Chapter VI #2
For a mortal moment, I thought I might escape.
A path had been broken through the snow, and I fell through the bank and picked up speed, away from that quivering darkness.
But behind me, the sound of crawling ice turned rhythmic and thudding.
Whatever pursued me had slipped out of the wind and transformed into flesh.
Wild-eyed, I could bear the chase no more.
I turned to face my pursuer.
Under the thin moonlight, a great shadowy rider bent low over the neck of the black warhorse.
The rider’s cloak and the horse’s mane streamed together like dark clouds in the wind.
A black chamfron glinted in the moonlight, sharp hooves digging into the ice faster than my stolen boots could ever hope to run. My heart jumped into my throat.
Lord Death, in human form, out hunting in the frozen night. The tales were all true.
There was no escaping. But if I had to see every spirit and house demon, then I would also see Death when he came.
I stumbled and caught myself, planting my feet firmly in the snow.
All my fear, all my anger poured out of me in a scream.
The sound was so piercing, so powerful and agonized, it surprised even me.
The great black horse shied and reared. I did not flinch. It continued to prance, but its rider looked down at me in regal silence, a heavy veil draped over his features.
I felt very far away from what was happening, as if I’d drifted free of myself, watching the scene unfold from just above.
My tunic stuck to my back with sweat and grime, chilled from the snow underneath.
I couldn’t feel my legs. All the chaos of my beating heart and his surging pursuit was suddenly expunged, swallowed up in the silence of the mountains.
I expected him to devour me, to take me, to pick me apart flesh from feather. But he simply sat upon his great mount, face hidden, and we regarded each other in the stillness.
“What a strange gift of the gods, to find a helpless lamb wandering out here in the dark,” he said. His voice trailed a long finger up the knobs of my spine.
“I am no lamb,” I said. “And I had hoped death would be peaceful.”
The stallion started to shy, but with one harsh word in a language I didn’t recognize, it settled. He dismounted and walked toward me.
It took every ounce of courage in me to stand straight, for he was a pure nightmare, dread made real, and yet, once I withstood the cloud of fear that seemed to emanate from him, I could see the way and shape of him.
This was no spirit of shadow and smoke; this was something real and solid.
His head and shoulders blocked the moon, with a face so dark and devoid of feature, it was as if I could reach into his skull and my arm would be swallowed by the abyss.
But then he turned, and I caught the edge of a man’s profile beneath the veil.
Strong and sharp, it reminded me of the old Roman statues of gods that could be found in forsaken shrines along the road.
A man, but tall, taller than even Maxime.
He stood over me as a stark figure of black against the blue snow and sky.
“If not a lamb, then what are you?” he asked.
“What am I?” I repeated, bewildered. What was I was supposed to say? A witch? A murderess? A whore? I clutched the edges of the hide, pulling it tighter across my shoulders. “I am a human.” My voice stayed strong, but hands shook against my chest.
“A human? Said with such insistence,” he murmured. The shadowed head tilted in an uncanny, animal curiosity. “Do you worry you might not be?”
“I am mistaken, sir,” I said. I couldn’t run but I wasn’t about to lie down and make it easy. “Human is perhaps too strong a word. I am nothing but a whore.”
“A whore? Well, this is a gift indeed.”
Was he toying with me? He waited for my response, and despite the wind, his cloak hung heavy and straight. A ripple of frustration rose up my spine, warm and prickly. Strangely, this reassured me I was alive even more than the pain in my hand and the burn in my lungs. “Are you going to kill me?”
“Would you like me to?” he asked, as if extending a lordly invitation.
“Of course not,” I retorted. “Am I then free to continue on to the next village without you chasing me in the dark? Can I arrive with my flesh not split from the cold like a frozen grape on the vine?”
“Is that what you want? To go on to the next village and arrive as you are. Afraid? Powerless? Weak?” I felt the potency of his assessment, even without seeing his face. “Do you really believe that you are nothing but a whore?”
