She knew she was babbling. After all, she was
inside
Death’s head, the deepest place. None of this was
real
, and talking about the external appearance of that “head” seemed like a very natural thing to do in this perfectly insane and ludicrous moment. . . .
“I am sorry,” she finished. “I’m sure this is not quite the thing you were asking. But since I am
inside you
, within a mad dream, I might as well amuse myself. Indeed, do you happen to have a mirror? Because then I can
show you
exactly what I
see
—and if you might perchance want to know what your face, or the back of your head looks like—the back of Death’s head, hah!—I can oblige—”
And the moment she spoke, the mirror was before them. Full length rectangle, silvery perfection of glass, without a frame, and only cast in contrast by the grey universe of mist all around them—a dislocated chunk of perfectly carved ice, a winter crystal, a northern fjord.
. . .
“It is as I had hoped. You have been my mirror so far,” Death said, and his words were rather cryptic. “And now, what else do you see?”
“I really am not sure—” Percy protested.
“Help me!”
Death whispered. “Look!”
Percy glanced only once, seeing a full-length reflection of herself: tired, ordinary, dull, ungainly—the usual unpleasant sight she encountered every time she looked inside a tub of water or the little old hand mirror that belonged to Gran.
. . .
But when she glanced from the corner of her eye, expecting to see the reflection of the handsome man in white standing next to her, all she saw was
. . .
cobwebs
.
“Hmm, I think
you
should look now,” she told Death.
But he regarded her sadly, and he confessed another secret.
“Death cannot look at itself,” he said. “When I look in the mirror, I see nothing at all—as ever I must. Only others can look at me, and I, in turn, can look at the entire world.”
“So, what exactly does this have to do with your Cobweb Bride?” Percy felt her mind reeling in another fine layer of confusion.
“You, who can
see
death—in a way that no one else can,” he whispered, “you can see
me
in places that I myself may not look. She, who is my Cobweb Bride, bears a part of me, and thus, she has been eternally hidden from my searching gaze. A torn piece of my very
self
rests with her and upon her—an ember of me—and it covers her like a cloak of invisibility, shielding her from my own sight.”
“That is the most insane thing I have ever heard,” said Percy. “How on earth—or in Heaven—does something like that even happen?”
“At the moment of proper death, every mortal whose turn it is to come to me, receives a piece of me unto them, and becomes my betrothed. It is a favor, a token of our union.”
Percy stared, with a glimmering of comprehension.
And then Death added: “Yes, you understand at last—you are
all
my betrothed at the time of your passing. When you receive my token, you are irrevocably marked as mine. And being mine, you come unto me, as naturally as rushing water into an empty vessel—indeed, you are then made into a
liquid fire
, flowing smoothly into the
receptacle
that is myself—together with
that
which is already mine. . . .”
“And this is what happens to all who die?”
“Indeed, it is your mortal destiny. Except, it did not happen this one time. My Bride received my favor, but
did not come to me
—does not come even now, to this day! And because she has my favor, I can give it to none other, and no one else can die in their proper turn.”
“So, a single token, a favor
. . .” Percy mused. “Wait! How exactly does that work when so many people die at the same moment? Do you give out several favors at once, like bunches of daisies? Do you even
have
that many favors? What do they look like? Am I babbling again?”
Death’s lips curved into a smile.
“How does water pour through many holes at once? It is a paradox of simultaneous being. My one favor is granted to my one betrothed—an infinite number of times over. And yet, even if one drop remains behind—one drop of my
will
—and does not return to me, I am
diminished
. And I no longer can dissolve you unto eternity.”
“But water does not diminish in its
nature
if it loses a few drops! And neither does fire cease being fire if it sheds tiny embers!”
“And yet, though I burn, and though I flow, I am neither fire nor water. I am Death complete, and none other. And I require the fullness of my eternal being in order to perform my function. Once I mark a mortal, that mark—and that mortal—must return to me, else I remain suspended in my own unrealized purpose.”
Percy rubbed her forehead in a fine example of mortal pain and frustration. The long mirror still floated before them, suspended in grey nothingness. And she glanced at it again and again, seeing her abysmally mundane reflection, and seeing
nothing
where his masculine shape should have been reflected—rather, the silken pallor of the spider webs, stretching unto infinity.
“So.
. . . All you see when you look for her are
cobwebs.
. . .”
“No,” he replied. “It is what
you
see—when you look in the mirror at my reflection. I meanwhile see nothing; only my token shadow calls out to me from an infinite distance, informing me about cobwebs all around, about the whiteness of snow, and her open eyes. . . . And that is all. Indeed, I cannot see any of it, I am only
told
it is thus. But if
you
observe closer, you might be able to see more—not only her, but along with her, my token self. Look for it, and tell me
where
my Cobweb Bride and I are hidden!”
Percy exhaled.
She had a dizzy moment of existential vertigo—what in all God’s Creation was
she
, of all people, doing
here
and
now
, inside Death’s oh-so-cavernous cranium, when she could instead be at home back at Oarclaven, eating buckwheat porridge by the fire?
.
. . by the fire, listening to Gran’s unending death rattle . . .
.
. . eating buckwheat porridge, but only tasting ashes . . .
