Left On the Hither Side of Death by kimikocha

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Left On the Hither Side of Death

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“He will come to death. An image of the splendor of the kings of men in glory, undimmed before the breaking of the world.

But you, my daughter…”

Elessar dies at the end of winter. As the snow melts, giving way to the pale green shoots of new life, the queen he left behind makes her way to Lórien.

It is not the Lórien of her childhood. Arwen strays beneath the fading trees, in grief and in doubt, searching for something — though what it is, she knows not.

Before the spring rains come to water the new growth, she finds out.

*

“Good morning, Queen Undómiel!”

The high, sweet voice comes from somewhere behind her. Startled, Arwen turns and sees a child standing in the branches of a nearby tree. A little girl of the Edain is what she appears to be, with a round face and dark skin, clad in what look to be the robes of a Southern priestess — dyed in cinnabar, with a faded bonnet which might once have been red. She holds a staff in her left hand, a sort Arwen hasn’t seen before with ornamental rings that chime as she moves. Across her face she wears a bright smile, and upon her shoulder…

…That is a positively ragged cat on her shoulder, or that’s what it looks like. But its eyes are lit from within by a strange golden light, and as it shifts its position on the child’s shoulder, something about it seems to — shimmer. As if it’s a mirage, an illusion, or somehow otherwise insubstantial. A spirit, Arwen thinks — surely not a Maia? Regardless, it’s certainly not a real cat.

“Oh!” the child exclaims, seeing the turn of Arwen’s gaze, “Don’t be afraid of him. He’s my friend. He can’t hurt you.”

Odd as this is, Arwen is still the Queen of Gondor, with all the dignity thereof — and shy though she is by nature, she has encountered many, many children. With grave sincerity, she inclines her head. “Is that so?”

“Yes,” says the little girl, nodding for emphasis, “But you’d best not try to pet him. He doesn’t like that. Also, you shouldn’t ask what his name is. He doesn’t like that, either.”

“I see. Then your friend shall remain nameless and un-petted.”

“Good!” Clearly pleased, the child’s cheeks puff out as she beams down at Arwen. “I’m sorry to have interrupted you as I did, Queen Undómiel. I wished to speak with you. May I?”

“You seem to be speaking already, no?” The teasing reply, said in a tone which belongs quite distinctly to her father, rolls off Arwen’s tongue without conscious thought. “Please, do. But first, what is your name?”

“…My name…?” The little girl tips her head to the side, mouth pursed in thought. Then she brightens. “Oh!”

Hopping down from the tree in a swift, fluid motion that sets the rings on her staff chiming merrily away, the child straightens and looks up at Arwen. At this level, she’s about the same height as Eldarion around the age of six, though he was a tall child — it’s difficult to say how old this one might be.

“My name is not one which your tongue will be able to pronounce,” the child informs Arwen sagely, and hides a giggle behind her hand. “Don’t worry, Queen Undómiel, I won’t be upset that you can’t say it. None of your people can, and you would tie your tongue in knots if you tried. If you wish, call me Agân. That is also my name, or close enough, and your tongue can speak it.”

“Then I’m very pleased to meet you, Agân.” Arwen smiles, and wonders. The little girl’s feet are bare upon the forest floor, but they’re clean, unmarked by cuts or even dirt from travel — a small thing given the clearly unearthly nature of her cat, but strange all the same.

Not all is as it seems.

*

If a traveler asks the southern oaks about the origins of Death, they will say that she was born not long ago beneath their sheltering branches. The name that they would give for her is not one that can be said within the lifetime of Men, but they know what she looked like, and they remember her with kindness.

There was something mysterious about her, they say. For she had the memory of many things from years that came before, told them stories of other lands whose shores she’d never seen. But in every other way she was a child, like any other — she laughed and played and cried and begged for sweets from her mother. (She was particularly fond of blackberries, they recall, and when their season came her face and fingers were always stained a shade of purple.) Her people knew the ways and rhythms of land and tree and sky, and taught them all to Death as she listened, rapt, at their feet.

