The Death Seer (Skeleton Key) (12 page)

The man is climbing the vast, red tree with the woman over his shoulder. He climbs and climbs. He shouts, “Bring her back! Please! Bring her back!” But he never reaches the branches or the white light above.

The man is standing triumphantly in a field in front of a wooden door. He has trapped the door using spells and charms, it won’t escape him again. The woman lays twitching and unconscious off to the side. He reaches for the handle and turns it, but it doesn’t open. He tries again. Still it doesn’t open. He shakes the handle, slams his shoulder against the door, and pounds on it in rage with his fists. At last he drops his head back and lets out a bellow of rage and anguish.

The story ended in screams, all the banshees joining in their keening wail. I covered my ears, but Kord stood stock still, arms at his sides, breathing quickly.
 

When the screams died down, Kord said, “Why are you here, then?”

The banshee pointed her bony hand up towards the top of the mountain. Day was arriving and I saw that the mountain rose straight up into the sky and out of sight.
 

“It goes around the tree,” Kord said to me without looking at me. “If we keep the rock face on our left we’ll walk in circles. They’re looking for a way in. They want to throw themselves to the serpent. They’ve lost faith in Father Death.”

“Kord, where’s that field? He’s at my door, he’s got it trapped. We have to get there.” I pulled on his arm.

The banshee backed away and began her slow crawl back up the mountain. Kord just stood there watching it.

“Come on! Let’s go to that field!”

“I don’t know where it is,” he said, a deadness to his voice. He only swayed a little when I pulled on his arm.
 

“We have to look for it. Look, it’s daylight. We can travel without fear. Maybe we can go back to the Sisters and ask about the field.”

Kord laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I don’t know how to get back to the sisters, remember? I don’t know where we are. I don’t know how to get you home. The only place I could take you to right now is the edge of that cavern and throw you to the serpent, which at this point might be a merciful act.”

I dropped his arm and backed up a step. “Don’t say things like that.”

He stared at the place where the banshee had been and shook his head. “He had no business going out into the world like that. No business seducing her. No business siring me.” Kord turned to me, his eyes burning blue. “I can’t get you home, Brenna, but even if I could, where’s my home? Is this it? This place with its relentless red sky and mindless shells of living people. It’s all a damn pretend game, here. Nothing’s real! Even you…are you real, Brenna? Maybe I conjured you out of my imagination to give me some hope, some sense of purpose. And—” He stopped to laugh rather hysterically. “And even in my own imagination I can’t find any hope or purpose. You know why I can find my mother in that swamp so easily?”

I swallowed. I had one foot in front of me, one behind me, torn between fear and a desire to take him into my arms.
 

“I can find her because despair is never far for me. It’s always right there. I’m at that swamp more often than not. I kneel and look into it and wonder if maybe that’s where I belong. But then I remember you and our adventures and it’s just at the edge of my vision, this sense of hope. Like, I can almost see clearly the way everything is supposed to be, but never completely. Now…” He threw his hands up and looked up at the mountain.

“Now, what?” I asked. “We start walking. We find someone who can get us back on track. We find the door, and we go home together. Nothing’s changed.”

“I appreciate the invitation, my love, but I just found out I’m not fully…human.”

“You’re human enough. Please, Kord, don’t give up on me.”

He shook his head, still staring at nothing.
 

I took a breath and moved to his side. My heart was pounding as I put my hand on his shoulder. He didn’t flinch or move. “When I was in there, when I thought I was going to die, I realized something. We played toy soldiers in your window sill. We played with action figures. We did not pretend to be Hindu monks in forbidden love. That wasn’t a pretend game. You remember things from other lives.
Our
other lives.”

I moved a little closer and laced my fingers with his. “There’s a cycle to this. We get to go around again. And you and I are destined for each other.”

He let out another bitter laugh. “I was not always Death’s son. He took me out of that cycle. He changed everything. I don’t get to find you and fall in love with you again and again.” He turned to me and cupped my jaw. “You’ll die alone. Or you’ll marry someone you don’t really love. You’ll die and live again and again and never find the one you’re meant to be with.”

I hugged him and rested my cheek on his shoulder looking out into the barren landscape beside us. “We’re together now. Nothing stopped us being together now, did it?”

“Did you see what he did to her? Did you see what loving him did to her?”

“Kord—”

“Do you know why you can’t save people from the swamp? It’s because they want to be there. She wants to be there. She chose that. She knew nothing but misery in life and so she chose it in death. That’s what loving him did to her.”

I couldn’t answer him. I didn’t have any answers. I just knew we couldn’t give up hope. “Don’t I owe you a kiss?” I whispered.

He was quiet for a moment. His arms tightened around my waist. He let out a laugh. “Believe it or not, I have not forgotten about that.”

I smiled, still not looking at him.

“Can I have it now?” he asked.

“Sure.” I leaned back and smiled up at him.

He stroked my cheek with his thumb. “Any kind of kiss I want?”

I nodded.

“Maybe I should save it for after we get somewhere safe.”

I grabbed him by the hair and pulled him down for a kiss. He laughed against my lips for a moment and then took control. Up until that moment, I don’t know what I’d been feeling for him. Definitely attraction. Definitely kinship. But not this ancient, primal connection. His kiss was magic and it cast a spell I doubted I’d ever recover from.
 

He pulled back and smiled down at me. “We should do that some more.”

I nodded, speechless.

He kissed me again, this time lightly, more playfully. Then he took me by the hand, turned us so that our backs were to the mountain, and started walking.
 

