The demon floated a foot off the ground and looked down at Keaf with black holes for eyes. “You summoned a demon,” it thundered. A rending sound of breaking bones accompanied each word, and its face twisted through imitations of all the people that Keaf and his father had buried. “This is my death-yard, mortal. Would you have it?”
Keaf found the barest trace of voice. “You possessed Wend’s body?”
“No.” An agony-twisted face appeared in the bony plate of the demon’s chest, and the moaning grew louder until it vibrated in Keaf’s head. “This one I possess.”
The moan became a scream, and Keaf covered his ears. “Stop!” he cried. “It hurts. Please, stop!”
“At your command,” the demon said. It opened its mouth, and a long black tongue reached out to carve a rent in its chest. Red ichor sprayed outward, spattering the ground at Keaf’s feet. He skittered back and held the sword across him as some meager protection. The opening in the demon’s chest widened, and the body of a naked woman, raw red and hairless, spilled out. She moaned as she hit the earth and raised her head to look at Keaf with bottomless red eyes. Then she lay still.
“You can have her now,” the demon said. It settled back to the ground and hunched forward until its head nearly touched the ground at Keaf’s feet. “What would you have me do? Bodies broken? Enemies tortured? Command my cruelty.” Its voice rasped in Keaf’s ears.
Keaf shuddered at the idea of choosing his own fate. Body broken? Torture? What else would the demon do to him? He hugged the sword to his chest and wept. “I beg you, spare me,” he sobbed. “Go away, and I will never call you again. Begone to the furthest hell and spare me.”
“Done!” The demon reared up tall as an oak and sucked all the fire and stench back inside its body. “Fare you carefully, lord and master,” it said.
As it sunk back into the earth, a great whirlwind surrounded the graveyard, and the edges of the sky burned with fire. Keaf curled into a ball, awaiting sure death, and prayed for the salvation of his soul.
Keaf awoke with a pain in his side, and he rolled over to find the hilt of the sword caught in his shirt. Dawn was close, and a cold mist hung in the air. He sat up and rubbed at the very real pain in his temples. Inexplicably, he was still alive.
Close by, a flock of crows had gathered on the mound of dirt beside Wend’s open grave. A good sign. Crows avoided demons. Looking around, he saw the woman. She lay where she’d fallen, a tangle of arms and legs and bright pink skin with alluring curves. Pink, not red, and a head of long black hair where there had been none. A crow lifted from the grave site and fluttered over to land beside her. Its beady eye stared for a moment, and then it pecked at her arm and drew fresh blood.
Keaf pushed to his feet. “Get away, damned bird!” He lurched forward on cramped legs. The crow hopped once, eyed Keaf up and down, and flew off with the others to circle noisily overhead.
Keaf knelt beside the woman and pressed a finger on the nick in her arm. The blood was warm, but she was very cold. He scooped her up-digging had given him strong arms-and carried her to his shack as the crows returned to their decomposed feast.
Rekindled fire, fetched water, corn mush and the last of a trapped pheasant, a too-large shirt and trousers to cover her nakedness. In an hour Keaf had done the meager things he knew to do, and the woman seemed to rest comfortably on his bed. Other than a twitch or two, she hadn’t moved.
He settled by the fire and nibbled at the pheasant, and he had time to wonder. Last night might have been a dream except for the person now in his bed. The demon had been almost servile in the way it dumped out the woman, and it had spared him when he begged. Lord and master, it had said. But that made no sense. Perhaps the sword had scared it away. The Sword. He dropped his bowl and dashed out the door.
It lay in the graveyard where he’d dropped it, gleaming in spite of the smudges and dirt. He picked it up carefully and wiped both sides of the blade on his sleeve, fraying the coarse cloth along the sharp edges. Patterns danced deep in the metal, swirling and looping in designs that almost looked like words. Keaf gripped the hilt, and once again he felt a power within himself, and he heard the distant roar of the crowd. His father had told him stories of magic, of mighty wizards and strange beasts, but Keaf had always taken them to be fairy tales. Might as well fancy himself a king. But this Sword cried out with magic. It had to be worth very much gold.
He glanced at the open grave, decided Wend’s body could wait, and returned to sit by the fire. The woman still slumbered. He planted the blade’s point between his feet and leaned his chin on the pommel in what he supposed was a very royal pose. Before he knew it, he drifted off to sleep.
“My Lord.”
The words nudged Keaf awake, and he opened his eyes to find the woman kneeling at his feet. As she bowed her head, her long black hair fanned forward to touch his moccasins. Words stuck in his throat, and his mouth hung open. The woman looked up and smiled, and her face went from ordinary to beautiful.
“You saved me,” she said. Gold flecks twinkled in the dark green of her eyes, there was an earthy aroma to her that was not bad. “You banished Gemlech.”
“I did?” Keaf didn’t remember it that way. “Are you all right?”
“After two hundred seventy-six years in a demon’s chest?” She stretched her arms and scratched at the sides of her head. “I could be worse.”
Keaf watched her body move and his heart galloped with a different sort of terror. He’d never been so close to a living woman, and though he’d explored a few dead bodies, she was an exotic mystery to him. He fumbled a cup of corn mush from the pot and snatched the pheasant’s carcass from near the fire. “Are you hungry?”
She looked at the grimy mush and greasy bird and nodded. “If my Lord is through.”
“I’m just Keaf,” he said, embarrassed by her words. “Please, take what you want.”
“My name is Dellawynn.” She sat back on her haunches as she took the pheasant and tore hungrily at it.
“I don’t know how we survived last night,” Keaf said. “But I saw you come from the demon’s chest.”
Dellawynn’s look grew distant. “I caused a lot of mischief once. The gods wanted to punish me.”
“I thought that monster was going to kill me,” Keaf said. “Something must have changed its mind.”
“It was you,” Dellawynn answered through a mouthful of mush. “You made him give me up and banished him.”
Keaf was dubious at best. And Dellawynn’s reaction seemed to fit in a fairy tale. The princess is rescued by the prince, she is eternally grateful, they fall in love, and live happily ever after. This would be the middle part.
“If I may ask, my Lord,” Dellawynn said, “when do we depart for your castle and keep?”
Keaf looked around his hut and felt his elation at having a woman’s attention collapse. This was where she discovered he was a gravedigger, a shunned man. He pointed wordlessly at the hut’s bleak walls.
Dellawynn’s eyes followed his gesture. She set down the pheasant’s bones and empty bowl, and a small sigh escaped her lips. “If this is your home, then I know my purpose. I will help you get a castle.” She reached out and touched his knees, leaning forward so that Keaf saw the curve of her breasts. She was much more woman than Toya, the blacksmith’s daughter. “I once brought the kingdom of Delfland down in fire, and I made the Prince of Borhas give up his crown,” she continued. “Getting you a castle and servants and treasures shouldn’t be too difficult, and I will be your queen if you will have me.” She looked down, but the hint of a smile lingered on her lips.
“But this is all I have,” Keaf said. “I dig graves.”
“Why don’t you go somewhere else then? Start over?” Keaf had once asked his father that same question, and the answer had made him proud. Only a decent, honest person can be a gravedigger, his father had said. Any lesser man would run from the responsibility and the burden. Keaf believed that to his soul. “I am Keaf,” he said. “I dig graves. I don’t know how to be anyone else.”