Walks With Death

Death sat quietly in an elmwood chair, the tendrilled wisps of his cloak fallen across his frame and spooled around him like black ink. Beneath his beakish mask, almond eyes locked on a tall figure standing in front of him. Rare as audiences with his lordship were, even rarer was the opportunity to break monotony’s molasses grip, so he had acquiesced with glee. He went so far as to offer her a compliment.

‘Your smile is really quite lovely.’ he said.

She wasn’t smiling. In fact, Tara had not smiled in quite some time. Nor did she reply.

He tried again.

‘You wished to meet with me?’

This worked. He watched a small spark expand between the whites and blacks of her eyes, not unlike the sun which now rose behind her.

‘Yes, I did.’ She said, ‘I… I want to see the Palisade.’

‘The Palisade? Why, it’s right there.’ Death replied, gesturing out the window toward an immense confusion of spikes and pylons.

‘Yes. Sorry. I want to go to the Palisade. I want to see what it looks like from the top.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve only seen it from the bottom.’

‘What’s wrong with the bottom?’

‘Nothing.’

Her voice tripped over the vast hole ‘nothing’ had failed to cover. Death took note of this pause and sat with it, wondering what to make of this strange girl with strange dreams of a place she could not reach only miles away.

Then a boldness found her, made of her a marionette, and forced her to say: ‘Everything. Everything is wrong with – it’s where I’ve worked my whole life, each and every day. I’m supposed to pretend that it’s worth it? Because the Palisade protects us from... whatever’s out there?’

As her voice trailed off, her right arm lifted, as if by strings, until it was pointing at the Palisade and the forbidden wilds beyond its gate.

‘I had to ask. Please.’

Death erupted from his chair. He landed before her in a tangle of thread and theatrics.

‘Well, then, how could I say no? To the Palisade we shall go!’

Though the words reached her, Tara still did not offer a smile. Death’s desire to grant her joy broadened. Reaching one hand into his robe’s hidden pocket, he produced a small trinket, then dangled it from his palm. Tara inched closer. She saw that the trinket was a small and intricately fashioned locket in the shape of a heart, seemingly composed of iron, a material so rare that to hoard even a sliver would be punishable in the extreme. Therefore, it was immensely valuable.

‘I want you to have it.’ He said through a wide grin. ‘It belonged to someone very important to me. She found her dreams. I want you to find yours.’

In spite of these words, he dumped the locket into her hands without ceremony, so brusquely that Tara could not help but feel mistrustful of her new benefactor. A desire overtook her, then, to march her feet away from this place and return to the dredges she already knew, which she would have done if it were not another type of death, one more brutal than what Death might offer instead. She brushed this thought into her coat, along with the locket and several specks of dust.

She and Death walked together down a set of spiral stairs which led to Bell’s Courtyard. The courtyard was a central kind of place in a time where central places no longer existed, and people no longer burdened them with their ideas of history. After a certain point, the name of a place was just the name of a place. As harlots came and heralds went through the courtyard, still came the constant chink of hammers which lovingly beat nails into wood to build the Palisade. On occasion, one of the laborers streaming by would look up at Tara, searching and failing to find something in her, or perhaps of her, this reason she now walked with Death. None of them, however, dared to look upon him.

As they approached the steps to the Palisade, Tara found her feet had rooted themselves in place. She looked at the path looming before her, an array of soft sloping steps beholden to an eerie calm. Past several scores of stairs the light began to fade, as walls squeezed together to form a dim and dreary hallway. She began to wonder if there even was a top of the Palisade, or if oblivion was all that waited on the other side. Meanwhile, Death had climbed several steps all at once, so beautifully unaware he was of this thing called fear.

‘Come!’ He shouted. ‘This is what you wanted.’

It was. Her feet began to move, awkwardly at first, then with pride for where they went. Under the sallow sun she climbed with Death, quiet as mice. They moved beyond the sound of hammers, beyond even the sound of wind whistling through the tunnel. It seemed they had traveled quite far when Death began to grow bored, as he was wont to do.

‘So.’

‘Yes?’

‘We’re past the bottom.’

‘Yes.’

‘How does it feel?’

Tara paused to consider his words, sensing that their weight might drag her down towards the Earth.

‘It’s still not the top.’’ She said, before silence took hold once more.

It struck her, then, that she had grown to love the Palisade. Perhaps for the sole reason one loves anything, which is that it is there. Or perhaps because an idea of the thing is there, which sometimes is easier to love than the thing itself. Only the Palisade could hold together the fragile remnants they called home, and keep out whatever it was they as a collective had forgotten, whether it was by accident, or whether it was very much on purpose.

No one had seen its top in a long time.

The dark walls of the Palisade closed further and further around them. With little to do besides walk, Tara began to wonder. She wondered at the world beyond the Palisade, in as simple terms as the shapes and colors she may have never seen before. She wondered at this companion she had found who gave her a locket and helped her along. She wondered what she had given him in return.

Suddenly, the staircase ceased. It folded like origami into a gleaming white terrace, composed of stony materials Tara could not quite name. As she wondered where the materials had come from, her gaze turned towards the tawny hills and tall trunk trees stretching out into the vast horizon. Their enormity made her feel small, thin as the distant reeds that swayed in the wind and looked like life beneath the silent sky.

Across from her, Death felt confused. He had held the assumption that, at this exact moment, Tara would experience euphoria. Yet she seemed calm; stoic, even. It was as if the setting sun could do no more for her than it could for the end of the day, unable to rewind or unwind time, nor bring to bear the tears she would have shed in another life where the far flung wilds were not beyond her reach. Here she stood, atop a world that had nothing left for her.

Tara turned to Death. The iron locket found itself in her hands, gleaming against the day’s slow fade. She searched him, then, hoping to find something not unlike humanity. Perhaps it was hiding behind his cloak or beneath his mask. Yet all she found was a question.

‘Who did the locket belong to?’

‘It doesn’t much matter.’

‘I think it does. I think it matters to you.’

His hollow eyes held her gaze.

‘It was someone I loved.’

‘Did they love you?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘But they left.’

‘They chased a dream.’

‘Were you not in it?’

‘It wasn’t about me.’

‘You’re Death. It’s always about you.’

An ice chill crept along his neck. Rooms had been opened which were best left closed.

‘Tara, I’m not real.’

‘I think you are. You’re here, with me.’

‘No. I’m not, and I never was.’’

Silence crept between them. It stayed for a while, long enough to allow the unfurling of his words before Tara’s eyes. Nothing could stop what happened next, the slow and unhurried way her feet left the ground, tumbling from the precipice where once lived a dream, before it fled like light towards the endless land. In her final, falling moments, it was not quite joy or sorrow that reigned in her mind, or even resignation, but a brutal tenderness. One could scarcely hear her heart shatter, buried as it was beneath the rhythm of an iron locket that beat mercilessly against her chest.