On
a chill autumn night a beggar woman brought a boy kicking and
screaming into the world.
The beggar knew from bitter experience that a winter spent in
icy gutters and crowded almshouses meant death for an infant.
She remembered all too well the blue lips and frozen digits
of her firstborn, whom she had lowered into the earth.
Here
the leaves looked greener and firmer.
Blossoms still lit up the branches and made the air
sweet-scented. In this
one circle of trees, at least, autumn clung tenaciously to the
summer.
In
the centre of the glade stood a solemn young man with a face
world-weary beyond his years.
His clothes shimmered like sunlight off of rippling water and
he was surrounded by all manner of fabulous creatures, the species
of which the beggar could not name.
The man looked up at the beggar and the baby in her arms and
asked in tones of faint sadness, ‘What are you doing here, lost in
the woods?’
‘I’m looking for a godfather to take and raise my son.’
This seemed to bring the first turnings of a smile to his lips.
‘I will do it.’
‘Then tell me your name.’
‘Do
you not know me? I am
the Lord of Heaven.’
Alarmed, the beggar backed away. She
gripped her baby tight.
‘Oh no, then you’ll never do for a godfather.
For you are not just.
You let the weak and needy suffer while the strong and rich
feast and dance.’ And
with that she fled from the blossoming glade, and all at once the
chill evening caught her breath and the woods seemed dark and full
of the eerie hoots and gruff calls of hidden beasts.
After wandering lost for a while more, the beggar stumbled upon a
second glade. Here the
boughs of an ancient briar parted and rose like the arms and base of
a throne, and on this arboreal seat perched the most peculiar of
monsters, licking rank meat from the tips of its talons.
From the twisted branches around it misshapen creatures
leaned, whispering sibilant advice to the monster. It fixed the beggar with its beady eyes. ‘What are you doing here, lost in the woods?’
‘I’m looking for a godfather to take and raise my son.’
The
monster clapped its hands in a clatter of talons.
‘Ooh,’ it trilled, ‘I will do it.’
‘Then first tell me your name.’
‘Do
you not know me? I am
the Prince of Hell.’
The
beggar covered her newborn’s eyes.
‘Oh, I know you, Mister!
And you shan’t have him, for you are not just.
You damn those who serve you just like the damned who don’t.’
And
with that she fled the glade, and the forest seemed now welcoming
and warm and full of gruff sounds and woodsy smells all reassuringly
earthy.
After wandering lost for a while more, the beggar chanced upon a
third glade. Here, in an
old deckchair, a wizened figure reclined, snoring into a book of
limericks he had been reading.
A
twig cracked under the beggar’s tatty boots and the stranger woke
with a start. Then he
composed himself, marked his page with a bookmark fashioned from a
carrion crow’s feather, and smiled.
The beggar stifled a scream, because the skin of the
stranger’s face was stretched as thinly and tightly across his skull
as the skin of a drum, and the fingers that poked from the sleeves
of his black robe were wire thin and ivory-hued.
‘Before you ask what I’m doing,’ said the beggar, ‘lost here in the
woods, I venture to say that I know who you are.’
The
stranger stood up straight and tall.
His robe hung emptily from his shoulders like a curtain from
a rail.
‘You’re Death,’ pronounced the beggar.
‘Correct, my dear woman.
And you are?’
‘I’m nobody. But I hope
that this boy will grow up to be somebody.
So I’m looking for a godfather to take and raise him.’
‘Then I will do it.’
And
Godfather Death did just that, carrying the infant home to his
halls. There he raised
him and taught him the secret signs that warned of his own impending
visits, and among them was this one: that the boy could always tell
whether or not a sick patient was doomed to die by watching for
Death’s shadow at the deathbed.
If his shadow loomed at the foot of the bed, death was
inescapable. If the
shadow darkened the head, death was for another day.
Armed with this and other insider knowledge, the boy grew up to be
an exemplary physician.
Such was his skill that he spent his days travelling the continent,
called from home to home to cure the sick or else ease the passing
of the suffering.
Then one day a great emperor fell ill and summoned the physician.
He rode hell for leather to the emperor’s court, where he
found him shrivelled and needy in the royal bed.
