And everyone there cried with one voice, “Yes! Yes, you must stay with us. You are so beautiful that we cannot let you go.”
“We are tired,” said Captain Compson.
“We are blind,” said Lorimond, adding, “especially to poetry.”
“We are afraid,” said Lord Torrance quietly, and his wife took his arm and said, “Both of us.”
“We are dull and stupid,” said Lady Neville, “and growing old uselessly. Stay with us, Lady Death.”
And then Death smiled sweetly and radiantly and took a step forward, and it was as though she had come down among them from a great height. “Very well,” she said. “I will stay with you. I will be Death no more. I will be a woman.”
The room was full of a deep sigh, although no one was seen to open his mouth. No one moved, for the golden-haired girl was Death still, and her horses still whinnied for her outside. No one could look at her for long, although she was the most beautiful girl anyone there had ever seen.
“There is a price to pay,” she said. “There is always a price. Some one of you must become Death in my place, for there must forever be Death in the world. Will anyone choose? Will anyone here become Death of his own free will? For only thus can I become a human girl.”
No one spoke, no one spoke at all. But they backed slowly away from her, like waves slipping back down a beach to the sea when you try to catch them. The Contessa della Candini and her friends would have crept quietly out of the door, but Death smiled at them and they stood where they were. Captain Compson opened his mouth as though he were going to declare himself, but he said nothing. Lady Neville did not move.
“No one,” said Death. She touched a flower with her finger, and it seemed to crouch and flex itself like a pleased cat. “No one at all,” she said. “Then I must choose, and that is just, for that is the way that I became Death. I never wanted to be Death, and it makes me so happy that you want me to become one of yourselves. I have searched a long time for people who would want me. Now I have only to choose someone to replace me and it is done. I will choose very carefully.”
“Oh, we were so foolish,” Lady Neville said to herself. “We were so foolish.” But she said nothing aloud; she merely clasped her hands and stared at the young girl, thinking vaguely that if she had had a daughter she would have been greatly pleased if she resembled the Lady Death.
“The Contessa della Candini,” said Death thoughtfully, and that woman gave a little squeak of terror because she could not draw her breath for a scream. But Death laughed and said, “No, that would be silly.” She said nothing more, but for a long time after that the Contessa burned with humiliation at not having been chosen to be Death.
“Not Captain Compson,” murmured Death, “because he is too kind to become Death, and because it would be too cruel to him. He wants to die so badly.” The expression on the captain’s face did not change, but his hands began to tremble.
“Not Lorimond,” the girl continued, “because he knows so little about life, and because I like him.” The poet flushed, and turned white, and then turned pink again. He made as if to kneel clumsily on one knee, but instead he pulled himself erect and stood as much like Captain Compson as he could.
“Not the Torrances,” said Death, “never Lord and Lady Torrance, for both of them care too much about another person to take any pride in being Death.” But she hesitated over Lady Torrance for awhile, staring at her out of her dark and curious eyes. “I was your age when I became Death,” she said at last. “I wonder what it will be like to be your age again. I have been Death for so long.” Lady Torrance shivered and did not speak.
And at last Death said quietly, “Lady Neville.”
“I am here,” Lady Neville answered.
“I think you are the only one,” said Death. “I choose you, Lady Neville.”
Again Lady Neville heard every guest sigh softly, and although her back was to them all she knew that they were sighing in relief that neither themselves nor anyone dear to themselves had been chose. Lady Torrance gave a little cry of protest, but Lady Neville knew that she would have cried out at whatever choice Death made. She heard herself say calmly, “I am honored. But was there no one more worthy than I?”
“Not one,” said Death. “There is no one quite so weary of being human, no one who knows better how meaningless it is to be alone. And there is no one else here with the power to treat life”—and she smiled sweetly and cruelly—“the life of your hairdresser’s child, for instance, as the meaningless thing it is. Death has a heart, but it is forever an empty heart, and I think, Lady Neville, that your heart is like a dry riverbed, like a seashell. You will be very content as Death, more so than I, for I was very young when I became Death.”
She came toward Lady Neville, light and swaying, her deep eyes wide and full of the light of the red morning sun that was beginning to rise. The guests at the ball moved back from her, although she did not look at them, but Lady Neville clenched her hands tightly and watched Death come toward her with her little dancing steps. “We must kiss each other,” Death said. “That is the way I became death.” She shook her head delightedly, so that her soft hair swirled about her shoulders. “Quickly, quickly,” she said. “Oh, I cannot wait to be human again.”
“You may not like it,” Lady Neville said. She felt very calm, though she could hear her old heart pounding in her chest and feel it in the tips of her fingers. “You may not like it after a while,” she said.
“Perhaps not.” Death’s smile was very close to her now. “I will not be as beautiful as I am, and perhaps people will not love me as much as they do now. But I will be human for a while, and at last I will die. I have done my penance.”
“What penance?” the old woman asked the beautiful girl. “What was it you did? Why did you become Death?”
“I don’t remember,” said the Lady Death. “And you too will forget in time.” She was smaller than Lady Neville, and so much younger. In her white dress she might have been the daughter that Lady Neville had never had, who would have been with her always and held her mother’s head lightly in the crook of her arm when she felt old and sad. Now she lifted her head to kiss Lady Neville’s cheek, and as she did so she whispered in her ear, “You will still be beautiful when I am ugly. Be kind to me then.”
Behind Lady Neville the handsome gentlemen and ladies murmured and sighed, fluttering like moths in their evening dress, in their elegant gowns. “I promise,” she said, and then she pursed her dry lips to kiss the soft, sweet-smelling cheek of the young Lady Death.
CREATURE CONTRIBUTORS
BEAGLE, Peter S. (1939– ) is the author of The Last Unicorn, and more than twenty-five other books, both fiction and nonfiction. He’s also a poet, screenwriter, and songwriter, and the winner of a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2011.
“Come Lady Death” was first published in 1963.
BOUCHER, Anthony, aka William Anthony Parker White, aka H. H. Holmes, (1911–1968) was a science-fiction author, respected literary critic, and writer of mysteries and short stories. He was also the first English translator of Jorge Luis Borges, the author of numerous radio plays, and a founder of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
“The Compleat Werewolf” was first published in 1942.
DAVIDSON, Avram (1923–1993) was the author of dozens of short stories and novels. He wrote everything from space opera to science fiction to detective novels, along with a series of alternate history novels about the medieval magician Vergil Magus (derived from Virgil).