But when the ships came—

This is where the southern oaks will stop and say no more. A wandering traveler can argue until they’re blue in the face, and the oaks will remain silent. They do not wish to speak of what befell the child known as Death.

It is the elm-trees one must seek if one wishes to hear the rest, for elms are wise in the ways of the world, and will tell even of things that one might not wish to know.

The ships came, the elm-trees say, from a land so far away that only the oceans know its name. They came with fire, and men with sticks that shone in the sun. Clank-clank, clank-clank — they made a racket with their steps, such a racket that all the animals fled.

They took Death away, and she never came back.

She cried, but she also showed the one who carried her how to ease the pain of a dreadful wound he bore upon his cheek. Not knowing the ways of the earth, the fool had let himself take injury from the plant the southern elms call bitter-weed, which holds a terrible poison that rots the flesh of those that walk and run. Without the mash of kingsfoil root laid over the wound to draw out the poison, it would have taken his face at the least. Perhaps it would have killed him.

Death had mercy that day, the elm-trees will say in dispassionate tones. The men who took her had none.

*

Agân’s joy in everything around her is an infectious thing. For the first time in weeks, Arwen finds herself smiling, then laughing out loud. She follows where she’s led when the child catches sight of a small, clear brook running between the aging mallorns and cries out in delight, tugging at Arwen’s sleeve.

“Yes, I wished t— oh! Queen Undómiel, look! It’s so beautiful! Let’s go see it! Let’s go!”

It’s… a stream. There’s nothing particularly unusual about it. Once, Arwen would have taken as much delight in nature as any elf, but…

Perhaps the years living among the Edain have gotten to her. Or, more likely, Arwen’s grief clouds her eyes. Grey and dull is the world around her in the weeks since her love’s passing. Nothing seems as bright as it once did.

And yet—

“Oh,” Agân breathes, staring entranced at the water. A few small fish are beginning to appear with the coming of spring, visible as shadows beneath the glassy surface. Rocks and sticks and other detritus litter the presently undisturbed silt of the riverbed. It’s truly nothing out of the ordinary — but the child seems to find it nothing short of awe-inspiring.

Her ragged cat, on the other hand, seems rather unimpressed. He leaps from her shoulders and streaks off into the trees as she flops down on the bank, dipping her bare toes in the water and squealing with delight at the sensation of the cold water.

“Queen Undómiel!” cries the little girl, sticking her feet further into the water and gleefully wiggling her toes, “You should come try this! It’s fun!”

“All right,” Arwen allows, amused, stopping to pull the soft slippers from her feet. “I’ll try it.”

“Oh, look at the little fish! They’re so tiny!”

“The minnows? Yes, they are tiny.”

“Min-nows,” the child repeats, grinning and leaning down to peer at them under the water. “I call them something else. Aren’t they wonderful?”

“Yes,” agrees Arwen — for how could she disagree with that? “They are.”

*

High above them in the bluest sky, puffy clouds form and mingle. A warm wind picks up among the trees, carrying the scent of coming rain. A young crebain and her mate, long-removed from the days when their ancestors served the White Hand, build their nest at a juncture between the branches of a tree.

Their chicks will hear tales told to their parents by a tongue-cut sparrow, who outlived the people who raised her by a century or more, far longer than any sparrow ought. They will learn of the young fisherman who spent his youth as a pampered guest in a kingdom far beneath the surface of the sea, and of children born in giant fruit.

They will also hear of the kindly spider who spun her silk into bolts for a poor, childless couple who took her in, whom in time they called their daughter. A neighbor jealous of the couple’s new-found wealth peeks in the window of the girl’s spinning-room, and sees the girl in her true form. Thinking to revenge herself upon the girl who brought the wealth and the couple who took her in, the jealous neighbor reveals the spider-girl’s secret to her parents.

