I was alive. If I was alive, I was real. If I was real, then this was some trick of the forest. All around me the thin moonbeams slanted through the trees. The wood was so quiet and strange. I felt thenearness of that otherworld, of something watching me just beyond my field of vision. A whisper, a snap of ice.
Blindly, I spun and set out in the direction I hoped would lead to escape.
If I thought it would be any easier on the descent, I was wrong. I floundered, hitting buried rocks and once getting swallowed in a drift near to my neck. Farther down, the snow lessened, but the slope was so steep and slick I fought to keep from falling.
And that whispered voice of ice crept closer and closer.
At first, I thought it was only the sound of my struggling. But I began to hear it, a half step behind me in the quiet, even when I stopped to catch my breath. My ears strained around the sound of my thudding heart, but I dared not turn around. That whisper of ice echoed across the forest, whistling in the thin wind. Cold and remote. But nearer. Ever nearer. So close I could hear words in a strange and ancient tongue along my neck.
I felt sure that something was there, in the dark between the trees, watching me. Something ancient that could not be seen by any living creature had me in its sight. Or I had truly gone mad and would soon bite off my own tongue.
At some point I began to run.
The whisper of ice chased, putting thoughts into my head in vivid detail—the scrape of long fingernails drawing across my blue frozen thigh, splitting the flesh open to the bone, and feasting on the marrow. But I kept running, and suddenly the trees released me onto a bald mountain ridge.
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 cloudof 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. “Humanis 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?”
