Keturah and Lord Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

Go home and rest.”
    When I went to kiss Gretta, she drew away. “If all else fails, you must fight him, Keturah,” she said. “I shall be forever angry with you if you don’t.”

III

    J determine to solicit Soor Lily.
    I slept the night away and awoke the next morning with a gasp, having thought myself there with Death in the underland of my dreaming. I looked out my window and saw that the dawn was a gray bird beaked with crimson.
    My days lost in the wood had not faded in my memory. I had a remembrance of the hardness of trees and the bitter taste of leaves and the black earth that gave me no water. Plague, I thought. Plague.
    From my window I could see the forest looming dark and deep, seemingly without end. But I could also see the village, close and safe. No—not safe. My village was in terrible danger, but what could I do to save it?
    It began to rain. Our poor and shabby village seemed even poorer and shabbier when it rained. It made the gray houses grayer, and the barns and sheds saggy, as if being wet was more than they could bear. The square turned to mire, the yards to muck. The color went out of the bay, and even the manor looked a great, bare mound of stone.
    And yet, I thought, had there ever been so sweet and glorious a place?
    “He has allowed his lands to fall to ruin,” Lord Death had said. From that one clue, I hoped, I could perhaps stave off the plague. To save myself I had already devised a plan. I would go to Soor Lily, the village wise woman, and seek a charm by which I might discover my true love. Then, by whatever wiles a decent girl might employ, I would have him wed me this very day.
    I had been afraid of Soor Lily all my life, and I was not alone. Her seven enormous sons protected her from those who would drive her away. Still, many of her worst critics in their time of need had gone to her for medicines and potions, and for a price Soor Lily had helped them. Now my fears had been adjusted, too, and I would go to her.
    No sooner had I done that than I would go to John Temsland and seek his help against the plague, though by what means I knew not.
    The rain stopped and the sun burned away the moisture in the mud and mire. A white haze settled knee deep over the village. Two children ran laughing through it, and the cows dipped their heads in it to graze.
    I lay back on my pillow to see the stone hearth, the trestle table, the benches painted with flowers and birds, the thatch ceiling above, hard as oak. In the corner was Grandmother’s chest, which stored my old cornstalk doll and linens for my someday wedding. Everything was the same, yet everything was different. Last Sabbath, the cottage in which I had been reared seemed tiresomely small and drafty. Today, it seemed the dearest cottage in Angleland. Bunches of herbs hung from the ceiling: wormwood, feverfew, lungwort, and marjoram. Last Sabbath I barely noticed them; today they were the sweetest scents in God’s kingdom. Strange, thought I, that only yesterday I had been about to die, and here I was today for the first time alive.
    I thought of my friends Gretta and Beatrice, and remembered wistfully how, as children, we would whisper together as we imagined our true loves. Would mine be someone from the town of Marshall? Or maybe someone who had come a great distance to live in Tide-by-Rood? Even as a young girl, Gretta would say scornfully that no one of any worth would come to our ragged little village. I had agreed heartily, but Beatrice dreamed of a traveling musician who would come to take her away.
    Perhaps our true loves would be found among those we knew already—but there we would pause and shake our heads. Gretta would list the qualities she would insist upon in a husband, and Beatrice and I would roll our eyes. “There is no man that perfect, except my father,” said Beatrice. “And he is taken.”
    “And you, Keturah—what of you?” Gretta would ask.
    “I? I will marry my own true love, and I care not who he is,