The Uncertainty of Death

by Y. K. Greene

  Surely Aedan will return there and then…

  And then she would be gone as far and as fast as her feet could take her. Each step she managed to take giving her greater odds of the Path opening up under her feet and shunting her to safety.

  Despite the danger there was an exhilaration in this headlong flight through the starlit woods. Mitei leaped a small stream, the movement graceful and seemingly easy thought the distance was greater than she was tall and the drop nearly as deep. Feet sinking into the bank on the other side she turned, avoiding the trunk of a large oak suddenly in her path, so sharply that she felt her long hair slap against the rough bark, catching a moment before she was past it and running full out again.

  Her feet found purchase where none should be found, her body gained speed that no one could mistake for a human and a grace that resembled nothing more than Death’s Dance was lent to each step as she fled. Mitei had managed quite a bit of distance but it was taking an odd toll on her, somehow she was losing the urgency of the moment. The need to flee and the reason seemed to become hazy in her mind and were nearly forgotten – all that was left was the urge to run, to dance, to run dancing in the starlit woods.

  Faster, I have to go faster.

  ***

  When Aedan returned to the clearing with his arms full of wood and found her missing, he dropped the bundle and gave chase. The hunt was still upon him, nothing but bringing his prey down before him or his goddess’ calming touch could bring him out of it.

  It was child’s play to pick up her scent again and find her trail where it entered the woods, Mitei wasn’t terribly careful and the signs of her passage were everywhere. In a moment he was on her trail, moving faster than a nightmare and nearly as bleak. She was in his world now; there was no way that the prey could escape him.

  Something is off, he thought as he cleared a small river, slamming into the trunk of an oak where a few silken strands of white hair clung. There was something off about her scent; there was something more there than he’d originally picked up in the clearing. It was still her scent, no doubt in his hunt addled mind about that, but there was something new, something more added to it. Sweat? Perhaps, he had caught a whiff of this on her before, something familiar teased at his senses and quickened his step. Now he was barreling through the woods like a thing possessed, tree trunks cracked at his passing and saplings were snapped neatly in two.

  It was maddening this scent, he couldn’t resist it. Something about it clouded his memory, urging him to greater speed while forcing him to take greater care with his approach. Aedan stopped barreling through everything in his path, dancing around the trunks, attempting avoid snapping even old twigs beneath his boot. He was close now and for some reason he wanted a glimpse…

  There, a flash of flowing white hair disappearing around a maple, and there a glimpse of graceful ivory limbs as she cleared a defile. It was hard, her dark robe cloaking most of her form in the colors of night made it hard to spot her through the trees but still he followed, feeling suddenly clumsy as he leapt, skidded and barreled into another tree. The poor thing groaned under his weight and he found himself wincing in sympathy. There again, she seemed to have slowed down, glancing over her shoulder a vague look of concern on her face. Not for me, no, for the damned tree!

  And they were off again.

  Aedan gaining and losing distance, growing close enough to see her faint smile, hear her laughter ringing in the trees and once, feeling the faint and fleeting lash of her hair across his cheek. She danced onward, so tantalizingly out of reach, teasing him forward; before them now another river this one wider and deeper, far too wide for both of them to leap, she skirted the edge of it and he found himself following.

  Suddenly she was leaping, a graceful slip of silvery light arcing over the water, then dropping fast over the edge – of a waterfall. There was no hesitation as Aedan plummeted after her.

  ***

  The water was cold and deep, by the time that Mitei had clawed her way back to the surface, her head was clear again and she became aware of her body. That is pain, and quite a lot of it, she thought right before a particularly debilitating burst slammed into her lower right leg, twisting her up and making it impossible for her to kick towards the shore. She flailed, trying to keep her head above water, when she felt a strong arm about her waist, tugging her backwards toward the shore.

  The second her feet hit the bottom Mitei stood up and flung off the strong arm of her savior, turning to face him. Aedan, of course, “why will you not leave me alone?”

  Instead of replying, the god of the hunt dropped to his knees in the water, head bowed before her, “you smelled like her. Forgive me but, for a moment you were, my goddess.”

  More weirdness, great, just – great, Mitei ignored the kneeling god before her and strode around him, fighting water to get to the shore. Her dress, a wispy thing of white chiffon that was, of course, more complicated than it seemed, streamed cold water as she went and was probably ruined. Her hooded robe was even soaked, though she knew from past experience that not even the Pacific could keep her robe wet for long. Once on the bank she noted that at some point she had lost another pair of lovely, expensive and altogether impractical shoes; sighing, she rung out her sopping hem and hair, a wary eye on Aedan all the while.

  He was standing now at least, regarding her from what she felt was a safe distance. The look on his face was, heartbreaking, Mitei might not have been able to place the exact emotion that he bore but somehow looking at him now made her feel like she was looking at something intensely, intimate and raw. Something in her chest ached in sympathy with that look on his face.

  “I am truly sorry Aedan,” she said at last, “but I cannot grant you the death that you seek.”

  “I know, somehow even though you remind me more of my goddess than ever before, I know.”

