Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt Page B

could no longer distinguish between my voice and Goody’s. My lungs gasped for air as did hers.
    Lord Death looked at Goody and back at me, then bent his head in assent. “You must keep your appointment with me,” he said.
    I nodded slowly.
    Soon Grandmother called out, “The baby’s head is coming, Goody, push, push!” and moments later, “A son— and as big as a calf.”
    I looked to see Lord Death, whether feeling gratitude or triumph I was not sure, but he was gone.
    Goody’s husband returned and cried harder even than his son had been crying, and everyone else, too, sobbed and laughed with joy. Goody had forgotten her pain already. Her eyes were full of her baby. I gazed at him, willing life into him, while Grandmother wrapped him and placed him in Goody’s arms.
    I glanced around Goody’s small house. There was little in it but a bed and a pot or two, but she had picked fresh grasses to grace her window. I remembered that once when I visited her, she welcomed me as graciously as a queen might welcome a guest to her palace, and how I had envied her and her straw bed and her husband in it beside her, and her son too. Standing there now in the warmth of her joy and her home, I shivered to think of Lord Death’s hand on my face. I gazed again upon the newborn, for it warmed me to do so, and meant to hold his tiny fingers, but Goody’s husband blocked my hand. He shook his head. Grandmother, busy with Goody, did not notice.
    When I opened the door to leave, Goody’s husband came to see me out. “I thank you, Keturah, for my new son. But I bid you, come no more to my house again.”
    I could see in his face how much it had cost him to say this.”I will follow your bidding, sir,” I said, and I left.
    The sound of the midnight crows scraped against my heart as I made my way to the top of the village and toward the forest.
    The oaks that rimmed the forest seemed to beckon with their long arms. “Come,” they whispered, “come.” But I knew that only a little way into the forest were brooding pines and towering elms. Dead brown needles crunched under my feet upon the path. I was afraid to veer off, knowing the tricks of trees.
    I thought of turning back. With every step I thought of it. But I knew I could not save my life by running away.
    I stopped. There, off the path in a glimmer of moonbeam, was the great hart that had led me once almost to my death.
    “And for all these many years Lord Temsland has not found you,” I whispered. He was very still—not afraid of me, but wary. “No other stag has ever been able to elude the lord,” I said softly, “for he is nothing if not a fine hunter. How... ?”
    The hart lived ever in the shadow of the wood. He knew its winding ways, knew where to find its hidden brooks of water. When the forest’s darker night fell upon him, then he rose up and led his herd to succulent herbs and fat nuts and sweet grasses. He lived side by side with death and was not sad.
    “So that is why you escape Lord Temsland—Death has bargained with you too,” I said. “But why?”
    “Because,” said a voice behind me, “he is so gloriously beautiful. Like you.”
    I turned to see Lord Death, and even in the dark I could tell that his eyes were upon me as if he had forever to consider me. I held my breath, waiting for him to seize me and take me away on his horse. But instead he leaned against a tree.
    “Sir, we have plans to clean and repair the village, so the plague will not come.” I was like a child who could not wait to tell her news. Me he might have, but he would not have my people. Not yet.
    “Have you plans? Did I tell you that would help?” He sounded amused.
    “No—but I inferred,” I said.
    “It will not be enough if Lord Temsland allows traffic with Great Town,” he said bluntly. “There, the plague has already begun.” He shifted to fit the curves of the tree he leaned against. “So—the end of the story, Keturah. Did the girl find her true love? Tell