PART ONE
She was the seventh daughter of a seventh son of many generations of sevenths.
The first time I met her I had no idea about her lineage. I was merely attending to my list, an old woman by the name of Blyth. Usually, I wouldn’t remember such a small detail like a name, most times I don’t even remember a face, but, as much of my time with her was, this was unusual. Blyth hadn’t quite died yet but there she was, staring me down. She was close to death but her heart was still beating, her body full of warm blood, and her skin still sweating through the fever.
Most people don’t see me until after their heart stops, some don’t see me until their bodies are cold, and there are even those who don’t see my black cloak until their body is buried underground. No human is supposed to see me before their time. Little did I know that Blyth was a seventh of a seventh of endless sevenths -and it wasn’t until I noticed another pair of eyes on me that I pieced it together. A little girl with pigtails and a pastel dress. She didn’t have a fever. She wasn’t on my list. But here she was, looking from my scythe to her grandmother and back again. I didn’t really pay her much mind -and then Blyth passed and whatever thought had been forming in my mind shifted back to her. She didn’t hesitate to leave her body and meet me.
“So you’re the reaper I’ve heard so much about, I suppose it’s time we finally met.”
At the time, I’d only met a few sevenths. They were few and far between -well except for in this family. But none had senses as strong as this woman or spoke so fiercely in the face of Death.
“I suppose the time is right. Would you like a ferry ride?”
I met her again six months later when her uncle fell off his horse. He didn’t see me for hours after his death. This time, her hair was down and she was smiling at me. Again, I didn’t pay her much mind. Until she spoke to me.
“I suppose it’s time for a ferry ride?”
“I suppose it is.”
That was the first time we spoke.
And again we met, this time years later. It was her 13th nameday. I arrived just as she was walking out of the house. No pastels, or pigtails anymore. She was dressed in all black and wore an amulet in the shape of a raven around her neck. She had become a Sorcerer’s apprentice. And again, she smiled at me. This time I looked closer, though not necessarily at her. I am not in charge of punishments for the wicked, nor do I care about the sins of humans, but it was the third time a mysterious death had surrounded her and I was beginning to wonder if the sevenths of this family were cursed. To be followed by death is not an easy life, and a curse like this is not often given without a reason. Nonetheless, I took her oldest sister with me that day. On the way out I saw her leaning against the outside of the house.
“I hope the waters are smooth today.”
“They always are.”
“Just in case.”
I hadn’t been prepared for that, but I left without further conversation.
Over the following years, I saw her many times -by the sides of patients, family, friends, and strangers. She was like a dark angel following the scent of Death. Each moment with her was different, she always said something equally as jarring -and each conversation she stretched out longer.
And then, finally, I noticed. She wasn’t a child anymore, nor an apprentice -and without a family, she couldn’t even really be called a daughter or a niece and be honest. Over the years I’d learned about her practice and her patience. I’d seen her cool personality crumble -that was the day I took two more sisters and a dear friend. She was 25, and one of the strongest Sorcerers I’d ever heard of.
Thinking back, I never did witness her magic.
One day I dropped by, I couldn’t tell you why -I had many other names on my list but something about seeing her just seemed good to me. She was on her way out, as she often was, so I walked with her to the market, and then the train station, and I even joined her on the boat. I came and went as needed to keep up with my list, but I did come back to her. She was on that boat for three months, and when she finally arrived at her destination she didn’t speak the language or wear the right clothes. But she learned, and she helped, and every time I came and went I’d see her learning something new or helping as best she could.
The year I spent watching her travel is still one of my fondest memories. At some point, I’d stopped just ‘watching’ her travel and began traveling alongside her. And years later we took a boat back to a train that led to her town. My list kept hold of me though, and I was often gone.
Luckily she was still cursed.
A terrible thing to think, I know. But it meant I could see her often. She was 29 when it happened. The last of her sisters was dying, and I had to take her. The woman I loved was followed by death, and I couldn’t help but to think that maybe I was her curse. I had cursed her with my presence, poisoned the air around her just by existing.
I made the mistake of telling her so. I had never seen her so angry. She told me I was wrong, but I knew the truth. So I vowed I would never let Death see her face again.
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I’d known Death intimately, but he made a promise I knew he wouldn’t keep. His list was his master, his mother, and his mission. One day, my name will show up and he will have to claim me.
Or that’s what I’d thought.
