People fear death because they love life; never has there been a statement more false than this. I knew a young woman who truly did love life, but neither did she fear death. She possessed such a marvelous peace, such a surety of existence, something I have never seen before in any human being. Then there was her innocence. This was her perfection. Most people deserve death, but she does not. I watched her every day, doubting her perfection, and in this way I grew to love her; but she could not see me.
So I purposed to make myself known to her. I strove to obtain her attention, indeed her affections, in any way possible, but she fell into a fever. I was there, staring down on her as she shivered in bed. Her face was not creased with worry, but only with the pain of the illness. In those nights of her sickness I felt closest to her. On the last night, as she was closest to death, I wept a single tear, my first; glistening in the candle light, it fell onto her sweat drenched forehead. I then turned and left her side, returning to
my abode, my heart heavy with guilt.
The next morning, as the sun rose, so she rose, bright and pure. I did not renew my attention toward her, nor did I try to earn her attentions. I stayed away from her, following at a distance. Due to her purity, noblemen tried to earn her affection, but they were evil, cruel men. They would have corrupted her. They would have hurt her. So, to keep her safe and pure, I made sure they truly feared death.
The common folk began to suffer plague in vast numbers. They suffered starvation. The noble classes ignored the troubles of the commoners, safe from starvation because of their vast riches. Plague, however, penetrated even the walls of their secure castles. Still they did nothing; they showed no goodwill.
When the last withered straw of the failing crops broke, the people sat around in their misery, stewing in their anger. In this moment I made my move, incenting revolution in their minds. They rose up against the noble classes. And then those men who would have corrupted my love grew to fear death. They cowered in their castles and palaces, but the people drug them out into the streets, into mock courts, and executed them. Those cruel men would never endanger her purity again.
My satisfaction soon turned to horror as the people in their angry fervor began to kill people whose time had not yet come, people who deserved to live at least a few more years until they grew weary of life and embraced death willingly. They were, however, forced into death’s embrace and death accepted them reluctantly.
The people butchered the royal family and the noblemen who would not flee. They turned their attention then toward the noble families, wives, daughters, even babies fresh from the wombs of their mothers; the image of the innocent faces covered in blood haunted me because their innocence reminded me of her innocence. It was not their time, nor was it hers, yet soon I knew she would meet death. That was a fate I wished to spare her. I wanted her to grow old and live the life she so enjoyed to its fullest, but these people, whose anger I was responsible for, would soon rob her of that full life.
Sweeping through the city streets, corpses cluttering in my wake, an angry mob following, I came to the house of her godfather. She stared from one of the humble windows. Her ears were filled with roar of the mob; they called for justice, but meant blood. I called out for her to flee, but she would not hear me. For the first time I saw fear in her face, for death, terrible and ugly, approached her.
I turned away and fast as a diving falcon made my way to the hut of the old witch of the woods. I faced her from the opposite side of her little fire. She stumbled back unto her back, rolling in the dirt of her hut’s floor. She held her hands in front of her face, not daring to look me in the eye.
“Witch,” I said to her. “Give me a man’s body.”
“Why, lord?” She asked, rising to her knees and leaning forward. She still averted her eyes, looking off toward the door of her hut and the dim sunlight that struggled in through it.
“I must save one whose time has not come,” I told her.
“Why should I do this?” She grew bolder, daring to glance at my face.
“Your time draws near, witch.” I hissed, reaching across the fire toward her.
She scrambled back, placing her back against the hut wall. Then a thought came to her. She cackled. Then she crowed, “Ha, I know your ways. I know too much to be frightened so easily.” Hunched over, she shuffled forward. She rolled back onto her heels, rocking back and forward. She flashed me a toothless grin.
“Name your price, witch.”
“A single tear, lord,” She pleaded, looking up into my eyes for a brief moment. She looked away again, her face cringing in pain. “That is all I ask,” she whispered.
“So be it.” I thought about her then and grieved for her fear. A single tear jumped from my eye and fell toward the ground. The old witch caught it in a crystal vial and hid it away before returning to me. She hobbled to a filthy pile beside me, tossing an herb here and a bone there until she came across a small black pouch. She poured the contents of this into her cauldron of boiling water, whereupon I drank it. Thus I obtained a man’s body, dressed in the style of the revolutionaries.
