Don't Let the Fairies Eat You (33 page)

Once, in the sunset lands, a sickly man made a wager with Death. “You’re a taker of life, but do you know life’s making?” the man asked, for in his feverish state, he could see Death standing in the corner of his stone house, while his wife thought him delirious. “My wife is pregnant and the witch woman says she holds seven children. I say, I know the order of boys and girls that will emerge. For every one that I’m right, you will give up a part of your body, and for each that I’m wrong, you may take from that child.”

Death thought this a pointless wager, but one strange enough to rouse its interest. It nodded to the man and withheld his death long enough to see the children born. The man thought himself clever, as he’d now tricked Death into letting him see his children at least once, and if he took all of Death’s body, he would offer to trade back the pieces in exchange for a longer life.

But the man’s cleverness ended there. He was no seer and didn’t know for certain the true order of his children’s births—he only thought he did. While he guessed they would emerge from their mother as boy, girl, girl, boy, girl, boy, girl, the true order was boy, boy, boy, girl, boy, girl, girl.

When the first boy emerged, the sickly man coughed out a laugh to the bewilderment of his wife, the witch woman delivering the babies, and the family present. “Ha, Death! That’s your feet!”

But then the other children came along, most of their guesses wrong, and so too were their bodies. Out came a boy with no legs, a boy half-formed, his gut missing, a girl without hands, a boy without arms, and a girl half-formed, her chest missing. The last girl emerged with a complete body, but by then the man truly was delirious, writhing in bed and screaming for Death to release him. Death acquiesced, and was footless and faceless while doing so.

The eldest boy, Thotan, was born with Death’s feet, though they looked like normal feet, and the youngest girl, Kehinde, was born with Death’s face, though she looked much prettier. They grew up innocent of their gifts, spending much of their time helping their three surviving, troubled siblings. The rest of their time, they defended their mother from other villagers when rumors spread that she’d been impregnated not by her late husband, but by some demon. Many in the sunset lands believed devil creatures roamed the same plains as elephants and zebras, and one could have easily lured their mother away.

One night, the children awoke to shouting outside. The villagers had surrounded their house and demanded their mother hand over the healthy boy and girl, or else they would burn her and the children alive. Thotan and Kehinde struggled and cried, but their mother promised they’d have a better future where they didn’t need to look after their siblings.

“You’ll be safer with us,” the village elder told them as he pried them from their mother. Yet once he had them away from their house, he looked to the other villagers and nodded. They boarded up the doors and windows, shoved lit torches through openings in the wood, and set fire to the roof. The surviving brother and sister cried, squirming in the elder’s rough hands, but he held them firmly and dragged them back to his house. The screams of their family chased them mercilessly until the elder locked them in a small, dark room.

“You can come out in a day, when you’ve calmed down,” he told the crying children. “Then we’ll have the witch woman examine you and see if you’ve been tainted in some way yet unseen. If all goes well, you may serve my family until you come of age.”

Neither child believed they’d ever calm down, but eventually they ran out of tears. “We must kill him,” Thotan said.

“Then what?” Kehinde asked. “We’ll have nowhere to go.”

“They won’t know we did it. We’ll burn him, like he burned our mother.”

“That’s not how his life ends. He dies when a big cat tears out his throat.”

Thotan scrunched up his face. “How do you know?”

“I saw his death. Sharp teeth rip his skin and he dies clutching his neck.”

Thotan tapped his foot, thinking. He didn’t know how his sister knew this, but he believed her. When the two were released from the dark room, he went on tapping his foot every time he had to stand and wait somewhere—in the elder’s kitchen, in his yard, outside the witch woman’s house, and then in the field to the east of the village. By then he tapped both his feet, left, right, left, right, his mind focused on a big cat, wondering when it would come.

The witch woman looked over Kehinde, inspecting her from head to toe, and then looked over Thotan. “Hold still, child,” she said.

Thotan went on tapping his feet. “I can’t.”

When the witch woman tried to hold his feet to the earth, he kicked her hand away and began to dance. The elder, the witch woman, and a few villagers told him to stop, and the elder even accused him of summoning devils, but Thotan wouldn’t hold still. His feet hit the ground more quickly, his hands swayed over his head, and then one hand raked the air like a claw and his dancing grew faster.

Everyone heard the roar just a moment before they saw a flash of red, black, and white. An oddly-colored lion with sharp antelope horns growing from his skull pounced on the elder’s chest, knocking him to the ground, and tore the man’s neck apart like it was no thicker than a finger. Thotan’s dancing stopped as he stared into the demon cat’s white eyes, blood caking the beast’s muzzle, and then the creature bounded off into the tall grass, out of sight.

“Bokoraru,” the witch woman gasped. “The Devil-Lion.” Fingers pointed at the children and voices raised. “Devils! Demon children!” Stones flew through the air, and the siblings took off into the tall grass in the bloody wake of Bokoraru, running and running until they couldn’t hear the villagers’ shouts anymore.

“They’re right,” Kehinde said, rubbing one bruised shoulder. “Something’s wrong with us. I saw the elder’s death and you called it to him.”

Thotan nodded. “And now I’ve called our deaths. We’ll die without a home or money, from starvation and heat, if not from animals.”

“Those aren’t our deaths—at least, not yours. Your death is muddled, hard to see, but it happens in a dark place, when your limbs are bloody and stuck with shards of a broken heart.”

“You can see anyone’s death then?” When his sister nodded, Thotan had an idea.

