Falling Stone

by Amy Stilgenbauer

  Jaclyn stared as the woman went on, listing Henry’s multiple transgressions against his ex-wife as well as the other building’s tenants, including one instance of revealing the identity of a young woman in hiding. “He sounds lovely,” she said, now more certain than ever that she had been duped.

  “You think he’s gonna be a good guy ‘cause he’s a food critic. How much trouble can a food critic get up to? A lot of trouble. And the way he treated dear Alice. I can’t ever forgive that...”

  Beginning to regret compelling this woman to talk, Jaclyn nodded. “But do you have any idea where he may have gone?” she pressed.

  “The paper maybe? He’s usually there most days. Or at the Starbucks down the street. Has a very strict routine that one. Thinks his life is some kind of Norman Rockwell, you know, and if he even slightly deviates...”

  But Jaclyn didn’t listen to another word. Having finally gleaned the information she needed, she was off.

  8.

  Something tasted wrong about Henry’s coffee. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what exactly, but the sense was there. He took another sip and sloshed it around in his mouth, trying to sample each flavor note individually. It was bright, but slightly alkaline, just the way he liked his darker roasts. There was a carbony hint of tobacco and chicory, but Henry normally liked those flavors too. He swallowed trying to gauge if, perhaps, there were an old crop aftertaste, but it wasn’t that either. Frowning, he stared into his reflection in the dark brown liquid. Something was clearly wrong, but he found his inability to say what that was more disconcerting.

  The glass window shattered and people at all the surrounding tables jumped up, screaming. Again, Henry felt the world around him freeze as time slowed. He swore. Sure, he knew he was supposed to expect her today, but part of him wanted to believe his handcuff trick would have been enough.

  “Henry Danvers, what did I tell you?” said her crisp, but sweet molasses voice from where the window, now replaced by a driverless car, once had been.

  “Lady Death, how nice of you to drop by,” he replied, not looking up from his coffee.

  “I warned you. I warned you about trying to trick me.”

  “And I told you I still had things to do.” He couldn’t bring himself to look at her. He knew that if he did all the bravado he was trying to convey would vanish.

  “And have you spoken with your former wife?” There was a twinge of knowingness about her voice. He said nothing. “No...of course you haven’t. You never planned to, did you?”

  Henry still didn’t answer. He tried to take a nonchalant looking sip of his coffee. It tasted like liquid salt. He coughed it back out all over his suit.

  She laughed. A dark, impenetrable laugh as harsh as the most scorched coffee he’d ever tasted. “You thought you knew enough about death to pull one over on me with your fancy iron handcuffs. Nice move. But unfortunately for you, I have a trick up my sleeve. I’m more than just Death. I’m a Harvest Witch.”

  Though he had no idea what that meant, the words sent a chill down Henry’s spine. “It’s all been a mistake,” he muttered, trying to stand without looking at her. “There has to be some mistake.”

  “The Queen of the Shades does not make mistakes.”

  Henry took a deep breath and turned to face the woman calling herself Death. With all the courage he could muster, he threw the hot coffee straight at her face.

  She dodged, brown eyes flashing a sudden red-orange. “How dare you?” She touched the pumpkin shaped pin at the clasp of her cloak and something inside Henry knew it was over. He had put up a good fight, but his life was about to end.

  Moments came flashing back to him again, just as they had when he ate the Shoofly pie, but this time they weren’t at all pleasant. He saw himself playing in the yard at the house in Waterville; then being chased through the streets of the same village by a group of bigger, angrier boys. He saw Alice’s tear stained face as she told him of yet another miscarriage and all he could do was yell back at her. A cord in his gut twinged with regret at the memory. For a split second, he saw his own funeral, but he could make out none of the faces in attendance.

  Then it stopped. He was back in the coffee shop. The car was still precariously close to his table, coffee still dripping down the windshield. Death still stood before him in all of her glory, but he was still, oddly, alive.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, glancing around for his lifeless body, but only seeing the frozen faces, fleeing the crash in slow, deliberate movements better suited to stop motion animation.

  “You just want to live?” She asked.

  Henry was half certain the words were nothing but a tease. Her voice sounded too mocking, too nonchalant, to be anything but. Still, he nodded. Of course that was what he wanted. Wasn’t that what everyone wanted? To keep right on living as they always had been? To never have to die? It seemed like such a silly question. The longer he waited without hearing her say anything else, the more ridiculous it seemed. “What else could I possibly want from you?”

  “You don’t want anything more out of life then to be alive?”