I hurried back to my love, only to find I was too late. The mob had taken her. I had caused this. I followed the noise of the mob to the center of the city where their instruments of execution were set up. I gazed up at the shining blades of the guillotines. I made my way through the crowd until a came to the base of the raised platform on which those instruments were established. I saw her there, fear had left her face, replaced by sorrow. I had corrupted her purity and thus I stood straighter in my resolve to save her from her fate.
“You, sir,” I said to the man who stood over her bearing a smith’s hammer. “What must be done that she may go free?”
“Nothing can be done. She must die.”
“What crime has she committed?”
“None,” the man admitted, “but still she must die. Someone must die today.”
I laid my hand upon the man’s shoulder and showed him a great many terrible things. I then stared into his eyes as he sweated in fear. “I will return in a short while, she best live until then. You will know me by my touch.”
So I turned from her once more and hurried to the witch’s hut. When I appeared across from her, fire flickering upon my face, she scurried back to where she had hidden my tear and clutched the vial to her. I ignored her action, making my human flesh seem as large as possible.
“Witch,” I said to her. “Give me a woman’s body.”
“As you wish, lord,” the crone smiled her toothless smiled. “But, as before, there is a price.”
“Name it, witch.” I said.
“A singe tear, lord,” she said as she extended the vial toward me. “That is all I ask.”
“So be it,” I said. I thought about her then, her face full of sorrow and I wept a single tear. It jumped from my eye and fell. The witch caught it in the crystal vial and secreted it away. She then produced from her ragged garments a black pouch with a red ribbon. She emptied the contents of this pouch into the boiling water of the cauldron whereupon I drank once more. Thus I obtained a woman’s body, dressed as the daughter of a nobleman.
To the center of the city I ran. When I arrived, I laid my hand on the shoulder of the man with the smith’s hammer. He turned around with a shout, raising his hammer. He dropped it to the ground when I showed him what he had seen before. “Release her, kill me.” I said, pointing to my love.
As the man freed her, she looked up at me, her face filled with shock for she saw in my woman’s body her own features. Then she realized what I was doing and gratitude, even a flicker of love, came to her face. “Thank you,” she said, her voice angelic.
“Take her far from this country,” I told the man. “Be good to her or else I will visit you very soon.”
“It shall be so.” The man said.
Content that my will would be done and that my love was now safe from harm, I mounted the platform, knelt, and laid my head beneath the blade of the guillotine. The executioner released the latch and I died. I, Death, sacrificed myself for love. I, Death, felt my own cold embrace and awoke in the darkness of my abode. I was content for a time, but I was soon forced to realize that I cannot love without bringing those I love into my cold embrace.
I emerged from my abode and returned to the witch’s hut. Someone’s time had come and I journeyed to fulfill my duty. But it was not the witch’s time to die. When I entered her hut, the witch was raising a knife over the unconscious body of my love. Her purity was corrupted fully in the presence of the dark magic which filled that hut, but still I loved her.
“Your time has come, witch.” I hissed as I reached into her chest with my cold fingers, seeking to stop her heart and bring her into my frigid embrace. She deserved the worse, most painful experience I could give to her. This I intended to give her, but that wily witch had different plans. She raised the crystal vial containing my tears to her mouth and gulped them down. My hand was forced from her as it closed around her heart. I hissed at her.
She raised her stone knife once more while she recited an old legend; “One of Death’s tears and he cannot take you then, two tears and he is banished to his den.”
I struggled against the dark power that drug me back to my abode, but it was futile.
In my dark abode I sat upon my throne. When I looked up I saw her at my gate. But she did not come in her own form, but in the form of the old witch. I knew then what purpose my tears had served and what dark rituals the witch had performed against my love. I knew then that the witch had regained her youth and I could not touch her until she had lived out the years allotted to my love who now wept at my gate. I
know now that I can never love again for humanity is doomed to come to me and my
love only quickens that end.