  “I am not your goddess. Not your mate. Not your death.”

  “I caught you,” he said, stepping forward out of the water and coming to stand beside her. He touched her arm, so lightly and then withdrew as he hesitated, “We can be at ease now, this hunt is over. Come to the clearing, I’ll light a fire and we can warm ourselves by it.”

  Mitei hesitated but followed where he led as they left the river and its roaring waterfall behind them.

  ***

  It is going to be a good fucking day.

  That's what popped into Leslie's head when she woke up that morning. The tracking system she'd installed on Death's phone was working perfectly as far as she could tell and for the first time ever, someone was literally able to keep tabs on Death's whereabouts at all times. Not that she had any intentions of letting others know that she knew where Death was at the moment, partly because even the GPS on her phone didn't know right now, and partly because the corporation was in a complete panic.

  Someone had tried to blow up the new secretary last night. The fireball had been all over the news and it hadn't taken long for the vehicle to be identified as belonging to Jules, the company hadn't been fast enough to keep that information from leaking out and by now her father was probably in a hell of panic, fear and anger - none of that was Leslie's problem at least. She'd managed to keep the company's name and location out of the media, though the news had mentioned that Jules had come to the city from her nearby college campus in order to apply for a position at a Philadelphia business, that was all the information they'd been given.

  With the handy little tracker in Death's phone, it was easy for Leslie to tell that Death had been called to the scene of the accident as usual, what wasn't usual was the fact that there had actually been no body in the burnt out wreckage of the car. Leslie had no idea what Death had done with Jules’ body and she didn't really care, after she'd checked the GPS and confirmed that Death had been on the scene she'd checked to see where Death had gone next, there'd been a brief stop off in California and then - nothing. At the moment Death was so far off the map the GPS couldn't track her.

&n
bsp; It was entirely possible that Death was currently slogging through the bowels of one of the few under developed stretches of wilderness left on the planet, that her cell phone had lost the last of its power in the night, any number of reasons why Leslie couldn't currently track her. But right now, Leslie highly doubted that Death was anywhere that mortal means could reach her.

  In this company death was literally a way of life, but all accounts she'd been able to dig up in the libraries indicated that whenever Death lost one of her over paid secretaries she took it hard. Or as hard as a being who wasn't human could take a death anyway. On the even more rare occasions when that secretary’s death had been unpleasant in any way shape or form, it wasn't unheard of that Death would be morose as well hard to impossible to reach - and that meant nothing but opportunity to Leslie.

  Of course there was the rather obvious possibility that someone else had been privy to this information and acted on the newest, most vulnerable and gullible member of the company deliberately hoping to make Death vulnerable in some way. So she'd have to act fast, very fast indeed. She'd already moved to quiet the media and the government agencies that would investigate the accident and look for Jules’ body or captors. They would continue the investigations but any information would be passing directly into her hands before anyone else and she could use that information to help her gain leverage with the board.

  Right now was a dangerous time to be the head of any corporation, everyone the world over was looking for a way to topple the top earners out of their pay brackets and disseminate the 'absurd' profits among the starving masses. Now wasn't the time for Death to be acting erratically and drawing attention. Not that Death had ever seemed properly cautious or cutthroat enough to be heading the biggest corporation in the world, no, Death had always seemed particularly naive to Leslie and now might be the perfect time to have her removed from total control of the international organization once and for all.

  There was a meeting scheduled for ten in the morning and Roth was up at six, slowly sipping a cup of coffee and contemplating the day's plans. If all went well, within a few short hours she'd be well on her way to finally grasping this company in both of her meticulously manicured hands.

  Now, if only she could figure out a way to capture Death's power for her own. Not a single one of the books on sorcery she'd been able to find, buy or steal had contained a single spell that would help her capture such a power from someone else. Oh there had been spells a plenty, some even swore to be able to bind the abilities of another to oneself but her constant experiments had proven them all to be false, Leslie hadn't even managed to steal the singing voice of one particularly hungry little street performer she'd briefly associated with.

  She set her mug down with a rattle and stood up to pace. Well if I can't have her powers over death for my own, yet, I'll just have to settle for having her corporate power. With the meeting just a few scant hours away, Leslie retired to her bathroom and a long, luxuriant bubble bath.

  ***

  Feeling a bit calmer once she’d managed to get all the buttons on Leo’s shirt closed and now that her skin had stopped smoking, Jules tried looking around. It was unexpectedly difficult. Whenever she turned her face away from where Leo was currently standing in front of her, her eyes seemed to lose focus. Nothing she saw behind her seemed to be something that either her eyes or brain could process.

  So she looked back at Leo and used him as a control. The area around him was still very hard to focus on but keeping him in view seemed to help her at least gain a sense of up and down. Of course, the fact that he seemed to be standing at a slight, but still impossible, angle to where she was sitting almost threw her off again.

  Enough, she thought, this place obviously isn’t Kansas and nothing will be gained by sitting on my ass, hoping to figure out up and down by staring at this useless hunk of man meat. She levered herself to her feet, careful not to think about the mechanics of the motion and wasn’t at all surprised to find that she and Leo had a more direct orientation when she was done. “So, now what?”

