Events elsewhere were not as sanguine. A developer bought a large tract of land that included their swamp. It was theirs in proximity and spirit, not in the eyes of geographic law. The company planned to drain the swamp, cut down the trees, and build a number of identical houses there.
Cedric exploded. He trekked to all the residents for miles around and so impressed them with the need to preserve the wetlands that they formed a citizen's committee to oppose the development. They wrote letters to newspapers and the county authorities; when these failed to halt the project, they set about constructing deadfalls for bulldozers. They filed suit in court to stop it. When the company lawyer tried to suggest the swamp was nothing more than a murky waste that posed a public health threat as a breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitoes, Cedric argued persuasively that those mosquitoes carried no diseases in this region, being the wrong species for that, served as food for pretty birds, and wouldn't even bite people who were sensibly protected by repellent or a spell. Then he spoke of the other aspects of the wetlands—the fish and amphibians, the foxes and deer, the trees that could grow nowhere else, the special interactive magic these living things had developed to get along. "There is no bad water coming from this region," he concluded, and he had documentation to prove it: studies the college had made. "No erosion, no bad flooding. The wetlands keep the water pure and contained, so that we who live near it can live at peace with nature. Too little of this kind of natural paradise remains; how can we pave it over with another foul city!" And such was the nature of his eloquence that the spectators in the courtrooms applauded. Few had really cared about the wetlands before; now they all did.
But man's law remained on the side of the developer, and the judge, with open regret, ruled in favor of the company. The bulldozers would be allowed to forage in the swamp.
"I'm so sorry," Niobe told him, but Cedric only shrugged. "They will be stopped," he said grimly. But he didn't say how.
One foggy morning Cedric kissed her with special tenderness and lifted Junior out of his crib. "I'm taking him for a walk down to the oak," he said.
She was pleased—but somehow alarmed too. There seemed to be an edge to his final words: "We'll be there." Yet they were innocent words, and the water oak was the safest kind of place for the baby; the hamadryad was virtually a babysitter now. In fact, the nymph had begun to teach the baby some wild magic—and if there was one thing rarer than the company of a dryad, it was the sharing of the magic of a dryad. Junior, too young to walk or talk, nevertheless did seem to understand and almost seemed to be able to do a spell. So why should there be any concern? Niobe knew she was being foolish. There was, she reminded herself firmly, absolutely no threat to Junior.
She labored at the loom, forming a fine picture of that very tree, and as her hands moved, largely of their own volition, she daydreamed. The image of the tree fogged out and was replaced by that of the saturnine face. "Today I come for you!" it said, grinning evilly. "My emissary is on its way and cannot be stopped. You are doomed, mistress of the skein!"
Niobe screamed. The image vanished, and there was only the forming tapestry. She was shuddering with reaction. This was the vision other lovemaking rapture, but it was quite foreign to love. Cedric had banished it by his music, but now it was terrorizing her directly! What did it mean?
Then she heard a shot. She jumped. That was the sound of a gun—and it was from the direction of the swamp— and Cedric was there with Junior. He had no gun!
Horribly alarmed, she rushed outside and ran headlong down the winding path to the oak. As she approached, she heard a thin screaming from the tree. It was the dryad, hanging by a branch, shrieking with all her frail strength. Below her was the carrier, overturned.
"Junior!" Niobe cried, her horror magnifying. She scrambled to the tree and took hold of the carrier.
Junior was in it, his body smudged with dirt, and now he bawled lustily. But he seemed to be unhurt. He had overturned and that had alarmed him; that was all.
She glanced up at the dryad. No, of course she wouldn't have tried to hurt the baby! In fact the nymph was still screaming, one little hand pointing away from the tree, to the dark lower side where the gloom of the swamp was strong.
Niobe looked in that direction—and saw Cedric's body sprawled in the bushes. Suddenly her premonition of dread had a sharp new focus. Not her baby—her husband!
She ran to him. He was face down, and blood welled from the wound in his belly. He had been shot! He was unconscious, but his heart still beat.
She looked up—and the dryad was there, for the moment away from her tree. "What—who—?" Niobe asked, forgetting that dryads do not talk.
The nymph took a stick and held it like a rifle, then shook it to suggest its firing. But Niobe already knew he had been shot. "Have you any magic—for his wound?" she demanded.
The dryad ran back to her tree, ran up it as a squirrel might, and disappeared into the foliage. She returned in a moment with a small branch.
Niobe took this and touched it to the wound. The flow of blood abated. The nymph's magic was helping! "Thank you," Niobe said.
But how was she to get Cedric back to the cabin—and what was she to do with him there? He weighed far more than she and would be almost impossible to drag, and the movement could kill him. And there was the baby! The dryad pointed to the tree. "You'll help?" Niobe asked. "He'll be safe, there, for a while?"
The nymph nodded yes. So Niobe struggled to drag Cedric the short distance to the tree and there she propped him against its healing trunk. "I'll bring help!" she told the dryad as she picked Junior up and hurried away.