  “Yes!” He shouted, feeling bizarrely angry that she was asking him these questions. He felt like he was being toyed with, like she was a cat playing with a mouse before its ultimate demise.

  “I just wanted to be sure.” She touched the pumpkin shaped pin again. The car she perched on began to back away, the window collecting itself, glass figments flying back into place. Henry felt a searing pain at the back of his head before everything went black.

  *

  Henry sipped his coffee and looked around the cafe. Something seemed off. At the table in the corner, a teenaged couple held hands and stared moon eyed at one another. Next to him, a blonde in a business suit talked rapidly into her cell phone. Across the way, a grubby looking man, who likely hadn’t bathed in days was typing furiously into his laptop. No one seemed to have noticed the shattered window or the car that had run through it.

  He glanced at the counter. A red haired young woman in a purple dress was collecting a cappuccino to go. She glanced toward Henry. For a split second, he was looking into the coldest pair of brown eyes that could ever exist. She smirked broadly and walked over.

  “Enjoying your coffee?” She asked, sipping her own.

  Henry looked back at the window. It wasn’t even cracked. “What are you playing at?”

  “Nothing,” she said, a playful smirk dancing over her lips, which Henry found oddly enticing. “I just decided to give you what you wanted. For now.”

  “Are you...flirting with me?”

  “God no!” She touched her hand to the pumpkin pin she still wore in an overly dramatic way and rolled her eyes. “Men. Do you like your coffee?”

  Puzzled, he took a sip. Something definitely tasted off about it again, but this time it only took until the second sip to understand what was wrong. There was no brightness or carbony notes; the coffee had no flavor at all. He took another drink. It felt warm; he knew there was warm liquid in his mouth, but that was all he could say.

  “What have you done?” He demanded.

  Her smirk grew wider. “You said you only wanted to be alive.”

  “But-”

  “Ah, ah, ah,” she laughed lightly now. Everyone around them would surely imagine that this was a date, Henry knew, feeling the terror well up inside him. “You said it was what you wanted. Now, as a trade, everything you eat will be bland, with no taste.”

  “I’m a food critic!” Henry could feel his livelihood slipping from his grasp. The sound of rushing water filled his ears.

  “Plenty of people get on this way, you’ll be alive at least. Isn’t that what you want?”

  “I’m a food critic.” But the words came out so meekly, he wasn’t entirely sure he had actually uttered them.

  Death just smiled coyly as she stood, sipped her cappuccino, and walked away.

  Alone, Henry pinched himself to be sure he wasn’t dreaming. He felt a s
light twinge and knew that, for what it was worth, the senses in his left arm worked. The coffee still tasted like nothing. He couldn’t smell anything either. Not the coffee brewing away behind the counter. Not the pastry displays or the fancy baskets of freshly ground beans. Nothing.

  It’s over, he thought, the weight of it all crushing him slowly. There’s no point to me...

  He wanted to flee, run straight into New York traffic and hope that some car struck hard and fast. The thought nagged at him, growing louder and louder with each passing second.

  “But then she wins,” he muttered under his breath. “That’s what she wants me to do...If I kill myself, she wins.”

  Henry knew enough about death to know that.

  9.

  When Jaclyn arrived back in the Underland, she didn’t spare even a glance for the Fates. She already knew what Moira would say. She would call her selfish, rail against her for making things up on the fly. Aisha might even be upset that Jaclyn had potentially changed the ultimate agent of Henry’s demise. She didn’t want to deal with any of that right now. Instead, she marched straight to Calu.

  “I’ve been expecting you,” he said, his honey voice not sounding nearly as ominous to her as it did to many others. She still remembered how strained it sounded the day she had trapped him into giving her this job. “Henry Danvers isn’t dead?”

  Jaclyn rolled her eyes. Moira’s precious book lay open on the table, both dates already crossed out. “They’ve already gotten to you, huh?”

  “I can work some stuff out on my own.” He closed the book on the table and paced over to her. The expression on his face did not contain a hint of anger or reprimand. It was calm, understanding, even a little amused. He took her hand with a smirk. “Made you mad, did he?”

  Jaclyn frowned, removing her hand from his and walking over to sit down in the chair he had just vacated. “He tried to pull some stunt and I couldn’t let it stand. Especially not after the neighbor told me that nonsense with his wife was a total lie. A car crash would have been a nicety for that...”

  “You were completely ruthless. I couldn’t have done better myself.”

