She guided her horse through the ashen field. The fire was consuming the forest, charring ancient oaks and fresh saplings alike. The sounds of the waking world were muted to her with the sound of the fire, the falling giants, all like distant thunder. Only the soft clomps of the horse’s obsidian shoes on the dirt, the sound of her leather armor, and the dull whispers of the skulls at her side reached her ears. The skulls were fresh, three woodsman caught in the blaze. The flowers wrapped around them were from Arbre De Grand-pere, the five century old oak that once dominated the heart of the woods. The horse was beginning to be covered in other similar flowers, the tiny spirits of the plants. The human skulls were beginning to find company from the bones of rodents, rabbits, a deer, a trio of doves. The skulls and flowers of the young tried to shout in their quiet voices, begging, pleading for this to be a nightmare. Arbre De Grand-pere was quiet.
“You do not beg,” she said. The horse was in the heart of the forest now, and she felt her reaping extend further east. The fire had jumped the river. Perhaps she would make two trips this day.
“What is there to say?” His voice, despite the youthful body he had been reduced to, sounded ancient and old. She recalled her mentor and nodded to herself at the similarity.
“All beg, even those resolved in life. Some of these flowers belong to many near your age. Even this man,” she said, pointing to one skull, “was calm and resolved in his dying. He begs now, if only in whisper.”
There was that silence of movement as she guided the horse to the river.
“Do you not hear them?” Arbre said. “What they beg for? What he asks of you?”
“Salvation, peace, to be brought to their comfortable resting place.” She said it with absolution, so jaded to the words of the dead in these long millennia.
“No, not this man,” The spirit of the old tree said. “Listen. Listen as only one such as you can.”
She halted the horse and listened. The sound of the fire grew quieter, and the many voices of the dead now filling her saddle rose to her ears.
“What is this?” she started when a single voice spoke out above the rest.
“Please accept my sacrifice. Please death. Accept it so this may stop. Please, oh why don’t you stop?”
“Your sacrifice?” She said. Her hands wrapped around the skull and brought it before her. Around the bone she could make out the shadow that once was the man. His eyes beckoned towards her. “What sacrifice do you perform?”
“These woods, this blaze. We set it so that Marilina may live. A great sacrifice.”
“Plant and animals so a human may live,” Arbre said. He sounded disgusted.
She found herself chuckling. It was a hollow empty thing, dry and crumbling in her long dead lungs.
“Oh, mortal. You think death will restore life? Sacrifice to restore the lost? No, no we reap all death, and we are greedy. But as you have been so giving to us today, we will reward you. We will grant you something greater. A memento to your gift.”
The old man’s skull screamed but she smiled at him. She would finish her reaping here, and return to the underworld. There, all would be deposited, ignorant of what they have become after the ride.
“What holds for him?” Arbre asked.
“He will retain his knowledge of death, and in doing so will experience it again and again until the last sun sets.”
She could feel Arbre De Grand-Pere shudder, then try to whisper something that did not meet her ears.
“Speak, ancient oak. Speak. I would hear your consol.”
“I would, I would like to bear witness to this. For the sake of my forest.”
She frowned. This was not what she expected.
“You would suffer too. You would experience your death endlessly. It would not bring you joy.”
“It would bring me closure.”
“These are not the concepts of your kind. Only animals that think know of the true passing of time. I would not see a soul like yours corrupted by beasts.”
Arbre bristled.
“Then maybe we can come to a bargain,” he said. “Allow me to witness it but once, then I can travel with you. A sprig of once living nature in your helm until the last sunset.”
She nodded.
“Very well, ancient oak. A glimpse of righteous, then an eternity of reaping.”
She didn’t like this agreement, but it was what she had made millennia ago when she too was an ancient wooden giant. He sounded like her mentor, but she would take that role for him. In time, the ancient oak would be a reaper too. In time, he would forget the man who burned the woods. A nameless soul in a sea of the entropy of the world.
The figure of death as a lone dark skeletal form riding on a pale horse, the reaper with their scythe, or a punky dressed teen hanging out before a mob scene. Death has appeared in many forms in media over the years, and it’s always a stirring squirming thought in our heads.
I also find fascination with stories that talk about deals with the devil. When they involve death, don’t those deals require a certain bit of a more direct supernatural advocate? Today’s story was a combination of those two concepts, and with the additional notion that even the spirits plants need to be reaped you end up with a very busy reaper during a tragedy.
