I didn’t know where I was going, or what I expected to find. There were no servants. No signs of life. Just seemingly endless hallways dotted with doors and windows. I tried several of the doors but found them all locked. Soon, I began to worry about becoming lost. Still, nothing lived, it seemed, but me. At the next turn the hallway ended in a split of stairs. I leaned over the polished railing. Above and below me, the stairs stretched into darkness.
Everything remained as silent as the grave. I shuddered, remembering again the terrible feeling of that oppressive place. Despite my exhaustion and being warmed and loosened by the bath and soft shift and the fine bed waiting for me, I was dreading sleep. There were too many things to fear in rest. I dreaded to lie down and wake up someplace else. I dreaded more to be awakened in the middle of the night by some creature or spirit. But most of all I dreaded waking up and having this all swept away.
In nightmares, one woke by the slow realization that youcouldwake, that you were trapped inside something you had ultimate power over, and then you’d scream. In a fit of bravery, I leaned over the edge of the stairs, my hands on the polished banister, and screamed into the dark. Not a real one. Not the kind of desperate attempt to wake. But I wanted to see if I could.
The dark did not answer.
I felt then, deep in my bones, that I had made a mistake. That I should not be here. I turned back to my room, but had not taken more than a few steps before a scream tore through the silence behind me.
I bolted back to the rail. Had it come from above or below? It had sounded like a woman, but as if it had poured out from the empty air. Was it my own strange echo, seeming to linger in my ears?
The flickering torchlight and the silence closed back in. In the thick blanket of quiet, I immediately began to doubt myself.
“Fraulein,” a stern voice admonished me.
I gasped and spun.
Death stood behind me, robes sweeping the soft carpets so quietly I had not heard him.
“I heard someone scream,” I said. “Another woman.”
“And so you went searching? My, aren’t you curious.”
I stepped back. “I did not mean any harm.”
“I know,” he said. “But I would ask that you stay in your room after the sun has set. No matter what you hear or what you may think you see, do not come out until sunrise. This house is an old house, built with old magic, on a place much older still. I am only its most recent resident.” He waved his gloved hand at the staircase. “Whatever you heard came from the house itself. It is its own entity, and it can play tricks on even one such as me. It is quite dangerous for you to be wandering.”
“I didn’t see any servants,” I said.
“And you won’t. Death is nothing but a profound and utter loneliness.” He hesitated, as if catching himself. “Well, until you.” He offered his arm. “May I return you to your room?”
It was simple to surrender to the comfort of his soft flattery and authority. Slipping my hand into the crook of his arm, it was a shock to find him as real as my own body. He might have been a god of some kind, but his arm had the strength and sinew of a man. At least now, after bathing, I felt like something more than a sewage rat. My fine tunic swept along behind us on the carpet, and he led me back, turn by turn, to my room. Along the way he pointed out things I hadn’t noticed—an alcove with a statue of Dionysus that danced wheneveryou looked again, a glass-covered window that rippled like water when you touched it, even as it stayed solid, and Adam and Eve hiding in different places on the tapestry outside my door.
“The house pulls magic from its ancient source,” Death explained. “Like a deep well.”
“What is the source?” I asked.
He gave me a sharp look, as if he hadn’t expected me to question it. “The forest itself,” he said, in a tone that suggested I should have known.
We had arrived at my door. He took my hand in his gloved one and slid away from my touch. “Remember,” he said. “If you cannot abide by the rules of the house, you will not be able to stay.”
I nodded, finding it not much different from a nunnery. Or a brothel. “I will not wander.”
He nodded.
“Goodnight,” I said, pushing into the room.
“May your dreams be sweet,” he said, as if uttering a blessing.
IWOKE WITH A JERK, AND THE SUDDEN PANIC FAMILIAR TOanyone who’d been dragged out of sleep by an iron-fisted nun or a brute of a man. It took me a minute for my stunned brain to remember where I was and why my side was cold. I was not asleep beside Dacia. Not at Josef’s. I was Death’s apprentice. In his home. I sat up, wiping sleep out of my eyes to peer at the room, its blues bathed in a cool gray light.
The tub was gone, a fire burned bright in the hearth, and on the table lay a tray of food.
It must be part of the magic Death had shown me—the way things moved in and out of my room as if the house could read my mind. I strained my ears yet again, but there were no sounds except the crackling of the cheery fire, my slowing heartbeat, and the growl of my stomach. Now it seemed so obvious, I nearly laughed—of coursenothing would live here, this was Death’s home. And the magic must be pulled from the same well Death had told me about the night before. Climbing out of my fortress of blankets and pillows and furs, I fell on the tray hungrily.
Rather than broth, there was a fine breakfast—soft, creamy cheese, dried fruits, bread that was sweet and chewy, and a honeyed beer to wash it all down. I hovered over it, taking wolfish bites. I had no sense of time, for beyond the trio of arched windows there was nothing but mountainside and swirling snow. It was a relief to be inside, so sheltered and warm. Swallowing the dregs of the beer, I wiped my mouth and turned to the clothes on the chair.
There was no way to tell if I was late—I had only my instinct that it was morning—but I rushed anyway, filled with a nervous, frantic energy as I pulled on a sturdy blue tunic spun of the same wool as my shift, but thicker, with silver embroidered flowers on the sleeves, a silver corded belt, and a veil the color of an icy mist for securing my hair. The clothes were all finer than anything I’d ever worn, and warmer too. But it was the stockings that delighted me most. Thick, plain, in the softest undyed wool I had ever touched. I slid them up my legs and felt nearly rich. A pair of sturdy leather shoes had been placed under the chair; I had just put them on when the knock sounded at my door.