The physician turned grave-faced, for as he examined the
emperor he became gradually aware of a column of shadow at the foot
of the bed. This
apparition was the sign his godfather had warned him of, and it
meant the emperor’s demise was imminent.
Then an idea struck him.
He called for the butler, the cook and the doorman, and together
they turned the bed around one hundred and eighty degrees.
The physician took a seat and waited for his godfather to
arrive.
He
was not long in coming.
He materialised in a cloud of smoke, smelling of cloves and
pipeweed. The physician
stood up and greeted him heartily.
‘But, my dear godfather, there must be some mistake.
Look where you’re standing, at the foot of the bed.
By your own law this means the emperor will survive.
Why don’t you go back to your halls and enjoy a fine glass of
chilled wine?’
Godfather Death stood as silent as a stone, which lies at the bottom
of a well in a forgotten town.
Then, in the blink of an eye, he vanished.
The
emperor spluttered and a healthy pink blushed through his cheeks.
In a week he was walking, and in a week and a half he was
throwing a feast in
honour of the physician, who became the toast of the entire empire.
At the feast the physician talked and danced the night away
with the emperor’s only daughter, and at the end of the night he and
the princess slipped away to a quiet room at the end of a quiet
corridor, and there they were very happy.
But... Godfather Death had seen through his adopted son’s deception.
And he was seething, for he would not be cheated.
The
next morning before the cock crowed the physician woke to a bony
grip around his wrist.
It was his godfather, whispering, ‘Because you are like a son to me
I will forgive you this one insult, but if you ever try to dupe me
again your life will be forfeit.’
Days passed. Weeks,
months. The physician
and the princess became engaged, and at the wedding party the
physician’s godfather drank too much wine and hitched his robes up
and jigged merrily with the bride. It
seemed as if all was forgiven.
A
year later the princess was pregnant.
Nine months after that a baby girl squealed into the world,
plump and a picture of health.
Yet after the birth the princess fell ill.
Her labour had not been straightforward.
The physician tended to his bride day and night, forgetting
to eat or drink as he administered her medicines and mopped her
feverish brow. Then one
night, rising from her bedside and rubbing his tired eyes, he beheld
a column of shadow stretching from the foot of her bed to the
ceiling. He vomited.
His heartbeat went crazy.
He called out to the shadow.
He tried to reason with it.
But it faded and the warning had gone.
He
sat with his head in his hands.
He chewed his fingernails until he drew blood.
Then abruptly he rose and called to the butler, the cook and
the doorman. Together
they turned the bed one hundred and eighty degrees, and by the time
the morning came the princess’s sleep was less fitful and her colour
had returned. Then
Godfather Death appeared.
The
physician declared, with a sweet-as-you-please performance, that
this was an unexpected pleasure.
‘How good of you, Godfather, to pay us a visit at this
troubling time. But as
you can see by the evidence of your own law, my wife is destined to
make the fullest of recoveries.’
Death looked down at the foot of the bed and at the bulge of the
princess’s feet beneath the quilts.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘I see that now. She is
going to live. But
please... spare your old godfather a quiet word outside.’
Death wrapped a bony arm around his godson’s shoulders and together
they ambled out of the door.
But to the physician’s shock it did not lead, as it had on
every previous exit, to the palace corridor.
Instead he and his godfather
stepped through it into a vast and freezing cavern.
Behind them the door vanished and there was only the cavern
stretching as far as the eye could see.
The air was silent and still, and that suited this underworld
well, for here in their billions candles burned.
Some were elegant and tall,
rising from the stone floor like flaming stalagmites, others were
burnt down to sputtering stumps.
‘Where are we, Godfather?’
‘We
are in the Cave of Candles, where wick and tallow flicker for every
human life on Earth.’
‘Some of these candles are taller than others.’
‘Some lives have shorter time to burn.’
‘And what happens when a candle, such as this one–’ here he pointed
to the nearest, which had melted almost as flat as a coin, and where
the flame trembled its last in a circle of shiny wax ‘–has burned so
low that any second now it will snuff out.’
‘It
snuffs out,’ said Godfather Death, and at that precise moment the
candle’s light winked out and the physician fell down dead on the
stone.
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