They found a dirt road leading the way to one of the cities where thousands of people lived and the great stone temples emerged from within like man-made mountains. After a short time, a traveler appeared, walking toward them. “Him?” Thotan asked. Kehinde told him the man’s death and Thotan began to dance in front of the traveler. He laughed, clapping in time to Thotan’s dancing, when suddenly a gust of wind tore over the road and the man’s neck snapped, as Kehinde had seen.

The brother and sister took all the coins the man had, which weren’t many, along with his knives and hat, which they could sell. They did this three more times before reaching the great city, and soon had enough coins to hire men to build them a house outside the city’s walls. Swift-growing prosperity is almost always noticed, so the brother and sister found themselves facing thieves from time to time. Every would-be robber wound up dead, sometimes of spontaneous stab wounds, other times of fire, or animals, or a violent pain in the chest.

As the years passed, rumors spread of a young man who could call Death by dancing. Thotan and Kehinde had to move several times to avoid attention, building three different small houses. Eventually, they moved into the great home of a rich man who died when his skin shriveled, as if the next twenty years of his life had gone by in a blink. To avoid moving again, Thotan hid his face behind a clay mask with two horns curling from its sides, so no one could trace him to his home. People then believed Death itself had come to walk among the city’s people, targeting the rich and giving their money to the poor, although few, if any, had received any riches.

Kehinde often went ahead to discover the deaths of whomever Thotan needed to kill. One day, Thotan decided his target should be none other than the city’s king. He could usurp the ruler’s throne under threat of death to any who opposed him. “And when our hold is solid, we’ll send men back to our village, with orders to be sure no one escapes alive,” Thotan said. His sister agreed—vengeance for their siblings and mother was long overdue.

Yet on the night they were to put their plan into motion, a foreigner appeared at Thotan and Kehinde’s doorstep. His skin was pale, his beard long and black, and his face haggard and hideous. He wore rich clothes and a fine hat, and his eyes appeared as cold as glass. “You must be the boy who kills at a look,” the foreigner said in his strange accent. “I’ve seen you put the mask away, even in my short time in this city.”

Thotan bristled. For one, he was a young man now, not a boy, and two, he’d been discovered. “What do you want?” he asked.

“I want your sister,” the foreigner said. “I come from the cold lands. I’ve stolen many brides from husbands, but I’ve found your sister so pretty that I don’t care that there’s no husband to steal her from. She’ll be mine.”

Thotan didn’t bother to ask what had happened to the foreigner’s other wives. “No.”

“If you don’t give her to me, I’ll tell everyone here that you’re the demon who’s been killing with a look. I may come from afar, but I’m wealthy and powerful, and if your king won’t listen, the people here will.”

“Let me talk to my sister,” Thotan said. When he brought Kehinde to the main hall of their great house, he pointed to the foreigner, explained all that had been discussed, and asked of his death.

Kehinde stared at the foreigner, her eyes straining, and then she shook her head. “I see no death. He’s more like a sheet of glass than a man. I’ll go with him, to keep you safe.”

“You won’t be his first wife. You won’t survive.”

“Neither of us will if he tells the city what we can do.”

Thotan reluctantly offered Kehinde to the foreigner, under the agreement that their wedding would occur in the city, not in the cold lands, and that Thotan could attend. The foreigner said it would happen in three days and then took Kehinde with him to the palace where he would be staying for the remainder of his visit.

“I can’t kill this man with my dancing,” Thotan whispered to his sister before she left. “But I don’t believe he’s as deathless as he looks to you. There’s some trick going on here. One of us will discover his fate. I’ll see you before the wedding, and hopefully there will be no wedding.”

Despite all his talk of hope, Thotan was distraught once Kehinde left his sight. He wandered outside the city walls, a wreck at the prospect of waiting uselessly for three days, and he pondered simply hiring someone to kill the man. “But what if I’m wrong and he has no death? What if no assassin can kill him?”

He heard an animal’s growl and looked to the tall grass. The white and black face of Bokoraru emerged, his black antelope horns protruding from his lion’s mane, and words fluttered underneath his growling. “Your foreigner has a death, my friend. He has simply hidden it.”

“How do you know?” Thotan asked. “And why help me?”

“We are kin to Death, in our own ways, and I am loyal only to kin,” Bokoraru said. “And I know because I have done the same. Your sister would see no death for me, devil or not, because my soul is not inside me. I smell his soul within a duck, which has been trapped within a large hare. Call the death with these strange animals in mind. The hare will spit up the duck and the duck will lay an egg, from which will hatch a body of the soul. Your sister will see the death then.” Thotan thanked him and the Devil-Lion then crept back into the tall grass.

Outside the city entrance, Thotan’s feet tapped the ground. On the first day, he danced as he envisioned a hare running. On the second day, he danced as he envisioned a duck flying free from a hare. On the third day, he performed the odd dance of a duck laying an egg. Scanning the surroundings, he didn’t see anything like a soul yet, but the wedding was set to begin within an hour and he could only hope the foreigner’s death would appear soon.

Thotan soon arrived in the palace hall, where the king had graciously offered to host the wedding for the foreigner, as the king’s guest. Banners of gold, red, and green hung from the walls and many people of the city had gathered in the king’s hall to see the foreigner’s wedding. A priest dressed in red stood up to begin the ceremony, and Thotan realized, standing at his sister’s side, that he only had a few moments to save her. “The strange man’s soul is coming. You’ll see his death then.”