“There are always gates and doors, you just have to know where to look,” he said after the mountain was small behind us. Seeing it from afar, it became clear that it wasn’t a mountain range, but one single mountain jutting up out of sight into the sky. The rocky path we’d chosen was beginning to smooth out, and there were even trees here and there.
 

“The trouble is,” he said, “if we do find a door or a shortcut, it’ll be risky taking it. We won’t know where it leads.”

“Maybe we should update your map as we go.”

He gave my hand a squeeze. “Definitely. Let’s survive first, though.”

The trees became more dense. They were different from the ones in the forest where the Weird Sisters lived. These trees were black, twisted, spindly things reaching in vain for the sky. They barely had any leaves, but they were so closely packed together that they blocked out a lot of the light.

Kord tensed a little at my side. He pushed his sunglasses atop his head and scanned all around us. “There’s death everywhere here,” he said.

“What’s that mean?” I answered in a whisper.
 

He shook his head, but didn’t answer. We walked more slowly for a few steps, and then he stopped. “Do you hear that?”

I strained, but didn’t hear anything.

“Come on. This way.”

We followed our path until it branched off to the right. We followed the right path. I could hear it now. Music…a fiddle or something. Laughter…masculine, boisterous laughter. A thatch-roofed building appeared ahead with yellow light spilling out of the windows.
 

We crept up to one of the open windows and peered in. There were men and women, and having seen one, I knew what these were. Ageless, timeless beings. One had platinum hair, wild like a lion’s main, and at least a six-and-a-half-foot frame. He stood in the center of the crowd. The fiddle player stopped. The man lifted a tankard of something frothy. “To Grim! May he find the peace he’s looking for!”

“To Grim!” the rest of the crowd shouted. They all drank. The fiddle player resumed his music.

“Reapers,” I whispered.
 

Kord turned to me, surprised. “Yes. How do you know that?”

“They look like Grim. Different from regular men, but not in a way I can describe.”

“That’s what immortality looks like. You can see it on reapers and witches and angels. Let’s go knock on the door.”

My stomach clenched. I wasn’t certain whether we should be afraid of these reapers. I was still technically alive, after all. Suppose they decided to make things official and finish me off?

I didn’t have time to object, though, as Kord was pulling me to the door and knocking before I could arrange my thoughts. The music stopped again. Kord didn’t wait. He opened the door and stepped in, pulling me beside him. A roomful of faces turned toward us.
 

“Good evening,” Kord said. “I’m Kord. This is my love, Brenna. We seem to have gotten lost and stumbled upon this place. Could one of you help us find our way back to the forest where the Weird Sisters live?”

I was hung up on how he so casually introduced me as his “love.” No one else seemed to notice, though.
 

“Look at him,” a tall, red-haired woman said. “He’s the spitting image.”

There were murmurs and nods. The white-haired man came forward. “You’re the son of Death, aren’t you?”

Kord’s jaw muscles ticked. “Yes,” he said simply.

The man stared for a moment. Then he laughed. “Well, come in, then. Have some ale. Bring your lady friend right this way.”

After having his hand shook and his back patted by pretty much everyone in the room, Kord and I wound up at a round table in a corner with two full mugs of ale, the white-haired man sitting across from us.

“Name’s Sith. Sort of the unofficial leader of this lot,” he said, jerking his head over his shoulder at the revelers.
 

“What are you celebrating?” Kord asked.

“Hmmm. More like grieving. A brother of ours went in search of the great serpent. He seeks to end his existence. No idea if he’s made it or not.”

“He made it,” I said. “He found me. Saved me from the swamp. Then threw himself to the serpent.”

Sith’s expression sobered. He frowned deeply and nodded his head. “So be it, then. I don’t imagine he’ll be the last. Not much for us here anymore.”

“Because of Father Death?” I asked.

Sith nodded. “He abandoned us. Went looking for his lady, and I can’t really blame him, but he’s let down an entire world. We can’t reap souls without his giving us assignments. So I suppose people are just walking around in the Overworld, living forever. Meanwhile this world’s stagnated. Miserable place, now. Used to be quite lively.” He chuckled, probably at his own word choice.

“We were given a vision,” Kord said. “Father Death was in a field with a door that could get Brenna back to the Overworld. Do you know which field he might be in?”

“Can you describe it?”

“It was just a field. With brown grass.”

“Rye grass,” I said. “About hip-high. The sky was different, too. A little brighter.”

“What’s this door, then?” Sith asked.

“It’s my door,” I said possessively. “I inadvertently came through it a few days ago and I’ve been looking for it ever since. It goes with this key.” I frantically dug in my pack and pulled out the glass key.
 

Sith took it from me before I could object. He turned it round and over and studied it. “You don’t see this every day,” he muttered.

“What?” I asked. “What about it?”

“It’s not from around here. Wonder where it comes from.”

“How do you know it’s not from around here? What’s that even mean?”

“Means it’s from somewhere else, is all.” He tossed the key back to me. I caught it and slipped it back in my bag.

“So the field? Do you recognize it?”

“I think so. Kinda hard to come by, though. It’s easy enough to despair and find yourself in the swamp. It’s a bit harder to have faith and find yourself in the fields.”

“Have faith in what?” I asked.

“Anything,” Kord answered, quicker to understand than me. “Death found it because he believes he can save her.”

“So we just believe that we can get back home and we’ll end up in the field?”

“That’s about the size of it,” Sith said.
 

“Then let’s go, Kord! We could be home by nightfall.” I was already on my feet.
 

Kord gave me a sad smile and rose more slowly. Sith stood and extended a hand to each of us in turn. “Good luck to you,” Sith said. “And if you find Father Death, tell him we mourn for the loss of him. Tell him the worlds need him. That he’s failing everyone just for the sake of this one woman.”