The Game of Love and Death

by Martha Brockenbrough

  This was heat. It was fullness. And once she gave in to it, it was strength.

  Flora, a voice said from somewhere so close it filled her skull.

  The voice she had not yet heard, but knew nonetheless.

  She responded. What now?

  That’s the thing, Love said. I can’t tell you the answer. I can only be here with you when you need me.

  Flora wanted to laugh. Where were you before? Haven’t I always needed you?

  It’s true that I did not choose you as my player. I chose the best heart I could, knowing that Death was choosing the strongest player she could. But you were born of love, Flora. Your grandmother loved you. Your parents. Henry. In that way, I was with you all along.

  The truth of it struck Flora like a blow.

  There’s no time to waste on regrets, Love said. There is only time to live the way you would have, had you known the stakes from the start.

  What difference will that make? The plane’s engine cut out.

  All of the difference. The only difference.

  I don’t believe you! They were falling now, and the view through the windshield had changed. No longer did she see the sky of day, but the one of night. A night without moon or stars, terrifying in its emptiness. Was she dead already?

  I cannot make you believe in anything. The choice is yours. I am here. I am within you. You and I are one. What do you want your last moments to be?

  Flora knew. As she understood what it took to lift a plane off the ground, as she understood how to bend her voice around notes to lift them off of a page of music and into someone’s heart, she knew what Love was asking of her. Not to act only if it would change the inevitable, but to act because it was the most courageous thing she could do.

  The end, for everyone, was the same.

  It was the choices made in the face of that, the ones made with a full heart, that could and did live on.

  Flora opened herself fully to Love’s presence, feeling him turn her into everything she’d feared becoming: someone no longer in control, no longer protected, no longer safe. Light and heat rose from her chest. They filled the cockpit with flame and bathed the windshield with brightness.

  Death turned, a look of astonishment on her face.

  And then it was not the sky around them that had changed but the airplane too. They were no longer in it, bending toward earth.

  The plane, Flora asked. What’s happened to it?

  Death has stopped time. She’s taken us out of it. We’re elsewhere.

  It took Flora a moment to take in what spread before them: a view of the world from a great distance. Galaxies unfurled like living watercolors, sending shades of blue and tan and green into the infinite black. She was unimaginably far from everything she knew.

  Flora turned and saw Death as Love did. She saw the unrelenting loneliness of being the only one of her kind, the one everyone feared. She also saw the one who secretly loved every soul she devoured, keeping each one safe in the endless expanse of her memory. Flora saw her, and she could not hate her.

  “Too late,” Death said. “The Game is over. You lost. She’s mine to take.”

  Love’s thoughts rose through Flora’s mind like air currents.

  May I? He was asking if he might use her body to speak.

  Yes.

  “But she chose him. Moments too late, but she chose him. This victory should not make you feel proud.” Love’s voice felt like music in her mouth, and as strange as it was to have someone speak through her, she also loved the sound and feel of it. With so little time left, it was a final pleasure to cherish.

  “I am entitled.” Death’s face was pale and her hands shook.

  “That may be. But you can’t take her,” Love said. “Not as long as I’m here.”

  “She’s mortal,” Death said. “I can wait.”

  “You’re a terrible liar. Look at your hands.”

  Anger twisted Death’s face, and black tears welled and fell. “What do you know of suffering? I am the most hated figure in existence. I bring nothing to humanity. All I do is take. I’m a curse. Unlike you, the thing I feed on despises me. And so I’ll take my solace. I will!”

  She grabbed Flora by the throat.

  Why aren’t you saving me? Flora pushed the thought at Love urgently.

  I can’t. I’ll only prolong your suffering. We lost. And now, we must let go. Flora felt him depart her body. Her flesh grew cold. She could not see what surrounded her, only faces, the faces of everyone she’d known and loved. She heard music and saw the blue sky. She felt hands on her body. Lips on her lips. Henry. These memories, especially of him, filled her mind, as vividly as photographs but in full color, enriched with the full depth of her senses. The dampness of sweat on his forehead in the heat of a performance. His hand on her back as they danced on a rooftop. The scent and touch and sound of him as she listened to his living, beating heart. Her life, every moment of it, was being pulled away as she watched.

  Seeing it again, she understood what she’d failed to see earlier. Someday. Just as it wasn’t only something to be afraid of, it also was not something that existed only in the future. She and Henry had their someday moments. To see them all again, to hear them, to feel them without the blunting filter of fear: It was like nothing Flora could have imagined.

  To die was not the worst thing that could have happened. The worst thing was that she’d almost missed the wonder of love.

  She could not speak, not with Death’s hands crushing her throat, the source of her song. She sent Death a thought, one she hoped would be her final gift. The Game means something only because we lose. That is your gift to humans. So thank you.

  Death’s hands faltered. Flora took in a deep, painful breath. She swayed, and then Love was standing behind her, holding her up.

  “If life didn’t end,” he said, “there would be no need for me. To choose love in the face of death is the ultimate act of courage. I am the joy, but you are the meaning. Together, we make humanity more than it otherwise might have been.”

