The Death Catchers (8 page)

“Okay … well then, what
is
Doomsday? If you could just explain what Vivienne le Mort is after, maybe—”

“Enough,” Agatha said, putting her hand up. Her voice hardened. “I cannot help you or your grandmother.”

“I'm not asking for help, I just want to know what you know.”

It turned out to be the absolute wrong thing to say. Agatha's expression changed from sad to angry. “What I
know
? What I know? If you had any idea of the things I know, it would utterly devastate you!” Agatha stood up. Her jaw tightened as her voice rose. “What I
know
, you foolish child, is that if Vivienne does discover your abilities, she will destroy you … what I
know
is that you had better think very carefully about the choices that will soon confront you.”

“What does that mean?” I said, trying not to cower as Agatha inched closer to me.

“I will not get involved,” she said coldly. “You and your grandmother are never to return here.” As she finished, white fog seemed to shoot out of every one of Agatha's pores.

Soon, it filled the entire room.

The vapor was so thick, I could barely see my hand when I held it out in front of me. I stumbled around the cottage, choking on the thick air. When I crashed into the stack of books by the couch, an idea seized me.
The Last Descendant
hadn't left my thoughts completely since I'd seen it a few minutes before. I followed my instincts. After all, Agatha hadn't provided me with any answers, but that didn't mean I had to leave the cottage completely empty-handed. I grabbed the old silver-engraved book, now on the floor, and tucked it under my arm before rushing outside.

I looked at my watch. I had only minutes until Mom would arrive to check on me. Sprinting toward home, clutching
The Last Descendant
, I felt relief with each step distancing me from Agatha's gloom-filled cottage. I hoped (in vain as it turned out) that I would never encounter Vivienne le Mort again.

I was in bed before Mom arrived. Because of the sprint home, I'd managed to heat up my forehead to the point that Mom was sure I had a fever. She tucked me in and placed the book she'd given to me in the waiting room,
David Copperfield
, on my nightstand.

“Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time,” she said.

“What?”

“It's a famous quote—another way of saying the solution to every one of life's problems can be found within the pages of a good book. Reading might make you feel better and
David Copperfield
was Dickens's favorite of all his books. That must count for something.” Mom leaned over and kissed me on the forehead, exactly like she used to do when I was a small child. “Call me if you need anything.”

She tiptoed out and shut the door. I had to remind myself I wasn't really sick, because when I thought about the morning's events, I swore the room was spinning—swirling with all the things I'd never heard of before I'd first laid eyes on Vivienne le Mort. Death-specter. Morgan le Faye. The Mark of Arthur. Hand of Fate. Isle of Avalon. Banshees. Doomsday. The Thread of Life.

As soon as I heard Mom's car pull out of our driveway, I took
The Last Descendant
out from under my bed. I cracked open the book. I wasn't expecting Merlin Ambrosius's book to be a lighthouse in the sea of anything, really, but I did harbor the faint hope that it might shed a small lamp's worth of light on my growing pond of questions.

The Last Descendant
, as it turned out, played a far simpler yet much more important role: it would be the book that changed everything.

 

Translations

I've never thanked you properly, Mrs. Tweedy, for letting us read Seamus Heaney's
Beowulf
instead of some Old English version. After all, there have been a lot of major improvements made to the English language in the last thousand years. “Reading is always an act of interpretation,” you said when Opal's mother complained that we weren't reading the actual classics, adding that each person's “imagination creates a different translation.”

There's no way I could possibly relate every detail of
The Last Descendant
, but maybe you should consider yourself fortunate. I'm not sure exactly what kind of English Merlin Ambrosius wrote it in, but I only understood it by reading very slowly and rereading some parts. I'll admit that some of it sounded familiar from the unit we did on myths and legends, but once I realized that one or more of the characters had some relationship to what's been happening here in Crabapple, it got a lot more interesting.

For better or worse, this is my translation—which is quite a bit shorter than the original. But it's like Bizzy always says: sometimes you gotta skip the salad and go straight for the meat and potatoes.

Around the beginning of time, seven sorceress sisters lived together on an island called Avalon. The Isle of Avalon, sometimes called Glastonbury or Elysium, was the gateway between the mortal world and the world of spirits. It sat in the middle of the sea, surrounded by a bank of clouds, thick with beautiful trees that bore the most delicious apples. Agatha the Enchantress, Vivienne le Mort, Nona, Argante, Morgan le Faye, Cathuba, and Fial all lived happily on the island, laughing, playing, and singing together. Avalon was a joyful, magical place and the sisters were the best of friends.

