When she was gone, the girl who must no longer be a princess dug a hollow and planted the flower inside it. Then she knocked on the cottage door.
A widow lived there with her son. When they saw the girl in her dirty cloak, they took her in without question, giving her food and a place by their fire. They said nothing of her green skin or of the thorn tree, covered in flowers of the same hue, growing at the edge of their clearing. Though at first the girl was wary, she grew to appreciate their kindness.
The widow’s son was a woodsman, handsome enough and willing to marry, but love of his old mother had kept him from seeking a wife. Now the two rejoiced in secret, because the woods had delivered a bride to their door. The girl was skittish, and loath to speak of her past, yet they knew they must win her in time.
“Be patient, my son,” said the old woman. “See how the girl fears to poke even her nose outside our clearing? She’s running from something very dark indeed. When her fears have faded, she will make you a happy wife.”
The queen’s daughter was no fool, but she was no woman of the world either, and did not perceive what the man and his mother were planning. When the woodsman took her hands in his a year after her arrival at his cottage, speaking words of love she could not return, she was stricken with fear. She appreciated her protectors, yet had no desire to become a woodwife.
“I cannot be your bride,” she said numbly. A cloud passed over the man’s expression, and she hastened on. “Unless you bring me what I desire.”
His brow cleared. “Anything. What would you have of me?”
She thought quickly, searching for a thing this man could never find. “A treasure only a king could possess.”
He bowed then to hide his smile, because he knew what to give her. The story of the green-skinned princess born seventeen years ago had spread far and wide, reaching even the woodsman and his mother. They’d guessed who the girl was long ago, and knew the flowering black tree was her own. A tree unlike any in the world, seen just once before, in the thorn grove on the king’s own grounds. He’d bring her a flower from the tree, and with that gift claim her.
The woodsman waited until the girl and his mother were busy in the kitchen and approached the tree. He’d never come so close before. Its perfume was too heady, its branches unpleasant. Now it seemed to him that the tree was crying out in a chorus of voices he could almost hear, telling him to keep away.
He moved closer and the voices grew louder. Closer still, and the tree’s shadows lit up with eight translucent bodies, hands out in supplication, drifting like smoke. Though he was terribly afraid, he was more determined to catch his bride. The woodsman closed his eyes and plunged his arm into its branches. A thorn caught his skin and tore it and still he reached, fingers closing around a green blossom and snapping it from its twig.
He shuddered in the sudden cold, as all the sounds of the woods went quiet. From the cottage came the crash of something falling, and he quaked, wondering what he’d done.
The cottage door opened. Through it came the girl he wished to make his wife, her arms before her, her eyes unseeing. She seemed not to hear him calling, nor to feel his hands as he attempted to hold her. She walked past the thorn tree and its broken protection, into the wild woods.
In her mind she was walking through the palace. It was the third night of the ball. When she pressed her hands to the trunk of a tree, she was opening the door of her room. When the tree opened to reveal a winding silver stair and she put one foot upon it, she was walking down into the king’s ballroom, dressed in black gossamer. She could hear the sounds of the party below.
As the tree sealed shut behind her, two arms came around her in the dark.
“Together at last, my love,” said the voice of the man of many coats. He stamped his foot and the silver stair split beneath them like an egg.
They fell for a long while and landed on the back of a vaporous horse. It carried them through trees carved from bright minerals, past lakes of pale fire. Her senses now restored, the girl knew they must be riding through the land of the dead.
The horse carried them to the doors of a jagged castle. They were led to a receiving room, where a great man sat in fearsome repose.
“Father,” said her abductor, “I’ve brought home a bride.”
Ah, the girl thought. It is as he said. He is the quiet and the cold, the thing that comes after the end. Not Death, but his son.
Death’s son looked at her with pride, running his fingers over her throat, resting his thumb against her pulse. “Even in your kingdom, her heart beats true. She is a worthy wife to the prince of Death.”
Death made no reply to his boasting. “A dozen of my son’s brides have crossed into my lands, and none of them lived for long. Who are you, that your heart beats so strongly in this place?”
“I am a woodwife,” she said, not daring to look at Death’s son. “I am nobody.”
“She is not—” Death’s son began, but his father threw up a hand to silence him.
“Lies do not become a bride. Nor my daughter, whom you will be tomorrow, once you’ve wed.”
“I am a woodwife,” she repeated primly. “And married already.”
Death twitched his lips, cut fine as ice. “Your husband has not followed you here, and the rules of the living no longer bind you. You will remarry tomorrow, but first I ask again: who are you?”
“I am a woodwife, who must now grieve the loss of my husband. I require three nights to mourn him before I can remarry.”
“Far be it from me to dishonor the custom of woodwives,” Death said, his voice slow and dry as driftwood. “But time moves differently in the land of the dead. I will give you two nights, not three, before you must marry.”
A translucent figure the color of cold tea stepped forward to take the girl to her room. Before she could follow, something batted at her ankle. She looked down to find a tortoiseshell cat puddling at her feet. Because it was the first living creature she’d seen in Death’s kingdom, and because it looked at her with such clever eyes, she leaned down to greet it.