In some versions of the story, the spider-girl flees the village before any other eyes can find her, never to be seen again. In the East, it’s said that upon learning their daughter’s secret, the girl’s parents gathered with the townspeople to drive her out; with sharpened sticks and burning torches they came, and burned her alive or drove her out into the night. The tale is much the same in the South — save that in those versions, the girl’s parents often try to defend her, and in doing so suffer her fate.

But the version told by the tongue-cut sparrow is different from all the others, and it is these version the chicks hatched by the young crebain and her mate will hear. In this version of the tale, the spider-girl does not flee. She hides her face and weeps at the sound of her parents’ footsteps. As the door slides open she does not look up — she does not dare, lest she see the love in their eyes replaced by hatred.

Yet it is not so. Her parents tell her that they love her still, and gather her into their arms — only four for her eight, but large enough to hold the world all the same.

Now, for their part, the other villagers are afraid of spiders. But when the vengeful neighbor comes to tell them all of the girl’s secret, something strange happens. The villagers gather amongst themselves and talk, and swiftly agree that they have no need to fear the spider-people at all! For word of the spider-girl’s kind and generous nature had spread throughout the entire town. It did not matter that she was a spider; or if it did, the villagers only cared that she spun the highest quality of silken thread, strong as steel yet delicate as a whisper.

Finding herself alone, the vengeful neighbor repents of her jealousy and rage. Slowly, over many years, she becomes a good neighbor and loyal friend — and they all lived happily ever after.

*

Eventually, Arwen recalls that there was meant to be a reason this child came to speak with her. When she brings it up, a look of unutterable sadness crosses the little girl’s face.

“…Oh, yes.” For a moment Agân turns her head away, her dark hair obscuring her features. When she looks up again, the look of grief has receded to a shadow. Her brown eyes are large and serious, the wisdom of ages reflected in their depths.

A child of the Edain she appears to be, and yet…

“I’m sorry, Queen Undómiel. I got distracted. I was having such fun.” Agân’s eyes crinkle as she smiles, swinging her feet and splashing in the cool water of the stream. “I should simply tell you the reason I came, shouldn’t I? So many things would be easier if everyone would just speak the things that are in their hearts.”

“You’re a very wise little girl,” Arwen says.

Sagely, the child nods. “I know a lot of things.”

Her nameless cat, who must have been lurking in the branches above, chooses that moment to leap straight onto Agân’s back — startling Arwen, but not the little girl. Clawing his way up the back of her robes, he lays himself out across her shoulders like a remarkably ragged stole and flicks a notched ear. His strange golden eyes — featureless, save for the fire which seems to burn within — seem to regard Arwen for a moment. Then he shifts, bumping his head up against his girl’s jaw, gaze moving disinterestedly off toward the forest.

“I am afraid that you will not understand everything I say,” Agân continues earnestly, “And there are some things which my tongue simply cannot speak, though I will do my best to speak plainly. Also, you must know that the favor I mean to ask you is a great one. You must not agree to grant it to me unless you do so freely, and you may refuse it just as freely if you wish! I won’t be mad, I promise.”

Slowly, Arwen inclines her head. “I understand.”

“Also,” says the little girl, worrying at her upper lip with her bottom teeth, “A lot of people think I’m scary. That makes me sad, but it’s not their fault. I don’t think I’m scary, but people are scared of lots of things. Especially when they don’t understand them.”

“You don’t seem very scary to me,” Arwen reassures the little girl, who beams and bounces where she sits.

“Good! But you might think I am, later. If you do, that’s all right. I won’t be mad.”

Arwen isn’t quite sure what to make of that, but with queenly composure she says, “Thank you, Agân. That’s very kind of you. Now, what is it that you would ask of me?”

“I would ask for your intercession, Queen Undómiel,” Agân says, drawing herself up very straight where she sits upon the muddy riverbank. Somehow, the fact that her bare feet are still dangling in the water takes nothing away from her solemnly formal air. “On behalf of many people whom I care about, very much. For you are the Evenstar, who shines the brightest in the dimming of the Sun; and your husband, King Elessar, may reach those who suffer in between.”