  Death stepped away. Her shoulders heaved, and tears striped her face. She removed an envelope from her pocket. She opened it and removed a piece of paper. When she destroyed it, both players would be lost.

  “No,” Love said. “Please. Wait.”

  “It’s not what you think,” Death said. “Trust me. It’s just that I cannot do this without you.” She pressed the paper against her heart. Two names, Flora’s and Henry’s, had been written on it.

  Death handed the paper to Love. “Keep it safe for me. Keep them safe.”

  “For how long?” he said.

  Flora did not hear Death’s answer.

  And then she was gone from that space, and back inside the airplane, and it was burning. The heat and the smoke were more than she could endure. She struggled to free herself. And then she felt two pairs of hands and arms closing around her. She’d given herself to love, and then she’d given herself to death, marveling that both forms of surrender felt like deliverance. These beings who carried her, immortal both, held her to the sky for one last flight, during which her skin was soothed and made whole by a wash of blue air, air as cool as the sea under a full moon.

  She felt herself being laid on the ground.

  She opened her eyes as an explosion filled her ears.

  HENRY reached Flora just as the Staggerwing blew up. He covered her body with his, stunned at what he’d seen: the plane dropping from the sky, slamming into the runway, tearing a smoking black streak into the earth. He’d run to save her, but she’d somehow been thrown free and had materialized on the gravel about twenty yards clear of the burning wreckage. He thought he might be hallucinating, but then she shifted beneath him, and he realized it did not matter what had happened or what he’d seen. All that mattered was she was there with him.

  He looked down at
her, beautiful and uninjured, as though she’d been made of something unbreakable.

  She blinked and focused. “Henry?”

  “Flora.” Her name was fire and music in his mouth. A weight flew from his shoulders, the one he’d felt on them his entire life. “The Game. Is it over?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They sat, and she brushed bits of glass from his shoulders, looking at him as if the world contained nothing else. He stood, and held out a hand. She took it, and they were side by side, watching the plane turn to ash. She shook her head at him and laughed. And then she was kissing him, the sort of kiss that they both might have thought existed only in the lyrics of songs.

  The kiss: It felt like light rising through them. It was a memory and it was a promise, an enigma and a wonder. It was music. A conversation. A flight. A true story. And it was theirs.

  DEATH hadn’t visited the small green house for many years. The world had changed all around it. No longer were the cars graceful things of steel and chrome. Some were small and sleek, tucked against sidewalks. Others were great rusting hulks on blocks in overgrown lots. But the house in Death’s memories remained as it ever was. Neatly painted, pleasingly compact, its windows lit with soft yellow light, filtered by gauzy curtains.

  Wearing an old-fashioned red dress that had somehow managed to come back into style, Death climbed the steps. Shallow crescents had been worn into the treads by time and passing feet, but the stairs felt sturdy, well cared for, ready to help people transition from inside to out and back again.

  The house was quiet but for a vintage jazz album that took Death’s mind back to the days the song had been played live: “Walk Beside Me.”

  Once upon a time I dreamed

  Of how my life would go …

  Death turned to take in the late-afternoon sun. She waited for him to arrive, much as he’d waited for her in Venice that spring day so many years ago. The passing time felt a bit like a dream: so vivid in parts, and yet nothing she could truly hold on to.

  I’d span the globe, a lonely soul

  Beneath the moon’s white glow …

  Love materialized beneath a once-small oak tree that now shaded the street. He’d dressed, as ever, in his fine gray suit. And he greeted her with a wistful smile.

  For years after the Game ended, he’d sat by her side, holding her hand, until the moment came and she knew she could carry on alone. That’s the way of unfed hunger. It dies, even as it feels like healing.

  But there was something more to it. Death couldn’t bear Love’s suffering. He was as hungry as she, although for something else. And so, because she loved him — she knew this feeling now, both its name and its effects — she’d let him go.

  I may have dreamed before you

  Of how my life should be …

  “Did you miss me?” he asked, looking as old as she felt.

  “No,” she said. “Not for a moment.”

  It was a lie and they both knew it. But some small lies are games. Or, closer to the bone, echoes of games that no longer need to be played.

  “Are you ready?” Love asked.

  Death nodded and found her voice, which was rusty from disuse. “Eternally.”

  She despised the sound, and so, although she was weak and unsteady, she transformed herself into the Helen guise one last time. She felt better right away, as though she’d come home to a place she never thought she would miss.

  “That face.” Love’s laugh was surprised. “I’m glad to see it again.”

  He shifted as well, and was once again young and glowing with irresistible light. The opponents faced each other. Death’s hunger unfolded like a map of space itself, infinite. It would not be long now. She readied her hand to knock. Then she hesitated.

  Love read her mind, as he now could. He stood next to her, his arm around her, keeping her steady and warm as the music played on.

