He reached the foot of the stairs.
He raised the hourglass and watched the draining of Time.
And then he paused. There was something he had to know. Bill Door had been curious about things, and he could remember everything about being Bill Door. He could look at emotions laid out like trapped butterflies, pinned on cork, under glass.
Bill Door was dead, or at least had ceased his brief existence. But—what was it?—someone’s actual life was only the core of their real existence? Bill Door had gone, but he had left echoes. The memory of Bill Door was owed something.
Death had always wondered why people put flowers on graves. It made no sense to him. The dead had gone beyond the scent of roses, after all. But now…it wasn’t that he felt he understood, but a
t least he felt that there was something there capable of understanding.
In the curtained blackness of Miss Flitworth’s parlor a darker shape moved through the darkness, heading toward the three chests on the dresser.
Death opened one of the smaller ones. It was full of gold coins. They had an untouched look about them. He tried the other small chest. It was also full of gold.
He’d expected something more from Miss Flitworth, although probably not even Bill Door would have known what.
He tried the large chest.
There was a layer of tissue paper. Under the paper, some white silky thing, some sort of a veil, now yellowed and brittle with age. He gave it an uncomprehending stare and laid it aside. There were some white shoes. Quite impractical for farm wear, he felt. No wonder they’d been packed away.
There was more paper; a bundle of letters tied together. He put them on top of the veil. There was never anything to be gained from observing what humans said to one another—language was just there to hide their thoughts.
And then there was, right at the bottom, a smaller box. He pulled it out and turned it over and over in his hands. Then he unclicked the little latch and lifted the lid.
Clockwork whirred.
The tune wasn’t particularly good. Death had heard all the music that had ever been written, and almost all of it had been better than this tune. It had a plinkety plonkety quality, a tinny little one-two-three rhythm.
In the musical box, over the busily spinning gears, two wooden dancers jerked around in a parody of a waltz.
Death watched them until the clockwork ran down. Then he read the inscription.
It had been a present.
Beside him, the lifetimer poured its grains into the bottom bulb. He ignored it.
When the clockwork ran down, he wound it up again. Two figures, spinning through time. And when the music stopped, all you needed was to turn the key.
When it ran down again, he sat in the silence and the dark, and reached a decision.
There were only seconds left. Seconds had meant a lot to Bill Door, because he’d had a limited supply. They meant nothing at all to Death, who’d never had any.
He left the sleeping house, mounted up, and rode away.
The journey took an instant that would have taken mere light three hundred million years, but Death travels inside that space where Time has no meaning. Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.
There was company on the ride—galaxies, stars, ribbons of shining matter, streaming and eventually spiraling toward the distant goal.
Death on his pale horse moved down the darkness like a bubble on a river.
And every river flows somewhere.
And then, below, a plain. Distance was as meaningless here as time, but there was a sense of hugeness. The plain could have been a mile away, or a million miles; it was marked by long valleys or rills which flowed away to either side as he got closer.
And landed.
He dismounted, and stood in the silence. Then he went down on one knee.