The grey, gloomy lines of grief rise up again, sharp and strangling.

It is not Arwen who answers this small petitioner’s request, for Arwen would look away and weep. No, it is Undómiel, the Queen of Gondor, who answers — saying gently, with perfect composure, that she cannot. “I’m sorry, Agân, but that’s impossible. King Elessar has passed away.”

“I know.”

That is… not the answer which Arwen would have anticipated. Nor Queen Undómiel. It brings her up short.

“I’m sorry,” Agân says mournfully, crossing her ankles and sitting very still. “I made you sad. He’s not gone, but many people are very sad when other people that they love go… to other places that they don’t know. It feels like they are gone, even though they’re not, I think.”

On her shoulder, the strange cat rumbles — a strange sound. Whether it’s a purr or a growl, it’s impossible to tell.

This time, Arwen is the one who speaks.

“That’s very perceptive of you,” she tells the child seated beside her softly, looking straight ahead. For suddenly she cannot bear to turn and look; the chasm of sorrow in her chest threatens to become a tidal wave, sweeping her away.

Tentatively, a child’s fingers curl around her own. Arwen squeezes back, and suddenly a pair of small arms wrap around her shoulders.

“Is this all right?” Agân asks her quietly. If Arwen isn’t mistaken, her voice in this moment is lower than before — no longer quite a child’s high register, but something else.

“Yes.” It’s all she can say.

“Good.” A tiny hand pats her shoulder, consoling. Perhaps it was only her imagination a moment ago, for Agân’s voice sounds once again as high and sweet as it had before. “I’m sorry that I made you sad, Queen Undómiel. You miss him, don’t you?”

“I do,” Arwen whispers. “I miss him terribly.”

At her feet, the stream trickles on and on, clear and lovely in its way. Still the fading trees ahead of her bring forth pale green leaves to greet the coming of spring. Their voices grow quieter, for as the elves leave Arda’s shores they seem to be forgetting how to speak… but this, at least, they still do.

*

There are few in Arda who can tell any tales of what became of Death after the ships took her away. Travelers along the coast may find a few sea-birds who will trade rumors of her fate for bits of stewed potato, but whether any of them speak anything of truth is impossible to say. Even those who speak honestly may be mistaken, for in truth, there was nothing that would be remarked on about the looks of the child the southern trees call Death. She was in every way a normal child save for the secrets in her heart, which of course cannot be perceived by the eyes of Men alone.

But.

If travelers are inclined to believe the words of crows, there are a few of them who’ll say that there is one, at least, who knows what became of Death. There might be more, but the old, graying crows that gather near Ithilien will say in their rough voices that they’re only certain there is one.

He is a cat, they say. A ragged cat who gave anywhere from one to eight of his nine lives to gain the power of Sight. He sees everything now, the crows say, and still doesn’t know if it was worth the cost. But he paid the price, and gained what he sought. If it was not everything he hoped for, he has only himself to blame.

(Some of the most ancient crows will break in and insist that there is more to it than this. There’s one who says that the cat regretted learning to see, and asked Death to take the last of his lives to spare him the pain of sight. Another claims that the cat offered his lives to Death, and Death refused to take them, saying that she does not take what is not offered freely. Yet one more swears that Death carries the cat’s lives as rings upon her staff, and that only the cat’s true love will be able to break the staff and return the cat’s lives to him. Still another insists that all of this is poppycock — no, that crow says, the cat strove with Death and won. That’s why he’s lived for so long, obviously. It’s also why he’s so ragged. It isn’t easy to strive with Death!

All the while, the other crows sigh and ruffle their feathers in embarrassment. None of them believe any of these claims. All of these other stories are commonly understood to be the ravings of elderly crows gone mad with age.

It goes without saying, of course, that none of them are true.)

