VIII. First She Saw Nothing
VIII.
First She Saw Nothing
The hellcat scratched and rubbed against the massive wooden door, mewing to be let out.
Its flames were like a torch, illuminating the grand hall enough for me to see the dirt and decay and the cracked tiles.
Had Death abandoned me in this ruin? Still in Amis’s boots, I tiptoed across the dark expanse, searching for any direction.
It all seemed so strange. Part of me wanted to turn and scratch at the door just like the cat.
A dim light wavered in the upstairs hall, throwing a shifting amber glow on the thresholds. I crept to the stairs. Was he waiting for me? “Is someone there?”
No answer came. I pulled the blanket tighter on my shoulders and climbed the crumbling steps. A wide hall greeted me, disappearing in either direction, and fresh bloodred rose petals littered the molding leaves, glowing like drops of blood from some wounded creature.
Uncertain whether it was a terrible foreboding or an excitement that quivered in my stomach, I padded my way down the hall.
Surely Death did not live in a hovel? Maybe we had only stopped somewhere to refresh his horse.
I wanted to run—that of course was what one did in the presence of Death—but I fought the urge.
Turning back would have been like crawling back into my grave and allowing them to bury me again.
I forced myself onward, holding tight to the memory of Death.
His healing. The way he’d kept his distance, sensing my fear.
I took heart that I had been untouched, even down to my boots.
You are mistaken, he’d said. What have you thought about living? he’d asked.
A strange draft moaned through the empty corridors, picking up the leaves and petals and swirling them in long tunnels. The hall ended at a set of heavy wooden doors. Taking a deep breath, I pushed them open.
The same feeling of observing myself that had overcome me in the wood did so again, as a rush of bracing cold air washed over me and my eyes beheld Death’s room. It was just as decayed as the rest of the chateau, but with thick stubs of wax lit on a large desk.
“So, you’ve come,” he said. “I thought I was going to have to hunt you down.”
I was so tired, so full of longing and nearly out of my mind with desperation and exhaustion, and I could not make sense of this powerful god and the ruin upon which he ruled. “But to what have I come?” I asked. “This is your maison du sommeil bleu? Your great home, Lord of Sleep? This is a hovel.”
He didn’t respond, for so long I thought he might not have heard me.
He did not seem offended, only regarded me with that same handsome face carved by the gods, and the proud posture of a lord.
I couldn’t help but look behind me, as if to double-check that it was, after all, a ruin and he the ruler of nothing. “Is there even food and water?”
“Ah, I forgot about the mortal obsession with their stomachs.” His expression softened into a gentle smile.
“All that promise and yet you are so limited. You can see me, see the faintest hints of the otherworld, but you cannot yet see the truth. How disappointing. But I’m sure there’s another village somewhere in need of your …
services.” His gaze washed pointedly over my filth and the thin shift under my blanket.
“You may sleep here the night and continue onward to the next village in the morning.” He turned his back, picking up one of the open books.
I nearly sputtered in bewilderment and panic.
He accused me of mortal obsessions, but I was, in fact, quite mortal, though now I felt a creeping sense of shame about it.
Panicked that I had failed some kind of test, I pleaded, “Please, lord,” and I heard the faint animal bleat in my voice.
“I am still a human. I need food and water to survive. I need shelter and warmth.”
“If you could truly see, you would know those things are yours already.”
“I expected a fine house,” I argued. “I expected you to live like a lord.”
“Human sight is so limiting in that way. You see only what you expect, what you are already told is real. I thought you were capable of more, because of the power you possess. But perhaps I was wrong.”
“I don’t expect to see spirits every day,” I snapped. “I just do.”
“Of course you do, for that is what you have always seen. Just as you move like an animal in heat around me, thinking I will take you at any moment. The world is as you expect it.”
His words were a slap, startling me into a new kind of realization.
I had expected that from him. I was alone and unprotected, and I saw his gaze upon my every move—maybe not to buy me, but certainly it felt as if he meant to possess me.
And I had been mistaken about even that.
I lowered my chin to hide the heat of mortification that rose into my face.
“Lord Death, please instruct me. How do I change what I see?” I asked, my head bowed.
“You surrender.”
“Isn’t that what you promised to teach me?”