The cat spoke first. “They’ll let you pick your chambers.” It ran a tongue over its shoulder. “Be sure to choose the plainest room. No jewels, no hangings. Choose the room most fit for a woodwife.” Then it padded out of sight.
Death’s servant led the girl from room to room, each more wondrous than the last. She shook her head at each, until the irritated shade showed her to a crude, windowless chamber, empty but for a mattress, a fireplace, and a hook for a cloak.
“This one,” the girl said. “This is where I’ll stay.”
“And may it bring you joy,” growled the servant. Though there was no firewood, they coaxed from the ashes a spectral flame.
When she was alone, the girl knelt on the hard mattress, wondering why she’d listened to a cat. Then a scratching came at her door, and the creature let itself in. It warmed itself in front of the meager fire before speaking.
“Well done, but not yet done. You must listen to me again, because I am your only friend here. You have not yet died, it’s true, but even one such as you cannot withstand the land of Death forever. Your wedding dress will be your shroud if you don’t make haste.”
“One such as me?” the girl said.
The cat ignored her, grooming each of its limbs in turn. “If you marry that stupid boy, Death will be your father-in-law. Tomorrow you must ask him for an early wedding gift: a kiss. No matter what he offers in its place, accept only the kiss.”
The girl promised to do so. The night she spent on her cold bed was long, and in the morning she rose exhausted. The servant fetched her, bringing her again before Death. He greeted her courteously, asked after her rest, and congratulated her that she still lived.
“Thank you, Father,” she said gravely. “I hope I’m not presumptuous in addressing you this way.”
“A little, perhaps, my daughter, but I will make an exception.”
“Then I must risk offense once more, and
ask of you one thing. My wedding gift, early.”
“A wedding gift,” Death repeated in his slow red voice. “What do you wish of me?”
“Something small,” she said. “Will you grant it?”
“I will. To make peace between us, and to show I do not take it lightly that my son stole you from your woodsman.”
She curtseyed. “It’s a small thing, as I say, in keeping with the custom of woodfolk. The night before a wedding, the groom’s father must give his new daughter a kiss.”
Death went still, so still the girl could feel it spreading. She was certain, for those moments, that all was unmoving in Death’s realm. All but one small thing: in the room’s farthest corner, tucked in shadow, the tail of a tortoiseshell cat.
“You may ask me for anything,” Death said at last. “Anything but that. I have rooms full of jewels—take your pick. I have the life-lights of adventurers, enchantresses, queens. You may hold them in your hands and judge their weight. Bismuth caverns and groves of tourmaline. What do you desire?”
“I would not know what to do with any of that,” she said, “being the wife of a woodsman. I only wish for your approval, father. And your kiss.” Chastely, she offered her cheek.
When he spoke again, his voice had deepened from red to black. “I gave you my word, and you will have your kiss. But I will not descend to you.”
It was harder than she thought it would be to climb the stairs to where Death sat in state, his long hands draped over the arms of his onyx throne. This close, she could see the swirl of his eyes, every color of weather. The charred wood shade of his skin and the bladed curves of his mouth. Standing at his feet she felt the life that ran through her like roots, and the places where it ran thinnest: her wrists and throat and temples. She turned her cheek to him like an animal turning its neck to the knife, and he pressed cold lips to her skin.
She tasted salt and metal. She smelled ashes and dust. The blood in her ears rose like a wave as her vision transformed.
She could see Death’s hall truly now. Where before there were tapestries and bright lanterns, now there were peeling walls and guttering candles. Death’s throne was in truth a tower of blackened bones, his rich red cloak tattered and eaten away. Only Death himself was unchanged.
“Happy marriage to you, daughter,” he said softly. “Now you see my home, and yours, with clearer eyes. I hope you do not regret your choice of gift.”
“Thank you, Father,” she managed. “On the contrary, it pleases me well.”
His castle was a place of horrors now, of bone and decay. Only her room remained the same, cold and cramped and nearly empty, and she was glad of it.
She lay back on her cheerless bed. Almost as quickly she sat up again, looking at the hook on the wall. It was the only thing in the room that had changed: now she saw the truth of it. It was only pretending to be a hook; it was really a keyhole.
She waited for the cat. Soon its scratch came at the door, and it trotted in to stretch in front of her fire. The flames, she could now see, were the gray ghost of something that fretted and sighed, worrying itself into letting off a faint, sorrowful heat. The cat warmed its fur in front of the thing shamelessly.
“Good girl,” it said. “But just one night remains, and now you must find the key. Your fiancé will invite you to dinner tonight, to gloat at his conquest. Say yes. Get him drunk, and make a wager. Tell him you can guess what he keeps in his innermost pocket. And if you guess right, make him forfeit to you the thing he wears around his neck.”
And it laughed its hissing little laugh, leaning close to whisper the suitor’s secret: what he kept in his inner pocket.
The girl agreed, and all was as the cat predicted. A knock came at her door, and a servant bade her come down to join her fiancé at dinner. She was taken to a decaying hall, where he sat at the head of an ancient table. In a coat of thorns, he watched her come.
“Good evening, my love,” he said. “You are far too somber for a bride. You must eat and be merry.”