The truth, or the closest thing to it known by the crows, is that the cat who gained the power of Sight knows what became of Death. All of them agree that he saw the moment she met her fate — but travelers should be wary of asking the crows whether he was there in body or if he witnessed it from afar. This is a matter of heated debate among the crows, and not a one of them knows the answer.

*

“Estel is not lost,” Agân whispers again after a time, her sweet voice soft and mournful as petals falling from the trees. “I promise. It may not lessen your sadness, but I promise all the same.”

Grief constricts Arwen’s throat; tears threaten to choke her eyes. Somewhere in the distance, she hears a sparrow begin to sing.

I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone.

“Do you wish for me to leave?” A little plaintive, like a child’s voice, but warm and kind. Once more shading further into something far older as it goes on. “I can depart, if you wish. Whatever you may believe, a choice lies yet before you — a choice which you need not make now.”

“No.” The word comes with difficulty, but it is true. Arwen shakes her head, and hugs Agân a little closer. The child’s nameless cat is gone again — to where, she doesn’t know. “Stay with me.”

“I will.”

*

The cat who gained the power of Sight has nothing to say to wandering travelers — if indeed they can find him at all. For one can search and search his haunts and never find him; having learned how to see, he also knows how not to be seen. It’s said that he might remember how to speak in the arms of the one he loves the most, but no one knows who that person is. There are some who believe his love is Death. Others say no, that’s wrong — the cat’s love is one who sings with a voice made from metal. And so forth.

The Elder-Crow who lives in the highest, oldest tree thinks all of these theories are missing the point of the story. It doesn’t matter who the cat’s true love is, he’ll sagely croak to the wandering traveler. The truth of the matter is that the cat forgot who his love is. He may have forgotten how to love at all. It’s something he lost when he gained the power of Sight, but he didn’t know that was part of the price. Would he have sought the power if he knew what it would cost him? Perhaps. Or perhaps he had no choice. There was a reason, the Elder-Crow is certain, but as he himself is not the cat, he doesn’t know what it was.

He is very wise, the Elder-Crow. He knows many things that are true, and many things that are true enough.

It’s a difficult business, finding the truth — this is another thing he’ll say to any wandering traveler who seeks an audience with him. For most things that are true are really only true enough, and many things can be true at once — even things that seem to contradict each other. One must learn the ways of truth and mostly-truth before one can know what is true; but once those things are known, learning what is true is not so difficult.

“But!” the Elder-Crow will rasp, “This is not the reason you came to me, young one. You came seeking knowledge of what became of Death. Of that I can tell you no more, and the cat will never speak to you. If you wish to know a story of her fate that is true or true enough, you should seek an audience with Death herself. She is very friendly and kind, and I’ve heard it said that she loves blackberries.”

*

“What choice did you mean?” Arwen asks at last, at the fading of the sparrow’s song.

“Huh?” For a moment, the little girl sounds confused. Then, “Oh! Forgive me. I was thinking, and I forgot. I meant the choice of gifts. The one you were granted when you joined your life and heart to one who — didn’t have the same gift as the one you had. That one. You know about it, don’t you?”

That sounds like the choice of Lúthien, but that can’t be what Agân is referring to. For Arwen, that choice is long past.

She frowns. “Are you referring to the choice given the peredhil? That of my father and his brother, Elros?”

“The… per-edh-il?” Agân enunciates each syllable carefully, rolling them around her tongue. Her small face scrunches up a little, seemingly perplexed. “I don’t know. I don’t remember them. Unless… oh! Do you mean my friends? The ones who taught the trees to speak?”

That… doesn’t sound familiar. “Perhaps?” Arwen tries, thinking back to the stories she knows of her father and late uncle.

Before she can find something that might be relevant, Agân wrinkles her nose and shakes her head. “No, that can’t be right. My friends didn’t have children. Not that way. And in any case,” she proclaims, with every bit the air of a child declaring that this game is boring and she wants to play a new one, “It doesn’t really matter. The point is that you have a choice! A choice about which gift you will take — the gift of Elves, or the gift of Men. You can’t pick both. It doesn’t work like that. But they’re both wonderful.”