They also ate a lot of apples.

The Seven Sisters of Avalon, also known as Ladies of the Lake, enjoyed each other's company, but they also had a more serious pursuit. According to the story, they were the gatekeepers between the mortal and spirit worlds, guiding each soul's transition from one world to the next. The one inflexible rule was that the sisters could only leave the island or interact with mortals if they all agreed that destiny required it.

The wisest of the sisters was Agatha the Enchantress, known as the White Lady. She was Avalon's prophetess, who saw visions of the future in the waters of the Sooth Spring, the powerful oracle near the center of Avalon. Agatha advised the sisters, relying on her visions to settle the rare disputes between them.

The second sister, Nona, watched over the creation of life. As a gifted cook and farmer, she naturally controlled the fertility of the world and all creatures in it. Argante, the strongest of the sisters and a fierce warrior, was entrusted with watching over the vitality and vigor of the human body. Fial, responsible for the intellect and passion of mortals, was learned in all areas of knowledge and possessed impressive artistic talents. Cathuba was the most empathetic of the sisters, and her talents lay in her ability to communicate with every type of living creature—she concerned herself with mortals' interaction with the world around them.

The two most notorious sisters were Vivienne le Mort and Morgan le Faye. These two were entrusted with each mortal's thread of life. Every mortal's life—the amount of time and unique fate granted to each person from birth to death—was measured by his or her thread. Morgan le Faye was tasked with measuring each life and Vivienne with cutting it.

The two sisters worked together. Morgan would have a death-specter and Vivienne's cut would send a banshee to usher the mortal's soul through Avalon to its proper resting place. Quite simply, Morgan knew the
why
and the
when
of a death and Vivienne was responsible for the
how
.

The sisters were as beautiful as they were notorious. Morgan had waves of long black hair and piercing sea-foam eyes and wore a long red-hooded cloak and sandals made of gold. She had a reputation for being cold and calculating, preferring logic above all else.

Vivienne le Mort was the exact opposite of Morgan le Faye in both temperament and appearance. The youngest of the sisters, Vivienne had flaxen hair and magenta eyes that clouded over when she grew angry. She wore a dark robe that set off her lovely golden hair and was known for her hair-trigger temper. She could go from calm to cruel in a matter of moments.

The Last Descendant
explains that for many years, the sisters lived peacefully, never leaving Avalon. One day, Agatha the Enchantress had a vision that the mortal world's delicate balance between life and death, hope and despair, was in great danger. Agatha's vision required the sisters ensure that the mortal Arthur Pendragon become king. Among other things, they were to find a suitable Keeper for Arthur—a trustworthy and perceptive mortal who would alert the sisters to all potential dangers Arthur might encounter. Arthur, according to Avalon's oracle, was to guide civilization out of the Dark Ages. The righteousness of the selfless Arthur Pendragon, paired with Avalon's power over fate, would restore balance to the mortal world.

Vivienne and Morgan watched carefully over Arthur from his birth forward. Fial recruited one of the most powerful sorcerers in the land, Merlin the Magnificent, to be Arthur's tutor and advisor. Argante forged a sword for him called the Excaliber and trained him to use it to defeat men stronger than himself. Cathuba taught him of the world's natural order and how to tame every kind of beast.

Vivienne and Morgan oversaw his thread of life, ensuring he was protected as he grew and matured. After careful consideration, the sisters decided that Guinevere, the daughter of the dutiful King Leodengrance, should be appointed the mortal Keeper for Arthur. Guinevere was unusually intelligent, trustworthy, and altruistic. Her intelligence was matched only by her beauty, which caused people to confide in her and tell her all sorts of useful information.

The sisters permitted Fial and Morgan to travel from Avalon to convince Guinevere to accept this vital role as Arthur's Keeper. Arthur prospered as a knight, then as king, and brought peace and balance back to the land. He also fell deeply in love with Guinevere and made her his queen. Camelot, the castle and court of Arthur's empire, became a symbol of beauty and enlightenment.

Not too long after the establishment of Camelot, a deep schism developed between Morgan and Fial. The cause was a common one—familiar to spirits, gatekeepers, and mortals alike.

It was love, plain and simple.

Watching over Arthur necessitated journeys by the sisters from Avalon to this world. During these visits, though she knew it was forbidden, Morgan le Faye fell deeply in love with a mortal—a knight from King Arthur's Round Table. The knight had never met anyone as captivating as Morgan. Her trips became more frequent until she was spending very little time on Avalon. It was Fial who first discovered Morgan was having an affair with Sir Lancelot, by then the most famous knight of King Arthur's Round Table. Soon rumors spread that Sir Lancelot was having a relationship with someone in King Arthur's court. Many assumed that Lancelot was involved with Queen Guinevere herself, which began to poison Arthur's trust in his queen and weaken her ability to protect him.

