“He’s Death, isn’t he,” said Connelly.
“Death,” snorted Nina. “That just a word. Might as well be writing in the sea or the sand, for who can name nothing? Should you try it would surely eat that word as well.”
“He has a thousand names and each one catches but a part of him,” Dexy said.
“He is the Harvester, the Sickle Man,” said Nina.
“The Night Walker and That Which Devours.”
“The Skullsie Man, the Star Reaper, the Grinning Bone Dancer.”
“He is the Black Rider, the great beast below all and beyond all.”
“Fenrir Wolf-End, the Sightless Hunter, Forest Stalker and Singer of Ends.”
“The Red Axis, the Forgotten Plowman, Destroyer of Worlds.”
“Pale Conqueror, the Crownless King.”
“Death?” Dexy scoffed. “Death is but a term. To say he is Death is to call night a mere shadow. He bears a dread weapon in his hands, that thing we call nothing, and he brings it down as a blade. Cuts under all, plows it all up, turns it over. That is what he is.”
“But you knew that, didn’t you, boy?” Nina asked him. “You knew it all along.”
Connelly thought about it. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I think I did.”
“ ’Course you did. You’re slow, but you ain’t stupid.”
Connelly looked down and set the bowl aside. He stared into the fire a great long while.
“Can I kill him?” he asked.
Nina and Dexy looked to the blank seat, then up at the sky.
“To kill death,” said Nina. “Ain’t that a thing man’s hungered for since he looked about and saw where he was.”
“Could death be so great a thing that death itself could die?” asked Dexy.
“And were it to come about, what would follow? More death? More suffering? Perhaps. Who can say save he himself that has seen the deaths of thousands, of millions, the deaths of all?”
“Well?” said Connelly. “Can I?”
“Yes,” said Dexy. “Yes, he can be killed. But not easily. With great effort and sacrifice, it may be done.”
“I sacrificed plenty already,” said Connelly. “Little more won’t matter much. But he can die?”
“Yeah. But you knew that already, too, didn’t you?” said Nina. “Otherwise you wouldn’t been chasing him at all.”
“I guess so. I saw him scared. Scared of me. Don’t know why, but… He looked like a man who knew he could die.”
“And he can,” said Nina. “Listen—he weakens now, before the new dawn. He races to stop it. He knows it is driving him back, driving him down, ending the old and bringing in the new. He fears it. More than anything, he fears it, and the birth it brings.”
“All right,” said Connelly.
“But consider your actions, white boy,” Nina said. “Consider what you doing. Why you doing this, first of all? For everyone? For yourself?”
“Not for me,” said Connelly. “For my little girl. It wasn’t right. I got to make it right. And if the world refuses to be right then you just have to force it. You have to make it. Beat it until it listens.”
“Death will always be a part of this world, though,” Dexy said softly. “One way or another. I can’t say how but it’s always going to be here. Remember that.”
“It defines all men,” said Nina. “Starts it. Ends it. What defines a country or a civilization ain’t how it lives life, but how it ends it. How it conquers and controls. How it reaps what it needs. He going to be there for that. He going to be there. You know?”
“I do,” said Connelly. “And I don’t care. Anything’s better than him. Folks shouldn’t go the way they do out here. Shot down in the night, cut in half by trains. Scared and alone. It ain’t right.”
The sisters nodded to themselves.
“I asked him something,” said Connelly quietly. “I asked him something last I saw him. I asked him why he took my little girl. And he just said so she’d die. Which wasn’t any kind of answer at all. So I’m going to ask you. Why did he kill my little girl?”
“Boy,” said Nina, “do you not know where you are? Are you but a year old? What fool looks Death in the face and asks ‘why?’ and expects an answer? Perhaps even Death does not know why he comes to those who die. Perhaps there is no motivation, no driving force, no intent.”
“If he cannot say, surely we cannot either,” Dexy said. “Certain questions can never have answers.”
“Dammit,” said Connelly softly. “Goddamn it. Goddamn it all.”
A breeze blew through the little clearing, pulling the flames this way and that. Dexy and Nina looked at the blank seat once more. Then Nina scowled as though having heard some foolishness and Dexy shook her head.
“Well, Lord, Lord,” Dexy said. “First time for everything.” She turned back to Connelly. “Ask another.”
“What?” said Connelly.
“Ask another,” said Nina. “Ask another question. First time in a long age since we were asked beyond the three. But we couldn’t answer the last, and so you can give us another.”
Connelly thought about it for a long while. Considered what he was doing, perhaps for the first time. Considered his life after death and the lives of others.
“What’s going to happen if I win?” he asked.
Dexy peered into the fire, her eyes sifting through the flames, and said, “The same thing that always happens after death. Rebirth.”
“The wounded and injured and dead rise again, fully healed,” said Nina. “That which came before rises up and goes on. Whole. As it was before. Perhaps greater.”
“And I’ll go home, right?” said Connelly. “Then I can go on home. And rest.”
“Maybe,” said Dexy. “But if not, white boy… If what was lost never could return, would you still do this? Would you still hunt this creature down?”
“In a heartbeat,” said Connelly. “Without a second’s thought.”
“All right, then,” said Nina. “All right. Your mind’s made up.”
Dexy glanced at the empty seat and tilted her head as though listening. Then she said, “Are you certain of what you want to do, boy? Understand that you are not merely attempting to kill a man, or even a god, but a thing that perhaps holds the endings of men and gods in his hand.”
“He looks like just a man to me,” Connelly insisted.
“And so he is, in a way. I suppose that is his weakness. I suppose that’s what gives you a chance to succeed as well as what makes you so sure.” She sighed and the clearing seemed to grow and the trees to shrink. The dark was no longer so close, nor did he feel so little.
“All right,” said Nina. “Enough of this. We’re done. I’m tired.”
“I got what I wanted,” Connelly said.
“You like things simple, don’t you, boy?” Dexy asked.
Connelly shrugged.
“Well,” she said. “They ain’t going to be for long.”
Nina spat through her teeth, the glob of saliva arcing out through a gap and landing yards away. She sniffed and said, “It’s cold as hell out here. Get on back up to the house, boy. We got some talking to do and you look like you could use a year of sleep.”
Connelly rose and did as she asked. When he looked back the women were gone, but he thought he saw their figures moving into the trees, and unless his fatigue was playing with his eyes he thought there were three of them.
He slept before the hearth and in the morning Dexy awoke him with breakfast. She served him chicken once more, now with rye bread. Neither of them spoke. Nina rose and went to the third room to tend to the last one’s waking.
“I suppose I’ll get going,” said Connelly once she came out.
“Yeah,” she said.
He went to the junk heap out front and picked through it. He found two old boots worn raw with age and a