“I had a choice of which gift to take,” Arwen corrects her patiently. “And I made it a long time ago, when I married Estel.”

“That’s not how it works!” Agân looks so petulant for a moment that Arwen nearly expects her to stomp her foot. Then, apparently, she gets hold of herself. “I’m sorry, Queen Undómiel,” she says, looking down at her feet. “That wasn’t nice of me. I forget that people don’t know things, sometimes, and that’s not very nice at all. I don’t know everything, anyway. But I do know a lot of things, and I do know that you didn’t already make that choice. You just chose to — to have the choice. That’s an important choice too, and lots of people don’t want to have that one at all. But it’s not the same choice you’re talking about, the one about choosing your gift.”

“It’s not?”

“No.”

*

It is, of course, somewhat difficult for those who live to gain an audience with Death. She does not often reveal herself to those who are alive.

There are, however, some who live who came very close to Death. Not all of them met this Death, of course, for there is more than one. Of those few who have met her, most know nothing of her fate. Most of them were children when they met her. They tell of a little girl who sat at their bedside and laughed and played games with them, and told them wondrous stories — Death is very fond of stories. She kept them company, they say. She promised that they wouldn’t be alone, and told them not to be afraid.

A wandering traveler can travel in circles around these stories, learning much about the way Death speaks to those who are about to die — and very little about Death herself. There are a few things, for she readily answers questions about herself when asked by those she visits: that she has died many times, and that sometimes she was afraid; that she loves climbing trees; that she is almost illiterate, but remembers everything she hears. Very little of it speaks to what befell Death after the ships took her away.

But.

If one stops to listen to the sparrows that gather in the rooftops near the healing-places, some of them might tell stories about meeting Death on her rounds. Death loves to listen to them sing, and sometimes sings along with them. She’s told the sparrows many stories, and if the traveler uses the things they learned from the Elder-Crow about the ways of truth, they might find some things in her stories that are true enough about her.

Once upon a time, she says, there was a little sparrow who knew of many things. She was born in a beautiful forest to parents who were very wise, and a flock full of other sparrows who taught her many things which she had not known before. The flock was very happy, and sang and fluttered among the trees that sheltered them for many years. But nothing lasts forever — which is not a bad thing, she hastens to say. It is only the way of things, sometimes. There are ways to escape from it. But that is another story, one she does not know how to tell.

Regardless.

One day, many cats came to the forest who were starving from within. They did not know that they were starving, because they were starving on the inside, and no one had ever told them what starvation felt like. They ate some of the sparrows, and took many others away, hoping to put them in a cage and keep them there forever so they could eat when they pleased and never be hungry again. But they did not understand that their starvation was of a different kind. They could eat and eat and eat until they burst right apart at the seams, and their hunger would never be satisfied.

The little sparrow who knew of many things was among the ones they caught, and she knew about the starvation that was hurting the cats from within. She tried to tell them how to ease their hunger, but their starvation was so great that they could not understand her words. They cut her tongue so that she could not tell them anymore, and plucked out all of her feathers, and then they ate her up.

As the little sparrow had feared, the starving cats ate and ate and ate and never were satisfied. They died in the end from hunger, and even then, the pain from their starvation didn’t stop. They didn’t know how to make it better, and so they lingered on as ghosts, searching and searching for more things to eat — but they found nothing, for they no longer had jaws or teeth to eat with.

The little sparrow saw them suffering, and felt sorry for them. She climbed out of the stomach of the cat that ate her, and tried to speak to the cats again to tell them how to make the pain stop. But the cats were raving mad with hunger, and did not understand her language; and the little sparrow wept and wept until her tears made an ocean all around, seeing that she was unable to help them.