Some hours later, that phase of the nightmare was done. Cedric was in the distant hospital, receiving the best care, and his family and hers had been notified. Both were quick to respond. But that was as far as the good news extended. Cedric was on the critical list and sinking. The bullet had damaged his spinal nerve, paralyzing him, and it had evidently carried an unidentified infection that was now spreading through his weakened system. "We can keep him alive for perhaps a week," the doctor said grimly. "He has a fine constitution; otherwise he would be dead already. Even if we could save him, he would be crippled below the waist and in constant pain, and there is a chance of brain damage. It would, I regret to say, be kinder to let him die."
"No!" Niobe cried. "I love him!"
"We all love him," the doctor said. "He was doing a great thing for the land. But we cannot save him."
"But we may be able to avenge him," the wetlands lawyer said. "Obviously the developer arranged to have him assassinated so he could no longer rally the people against the building project."
"But they had already won!" Niobe protested. "Why should they do this now?"
"They must have been afraid he was planning something new."
Niobe remembered Cedric's confidence that the developer would be stopped. Indeed, he must have been planning something! But that was no comfort to her now; she wanted him alive and whole.
"How can I save him?" she asked, clinging to that hope.
The doctor and the lawyer looked at each other. "You must appeal to a higher court," the lawyer said.
"What court is that?"
"The Incarnation of Death," the doctor said. "If Thanatos will agree to spare him, he will live."
She was ready to grasp at any straw. "Then I will appeal to Death! Where can I find him?"
Both men spread their hands. They did not know. "We do not go to Death," the doctor said. "Death comes to us, at the moment of his choosing, not ours."
Niobe took Junior and traveled hastily to the college. There she sought the old Prof. "How can I find Death?" she pleaded.
The Prof gazed at her unhappily. "Lovely woman, you do not want to do this."
"Don't tell me that!" she blazed at him. "I love him!"
He did not misunderstand. It was Cedric she loved, not Death. "And do you also love your baby?"
She froze. "You mean—I must choose between
them?"
"In a manner. You, perhaps, might reach Thanatos— but your baby is beneath the age of discretion. He would die. If you insist on making this terrible journey, you must in fairness leave him behind."
She looked at Junior, horrified. "But—I can recover him, after—?"
"If you are successful," he said. "But, Mrs. Kaftan, you have no guarantee of success. This is no ordinary person you seek; he is a supernatural entity. You may never return from such a journey."
"Suppose—I place my baby with a good family?" she asked with difficulty. "So that if I don't—don't return— he will be well cared for?"
"That would be an expedient course," he agreed. "Of course you would have to take a lactation-abatement spell, and arrange to have him fed from a bottle while—"
"Then you will tell me how to reach Death?"
"Then I will do that," he agreed reluctantly. "I did, after all, make you a promise to help you when you asked."
She drove her carriage hastily to the farm of Cedric's cousin, Pacian. Pacian himself was twelve years old, six years younger than Cedric, but his parents were kindly folk with a strong sense of family loyalty. Yes, they would board Junior; he was, after all, their kin, a Kaftan. Pacian, a pleasant-faced lad who reminded her eerily of Cedric, welcomed Junior as a little brother.
Then, with confused emotion and more than a tear or two, she returned to the college, where the Prof would show her the way to Death.
There was a small lake beside the college, and they had taken an old, unseaworthy sailboat and spruced it up for the event. Its leaks had been temporarily caulked, and its sail was lashed in position. This craft could proceed only one way: directly before the wind. But physical direction didn't matter; spiritual impulse was what counted.
The small deck was piled with kerosene-soaked brush. A single spark would render the boat into a bonfire in an instant. The sail was charcoal black and painted with a picture of a bleached skull and crossbones: not the symbol of piracy, in this case, but that of Death. Indeed, this was a deathboat.
Niobe stepped onto the pier. She wore her most elegant black evening gown, with black gloves and slippers, and her flowing honey hair was bound by a black ribbon. There was a murmur of awe from the assembled college students, male and female,as she appeared, and she knew that she had never been more beautiful. The anti-lac spell had halted her production of mother's milk, but her breasts remained quite well developed.
The Prof stood at the end of the pier by the boat. He looked old and hunched, and his face was as pale as bone. "Ah, lovely woman, it is a horror you face!" he murmured. "Are you quite, quite sure—?"
"If Cedric dies, what life is there for me?" she asked rhetorically. She braced herself against his arm and stepped onto the boat. It wobbled in the water, and she hastily sat down.
"Perhaps we shall meet again," the Prof said.
"Of course we shall," she said and blew him a kiss. She knew he had done his best and she trusted his magic. But her expression of confidence papered over a monstrous dread within her, akin to that of the fourth face of the water oak tree. She felt like a deer stepping out before the rifle of the hunter. It was in this sense a season for the shooting of deer, and the huntsman was Death himself.
"Remember," the Prof cautioned her, "you can jump off, and a swimmer will rescue you." He gestured to three husky young men in swimsuits standing alertly at the shore.
"And forfeit my love?" she asked disdainfully. "I shall not jump."
"Then God be with you," he said, and it was no casual expression. He closed his hands together in an attitude of prayer and lifted them toward the cloudy sky.
Where was God when Cedric was shot? she wondered.
But she smiled. "Cast off, please."