“I cannot teach someone who is unteachable.”
Unteachable? I had not suffered under the tutelage of the Mother Superior to be called that. “I’m not unteachable!” I argued. “I know Latin. I know how to write. I will devote myself to study.” I had done it before with the nuns. This could not be worse.
“You can’t even shift your mind when you try.”
“I can!” I looked around, trying to expect something more than ruins and see what I needed to see to earn his favor.
I believed him. Or at least, I wanted to.
But nothing changed. Everything was as cold and desolate as before.
I could not seem to do anything to my sight but go cross-eyed and give myself a headache.
“Salomé,” he said, his perfect composure making me feel more and more deranged, “there is a trial to even begin this work. I do not think you can pass it.”
He had not mentioned a trial before this, but I immediately breathed a sigh of relief. A trial was not his favor, bestowed. A trial was favor I could earn. If I passed, I had a claim to his grace. “I could. I will.”
“You would die.”
I barked a laugh. “I won’t.”
“You think to tell Lord Death that you will not die?” But the way he said it, pinning me down with a dark, expectant gaze, made me feel as if he were goading me. I believed—no, knew, somehow—that I could do it. Hadn’t I once already?
“You believe your stubbornness a good quality,” he said softly, as if reading my mind. “But even now it is blocking you and putting you into danger. You cannot pass this trial. You have power, but you do not have the vision.”
“Then teach me,” I pleaded. I felt lower than the ground to beg like I was, but I did not want to leave.
He had stirred a longing in me for life, for hope, for the idea of wielding my own power.
He’d hung before me the idea that I could find my sister again and now I could think of nothing else but my desperation.
“I cannot teach you this. It must be unlocked from within, for it reveals your capacity. Even ones greater than you have failed and died in the attempt.”
I found his gaze and met it, head high as I spoke what I knew above all else to be true. “I would rather die in the attempt than go back to the life I had. There is no place for me there.”
Silence fell between us. The only thing that seemed to breathe was the flicker of the candles along the walls and on his desk.
Finally, he stood and closed the book with a nod. “So be it.”
Satisfaction rippled through my chest like a wave of warmth.
He rose and plucked a great ring of keys out of his desk drawer.
“Now?” I asked, rather stupidly.
“Unless you have changed your mind.” His gaze betrayed nothing—no hope, but also no judgment.
“I’m ready,” I said firmly and followed him into the hall.
Darkness had fallen, and the torches were all lit, though they didn’t do much to break the impenetrable darkness. He moved like a long brushstroke of ink, but with each step the large ring of keys clinked at his side.
You see what you expect to see. I kept blinking and straining my eyes—but on every turn down the labyrinth of hallways, there were only more leaves and crumbling stones and broken glass. All I could see was an absolute ruin.
He led me to a small door, arched and cut into the stone.
With one of his great keys half-turned in the lock, he turned over his shoulder, his voice as cold as a winter wind, but gentle, as if it couldn’t help itself that it was freezing.
“This is your last chance to turn back. You will die if you fail.”
“All are born to die,” I said, my courage mostly bolstered by desperation.
I hoped, deep down, that he would offer me advice or give me some last-minute instruction, but he did not. He turned the key and opened the door.
I peered past him into the dark, my heart racing in anticipation. But it was only an empty room, barely large enough for a cot. “What is this?” I asked.
“Your trial.” He pulled something from his tunic and stepped inside the room.
I hesitated at the threshold. Then followed.
In the center of the empty floor, he placed an hourglass onto the stone. As soon as he removed his hand, the sand began to trickle. “If this runs out before you complete the trial, you will die.”
“What do I need to do?” I asked, eyeing the hourglass—even to me, a novice, it seemed clearly magical. It was made of a strange metal, and a soft green glow filled the room. My heart thumped so loudly in my throat I was afraid he would hear.
He leaned in close, the smell of rich decaying black walnuts enveloping me. Despite everything he’d said to the contrary, I felt as if he would kiss me—and then felt foolish when he did not.
“Ex nihilo,” he breathed. With no other instruction or encouragement, he pulled the door shut, and the key turned in the lock with a terrible click of finality. In the dark, the strange metal of the hourglass cast its eerie green light across my skin and the stones.