*

Gripped in Agân’s tiny hand is a fruit which resembles the one some Southerners call the nar. Like those, it’s roughly round; at the top of the fruit, pointed projections of its leathery outer skin gather in a cluster, like the remnants of a blossom. But its skin is different — not the bright, blooming scarlet she’s seen on the nar from the South. This fruit is pale as bone, with only faint hints of reddish hue visible here and there as patches on its surface — as if brushed on by a painter whose palette was running dry. With a look of intense concentration, Agân pierces the skin of the fruit with her thumbnail and drags it down the length of the rind. With a hollow sound like reeds snapping underfoot, the ashen-grey pith splits open.

The fleshy seeds within its chambers are as dark as clotting blood.

“I am permitted to give this gift to you,” the little girl in the robes of a priestess says solemnly. “It is the same gift which was granted to Elessar, and to all mortals in the beginning. A lot of people think it’s scary, but I don’t think it is. It’s also my gift, and I think it’s not scary at all! I’m allowed to take it, if I want. But I made a promise that I wouldn’t. Not until every single person is safe, and every place of suffering knows nothing more of sorrow.”

The cat on her shoulders is rumbling again. There are no pupils in its eyes — only red-gold flame, blazing bright.

“Estel is not lost,” Agân continues as a strong wind picks up, whistling through the trees and sending her robes aflutter. The child’s eyes are dark and ancient, fathomless, yet warm and kind — as a foreign, welcoming shelter in a storm. “And as he is not lost, this will not give him back to you, Arwen. Whether you choose this or not, your time is not yet come. I cannot tell you what comes for those who have this gift, for it is beyond anything that might be spoken by this tongue. Yet I know what it is all the same, and I can tell you truly that I see nothing in it to fear. In my heart, the only gift I know that equals it is the gift of life itself. I don’t know how to speak of the magnitude of that gift either, but — most of those who live know it, don’t they? Even if they don’t remember? At least, they usually seem to understand.”

Far above, within the clouds, there is a spark. Arwen breathes the air of life, heavy with the scent of coming rain, as she looks upon the gift.

I choose a mortal life.

In the ways that matter, she’d made that choice long ago. Never once has she regretted it. Nor is she afraid.

Arwen stretches out her hand to take it. There are many, she thinks later, who would be surprised by how very easy this choice was. Those who fear the gift of death will find it particularly difficult to understand, but in truth, that choice was among the easiest she made about her fate. It was a gift; it was no sacrifice.

The things she chose to do later were much more difficult. For as Agân had said, delaying the day she’d take the gift — that was the true sacrifice.

*

When first the wandering traveler heard the tale from the sparrows of what became of Death, he went away unsatisfied, for it seemed a dreary story. But many years later he came to the seashore and spoke there to a kindly spider who’d asked to share his fire. She told him a tale that was much the same, but it had a different ending.

Death wept for many, many years, the kindly spider said — a thousand years or more. But she also traveled far and wide, and made many friends. One of them was a cat who’d gained the power of Sight; another was the Queen of Cats, who did not suffer from hunger. The Queen of Cats spoke with the King, who also became Death’s friend. Both the King and Queen of Cats agreed to help Death speak to the ghost-cats, for the King knew their language, and the Queen was one whose light shone brightest even in the darkest places.

The cat who’d learned to see led all of them back to the kingdom of the ghost-cats. Since Death had wept so much that an ocean covered the kingdom, this cat also taught them all to see the air to breathe beneath the surface of the waves; but most importantly, he taught them how to find the ghost-cats, who’d hidden themselves away in their terror and madness.

With the help of the King and Queen of Cats and the cat who gained the power of Sight, Death was finally able to speak to the ghost-cats and tell them how to ease their suffering. It took many years, for the ghost-cats had suffered for a very long time, but one by one, the ghost-cats learned.

And slowly — very slowly — the kingdom of the ghost-cats became a place that knew nothing more of sorrow.

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Chapter End Notes

'Agan' or 'agân' is the Adûnaic word for death. Agân's character is (somewhat vaguely) inspired by the Ojizō-sama of Japan.

I had Númenor in mind when I wrote the kingdom of the starving cats.