  “No idea,” Leo said and slowly glanced around the area directly behind her. “It’s really hard to get any kind of bearing in this place.”

  Mr. Obvious I presume, “it’s probably not a place at all. Leo, do you remember what happened?”

  He shook his head, “I was at work when you and Mitei appeared in the middle of my classroom… Oh shit! The kids!”

  Leo turned abruptly and took several passionate but futile steps, only managing to get maybe a foot away from Jules before he stopped progressing in the formless distance. He kept trying though, before it finally dawned on him that he wasn’t making any apparent progress.

  “Calm down,” Jules said when he’d finally stopped. “We’re not going to get anywhere trying to storm off into the murk like that. Tell me the rest.”

  He turned around and explained as best as he could, how Mitei had appeared and tossed Jules at him then changed and gone to meet Aedan who’d found her again at last. When he got to the curious sensation of a space opening up beside him and somehow falling up, Jules stopped him. “We fell up? Are you sure?”

  “That’s what it felt like at the time but to be honest, however we fell it was bad enough to black me out for a bit, so I can’t be sure of that at all.”

  Except it was pretty obvious when you thought about it, where ever they had ended up it hadn’t been Aedan’s doing that had sent them there. If it was Mitei who’d done the sending, well Death only had a handful of options, carrying them out bodily, getting some of her Los Angeles employees to take them away or somehow using her personal Path. With a mad god in front of her, the first two options seemed extremely unlikely and that meant, “Mitei flung us onto her Path to get us away from Aedan.”

  “I thought she didn’t know if she could take people on her Path.”

  “She didn’t, but last I knew I was in Philadelphia, not L.A. which means she took me with her when she went to go save you so it must be possible.”

  “Ok, if it’s possible – then where the fuck are we?”

  “We, are probably still on the Path – without Mitei.”

  Jules let her words sink in. If Mitei could indeed take people with her on her path but those people couldn’t move forward in this formless haze on their own, then they might well be trapped here without her.

  ***

  Soaked through, without a sun overhead and with the chill of a winter night upon them, Mitei was shivering rather violently by the time they made it back to the camp. Aedan immediately fell to with the impressive pile of wood he had brought there, an area was cleared for a fire and he had the logs blazing in no time. Still, with the damp cloth of her ruined gown clinging to her skin Mitei could hardly feel the warmth of the fire and found herself shivering all the harder.

  Seeing her Aedan reached into his pack and pulled what looked remarkably like a large fleece blanket, holding it out to her, “you’ll get warmer faster if you strip out of that and put this on while you sit by the fire. I’ll go cut some branches to make a lean-to for the clothes to dry on.”

  Mitei watched him go warily before stripping out of her still dripping garments and throwing the blanket over her shoulders. It only took her a moment to realize she got warmer if she used the blanket as a shield from the cold air at her back and opened the front to funnel hot air directly at her body. She was still standing this way, relatively naked by the fire, when Aedan came back and cleared his throat to alert her to his presence.

  Mitei peered at him curiously over the edge of her blanket a moment before sighing and dropping it; she ignored Aedan’s sputtering gasps and picked up her robes from the pile at her feet where she had tossed them. Warmed by the fire, drier than even she would have expected, Mitei pulled the comforting fabric around herself, finally bundling her chilly feet and ankles in the blanket and sinking down beside the fire.

  Aedan stood a moment longer gapping at her, before coming closer. He wa
s wearing another blanket, knotted around his neck and again at his hip, it kept the blanket from falling off while he worked, getting a rough wall together for them to dry their clothing on. His hands were deliberate and deft, Mitei could not help but watch him latch twigs together and cover them with different twigs, then spread their dripping garments evenly over the whole and pushing it nearly in the fire.

  “Will they not burn? So close to the fire?”

  “Green wood doesn’t catch fire easily and with these clothes being so wet to begin with we have to put them practically in the fire if we want them to dry quickly. Or where you planning on staying the night with me in my woods?”

  She shrugged, “I do not think I have a choice. I think my Path is broken now.”

  “Your path?”

  “My Path,” she repeated the explanation she had so recently given Leo. Something deep in her chest clenched unpleasantly remembering him. “What happened to my friend?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” Aedan said but lifted his hands when she shot him a belligerent look, “hey I’m just a god, I don’t know absolutely everything alright.”

  Mitei thought about it for a moment, “you know far more than I do. Or at least it would seem you do.”

  Aedan sighed and hunkered down by the fire, still being careful to keep a bit of distance between the two of them, “my guess would be that you flung them onto this Path of yours.”

  “Them?”

  “You appeared in that room dragging a woman in one hand, you flung her at Leo before you sent them both away.”

  “Shit!” For once, Mitei’s hard won knowledge of languages escaped her. There is only one person that could be, the one in the car… wait, “how could you tell she was female?”

  “I’m pretty sure I and most of the males ever born can identify a naked woman at a hundred yards, even in the midst of a frenzied battle and even if the woman in question was somehow putting off enough heat to have made a fire sprite jealous.”