Because You Love to Hate Me(61)

And he is not sure he remembers what happiness is, but then she brushes her lips against his jaw, a warmth as sudden and bright as sunlight darting between clouds. There and gone, but not gone the way it was before, not missing.

He wants her to kiss him again, wants to kiss her back, but she is already moving, reaching up for the crown of red flowers in her hair.

When she takes it off, a pinkish stain lingers on her skin, and Death reaches up with his ungloved hand and brushes his thumb along her brow. And she is rimmed with light, throwing up sparks like embers, and when she smiles, he can see the light behind her teeth, can almost feel its heat.

She snatches the crown of dead leaves from his hair and tosses them both into the flames.

“Come with me,” she says, and then she is pulling him away, away from the fire and the festival, away from the field, and into the woods.

They stumble through the trees, Grace in front and Death a step behind, and there’s a lightness in his chest, and between strides, when the breeze is cool and her voice is sweet, he forgets.

Forgets that he is Death and she is burning, forgets that there is only one way for this to end.

“Grace,” he calls after her, “slow down.”

He wonders if, after all this, she’s trying to run, but then she reaches a break in the trees and stumbles to a stop, catching her breath at the sudden swatch of sky.

And by the time he reaches her, she’s sinking to the ground, lying back against the mossy earth to watch the stars.

Death lies beside her, the moss going brittle beneath him.

“Listen,” she whispers.

As loud as the festival was, the forest is quiet.

“Thank you,” he says softly.

“For what?” asks Grace.

For the spring dance, he wants to say, and the taste of summer fruit, for the bonfire and the starlit woods, and the memory of a life before. He is holding fast to each, cupping them in his hands, but they are already falling through his fingers.

He is getting cold again, the heat of the day dying down to embers in his chest. And he is hungry, and he is tired, and it has gone on too long.

He draws the glove from his hand. Lets it fall to the ground, silent as a leaf.

It is time, he thinks, his bone fingers drifting toward her hand. He wishes he could cup her life in his hands without letting it go. Keep it warm between them.

But that is not how death works.

But then she turns her head, those blue eyes shining in the dark.

“I want to go to the well,” she says, and the words are so jarring that he pulls away, sits up. He thinks he’s misheard, but she continues on beside him. “They say it’s the place where the dead meet the living, where the living meet the dead. I want to call down to my mother.”

And Death doesn’t have the heart to tell her that’s not how it works, that there’s nothing at the bottom but cold earth and tired bones.

This is what she wants.

He has given her so many things.

He will give her one more.

XII.

It’s been seven years since Grace went to the well.

None of the lads were brave enough to even climb the hill, but grief is louder than fear, and up she went to call her mother back.

But her mother never answered.

Now she stands there, side by side with Death, looking down at the ring of stone, the hole carved deep into the earth like an open grave, a place caught between the living and the dead.

“It’s time,” says Death.

“I know,” says Grace.

“I’m sorry,” says Death.

“I know,” says Grace.

The boy leans down and unties the laces of his borrowed shoes, and Grace kicks off her own.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“I want to go down.”

Death shakes his head. “It is too steep.”

“I’m not afraid of falling,” she says. “I want to reach the bottom and press my lips to the cold earth and whisper to my mother. Will you show me how?”

Death looks between her and the well and then swings his leg over the side.

He turns, holding out his hand, and she looks into those wide brown eyes one last time before she pushes him in.

She half expects him to catch himself, to hover in the air, but he doesn’t.

He falls.

Down, down, down, like all those words she hurled into the well, the ones that came up wrong, and then she hears the sound of bones crashing against the moss-slicked side, a body hitting stone.

Then nothing.

Grace stumbles back from the well, from Death, and runs.

Her chest heaves, heart trilling like a bird as she races down the hill.

Through the woods.

Past the dying fire as the distant sound of midnight bells ring in the end of spring.

She has done it.

The day is over, her time has come and gone, and she is running home, sprinting through the tall grass, when her foot catches something hard and flat laid into the earth.

She falls, cracking her head against the tombstone.

Her vision splinters into shards of light.

There is something warm against her face, like a hand brushing her brow.

Just out of reach is a crown of pale flowers, and her fingers drift toward it as the bells end, and the stars go out.

XIII.

Death is a girl with blue eyes.

A girl with bare feet and a white dress stained by red farewells and spring storms.