Suddenly, it leapt up and darted out of the room like any normal tabby. Before I could reconsider, I pulled the blanket over my shoulders and followed.
The room I emerged from was just off the kitchen, but there seemed to be no staff, no food, no life. The cook fires were cold. The shelves bare. The wine cellar empty. I followed the fiery tabby as it darted through rooms of dusty stone and drifts of leaf litter. There was no one to be seen. By the time I made it to the enormous front hall, it was clear: No one had lived here in centuries.
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 château, 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 thetruth. 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 acreeping 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’texpectto 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. Ihadexpected 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. Orat 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.”
