Sisters on the Case

Sister Death by Sue Henry

I am grown old now and weary, and speak more often with Death, though we have yet to strike a bargain, she and I. Still, she comes at times to sit on the low, three-legged stool by my small fire and croons to herself under her breath.

Then we may trade memories for a space, before she goes out again, for, given a cup of herb tea, she is willing to share rambling reminiscences, half forgotten. And I am comforted, if a bit nostalgic, at recalling past times and company.

She is well acquainted with Fate, for they are cousins. Time and again I see them together, like shadows in their long, gray dresses, the lace edges of their windblown petticoats repeating the color and rhythm of the ivory foam on the leaden sea, as they move slowly along above the cliffs of the cove to watch the tide come in over the jagged reef beyond the harbor.

Quiet and unassuming is Death, and has a refined and exquisite sense of timing and taste. She patiently does not initiate, but responds in serenity and forbearance to inevitabilities. She has a liking for old familiar things-songs, tales, her few living acquaintances- especially those of us on whom she must soon lay her cool hand.

I think she is reluctant to treat with me because she has grown fond of my hearth and companionship. Few enough there are willing to keep company with Death, and she is lonely. Unseeing, most villagers pass her on the road, for she is invisible to the incredulous. They go by with a small shudder, or perhaps a gasp of self-conscious laughter like a sob. She turns her head to watch them, a stoic patience in her clear gray eyes, acknowledging their fear with tolerant understanding and sympathy.

Some are intuitively aware of her presence. A crippled veteran of the last war once mentioned a figure he feels keeping pace beside his slow, uneven gait, but who is never there when he turns his head. Soon he will recognize and welcome her, I think.

It must be a disappointment and a burden to be feared, and it is sad that most cannot understand that Death is not the dreaded calculating haunt they imagine, but generous and gentle as a mother, well acquainted with grief.

She has a lovely, poignant smile. Out of her solitude she values compassionate company of an undemanding kind. Some nights I shake off the shades of sleep to find she has slipped in out of the dark to sit contemplating the coals of my banked fire, elbows on thin knees, chin and hollow cheeks cupped in the graceful curve of her palms and long, slender fingers.

She has the hands of a young woman, does Death, soft, comforting, and as beautifully translucent as old porcelain.

Once, when I was far gone with a winter fever, she laid one of them on my brow. It was cool, compelling, and she smiled faintly, but then swiftly removed it and shook her head a little as the hint of a frown drifted across her face. Willing I was, for, as I said, I am weary of being lame and as wrinkled as one of last autumn’s leftover apples. But she refused me and has since touched me not, careful never to brush so much as a fingertip against my hand in accepting a cup, so she must find some value of her own in our relationship.

I am not impatient, for I know that one day soon her gray cousin will follow Death in at my door and there will be no hesitation in the matter. For the time being, we are sisters of a kind and strangely closer than husband or kin. Sometimes, when the pain flares up in an evil lump and flutters like a bird within the cage of my ribs, she reaches one thin, pale finger to draw a slow circle through the tea in my cup. When I have drained it, if I sit very still, the agony slides away and I grow drowsy in the comfort of my own fire, glamoured by its flickering ribbons.

The winter was long and dark this year, and spring laggard to appear. But lately there have been a few days warm enough to go out into my greening patch garden of herbs and sit on the bench in the sun to watch the gulls float high over the cliffs of the cove. There I rest, and sort through my memories like an old gypsy with a bag of bright buttons. I recall days and hours, and people I have loved and lost into the long passage of my years, and find that often I can remember them more clearly than those of last week, or even yesterday. It is at times more difficult to recall the name of the boy who brings my wood, or to decide if it was two days or two weeks ago he last knuckled cheerfully on my door.

I was sitting there this afternoon, warming my brittle bones and watching a redbreast hop along the low garden wall after a beetle, when I heard a merry whistle and the boy came swinging up my path, a bundle of sticks on one shoulder and a grin of greeting on his crooked mouth.

‘‘How be you, auntie?’’ he asked, laying the bundle by the door and a gentle hand upon my shoulder.

I glanced up and was sad and cross to see, among the old, fresh bruises on his face, and worse than usual. One eye had swelled near shut and a split in the corner of his lower lip still oozed a bright bit of crimson.

As he wiped it away with the back of a hand, his sleeve fell back to reveal dark bluish purple discolorations-clearly the result of his stepfather once again taking out spite where he was able, leaving the marks of his cruel fingers in the flesh of the boy’s forearm.

