Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt

their names. That is good. What else do you remember?”
    I thought, trying not to hear the wind or feel it in my skirts. At last I said, “Nothing else, Grandmother.”
    “That is because you were not at any of those births, Keturah. Each time, you came into the house, looked about you a moment, and turned and left. The first time, with Melinda, you complained of a bellyache, and I thought nothing of it. The second time, with Jessica Cooper, you said the blood was making you faint. This from a girl who had helped with the hog slaughter since she was three. The last time, when it was June Siddal, you made no excuse, you asked no permission. You just left.”
    She stopped and placed her strong hands on my shoulders. “Keturah, I thought I was the only one who knew that you could see their deaths coming. But Goody Thompson knows too, somehow. I can do nothing more for her, though I pretend to busy myself. But she knows. She will be watching to see if you stay or leave. She is terrified to see what you will do. To see your death coming and to fear it—that is much worse than the dying. That is why I ask you to stay, no matter what.”
    I nodded slowly. “I will, Grandmother.”
    She hurried into the house, and I followed close behind.
    But even as Grandmother spoke to me, I remembered something else from those birthings—that I had seen Lord Death before.
    I had seen him that day when Grandmother fetched me to help Melinda’s baby get born. There he was in the dimly lit room, comely and somber, yet comfortable, patient, as if he were a part of the family—a distant rich cousin, perhaps, or a well-traveled uncle. His face on the night of June’s death, I remembered now, had been sad, and later so had our faces. The mother died, and the infant with her, and the poor woman’s eldest daughter took a knife and cut her face so that she would never marry and have a baby.
    I had seen him last year at St. Ivan’s Feast, when the men had drunk too much ale and began to wrestle. There he had been a shadow among the men, tall, and with a lordly bearing. When I looked more closely, he was gone. The next day a man had been killed, and the blacksmith’s son was gone. Poor Jenny Danson, for it was her father who had been killed, and her secret love who ran away.
    I had seen Lord Death among us many times since I was a young girl, I realized now. Though I had not known who he was, as a child I feared him and hid my face in Grandmother’s skirts if she would let me. As I got older, I came to believe that he had nothing to do with me.
    He had been in the shadows, silent and pale. He hadn’t looked at me or spoken to me, seemingly unaware that I could see him. Though I was young, I knew that I should not bring attention to his presence. I did not ask his name or point him out to anyone. I would see him standing, waiting patiently, respectfully. Though he was always there, I chose to ignore him, and I lived most days as if he were not often before me.
    As I entered the Thompson house, I thought my fear screamed out, but instead it was Goody herself.
    Her eyes fastened upon me the moment I opened the door, as did the eyes of Goody’s mother and her sister, and of her husband holding their toddling child. Grandmother knew, and all these knew. The wind flung back the door, and I hastened to close it.
    Once well inside, I looked at Goody with all the calm I could muster. I was aware of the low fire, and that Grandmother had cleaned the cottage and chased out the chickens, as was her wont, and that Lord Death stood in the shadows, his back to Goody.
    “Will you stay then, Keturah?” Goody panted weakly.
    Lord Death turned in a fluid, graceful motion and looked at me. In the forest he was tall and fine and strong, but here in a cottage he was royal and commanding, and his terrible beauty made the humble cottage shine with nobility.
    Above the crackle of the settling fire, in a voice that only I could hear, and yet a voice that was piercing