At last I said, “His voice is cold at first, John. It seems unfeeling. But if you listen without fear, you find that when he speaks, the most ordinary words become poetry. When he stands close to you, your life becomes a song, a praise. When he touches you, your smallest talents become gold; the most ordinary loves break your heart with their beauty.”
John turned his eyes away from Lord Death then, and looked at me as if he had never known me. He blinked his eyes as if he were awakening from a bad dream. The knife point touched his heart.
“Stop him!” I commanded Lord Death.
“I cannot stop him. If he wants to follow you, he will. But—”
And then, though we did not hear him, we saw the hart step from the trees and into our small clearing.
He was so close we could see ourselves reflected in his great round eye. The muscles in his chest quivered to be so close to humans. John looked at him, his mouth agape. None of us moved for fear that he would bolt. It seemed that he looked at John as much as John looked at him.
“He makes you want to live,” Lord Death said quietly to John.
John looked hatefully at Lord Death for the briefest of moments, and then at the knife he held in his hand.
Surely all the angels of heaven smiled when John’s eye was drawn again to the hart. The hart took a step closer to him, and then slowly lowered his stately head to the ground as if he were bowing. When his head was completely lowered, he began to nibble at mushrooms.
John reached to touch the stag’s antlers. His face forgot Lord Death, forgot me as well, and soon his right hand forgot to hold the knife and dropped it to the forest floor. Then Lord Death touched him, and John fell unconscious into his arms. Together we laid John comfortably on the ground. Lord Death nodded to the hart, who turned and stepped silently into the trees.
“He sleeps only,” Lord Death said to me. “His father will find him soon, for the hart will lead him here. They will find you, too, and take you home.”
“They will find my body,” I said, “for I will go with you.”
“You have no dower,” he said. “Live, Keturah. Go home.”
“But I do have a dower,” I said plainly. “This is my dower, Lord Death: the crown of flowers I will never wear at my wedding.” I could not stop the tears that filled my eyes.
He knelt on one knee before me.
“The little house I would have had of my own, to furnish and clean. That, too, is part of my dower.”
“I will give you the world for your footstool,” he said.
“And most precious of all, I give you the baby I will never hold in my arms.”
Then he folded me in his arms and wept with me. At last I laid down my sadness, laid it on the forest floor, never to have it again. Together we mounted his tall black horse and rode into the endless forest.
CODA
Being a collection of endings, every one happy.
Was it true, Naomi? Was it the end that must be?
But I am sure there are other endings that you would like to know.
Beatrice, for example. Beatrice sang in Choirmaster’s choir, and in his heart, for many a long year. And though her voice was that of an angel, it was said by many that it was love of her husband that gave her wings. She bore many children, all of whom had her small nose and who became musicians in their own right. She died before her husband, who promptly went back to making the saddest of music and joined her in death not a long time later.
Gretta and Tailor moved to be near the king’s court, where they bought a big house with a great door that Tailor painted blue. Gretta quickly forgot which were her children and which were Tailor’s. Living to an extraordinary age, she mourned them all equally as she buried her husband and, one by one, her children. In this suffering she found the best sort of perfection—the kind that never demands it of others.
Ben married Padmoh after all, and while it cannot be said that they were happy together, it can be said that they both lived comfortably and fatly, and died just the way they wanted—of food. Every one of their four sons broke with Marshall tradition and married for love.
As for young John Temsland, he grew to be a great and beloved lord, and the king held him up to others as an example. John married the king’s niece and loved her sweetly, and it is said he denied her nothing save her ongoing wish to hunt in the Temsland forest. That he was so adamant about this was a source of curiosity to her all their days, as was his wont to dream of a night and call out the name Keturah. But there were no other puzzles to him, and they were happy, as were their people.
As for Grandmother, when the fair was over, and when she came to know what I had done, she went into the garden and picked a large ripe strawberry, and then walked into the forest a long way.
“Oliver Howard Reeve,” she called, standing there in the cool of the forest. “Oliver Howard Reeve!” she demanded again.
And soon, because I asked, Lord Death allowed her husband to come to her.
“Sybil,” he said gently from the bending willows.
“You have all left me behind,” Grandmother said, with the slightest hint of a sob in her voice.
“Ah,” he said, “but someone has to be last.”
And so they talked together of all the big and small things of life, and soon Grandmother’s complaint became a thing of laughter, and she gave him the bright red strawberry and he gave her a lily-of-the-valley, and he took her hand and brought her through the woods to the meadows and the mountains. And oh, how we rejoiced over mountains together.
As for the hart—he lives to this day, as does the story of Keturah and Lord Death as it is told around the common fires of the great city of Tide-by-Rood.
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Some books come quietly—they are intimately the writer’s own, and even the editor need only touch it lightly before it is ready to be shared with readers.
Some, like this one, come with much help from others, and thanks are necessary. I wrote the first few pages of this book in a desperate attempt to fulfill a page quota while in my MFA program. My advisor at the time, Brock Cole, said, “There’s a book in there. You should write it.” When a writer of Mr. Cole’s stature says you should do something, you are wise to comply. I’m glad I did.
I wish to thank M. T. Anderson and Jane Resh Thomas, who nursed along subsequent pages and encouraged me to see it through to the end.
I am very grateful to my typist and dear friend Valerie Battrum, without whom this book would still be sitting on my desk, a stack of hand-scribbled pages. She is always among my first and most valued readers. I am indebted also to Stephen Roxburgh, Katya Rice, and my daughter Sarah for their editorial expertise.
Thanks go to the Canada Council for the Arts and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts for their timely financial assistance.
Finally, I express my love to my youngest sister, Lorraine, who died many years ago of cystic fibrosis at the age of