I sucked breath through my few remaining teeth and, recognizing the helpless anger in my eyes, he gave me a smile, shook his head, and shrugged shoulders already well muscled from rowing the boat and hauling nets out of the sea.

‘‘Ah, auntie, they are but trifling and petty things, already mending. Shall I carry you up a fish when we return?’’

I turned my gaze down to the harbor and narrowed my eyes to pick out the figure of the brutal man who stood by the boat, shaking a fist and hallooing an impatient demand for the boy’s attendance.

‘‘Best you be off, or he’ll make the next blow even less to your liking,’’ I suggested. ‘‘And be you cautious, for he would care little if you came not home, but drowned out of reach of shore.’’

He gave me only another quick smile for answer, but I caught a hint of thoughtful anger and resentment in his eyes as he turned to scramble away down the steep path to the crescent of sand below, then trotted along to join his tormentor, earning another clout for his trouble.

With an ache of fury and fear hard under my breastbone, I watched them cast off and turn the boat for open water, the boy spending all possible effort to keep even the sweep of the long oars, while his persecutor rested in the stern of the heavy craft. As they cleared the reef and headed into the stronger waves of open water, a hint of motion drew my eyes back to the shingle and told me I was not alone in my concern for that particular departure.

Not high on the cliffs, but close together where the boat had rested and the incoming tide lapped the narrow beach, stood those two familiar cousins, petticoats aflutter in the breeze, each with a comforting arm of reassurance about the other’s waist. Patiently, their consideration focused on the pair in that small shell of a vessel moving inexorably away over the rocking surface of the endless gray sea. When it disappeared around the headland, they turned and paced away slowly, stepping together, growing smaller to my sight until, far along the shingle, the cliffs loomed between us and they too were gone.

A long time later, clouds, dark and growling a heavy threat of oncoming rain, slid across the sun and it grew cool and breezy, even in the shelter there beside my cottage door. Unwilling to surrender my vantage point until I saw the boy home safe, I grasped the stick that I keep against the bench beside me to pull myself, stiff as a rusty gate, to my feet and tottered inside in search of my old blue shawl and a cup of water to soothe my throat, parched with disquiet.

Back on the bench once more, I felt my concern increase to see that the now howling wind of the approaching storm was assisting the incoming tide to hurl massive waves over the reef, all but hiding it with their assault and its resulting spray. The gulls that earlier had coasted circles in the air above the cove had fled away to some shelter of their own, leaving the sky empty of all but a blackish green wall of cloud moving rapidly toward land and casting ragged lines of lightning into the watery maelstrom beneath.

Narrowing my eyes and sheltering them with a hand to my brow, I peered seaward, yearning to see the boy in the boat pulling hard for the safety of the cove, but there was nothing among the huge, endless waves rolling one after another onto the reef and shingle below. From the few huddled cottages that make up our small village, a number of folk had hurried down to haul their boats higher on the sand and secure them from the greedy fingers of the rising sea. I could make out the widow Kale, hair and skirts a-toss in the blow, and her two tall sons as they struggled to drag their old dory up over the wet sand. Lost at sea in just such a storm three years before, her good man had left her little but helpless dread at the need to send her boys out as fishermen in his wake.

As soon as the boats were made safe as possible, the shingle quickly emptied as they all rushed back to shelter, except for the widow, who hesitated and swung slowly around to have one last look at the oncoming storm. Then, suddenly, she turned her back on the writhing sea, lifted her face and, following the direction of her gaze, I saw that she had marked the two gray-clad figures of Death and her cousin, as they slowly made their way along the cliff top, now hand in hand as they watched the sea. So the widow too was familiar with the pair. But it was apparent that she bore them no acceptance as she made a quick sign against evil in their direction, whirled and caught up her skirts to hasten to the consoling shelter of her hut.

Not long after her disappearance, as the first fat drops of rain began to fall and splash dimples in the dust of my yard, before seeking my own shelter I took another look beyond the waves dashing over the reef and was at last rewarded for my watchfulness by the sight of two figures in a boat as it rose on the crest of a wave, then was whirled out of sight into the trough that followed. It was only a glimpse, but I could tell that both were now rowing, hard, and had not far to go to gain the shelter of the cove, though that was now little calmer than the open sea that poured and pounded into it. A sudden lump of fear in my chest bent me half over with concern for them.

