The Game of Love and Death(87)

But it was strange. It did not feel like death, or at least what she’d expected death to feel like. Death was an absence, a coldness. It was the bodies of her parents being covered by snow, erased by whiteness.

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.