Fial tried to reason with Morgan, reminding her that the Seven Sisters of Avalon were only to visit the mortal world when a prophecy bid them to do so. But the change in Morgan had already taken hold. She complained about life on Avalon. She became restless and temperamental—quite unlike the logical, reasoned sorceress her sisters had known. She longed for Sir Lancelot and began to think the rumors about Lancelot and Guinevere were true. Finally, she fled Avalon permanently.

When the remaining sisters learned of Morgan's departure, they were concerned that the precise order they'd so carefully maintained was in extraordinary danger. With no one left to measure the threads of life, no one died at his or her proper time and the world's delicate balance was turned upside down. Arthur's kingdom fell into disarray, as wars raged with the Saxons to the north and the Romans to the south. The six remaining sisters decided that they would wait until Agatha received a vision in the Sooth Spring advising what course they should follow.

Vivienne, furious that Morgan had broken the vow between the sisters by leaving the island without consent, took matters into her own hands. She lured Merlin away from Arthur's side through trickery. And though it was not his time, she cut Sir Lancelot's thread in a fit of anger. Lancelot died shortly after, in a brutal battle on the Fields of Camlann. King Arthur, without his most powerful knight by his side or his sorcerer to safeguard him, struggled mightily on the battlefield. Meanwhile, a few villainous members of Arthur's court, convinced that Guinevere had committed adultery with Lancelot, made it known that they intended to punish the queen for her alleged misdeeds. As her final act as Arthur's Keeper before she fled Camelot in fear for her own life, Guinevere sent word to Avalon that the king was near death. Soon after, Agatha and Fial swooped in to take the injured king to Avalon. Arthur begged Fial and Agatha to find Guinevere and protect her, but Agatha explained that Guinevere was gone, and Arthur would never see her again.

When Fial and Agatha arrived back at Avalon with King Arthur, the other sisters were furious. Arthur was a mortal and did not belong on the island. Agatha explained that she was simply trying to fulfill the prophecy—Arthur needed to be safeguarded and bringing him to Avalon was the only way to heal him. Meanwhile, Morgan returned to the island after Lancelot's death, revealing to her sisters that she was now carrying Lancelot's child.

“We should cut the thread of Morgan's unborn as punishment for her actions,” Vivienne said, seething.

The other sisters objected to such a severe punishment.

“Children have no place on the Isle of Avalon,” Vivienne argued.

The disagreement caused a permanent rift between Morgan and Vivienne. Despite their initial misgivings, the other sisters knew that Vivienne was right—a half-mortal child had no place on Avalon.

In the end, the Seven Sisters agreed to a compromise called the Great Truce. Because no one else could do the work of Morgan and Vivienne, each would resume her job measuring and cutting the threads of mortals. Neither was ever to return to the mortal world. Morgan and Vivienne consented, but decided to inhabit different parts of the island, each viewing the other with contempt bordering on hatred.

As part of the Great Truce, once King Arthur had fully recovered and Morgan had the baby, all agreed that Arthur, his entourage, and the child were to set sail for the edge of the known world. They would start new lives in this unknown land.

Morgan, as punishment for disobeying the laws of Avalon, would only see her child in the brief moments after the baby was born, and then, never again. Agatha would sail with King Arthur to the new world, where she would remain to ensure neither Vivienne nor Morgan left Avalon and broke the terms of the Great Truce. If either sister ever set foot in the mortal world, Agatha would be able to sense a sister's presence and would travel immediately to Avalon and inform the other sisters.

The sisters decided it was the only way.

Several months later, when the mortal and spiritual worlds united during the Feast of Samhain, King Arthur and his court, along with Morgan's only child and Agatha the Enchantress, set out from Avalon for new lands.

Now, Mrs. Tweedy, that's as far as I got into the story. But it's not because I was bored. In fact, I gobbled up
The Last Descendant
, anxious to find out everything I could about King Arthur, Agatha, and all the rest. Although it was difficult reading at first, it got easier as I went along. But when I got to the part about Arthur sailing away from Avalon, something happened. I couldn't read anymore.

I had my second death-specter.

But it wasn't simply my second death-specter. It was the particular death-specter that one resident of Avalon had been anticipating for many years. It was also the reason Merlin Ambrosius had written
The Last Descendant
in the first place.