| The quest |
| He looks up to see death standing by the bed. As though he might protect her, he crushed her limp, feverish hands even tighter to his own scant frame. �Please,� the man begs. �Take me instead.� It shrouds itself in silence. �She deserves to live. The span of her life is just beginning. Mine should have been over long ago by rights; we both know that.� Unmoved, the shadow waits. At last the man breaks. �So many times you have refused me. Why in God�s name won�t you accept?� �Not in God�s name. You will not deceive me again by your cunning.� Hollow. Empty. Her hand suddenly clutches at his. Though she cannot know the words, she knows the speaker. The dying always do. A note of desperation: � I have told you before I no longer have the bag. Why won�t you believe me? What will it take to convince you?� �The truth, perhaps.� The smile on the man�s face is weary, and just a little sad. �Don�t you think I would have trapped the riders long since in it as I did you � if I still had it?� The shadows turn slightly away from her. He can feel the freezing cold of that gaze in his bones; yet it will not touch him this time either. �You have seen the riders?� �In the ruins of Berlin and the teaming millions of Ellis, even if the black one�s cry has changed to �Ride the bear, then buy at 26!� � �And the face in the cloud?� The man sighs. �That, I had seen long before man brought it mushrooming to earth again, when I pounded my knuckles raw against the gates of hell, and none dared admit me.� It seems to him that the apparition might have laughed, if ever light had betrayed a single feature in those enigmatic hollows. �Perhaps it was because of the way you treated the demon.� �He demanded my soul in exchange, so I forced him into his own bag and taught him a lesson he would not soon forget.� �All things have a price,� murmurs the shadow, almost gently. �I am paying a high enough price,� retorts the man. After a long quiet, broken only by the harsh rattle of the woman�s breathing, it speaks again: �So you tried to get into heaven.� �I gave the bag to a soul in the line, asked him to call me into it once he was inside.� �But once inside, all souls lose their memory. So you have neither heaven nor bag.� It might have grinned then, a small, sad, weary grin. And its attention returned to the woman on the bed. As she shudders in his arms, the man falls to his knees. �Please, I beg of you �� �No.� And then unexpectedly softens it: �Not this time.� �Ever?� There is a note of yearning in his voice. Beside him his wife sits up. She regards him silently, pityingly; the spectre whose hand she holds turns away. A moment longer she looks at him. Then, quietly, she fades. By now he knows better than to reach for her; his hands flail at the emptiness anyway. No answer. There was never any answer. And yet, this time, he takes a curious comfort from its refusal. |
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