But I’m not one to lose, so I set out for the other continent once again. I re-visited all the towns I’d come to know so well during our years traveling, this time calling in favors from magicians, sorcerers, doctors, shamans, and many more practitioners. I found my youth in a fountain, in a jungle, on a third continent. I figured if he thought he could leave me, I’d show him he’s not allowed back. If he wants to finish his list he can come for me in a supernatural way. I’m not some fool who dies of old age. Little did I know the man I’d loved had even more convictions than I‘d thought.
Years passed.
Then decades.
And now, it’s been centuries.
I haven’t seen death firsthand since the day my last sister passed. She was my sixth sister, only a year older. She was taken during childbirth. My nephew survived and was my sister's seventh and final son. As the years passed I watched him grow -and I watched his family grow too. He had six sons to his name. When his wife fell pregnant again, I cried for the life his seventh son would be forced to lead -and then I remembered a memory from a medicine man who had mentored me in my youth. I brewed a special tea to give my nephew’s wife, infused with my heart and soul. I don’t know if it was my magic, or their fate, but his seventh child was his first daughter, and his wife never birthed another son.
Now I watch my nephew’s great-great-great-grandchildren play in the snow, all seven little boys from one family, and all seven little girls from another. Both lines are the first full seven since my nephew. My family calls me the Morrigan, they say death and magic follow my path. They fear me but I know I cannot leave my family -not even for a moment, because if I do then Death may come.
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He may not show his face, but he will always be a slave to his list.
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PART TWO
“Gantha! Gantha!” My youngest many greats niece, a seventh daughter herself, called me from my book.
“Yes, yes, what can I do for you now?”
“Gantha, whose that man you’ve been talking to?”
…
“I’m sorry, what?”
Three men. I spoke to three men at the park today. Two when we walked into the park, returning friendly hello’s, and one man off and on while I read my book. He had wanted to know where I got my clothes, and how I could show him the store on my phone, he’d even asked what exactly my phone was -and how it worked. He was from 1827. Long dead, just as the two men earlier.
Puzzles have never been one of my favorite hobbies, but it didn’t take long for my mind to come up with this solution.
That cheating bitc-
“That man, the one who just walked away. He looked weird!”
“Shh, Maura, we don’t talk about other people that way,” I folded the corner down and put my book aside, “Besides, when he came from it’s perfectly normal to wear a wig.”
Maura snapped straight, her face flushing as she processed the seriousness of my tone, “Of course not, I’m sure he fits right in at home!”
“Well, at least there’s that.” I let out a huff and then glanced over at the aged specter hovering to our left. Over the years I’ve learned a well-timed laugh distracts even the sharpest adversaries -and luckily this one was four feet tall and still learning multiplication tables. So I softened my expression, and let out a soft laugh. Standing up, I shooed her back towards her sisters and cousins, “Now, off with you! Go fit into your own home! We’re leaving in 15!”
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Fourteen children under fourteen.
One girl with the sight.
The next eighty years I know,
they’ll be a blight.
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“I can feel it in my bones, Nelly,” I traced my fingertips over the stone carvings, “The future is going to be a hassle -and I know your granddaughter is gonna give me hell.”
“Don’t they always.”
A whisper in the wind, Nelly listens so lightly.
“You know the last one had an extra, and she never even said!”
“Sounds like a you-problem.”
“Now that’s just rude, you should at least feel bad for your baby sister.”
“…”
Even in Nelly’s silence, I knew she was there. And in her silence, I heard her call me out for being centuries old.
“Next time I come I’m planting a corpse flower by your grave,” grumbling, I used her tombstone as support. A whisper myself, I could feel my heart about to break again, “Sleep tight, sister.”
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Another ferry ride delayed.
I watched her as she sat, leaning into her sister’s grave, and spoke to a spirit only she could hear. I didn’t come here on purpose, truly. My list brought me. After all these years, I still can only see her in these moments -when her life and another’s death intersect. She hasn’t aged a day. Still the light-haired, black-clad enigma I’ve known for centuries.
I re-read the name on my list.
“Clyde.”
I haven’t been to see him yet. He’s thirty feet away from her and he’s already passed. I can see his spirit forming outside his body, soon it will return to its body without a guide and she will be able to hear him stir. He will go about his life, thinking he is alive until I come to take him. If she passes him on her way out, she won’t know the difference. He’ll look alive and be followed by a warm breeze; and from my experience, he’ll probably smell like summer rain. But make no mistake, this man is dead.
