The Game of Love and Death(88)

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