I thought of all the women I had been—the cursed daughter, the evil sister, the rejected lover, the violent whore—and I found I did not have a true answer.
He smiled. I couldn’t see it, but I was certain he did. His response came thin and haunting in the cool wind. “Tu es plus que tu ne l’imagines.”
“Eine wilde fantasie,” I said, tearing my gaze from his empty face to the cold forest. But it was I who was in a wild fantasy, or felt it. “Is this how you spoke to all the others you’ve taken?”
For a long moment the silence stretched, and I thought I must have angered him. But finally, he answered. “You are going to die from the cold.”
“Who are you?”
“You know me.”
“They say you have a home in this forest.”
“The whores talk about me?” He laughed and it raced across my skin, icy and thrilling.
“Of course, we talk of Death,” I snapped.
“Forgive me, I did not mean to offend you. I am only trying to be as mysterious as you. A woman, wild and dark, and yet … A nobody. A whore.” He looked down and adjusted his gloves. “Tell me, are you a very good whore?”
Even though I stood there in my stolen hide and boots and grave-ridden body, this was familiar territory. “I am a good whore.”
He made a noise in the back of his throat.
My legs, frozen as they were, felt a strange flush of blue heat.
“And why is a beautiful woman like you a whore?” he asked, lifting his head to regard me.
The intensity of his presence hit me again.
It was like nothing I’d met in any man, and the darkness I’d kept tamped down inside me leapt toward him in a slathering eagerness that made heat flood my cheeks.
“That’s a trick,” I said softly. Surely Death would know better than to ask a whore why she’d become one.
“It’s not a trick. I asked what you are, and you said a whore …”
“And then you asked why. A common question among men. Which story do you want? That I was a good daughter, abandoned in some tragic way? That I am a great woman, only without a good enough man? I’ve heard it all before, my lord.
That I am magic and night. Darkness and pestilence.
That I am a flea. A disease. I am both the dirt on their shoes and the harbinger of devastation and plagues. I am pure goddess and filthy demon.”
“Which of those do you want to be?”
“None of those. Those are only stories men tell about themselves and their desires and their fears. None of those stories are mine.” And without waiting for him to reply, I turned. I couldn’t feel my legs or remember how to walk, but I somehow began to move.
I was halfway across the ridge slope when his voice came on the wind, as close as if he were at my ear. “Would you like to have a different story to tell about yourself, whore?” I whipped around, fists balled tight. Only to find myself alone.
“What are you?” I screamed into the dark, heart beating through my ribs.
“I am the lord of sleep. Your final fate.”
“Show yourself,” I snapped. I longed to fight, or maybe just to keep his attention—lethal though it may be.
In some ways I felt woken from my stupor, alive in a way I could not remember being, filled with a sharp-toothed satisfaction at the thought of dying face-to-face with Lord Death.
I spun, searching the edge of the empty slope.
Shadows moved along the wood like smoke. His sigh was on the wind. But no wind touched my face. The hair on my arms stood up. “Leave me be,” I shouted. “I am nobody.” But I waited, desperate to hear him disagree.
“Don’t you want something more?”
His voice came smooth as velvet, right at my ear.
I jumped and turned to find him towering over me, a chill emanating from him—something blue and dreamy that moved in long swirls and smelled like burning leaves and the rotting rich spice of black walnut seeds in fall.
And then he seemed to be just a man. A stranger.
“Come home with me and be warmed,” he said kindly.
“You will freeze out here. In the morning, I can take you wherever you wish to go.”
“Will you kill me?”
He scoffed. “You are not the kind of maid to be sacrificed in fairy tales.”
My throat tightened as I thought of my sister. If only I was such a maid. If only I had been taken in her stead.
“At my home, you will have your freedom and your power. I promise you will be safe.”
What choice did I have? He was right, I would die out here, right at the moment I was so desperate to live. “Swear it?”
“On my honor,” he swore. “It is not your time. Not yet. Let me warm you first.”
The wind gusted and the moon bent closer. He bent closer, the entire world starlight and spice.
“Just to get warm,” I whispered.