hope. I looked up to thank him, but he had gone.

I ran through the black forest until I arrived home, where the candles guttered in the windowsills and the coals breathed in sleep.

I knelt by grandmother, vigilant until the sun paled the sky. By morning light I could see that the gray was gone from her face, and I left to go to Soor Lily’s.

When I opened my door, I saw that down in the village center below, the men and boys and women were already at work. The people sang and laughed as they worked on the road, and young John Temsland went from group to group upon his horse. Each group cheered him as he approached, and he encouraged them with words of praise, and dismounted to add his own strength to whatever task was at hand. Some of the cottages sparkled gaily with new whitewash, and the boats bobbed brightly with new coats of paint.

Jenny Talbot, a young girl who often walked with her pet pig at the edges of the forest so that it might find acorns, was close by our cottage. Her pet had become the most enormous pig in the village, but her father did not have the heart to slaughter it because of his daughter’s love for the creature.

I stopped, unseen, to watch her for a moment. She chattered sweetly to the animal, and sometimes she picked up acorns and fed him. Occasionally the pig raised its head, seemingly to listen to her, and picked the acorns delicately out of the palm of her hand.