  Taken aback, Jaclyn blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “You were ruthless. I don’t take to the tricksters either...” He trailed off, smirking at her. She smirked back. She knew that he didn’t count her as a trickster. Not quite anyway. “But I’ve never done anything quite so...perfectly pitiless.”

  Slowly it dawned on Jaclyn that he was complimenting her. “I wouldn’t call it pitiless. I didn’t exactly make him a shade...like some people would have.”

  Calu laughed. “You’re without mercy, Jaclyn Laindeir. Revel in it. Own it. Take it from me. I’ve been at this job a couple thousand years. I know what it takes.”

  Jaclyn shrugged, still a little uncertain. “I picked something up for you at Henry’s,” she said, thinking a subject change was the best course of action. When he didn’t do anything more than look at her with a puzzled expression, she went on. “He had photographs of a woman...and there was something...she looked like one of the women in the books you loaned me. The, uh, Sabine compassion goddess...I can’t remember her name...”

  She held out the photograph she had taken and he snached it. His expression changed from confusion to something Jaclyn could not decipher. His eyes bulged as he stared, examining every inch of the torn photograph.. His lips curled into a bizarre half-frown half-smile that didn’t seem quite human to Jaclyn. “Strenia,” he said. “Her name was Strenia.”

  “The neighbor said this woman was named Alice. According to Henry she lives in Queens.”

  “Why would Henry Danvers...”

  “She’s his ex-wife.”

  The photograph burst into flames. Jaclyn took a step back. “Do you...know her?” A memory was surfacing from a few months back. Calu had been in love with a goddess. Could it have been this goddess? Was this girl just a look-like...or...?

  “It doesn’t matter now.” Gone was the warm, admiring tone of just a few moments ago. His voice had shifted to cold and brusk.

  “Calu?”

  “I need a minute, Jaclyn,” he replied, pausing to force a grotesque smile in her direction. “You did good today. The Queen of the Shades is living up to her title.”

  Jaclyn forced a smile back at him, a small part of her wishing that he would open up more. He was a good friend, as far as friends Jaclyn had went. Still, she turned and left him to his thoughts. There was always work for Death to do.

  10.

  And so it is with a heavy heart, I say goodbye to my faithful readers and look forward to my next adventure.

  Final Note: The column that was meant to run this week was a review of the Dutch Kitchen Inn, a homestyle restaurant in Berlin, Ohio. I regret that due to my resignation, this column cannot run in its entirety; however, I will say that the shoofly pie is a wonderful last memory to hold on to from my critic days and it may well redeem the whole region of my preconceived scorn.

  Raymond folded the paper with a deep laugh. Moira, looking across the table at him with dancing eyes, laughed as well, her voice higher, lighter, but still full of meaning.

  “I had wanted to ask,” Raymond began, watching her face for any sign of guilt. “Do you know anything about this?”

  Moira simply smiled back at him, her eyes sparkling. He could see it written all over her face. She knew everything about this.

  “You saw to this?”

  She shrugged, still smiling. “What do you think?”

  “I think there’s something you’re not telling me because this is Harvest magic.” He tried to sound serious and firm, but found he couldn’t. He was happy. The small part of the review that mentioned him was a rave, and if Moira had done this, she had done it for him. The very thought made his heart pound. “I remember my mother doing that to me as a little boy when I stole desserts. Granted it would only last a few hours.”

  “Some people lose their senses naturally,” Moira said. She stood up and walked around the table. Draping her arms around his shoulders, she whispered, “and need I remind you that your shoofly memory potion isn’t exactly a Harvest ditty. Some of us do have a touch of both in our souls, you know.”

  Raymond blushed as her lips grazed over his cheek. “Not a Mooreland...”

  “Especially a Mooreland. When I first laid eyes on you, I knew you were more than just a self-righteous...”

  He felt his muscles tighten at her words. She was about to insult his family, his traditions. Sure, he didn’t keep to all of them. He didn’t even believe in many of them until recently, but it still stung. “Moira...don’t...”

  She squeezed his shoulders, saying nothing more. His heart still pounded against his ribcage thinking about what she did. He didn’t know what it meant, but the more he thought about it, the more he could feel himself smiling.

  “You did it for me?”

  Moira planted a lingering kiss on the side of his mouth. “I told you not to worry, didn’t I?”

  # # # #

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  You can find her online at https://amystilgenbauer.wordpress.com/ and on twitter @Rosainverno

  If you like this series, please consider supporting it on Patreon.

  And, be sure to read the other parts in the Season of the Witch series: