Keturah and Lord Death

John took another stride toward him, and I could hear the rage in that one step. He drew his hunting knife from its sheath. The wind lifted dust from the forest floor, filling my eyes with tears.

Lord Death raised one eyebrow. He drew his cloak aside a little, and the gloam multiplied out its folds. Night shied and whinnied.

“John,” I said, my voice shaking, “will you kill Death?”

“No,” John said to me, though his eyes remained upon Lord Death, “but if he takes you, I will follow.” He turned his hunting knife backward, to point at his own heart.

I put my hand out to steady him, just as he had steadied the hart’s mate that day in the woods that seemed so long ago. I felt my hand tremble, and with all the effort of my will I stilled it. “Don’t you see, John, I must go with him.”

The knife did not waver.

“John, I will try to tell you—” I kept my voice as even as I could, to calm him. “Doesn’t Lord Death own my every breath? Doesn’t thinking of him make me glad of a single day? John, I—I love him.”

“How can you love Death?”

How could I explain that many times in my life Lord Death had walked with me, that he was inevitably a part of my life, my intimate, bargain or no, and that he had always been and must always be my companion, my soul-and-heart love. He had steadied me before—how many times? How many times had I thought I had escaped him, when truly it was that he had not yet claimed me? How often had I felt the power in his arms, power enough to change the course of a river, to bring down a mountain, to spin or stop the world?

At last I said, “His voice is cold at first, John. It seems unfeeling. But if you listen without fear, you find that when he speaks, the most ordinary words become poetry. When he stands close to you, your life becomes a song, a praise. When he touches you, your smallest talents become gold; the most ordinary loves break your heart with their beauty.”

John turned his eyes away from Lord Death then, and looked at me as if he had never known me. He blinked his eyes as if he were awakening from a bad dream. The knife point touched his heart.

“Stop him!” I commanded Lord Death.

“I cannot stop him. If he wants to follow you, he will. But—”

And then, though we did not hear him, we saw the hart step from the trees and into our small clearing.

He was so close we could see ourselves reflected in his great round eye. The muscles in his chest quivered to be so close to humans. John looked at him, his mouth agape. None of us moved for fear that he would bolt. It seemed that he looked at John as much as John looked at him.

“He makes you want to live,” Lord Death said quietly to John.

John looked hatefully at Lord Death for the briefest of moments, and then at the knife he held in his hand.

Surely all the angels of heaven smiled when John’s eye was drawn again to the hart. The hart took a step closer to him, and then slowly lowered his stately head to the ground as if he were bowing. When his head was completely lowered, he began to nibble at mushrooms.

John reached to touch the stag’s antlers. His face forgot Lord Death, forgot me as well, and soon his right hand forgot to hold the knife and dropped it to the forest floor. Then Lord Death touched him, and John fell unconscious into his arms. Together we laid John comfortably on the ground. Lord Death nodded to the hart, who turned and stepped silently into the trees.

“He sleeps only,” Lord Death said to me. “His father will find him soon, for the hart will lead him here. They will find you, too, and take you home.”

“They will find my body,” I said, “for I will go with you.”

“You have no dower,” he said. “Live, Keturah. Go home.”

“But I do have a dower,” I said plainly. “This is my dower, Lord Death: the crown of flowers I will never wear at my wedding.” I could not stop the tears that filled my eyes.

He knelt on one knee before me.

“The little house I would have had of my own, to furnish and clean. That, too, is part of my dower.”

“I will give you the world for your footstool,” he said.

“And most precious of all, I give you the baby I will never hold in my arms.”

Then he folded me in his arms and wept with me. At last I laid down my sadness, laid it on the forest floor, never to have it again. Together we mounted his tall black horse and rode into the endless forest. 

Coda

Being a collection of endings, every one happy.

Was it true, Naomi? Was it the end that must be?

But I am sure there are other endings that you would like to know.

Beatrice, for example. Beatrice sang in Choirmaster’s choir, and in his heart, for many a long year. And though her voice was that of an angel, it was said by many that it was love of her husband that gave her wings. She bore many children, all of whom had her small nose and who became musicians in their own right. She died before her husband, who promptly went back to making the saddest of music and joined her in death not a long time later.