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What of riches and gold? What of lands and honors? But when I thought of these things there was a silence inside me—a hollowness. It fit ill, like the wrong ending to a good story.
Everyone was happy—old and young, rich and poor, male and female. But I could not touch their happiness, could not hold it. It was a dream and not real. What was real was the sense that in this life I had never quite been satisfied, had never long been at peace, had never loved or been fully loved as I longed to be. I could not name what was in me then, but I knew that the cure was not anywhere around me—not in Grandmother’s and my friends’ smiling faces, not in our shining little village, nor yet in any of the booths of the fair.
No, all I could think to ask for was my one true love, and this not even a king could give me. It was in that moment that everything became clear. “Your Majesty, I ask”—there was an audible intake of breath from the crowd—”I ask that the great hart and his mate no longer be hunted.”
The king looked at me, astonished, and then at John. I did not look at John. I would not. I could not. Behind me the people were murmuring among themselves.
“Very well,” the king said at last. “It is a strange thing you have asked, but you shall have it. Lord Temsland, John, do you swear?”
“We swear,” John said after a brief silence, and in his voice was an accusation, and great pain.
“It is done,” said Lord Temsland, and surely there was a hint of relief in his voice.
The king motioned for me to come closer and, when I did, said quietly so that few else could hear, “It is an unusual request, Keturah, from an unusual subject. Tell me what you say of this. As I traveled past Great Town, I saw villages emptied, fields unharvested, the grain stalks bent and rotting. I saw people hiding in holes like animals, and cattle dead by the roadside, and everywhere the smell of plague. But here, in Tide-by-Rood and Marshall, is health and marrow and wholesomeness. It is my understanding that it is because of you that this is so.”
“No, Your Majesty, but because of one greater than I, and, forgive me, greater even than you.”
He studied me then, a long moment, and nodded solemnly. “Tell him—tell him I have learned something. And thank him—or I suppose I shall myself one day.”
The music began again at a nod from the king, and the villagers dispersed to their fairing. And I—I guessed that the shadows of the forest were begi
Gretta and Beatrice saw me leaving and broke away from their men and the friends and family who had gathered to congratulate them. Gretta grabbed my shoulders.
“Keturah!” she said. “Where are you going?”
“Home. I am tired.”
Beatrice leaned her head against my shoulder. “Please don’t leave, Keturah. You are so pale, you frighten me.”
“Do not fret,” I said, stroking Beatrice’s hair. “Not today.”
“Keturah,” Gretta said, “promise us that you won’t go into the forest.”
“You have weddings to plan,” I said. “Come, I will not be gone so long.”
Then their families and lovers came laughing to steal them away, not understanding why Gretta had begun to weep, and I continued on.
XIV
A conclusion of sorts.
I entered the cottage as the last rays of sunshine fell on swirling dust motes. I straightened Grandmother’s bed, put away the bowls that had been left on the table, and went to Grandmother’s chest and unwrapped my cornstalk doll. Gently I cradled her in my arms, remembering now that she had never had a name. After a time I put her carefully away, then walked through the garden to the forest.
How thin the air felt at the forest’s edge, how ghostly the trees that guarded their realm. I looked around me. The whole world seemed as delicate as a dandelion seed, and as fleeting. Though the sun had not set, the moon had risen, and the village had never looked so beautiful. How sad to know that the figment village of my imagination would not vanish when I ended, to understand that it was not I who had invented the moon the first time I realized how lovely it was. To admit that it was not my breath that made the winds blow. It was not only my own life I mourned. Wouldn’t all life end with mine? Reason told me it was not so, but my heart, my heart knew that when I closed my eyes I invented the night sky and the stars too. Wasn’t the whole dome of the sky the same shape as the inside of my skull? Didn’t I create the sun and the day when I raised my eyelids every morning?
No. As if I had suddenly grown up, my heart was schooled. My friends, my village, and Angleland would all go on. They had already left me behind.
I turned away from the village and stepped into the forest.
In a little while I could no longer hear the familiar sounds of the village—the laughter of children, the squawks of geese, the lowing of cattle. All I could hear was the shushing of the green sea of leaves, silencing me.
I thought I understood the forest from the days when I was lost in it. Oh, proud trees, so tall and hard, I thought. You would not bend to make me feel less small. You would stand still and watch me die.
The forest was rampant, pathless, and full of shadows. The forest was death, and yet as I walked I began to see the secret life beneath every leaf. I heard eyes blinking, heard small hearts beating. I put one hand upon a tree. Even in the cool shadows, it was warm. I stood still, and as I stood I saw birds flit from branch to branch, squirrels run from their holes, and a rabbit lope around a tree. A butterfly lit on a bush, and a graceful doe stepped briefly into my vision in the deep of the forest. The wood leapt and swayed.
Then I saw the hart standing still as a tree trunk nearby in the shadows. He looked at me. Silently he turned, and just as silently I followed.
I followed the hart until I thought I had lost him. Then I found him, then lost him again. Soon I knew I was lost in the wood, and I sat against a tree. I daydreamed that my whole life until then was a story I had made up and now had forgotten, all but the end. It was a lovely gown I had tried on for a time, a gown whose color I could not now recall. It was a delicious meal that had not filled me.
The sound of a horse brought me to my feet. When I saw the black stallion approaching, I put my hand in my apron pocket. The eye was still as death, but I did not need the charm to understand the magic that was in my own heart.
Lord Death came close to me. I could feel no heat from him, hear no breath in his lungs. He was utterly still beside me, but there was a strange comfort in that stillness. It was as if he had eternity to stand beside me, and forever to listen. There was no time or motion to disturb us.
“And so there was no love for you?” he asked gently.
“Tell me what it is like to die,” I answered.
He dismounted from his horse, looking at me strangely the whole while. “You experience something similar every day,” he said softly. “It is as familiar to you as bread and butter.”
“Yes,” I said. “It is like every night when I fall asleep.”
“No. It is like every morning when you wake up.” He searched my face, touched it gently with fingers so cold they burned along my jaw, my temple, my lips, burned me to the very core. “But to know that is never enough. Keturah, I have abdicated my claim upon your soul. Come, I must take you home. Do you not know you have defeated me? That you have tricked my heart into loving you? Do what you will, marry whom you will, go where you will. You shall live to be a great age, and you shall not see me again until life has pressed its hand so heavily upon you that you wish to see it lift.” He stepped away from me and offered me his hand to lift me to the saddle.