Again the craft rose, a bit closer, and I could tell that the rowers were making an attempt to ride the crests whenever possible in endeavoring to reach safety. Very slowly they pulled nearer and, as I could see them even in the troughs now, I could tell that the man, rowing closest to the bow of the boat, was angrily shouting something at the boy in the stern, but it was impossible to hear his voice over the roar of the wind and crash of the waves. There was no response from the boy, his back to his stepfather, struggling to pull the heavy oars evenly and keep the boat headed for shore.

Again the man moved as if he were shouting, leaning forward, letting both oars drag through the water from the oarlocks. There was still no answer from the boy, intent on his rowing, who had little chance of hearing within the fury of the storm that had swept over them in a deafening curtain of rain.

As it reached me, I hauled myself partially erect, fighting a stab of pain in my chest, to gain the shelter of the door to my cottage, and saw that the cousins had reached the foot of my path and hesitated there to join me in watching the pair in the boat. Though the wind still tossed their skirts and the lace of their petticoats, the rain that had half soaked me through in a moment seemed to have no effect on the shadowy fabric of their dresses.

I was more concerned with the two in the boat, who were silhouettes against a sudden flash of lightning, and I could see that the craft had now almost gained the cove. That gain must have been made from the efforts of the boy alone, for the man had slid forward onto his knees and taken one of his oars from its oarlock, ignoring the other. He held it raised high over his head, clearly meaning to bring it down on the head of the unsuspecting boy with murderous intent.

‘‘No-o-o,’’ I cried, clutching at the air between us with the gnarled fingers of one hand. The other dangled strangely unresponsive at my side when I attempted to draw it up to hold against the pain of panic in my chest. The pain turned suddenly to a fire that ran down that arm and a great weakness came over me. Only by leaning against the frame of the door was I able to tell what happened next, for it occurred so very quickly.

Frowning, and shaking her head slightly, Fate withdrew her hand from that of her cousin and raised it toward the boat we could just make out in the distance and made a swift and subtle gesture.

With a last stroke of the boy’s oars the boat was caught by a rogue wave that came out of nowhere, unexpectedly catching it sideways and flinging it forward to stop abruptly, hard on the stones of the reef now hidden by the tide. Their jagged sharpness tore a hole in the hull, crushing it like an eggshell, ruining the precarious balance of the man and tossing him, oar still raised above his head, out of the boat and onto the rocks as well. There for a moment or two he lay quite still, then was washed off into the outer waters of the sea and sank from sight, leaving only the oar to rock and spin in the foam of the turbulent surface.

The boy had been cast backward into the bottom of the boat, but I saw him scramble up in the sinking vessel and look about in confusion for his stepfather, seeming dazed at seeing no one.

Now completely awash in the sea, the boat began to slip and disappear as the steep outer side of the reef lost its hold. Slowly, inexorably, it sank, following the man into the depths, threatening to take the boy as well. But at the last moment he rose and, leaping nimbly out of it onto the sharp stones of the reef, threw himself over into the slightly calmer waters of the cove, where he began a determined swim toward shore.

Gasping and faint, I sank to my knees in my cottage doorway, apprehension fading along with anger in the relief of knowing he would easily reach the safety of the shingle with no more trouble.

A long time later, I woke to find myself in my own bed.

The sharp pain was still there in my chest, but it was less, and I lay still in concern that I might wake it again.

The storm had passed and through the window I could see that the night was full of darkness and welcome silence. A small fire crackled and I could see the kettle steaming gently over it. Near it was the boy, peacefully asleep on a rag rug near the hearth.

I closed my eyes, deeply glad to see him alive and whole and, best of all, free, then opened them again, feeling the presence of someone else.

The door, which at times complains, opened without so much as a whimper and enough moonlight slid into the room to define the pair of shadows that fell across the floor. I looked up to see not only Sister Death, but also her cousin, Fate, standing together in the doorway, as I had long expected them to appear one day.

‘‘Come in and welcome,’’ I whispered as well as I could through my twisted mouth and beckoned with the fingers of my one good hand.

They came in together and closed the door.

Fate said not a word, but smiled and nodded before crossing to the three-legged stool where she sat, slim and graceful, by the fire, staring intently into its bright, compelling ribbons.

Sister Death stepped close to the bed, stood looking down at me patiently, and, saying nothing, said everything.

Without words, she had asked and I answered.

At last we had struck that long-anticipated bargain, she and I.

Slowly, she reached one pale hand with its slender, translucent fingers and laid its coolness with infinite gentleness on my brow.

The pain disappeared and I took a deep breath.

You are weary, she told me silently. Sleep.

Obedient, I closed my eyes and was content, but for one thing.

Care… for the boy, as thought faded.

Yes.