It hasn’t been long since I saw her last, death still clings to her like a scarf pushed against her in the wind. Last week a child tripped behind her, so young and full of life -until suddenly he wasn’t. She stayed with him as long as she could, trying everything she knew to bring him back. Nothing worked. She stayed until the world showed her a living boy opening his eyes, not knowing that he’d died. He had thanked her, and he and his mother got into the ambulance where I sat, waiting. 78 seconds later that ambulance spun out on a patch of ice. The only casualty was the boy.
I am provided my list. I do as the world tree commands. It gives me names, and dates, and general times and causes. But the world tree does not care about a few spare minutes here and there, or a car accident instead of an aneurysm. So long as the same life is taken and no other deaths are changed, my list is satisfied. A single life is inconsequential to the way of things -or so it seems.
And she’s stood to leave. Good, let her go. I am a monster she doesn’t need to see -the curse she doesn’t need to be reminded of.
My dear Morganthe, may we never meet.
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PART THREE
Here we are again. So close yet so far away. She’s surrounded by her family. I wonder what she tells them? Who do they think she is? Do they know the truth? Do they fear her? Or do they feel safe in her presence, knowing they’ll live to see another moment? All I want is to ask.
Maybe I’ll keep the next soul for a bit and investigate.
Or not. As I reviewed my list, I felt my desire wane. I wonder what would happen if I just didn’t take her. There’s no right time to die, according to Morganthe, but something tells me she doesn’t want me to take Olivia. She’s 102, though, so I’d say this is a perfect time. I have actually met Olivia before.
It was when I took her grandfather. Morganthe’s nephew. She couldn’t see me, of course, but I could feel her anger at me. She knew I was there, even if she couldn’t make out my dark robes and boney features. People with rage like that -well, their fires don’t die with them.
They all say their goodbyes to Olivia, all fourteen grandchildren, all six (known) daughters, and one great-aunt.
Morganthe, tears streaming down her face, kissed her niece’s forehead -and even at a distance, I knew what she was saying. She’s said it to every lost soul she’s met, from every patient she watched me take away, to every sister I eased onto the ferry, and every child she watched come back to life only to die 78 seconds later.
“Do not fear Death, he will show you a world that we can only imagine. Sleep tight, and may the waters be calm on the river Styx.”
Two hundred years later and she still says it. She still calls my name. She still brings peace before the darkness takes them. And, above all else, she stills tells them I cross the river Styx.
For reference, I do not cross the river Styx. Please do not spread that.
Nonetheless, I am reminded of when she first made the joke, centuries ago during an unusually warm spring evening as we sat looking over the most recent village we were visiting. Watching fireflies dance on the brink of twilight. It was a peaceful night perfect for two who were on the cusp of love.
“Well, if you don’t actually cross a river why are you called the ferryman? Huh? Explain that.”
“It’s metaphorical, I ferry them from this life to the next.”
“Ugh, you always say that. But what does it mean.”
“The transition is hard for some, I am there for guidance when the fear sets in.”
She doesn’t understand, I can see it on her face. She’ll never understand since she’s never truly feared death. I’m partially convinced she’s never feared anything.
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I left her there, that lying, cheating, old hag. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Knowing death is coming is a heartbreak all its own, and death is sure to make itself known. He’s never been particularly subtle.
I loved Olivia with my heart and soul and I like to think she felt the same. And now, I had a seventh daughter of a seventh to deal with. She must have known. Her grandmother must have told her what I did. There is never a right time to die, but she’s lucky I didn’t find out before she was old and invalid.
Nonetheless, she was the last link to my old-world family. With her, the knowledge of our bloodline died. We’ve crossed oceans, traversed tundras, discovered worlds, and now we occupy a city block -no magic within four thousand miles. Until now.
Olivia had outlived all her siblings, she had succeeded where they had all failed. She passed of old age, nothing more, nothing less. And if Death could say it, I know he’d make sure to remind me, “She died because of me -and the list. This curse takes all from you, I’m sorry.”
I wonder if he still thinks that way. Or has he forgotten me by now? It’s been centuries since I’ve seen death firsthand but that could be coincidence. I spent my natural life exploring a cure for death -and clearly found it. Maybe they’ve stopped putting me on their lists. Maybe the world tree decided I no longer belong with the naturally living, so I no longer get to see their natural deaths.
Or maybe he remembers. God, do I hope he remembers me. Even if it means I never see him, even if it means I live forever, I just hope with all my heart that he hasn’t forgotten me. A love like ours shouldn’t die like that.
But now that I’ve left Olivia’s side, I’m sure that he will come quickly. He never was one for dragging out death. The most it’s ever taken is 78 seconds.