“I do not make such judgments, child. I only take what is offered me, in the dark, in the forest.”

September crumpled to the ground. She stared at the winter branches of her hand. A great orange tuft of her hair flew off—she was nearly bald now, only a few wisps of curls clinging to her head. She sniffed and cried—or tried to cry, but her eyes were dry as old seeds, and she could not.

“Death, I don’t know what to do.”

Death climbed up into her lap, sitting primly on her knee, which had already begun to darken and wither.

“It’s very brave of you to admit that. Most knightly folk I happen by bluster and force me to play chess with them. I don’t even like chess! For strategy Wrackglummer and even Go are much superior. And it’s the wrong metaphor entirely. Death is not a checkmate … it is more like a carnival trick. You cannot win, no matter how you move your Queen.”

“I’ve only ever played chess with my mother. I wouldn’t feel right, playing with you.”

“I cheat, anyway. When their backs are turned, I move the pieces.”

Slowly, a hole opened up in September’s cheek, just a tiny one. She rubbed at it absently, and it widened. She felt it widening, stretching, and was so terribly afraid. She trembled, and her toes felt awfully cold in the mushroomy mud. Beneath her skin, twigs and leaves had begun to show. Death frowned.

“September, if you do not pay attention, you will never get out of this wood! You ar

e closer than you think, human girl. I guard the casket.” Death’s tiny eyes wrinkled kindly. “All caskets are within my power. Of course they are.”

September yawned. She didn’t mean to. She couldn’t help it. A twig in her cheek popped, turning to dust.

“Are you sleepy? That’s to be expected. In Autumn, trees sleep like bears. The whole world pulls on its nightclothes and snuggles in to sleep through all of winter. Except for me. I never sleep.”

Death climbed up onto her knee, looking up at her with hard acorny eyes. September tried very hard to listen to her Death, instead of the sound of her slowly opening cheek. “I have terrible nightmares, you know,” Death said confidentially. “Every night, when I come home from a long day’s dying, I take off my skin and lay it nicely on my armoire. I take off my bones and hang them up on the hat stand. I set my scythe to washing on the old stove. I eat a nice supper of mouse-and-myrrh soup. Some nights, I drink off a nice red wine. White does not agree with me. I lay myself down on a bed of lilies, and still, I cannot sleep.”

September did not want to know. The moon moved silently overhead, making gape-faces at them.

“I cannot sleep because I have nightmares. I dream all the things the dead wish they had done differently. It is dreadful! Do all creatures dream so?”

“I don’t think so … I dream sometimes that my father has come home, or that I have done well on my math exams, or that my mother’s hair is all made of candy canes and we live on a river of cocoa on a marshmallow island. My mother sings me to sleep, and only once in a while do I dream of awful things.”

“Perhaps it is because I have no one to sing me to sleep. I am so tired. All the world earns its sleep but me.”

September felt sure that she was meant to do something. That, like Latitude and Longitude, the Worsted Wood was a kind of puzzle, and if she only knew how the pieces were shaped, she could manage the whole thing handily. Lost in thought and terror at her own nightmares, September’s Death curled, small and feral, on her knee, her cloak of barkish hair wrapping her like a blanket. With her good hand—a relative thing, really, since it was blackened and rough as a hawthorn branch already, and showing sap under the fingernails, September gathered up her Death and laid it in the crook of her arm. She did not quite know what to do. September had never had a brother or a sister to rock to sleep. She could only remember how her mother had sung to her. She felt as though she were in a dream. But she brushed Death’s hair gently from her face and sang from memory, softly, hoarsely, for her throat had gone rough and dry:

Go to sleep, little skylark,

Fly up to the moon

In a biplane of paper and ink.

Your wings creak and croon,

borne aloft by balloons,

And your engine is singing for you.

Go to sleep, little skylark, do.

Go to sleep, little skylark,

Fly up past the stars

In a biplane of sunshine and ice,

Past comets and cars, past Neptune and Mars

Still your engine is singing for you.

Tags: Catherynne M. Valente Fairyland Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net