The Prof bent down and lifted the rope from its mooring. The breeze caught the sail and the craft moved out into the lake. Left to its own devices, it would in due course bump into the far shore—but she had a different plan for it.
She turned and waved to the folk on the shore behind.
Then she reached into her purse, brought out a big wooden match, and struck it against the hard surface of the deck. It burst into life.
For a moment she held the little flame before her. Then she clamped her lower lip between her teeth, closed her eyes, and flung the match forward into the brush. If it did not ignite this tinder, would she have the courage to try it again?
But it caught, and in a moment there was the crackle of spreading fire. She opened her eyes, and saw the flame and smoke pouring up. The fire did not spread instantly; it took several seconds to infuse the full pile. Then it intensified, and the sudden heat of it smote her body. The sail caught, and became a bright column.
Now was the time to jump, before fire surrounded her. She was tempted. Then she thought of Cedric, lying critically ill on the hospital bed, and her resolve solidified. She stood, held her breath, and walked directly into the conflagration.
Cedric! Cedric! she thought as the flame engulfed her. I love you!
Her dress caught fire, and her hair shriveled, but she took one more step, bracing herself against the pain she knew was coming.
It came indeed. All her world became fire. She inhaled, and the fire was inside her, searing her lungs and heart. The agony was exquisite, but she endured it, refusing to collapse or even to scream. Death, I am coming for you!
The boat was formed of flame, now. The caulking popped out and water spurted in, drenching her feet. But the flame danced above it, and the smoke roiled about, as if fighting the water for this living prize. Niobe stood amidst it, her flesh burning, waiting for Death.
A figure came. It was a great stallion, galloping across the surface of the water, bearing a cloaked and hooded man. The horse came to the boat and stopped, standing on the lake. The man dismounted and brought forth a scythe. He scythed the flames as he would a field of tall grass, and the flames were cut off at their bases, their tops falling to one side. A path was cleared through the conflagration, leading to Niobe. Death had arrived.
Thanatos paused beside her and extended his skeletal hand. Niobe took it in her own, feeling the cold bones of his fingers.
Abruptly the pain of the fire abated. Thanatos led her along the scythed path to the pale horse and boosted her up into the saddle, then mounted behind her. The horse leaped into the remaining column of smoke—and through it, up into the sky.
Soon the stallion was galloping through the clouds above, his hooves sending little divots of fog flying back. Then they emerged to a scene above, where the grass was green and the sun shone warmly. Ahead was a mansion. They came to it, dismounted, and Thanatos guided her inside.
A motherly maid hurried up. "You brought a mortal!" she exclaimed with surprise and perhaps indignation. "See to her restoration," Thanatos ordered gruffly.
"She is not one of mine."
The pain returned when Niobe lost contact with Thanatos, but the maid hastened to bring salve. Niobe's skin was charred black, but where the salve touched, the normal flesh was instantly restored. The maid applied it to Niobe's entire body and made her inhale its fumes, and then no pain remained. Niobe stood naked and whole.
"My dear, you are beautiful!" the maid exclaimed, spraying something on the frizzled hair. The hair grew rapidly until it too had been restored to its former golden splendor. "Why should a creature like you try to suicide?"
"I love him," Niobe repeated.
"Ah, love," the maid breathed, understanding. She brought a bathrobe and new slippers. It seemed that the salve could not heal Niobe's incinerated clothing. "Thanatos awaits you," she said and showed Niobe to a sitting room.
Death—Thanatos—did indeed await her. He was like a stern father in his manner, despite his skull-face and skeletal hands. "You have done a very brave and foolish thing, young woman," he informed her disapprovingly. "You were not on my list. I had to make an emergency call for you."
"It—it was the only way to get your attention," she said, taking the s
eat indicated. "Thank you for coming." And she smiled.
The skull itself seemed to heighten its color, showing that Death himself was not immune to beauty. "It had to be done," he said gruffly. "When an unscheduled death occurs, the threads of Fate tangle."
That was what the Prof had told her. There was a certain order in the universe, and the Incarnations saw to its preservation. "I—where am I? In Heaven?"
Thanatos made a derisive snort, despite having no flesh in his nose. "Purgatory," he said. "The place of indecision—and of decision. All the Incarnations are here."
"Oh. I—haven't been beyond life before." She was somewhat intimidated by all this.
"And what brought you, ravishing mortal maiden?"
"Oh, I am no maiden! I—my husband Cedric—I have come to beg for his life. I love him!"
"Without doubt," Thanatos agreed. He snapped his bone-fingers, and a servant hurried in with a file box. Thanatos opened the box and riffled through the cards. "Cedric Kaftan, age eighteen, to go to Heaven five days hence," he remarked. "A good man, not requiring my personal attention." His square eye-sockets seemed to squint at the card. "A very good man! He loves you well indeed."
"Yes. I must save him. You must—"
Thanatos gazed at her through the midnight frames of his eyes, and suddenly she felt a chill not of death. It had not occurred to her before that the Incarnation might require a price for the favor she asked—and what did she have to offer?
Then she thought again of Cedric, lying in the hospital, and knew that there was no price she would not pay to have him whole again.
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