  The only thing I want now

  Is for you to walk beside me …

  Death knocked. There was a pause and the sound of slippered feet scuffing a wooden floor. The door opened halfway. Flora, her face shaped by the passage of many years, stood there as if she’d been waiting for them.

  She opened the door all the way. “I thought — I hoped — it would be you. Though I wouldn’t have minded if you’d come as the cat.”

  Death couldn’t speak. As was her lot, she’d consumed lives over the years. But she had long been hungry for this soul above all others, and she hadn’t known what sort of greeting to expect. She would never admit it, but being welcomed by Flora meant more than she could have imagined in all of those years of waiting. To be welcomed was rare; to be welcomed by someone she loved … she did not have the words for how it felt.

  “May we come in?” Love asked.

  Flora stepped away to let them pass as the song neared its end.

  The only thing I’ll ever want …

  “Henry’s in here,” Death’s player said, gesturing toward the bedroom where her parents had once slept.

  Is for you to walk beside me …

  Walk beside me …

  Walk beside me …

  As the instruments played their last notes, Flora shuffled to the record player — a vintage thing, the sort most people had replaced with small digital devices that turned ones and zeroes into sound. It meant the song was the same every time it was played, something that struck Death as being simultaneously magical and dreadful. The old woman lifted the tone arm, careful not to scratch the vinyl. She’d become gentle in her old age, even when she knew it did not matter. It was a form of caring, of connection.

  Love cleared his throat. “Shall I wait out here?”

  He put his hand on the back of the davenport, the one that had been Flora’s grandmother’s. In the decades since, it had been reupholstered many times, now in a soft velvet the color of new fern leaves. But Death would have recognized it even if time had reduced it to a pile of sawdust. The wood of the curving, carved arms still sang of the tree’s soul. Something about it sang of Marion’s, as well.

  Did she want him to see her at her most vulnerable? At her most despised? It would have been easy for her to keep him out of the room, to spare herself the shame. But there was no longer room for that in their relationship. Not when so much had been shared.

  “Come with us,” Death said.

  Love took Flora’s arm. Death followed them into the bedroom.

  The setting sun was visible through the window, a dusky painting in reds and oranges and gold. These were the colors of fall, although it was an early spring evening, and this evoked a sense of a beginning and of an ending, which was as it should be.

  Death didn’t need the light, but she’d always liked it. The fading rays reached Henry where he lay in bed, his eyes closed, his face slack with age and exhaustion. Time had changed him, but she would have known him anywhere. Not as well as her player, perhaps. But well enough to pick his face out of the billions she held in her mind.

  Henry had kept his curls, and they’d kept up their relentless march on his forehead. Flora sat next to him, placing her hand on his brow, as if feeling for fever. She moved his hair back to where she knew he wanted it to be.

  “They’re here,” Flora said, leaning close to his ear. “Both of them.”

  Henry did not stir. He was too far gone to that land of waking dreams and memories. His hands twitched by his sides, his fingers moving as though he were playing his bass. His lips moved, and Death read the word they shaped.

  Someday.

  Someday had come. It had come in many versions. This was the final one.

  “How will this work?” Flora asked. She reached for Henry’s hand. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d still rather you didn’t kiss him.”

  Death turned toward Love. Could it be that Flora didn’t understand she was here for both of t
hem? That she had postponed taking them for as long as she could? Death had won the Game. She always won. This time was different. Because of love, she’d waited. But that was all.

  “Flora,” Love said. He walked to her side and put his hand on her cheek.

  Flora leaned into him and wept. “Take me too. I don’t want to live without him.”

  Death’s heart filled with relief.

  “You won’t have to,” Love said.

  Flora lay down next to Henry, cradling his body. She put her hand on his chest. Henry opened his eyes. He found her hands with his and turned to look at her.

  “Are you sure you want to be here?” Death asked Love.

  Love nodded.

  The planet spun; the window darkened. Death sat next to Flora and Henry. She looked at Love, and he held out the piece of paper she’d entrusted him with so long ago.

  “Please,” she said. “Keep holding it. Just a little while longer. I’d rather do it this way.”

  He held the paper as if it were the most precious thing in the world. Death reached for Flora’s and Henry’s hands, which were still clasped over Henry’s heart. The rhythm had almost left him. His heart, the one Love had chosen, limped like a wounded soldier, but the music it made pleased Death still. She looked at Love and thanked him silently for his choice. And then Henry’s and Flora’s hands were in hers, and their lives began to flow away, all of those somedays that they’d hoped for, and had.

  Death gasped at the beauty of it all. Sunsets that pounded Puget Sound into a gleaming copper bowl. The taste of warm ginger­bread on cold fall evenings. Two lines of tiny wet footprints made by their just-bathed children. The way these two children, a son and a daughter, looked as they slept, chubby arms and legs flung wide as if they’d fallen from heaven.

  And there were sounds: of airplane propellers rising into the blue. Traffic rushing down past the Hudson River in New York. The swing and blare of gigs in Seattle, San Francisco, and Shanghai. The sweet burst of their son banging chords on his piano, and their daughter blasting high notes on her trumpet.