Willow listened to the rain as she poured rum into her coffee cup that had long since stopped being coffee. From her window she watched the clouds brightened, her skin turns to gooseflesh from the same electricity as it made contact with the earth. After work, she spent her evening searching every nook and cabinet. She tossed every shred of fabric from every closet and flipped the mattresses in her guest bedroom as well as her own. It would help if she knew what she was looking for, but that particular knowledge eluded her. She hoped that if she looked hard enough whatever it was would call out her, shine bright like a beacon as if it was looking for her too. Liquid splashes on the back of her hand and it pulls her out of her reverie. She quickly cleans her mess and takes her mug to her living room. She grabs a book from the bookshelf and takes a seat on the plush couch across from the fireplace. The logs crackle and split, the heat bates the chill from walking on the bare floor, while a different warmth spreads throughout her as she drinks. She fingers through the tome, but nothing jumps out at her. She tosses it to join the pile at the end of the couch. She winces as she finishes the last of her drink, her cheeks now red, her head heavy. The flames dance and flicker. The shadows tell a story. She decides it’s a love story of star-crossed lovers. The light cannot exist with the air, the air must be consumed to make the light. Their togetherness is only the split second where one ceases to exist so that the other can. It was rather cruel.
Her head lobs against the arm of the couch. She closes her eyes and sinks inward, she concentrates on slowing her heartrate, made easier with the whiskey now coursing through her. She grows heavy as she sinks deeper, as she reaches out for them. Her friends had to study for years to accomplish the simplest form of conjuring, but this came as naturally to her as breathing. She was searching for that in-between of heartbeats and the passing of electric signals. The very middle between exhalation and inhalation. Not quite dying, but more death adjacent. Cold fingers wrap themselves around her ankle, the sensation jerks her to the surface. It works. She drags her head up to meet her visitor.
“Hello, friend,” she says.
“Hello. It’s been a while,” they say. Willow watches them for a moment, they smile back with a toothy grin. The bony fingers rolled against her ankle. She sighs as she leans against the couch.
“Well, haven’t you heard it’s rude to keep Death waiting? What, pray tell, is the special occasion?”
“Tell me a story,” she demands.
“What kind of a story?”
“You know what kind.”
“I don’t presume to know anything about what you’re thinking.”
“One of our old stories. You know, since you won’t tell me how long you’ve known me, I have to piece it together somehow.”
“Fine,” Death tapped a finger where their lip would be as they thought. Willow watched as they decided on which story to tell. Some days she felt she as though she could just make out what their face looked like, and tonight as the flickering flame dimly illuminated the familiar figure, she thought she saw their forehead wrinkle in concentration.
“Ah, how about this one.” Death began, the storm itself quieting as if it wants to hear the tale as well, “long ago, there was once a woman who the incredible ability to see. People would travel for miles to learn their destinies and what legacies they would leave behind. She was always taught to never see her own future, but after spending years being a service to others, she wanted to know if there was something more for her. She prepared her ritual as usual and reached forward, forward as far as she could go, until she reached the end. The end of the beginning of everything. When she returned, she wept uncontrollably. She told others what she saw. No one quite knew how to handle the delirious seer and her vision. They did their best to calm her, and she did for a while. She tried to ignore what she saw and continue with her purpose, but her visions began to waver in quality. For some her visions were completely wrong and other she couldn’t see at all. The act itself had become a toll for her and at a point she never fully recovered from her visits, growing weaker with each request. Some believed that her time as the seer had come to an end, they kept her isolated and waited until she was mostly well before asking her for one last thing: who would be the next seer. She reached forward and saw that it would be a young boy in a neighboring village, that he would already be showing the signs. They thanked her with fresh fruit and drink and left her alone. I visited her one night, I grabbed her hand, it was clammy, her plump cheeks now slack. I asked her, ‘do you know who I am?’ She nodded. I began to tell her about her life, some parts she probably had forgotten, when I got to the part where she saw her own future, she stopped me. She asked me if I wanted to know what she saw. I told her yes. She mustered all her strength and said, ‘I saw the beginning of everything and the end of it all. I saw things that had happened and things that have yet been. What needed to be done but wasn’t. Things that never should have happened but did.’ She started crying. ‘I saw the end of us, our universe, our universe, and it was beautiful.’ I wanted to help her. I took her with me that night and nursed her back to health. When she was well, I gave her some of my magick. I gave her the means to start a new life but promised to watch her as dealing with death and decay can take its toll. She found a new home and when all it seemed everything she touched turned to ash, I found her and showed her how it could be good. I made her a promise one day as she watched the eggs she just gathered crack and expel a sulfuric gas. And I’m still keeping it this day.”
Death idly rubbed Willow leg as they looked into the fire. Willow sat up and pulled her legs close to her, Death looked at her.
“Was that the first time we met?”
Death nodded.
“And you’re where my necromancy comes from?”
“Yes.”
Willow’s head began to throb, her skin tightens with static electricity. Death sits still and watches her. She stands and presses her hands to her head. Death continues to stare.
“Why can’t I remember you then? Every other story, there’s sensations and flashes, but just trying to catch a glimpse of memory is splitting my head apart.”
Death stands and grabs her wrists. She focuses on the shadows moving across their face and they seem melancholy. “I’ve never met anyone else who knew about the end of all. I’ll be there, of course, but I must admit the thought of not having to bear it alone overwhelmed me. In exchange for her sight, I bound a bit of myself to her. Unfortunately, we’ve had this discussion many times before.”
“What do you mean?”
“Having the knowledge of the end of the universe as we know it, even as a story as long since forgotten as this one, weakens you. It will kill you.”
Willow stares at her friend whose shoulders seemed weighed with a burden.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve called to me, the house in disarray looking for something that never seems to appear. But it’s not because something has been misplaced. It because something has been stolen. I have to take your memory Willow.”
Willow began to argue, but Death shushes her.
“I wish there was a different way. If I don’t tell you the story, you will continue to search for something that is simply not there. You’d go mad, finding everything in nothing, and never the thing you’re looking for. Living with the story is worse. I will destroy the memory of this story, this story only, and another one will blossom in its place and you will live on.”
Willow knew she couldn’t fight this. She grips their hands and asks, “Can I at least know the promise you made her?
Death huffs out a puff of air, “You should have figured it out by now. That I’ll always be there for her. Here for you.”
Willow rolled her eyes ignoring the single tear that fell. She shivers as Death draws closer. They grip her at the base of her head and stare into her shimmering eyes.
Willow pulls a smile out of nowhere, “See you at the edge of the universe.”
—
Death lays their sleeping friend on the couch, pulling the blanket over her. They take a seat across from her and watch her sleep for a while. It hasn’t gotten easier doing this to her, but like many of the difficult burdens of being an omniscient being, it must be done. For now, she will be at peace, and that is worth the ache.
Photo by Sergei Solo on Unsplash
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