The body seemed to melt away under Maggie’s hands. One moment it was a solid, hairy weight, then it wasn’t. For a moment she thought it was sinking and her heart sank with it, because fishing a dead god out of the pond was going to be a bitch of a way to spend an hour.
But he did not sink. Instead he simply unmade himself, skin from flesh and flesh from bone, unraveling like one of her flies coming untied, and there was nothing left but a shadow on the surface of the water.
Maggie let out a breath and scrubbed her hands together. They felt oily.
She was freezing and her boots were full of water and something slimy wiggled past her shin. She sighed. It seemed, as it had for a long time, that witchcraft—or whatever this was—was all mud and death and need.
She was so damn tired.
She thought perhaps she’d cry, and then she thought that wouldn’t much help, so she didn’t.
Death reached out and took her granddaughter’s hand.
“Look,” said Death quietly.
Around the pond, the fat trumpets of the pitcher plants began to glow from inside, as if they had swallowed a thousand fireflies. The light cast green shadows across the surface of the water and turned the sundews into strings of cut glass beads. It cut itself along the leaves of the staggerbush and threaded between the fly–traps’ teeth.
Whatever was left of the possum god glowed like foxfire.
Hand in hand, they came ashore by pitcher plant light.
Death stood at the foot of the steps. Maggie went up them, holding the railing, moving slow.
There were black stains on the steps where the god had oozed. She was going to have to scrub them down, pour bleach on them, maybe even strip the wood. The bindweed, that nasty little plant they called “Devil’s Guts” was already several feet long and headed toward the mint patch. The stink of dying possum was coming up from under the steps and that was going to need to be scraped down with a shovel and then powdered with lime.
At least she could wait until tomorrow to take an axe to the Devil’s rocking chair, though it might be sensible to drag it off the porch first.
The notion of all the work to be done made her head throb and her shoulders climb toward her ears.
“Go to bed, granddaughter,” said Death kindly. “Take your rest. The world can go on without you for a little while.”
“Work to be done,” Maggie muttered. She held onto the railing to stop from swaying.
“Yes,” said Death, “but not by you. Not tonight. I will make you this little bargain, granddaughter, in recognition of a kindness. I will give you a little time. Go to sleep. Things left undone will be no worse for it.”
Death makes bargains rarely, and unlike the Devil, hers are not negotiable. Maggie nodded and went inside.
She fell straight down on the bed and was asleep without taking off her boots. She did not say goodbye to the being that wore her grandmother’s face, but in the morning, a quilt had been pulled up over her shoulder.
The next evening, as the sun set, Maggie sat in her rocking chair and tied flies. Her shoulders were slowly, slowly easing. The pliers only shook a little in her hand.
She had dumped bleach over the steps, and the smell from under the porch had gone of its own accord. The bindweed… well, the black husks had definitely been bindweed, but something had trod upon it and turned it into ash. It was a kindness she hadn’t expected.
Her whiskey bottle was also full, with something rather better than moonshine, although she suspected that a certain cloven–hooved gentleman might have been responsible for that.
The space on the porch where the other rocking chair had been ached like a sore tooth and caught her eye whenever she glanced over. She sighed. Still, the wood would keep the fire going for a couple of days, when winter came.
The throats of the pitcher plants still glowed, just a little. Easy enough to blame on tired eyes. Maggie wrapped thread around the puff of feather and the shining metal hook, and watched the glow from the corner of her eyes.
A young possum trundled out of the thicket, and Maggie looked up.
“Don’t start,” she said warningly. “I’ll get the broom.”
The possum sat down on the edge of the pond. It was an awkward, ungainly little creature, with big dark eyes and wicked kinked whiskers. It was halfway hideous and halfway sweet, which gave it something in common with witches.
Slowly, slowly, the moon rose and the green light died away. The frogs chanted together in the dark.
The possum stood up, stretched, and nodded once to Maggie Grey. Then it shuffled into the undergrowth, its long rat–tail held behind it.
I will give you a little time, Death had said.
She wondered what Death considered ‘a little time.’ An hour? A day? A week?
“A few weeks,” she said to the pond and the absent possum. “A few weeks would be good. A little time for myself. The world can get on just fine without me for a couple of weeks.”
She wasn’t expecting an answer. The whip–poor–wills called to each other over the pond, and maybe that was answer enough.
Maggie poured two fingers of the Devil’s whiskey, with hands that did not shake, and raised the glass in a toast to the absent world.
About the Author
Ursula Vernon is the author of the Hugo Award winning comic “Digger” and numerous children’s books. She writes for adults under the name T. Kingfisher. She lives in North Carolina and gardens, if you can call it that. Find her online at www.tkingfisher.com
Copyright
Published in Apex Magazine Jan 6, 2015 (Issue 68)
© Ursula Vernon