No!
The world was all wrong, and it needed to be set aright.
Percy inhaled.
And she looked back into that blasted mirror, at the sea of white cobwebs, swaying. . . .
She blinked and cleared her vision, and she looked for a shadow, any familiar shadow, that she knew to recognize as a shadow of death.
Look closer . . .
Impossibly, the shadow itself seemed to be calling her.
“What do you see?” Death’s eager whisper sounded in her ear. But this time she did not take her gaze off the mirror and the cobweb ocean, an animate morass, wallowing, moving, like reeds in the wind.
Look closer—through the cobweb filaments of her hair and along each strand shine stars. . . .
Percy looked so close that she now saw each silken cobweb strand at the finest microscopic level; saw past each one, and beheld an entire forest of strands. The cobwebs were now motionless, for as she focused on them, examining each one with utter precision of
thought
, they were held and suspended by the touch of her mind, lifted and then swept aside, as she advanced deeper into their ocean.
She was looking for Death’s shadow avatar, a token given to his betrothed. She could sense it, just out of reach, and she could almost touch it.
And then she saw them—she saw the
stars
.
Tiny distant pinpoints of light, lavender and ruby and gold and cerulean and white.
. . . So many other colors of the rainbow!
The points of light winked in and out of existence, while the cobwebs moved before them, swaying like aerial seaweed. And yet, it was an optical illusion, for the stars did not shine along each strand—rather, they were plural reflections upon round liquid surfaces.
. . .
Liquid surfaces of human eyes.
Her eyes.
They were wide-open, framed by pale frozen eyelids, and they remained perfectly motionless, in stasis. A world of despair and agony and longing was reflected in them, along with the pinpoint lights and, yes, death’s unmistakable lurking shadow.
. . .
Where did those reflected lights come from? Percy tried to visualize their sources, only inverted, as in a mirror. The pinpoint lights looked to be “gathered” in a cluster, or aligned in a geometric pattern. What was this pattern?
For it was reflected in the
living
eyes of the Cobweb Bride.
And this same
pattern of light
was the only evidence, the one single clue, to her clandestine location.
“I see her,” Percy said. “She is looking at
. . . strange light. It is distant, but there are so many colors! Where could it be?”
“Ah!” Death sighed. “You are so close!”
“What?” Percy said. “All right, you did mention snow spiders earlier. Could this ‘starlight’ be the reflection of some truly monstrous spider’s eyes? I mean, this great big ugly thing with eight hairy legs, the size of a barn, could be watching and guarding her right now, having first covered her in horrible sticky cobwebs—ugh!”
“Snow spiders of winter have spun the webs in my hall once. But it was all such a long time ago. In your mortal reckoning, many ages past
. . .” Death remembered. “I have not seen them since they first decorated my hall with their lace. It may be that I have taken them all unto me. . . .”
“Is it possible you missed just
one?
” said Percy smartly. “Might
it
be out there now, having grown big and fat, and stolen away your Bride?”
“The world is infinite, and anything is possible,” Death said, his handsome face growing again melancholy.
“Since here I am, at present stuck in your head, and making up ghastly monstrous spiders,” said Percy, “why not help me truly look for her, your Cobweb Bride? But—not in here, where I might conjure even more nonsense. Instead, help me
out there
, in the real
world
. Out there, I have nothing better to do than freeze in that forest, along with the other poor girls. And simply going back home would be of no use to anyone. So what do you say, Your Majesty, Death?”
“If anyone can find her, mortal maiden, it is you.”
Percy would have hid her smile, if not for the fact that she was presently inside Death’s mind where everything was already out in the open and on display, including true inner states and involuntary human reactions.
And thus, she joyfully smiled at the compliment—one of the few she had ever received in all her sixteen years.
And then, just as suddenly, she experienced a shock. . . . Because Death, the beautiful young man dressed in white, with radiant smoke-colored eyes, suddenly took her by the shoulders and kissed her on the lips. . . .
The world exploded.
His lips were like a breath of summer. Where they touched her, she felt filaments of lightning coursing through her, echoing along each nerve ending with dark fire, until she could feel the extent and reach of
all
the shadows in the universe. . . .
They were all extensions of him.
And then he released her, but drew back just a space, remaining so very close, their faces barely apart. . . .
Percy was lightheaded. She felt her cheeks burn, and her lips had no sensation at all—it was as if they had been branded, and the branding took away all living energy, transforming it into an eternal conflagration that radiated in an aural nimbus around her, bathing the surface of her skin.
. . .
She had never been kissed before.
And now, her mouth had been
consumed
.
Percy looked up at him, up-close, seeing his perfect lips and sacred features, as he too observed her with his haunting eyes. And now there was a new gentleness in his gaze that she had not seen before—a shadow of infinite kindness.
Do not fear me, but do not long for me. . . .
“My Cobweb Bride has my favor,” Death whispered. “But you—now
you
have a fragment of my heart.”
And as she stared, wondering, he told her: “It is a part of me that I have never given before.
. . . Use it well.”
“What does that mean?”
But Death smiled, and he drew so near that she could see the smoke quartz shadow-pupils of his immortal eyes.