The girl looked down the length of the table, and her eye was not fooled. Where delicate meats and golden pastries should be were all the flat black foods of the dead. She snubbed them, sitting beside her betrothed and lifting a glass filled with liquid thick as blood.
“Let us make merry then.”
And she matched him, glass for glass, till he was drunk on Death’s wine, made from the long purple grapes that grow from vineyards fertilized with battlefield blood. Her own wine she fed in secret to the cat, who nosed about her ankles below the table.
“I wonder how you live still,” he mused. “I’d hoped you might. From the tales I heard of your birth, I knew you were something different.”
He leaned closer, confiding. “My father is old-fashioned, and would have an heir of me. You must survive long enough to provide it. When you’ve done so you may die, or live, whichever I fancy. I think you’d better make me happy if you can.”
The girl was not a queen’s daughter for nothing. She lifted her chin and her glass and smiled through her hate. “You will find me an amusing companion, I think.”
Her betrothed inclined his head slowly, moving with drunken care. “It amuses you to tell my father you are a woodwife. Perhaps we are not amused by the same things.”
“A wager, then. Might that serve to entertain?”
“It depends.” His voice dipped low, making a flirtatious hook that sought to catch her.
She lowered her own to match it. “I will bet you I can guess the thing you hide inside your clothes. In your innermost pocket.”
His eyes sparked interest. “And if you win the bet, what must I give you?”
“Why, the thing you hold closest to your heart. The thing that hangs over it on a chain. I am to be your wife, after all.”
He searched her face, and she kept it mild as milk. “And if you lose? What do I get?”
“A willing wife, of course.” She held his gaze. “Who wants only to please you.”
He set down his glass with a thump. “Done.”
The girl leaned back and spoke as if to herself. “What does a man like you hide under his clothes? Something forgettable, to be sure. A thing no one would bother to seek.”
His hand tightened around his wineglass as she went on. “You are the cold and the quiet, you told me once. The thing that comes after the end: after Death. I think you wish to be more than that. I think you want to be the one who does the impossible. The one who kills Death.”
He struck her across the mouth, his breath gone thin and fast.
She stopped a drop of blood with her tongue. “A whistle,” she said, her voice even. “In your innermost pocket you carry a child’s whistle.”
With shaking hands, Death’s son reached below his jacket and pulled out a tarnished tin whistle.
Once in a century, the cat had told her, exhausted by his labors, Death sleeps. Through the long night of his slumber, the sick sit up and smile. Knives steer clear of hearts, the drowning breathe in the waves. No one dies while Death lies sleeping, but he himself is vulnerable—only then can he be killed. He’s protected in his sleep by a trio of hounds, but there’s one thing that can draw them away: the music of his son’s tin whistle.
“What do you want from me?” Her betrothed’s voice was strangled.
“Only what you promised. The thing that hangs over your heart.”
He undid his shirt. Burning against his skin was the gold of a sharp-cut key, strung on a chain. He lifted it over his head and handed it to her. He did not follow her as she left the room, the cat following close behind.
It carried the whistle in its mouth. “It’s not the time for Death to die,” it told the queen’s daughter. “He needs a better heir first.”
Back in her room, the girl hastened to slide the key into the lock, but the cat moved between her and the keyhole. It dropped the whistle from its mouth and sank back onto its haunches, lifting two paws to undo the fur of its chest. The fur fell away like a cloak, rev
ealing beneath it a woman with green skin and hair black as branches.
“Do you know who I am?”
The girl looked at the woman, her hair and skin the very color of her own, but didn’t dare guess.
The woman who had been the cat took the girl’s hand in her own. “The queen was your mother, and I am, too. Death was too cruel in taking away all her children. I comforted her as best I could and gave her another daughter. When he took her from you in the birthing, I swore I would protect you. Death is my brother, and he comes for the lives of all women and men. But I, too, am Death: I carry away the lives of beasts, of insects, of plants and trees. I helped your mother make you, and I couldn’t let my worthless nephew have you.”
She kissed the girl’s temple, on the opposite side from where Death had laid his lips. The hair above her kiss silvered over, and again the girl’s vision changed. This time, all manner of beautiful sights were revealed to her: the hazy rime of spectral plants growing in the cracks of the walls, the delicate souls of dead flowers. A ghostly bird twittered in the corner; she could see the workings of its complicated heart.
Her other mother watched as she fit the key to the secret keyhole. Behind it was a landing, and another hidden stair. It went up, and it went down. She knew it would lead her, if she liked, back to the living forest. She could return to the palace, slip back into a life she knew.
But a wind blew up from below, from a place deeper even than Death’s kingdom. It smelled of the dust of roads she wanted to walk and mysteries she’d like to consider. It smelled like no place she’d ever seen or imagined.
She set her course downward, leaving Death and his kingdom behind.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MELISSA ALBERT is the New York Times bestselling author of The Hazel Wood and The Night Country. She was the founding editor of the Barnes & Noble Teen Blog and has written for publications including McSweeney’s, Time Out Chicago, and MTV. Melissa lives in Brooklyn with her family. You can sign up for email updates here.
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