Reaper Man

prison for it?”
    I DON’T BELIEVE SO .
    “Amazing.”
    The music changed.
    “I know this one! It’s the Quirmish bullfight dance! Oh-lay!”
    “W ITH MILK ”?
    A high-speed fusillade of hollow snapping noises suddenly kept time with the music.
    “Who’s playing the maracas?”
    Death grinned.
    M ARACAS ? I DON’T NEED … MARACAS .
    And then it was now.
    The moon was a ghost of itself on one horizon. On the other there was already the distant glow of the advancing day.
    They left the dance floor.
    Whatever had been propelling the band through the hours of the night drained slowly away. They looked at one another. Spigot the fiddler glanced down at the jewel. It was still there.
    The drummer tried to massage some life back into his wrists.
    Spigot stared helplessly at the exhausted dancers.
    “Well, then…” he said, and raised the fiddle one more time.

    Miss Flitworth and her companion listened from the mists that were threading around the field in the dawn light.
    Death recognized the slow, insistent beat. It made him think of wooden figures, whirling through Time until the spring unwound.
    I DON’T KNOW THAT ONE .
    “It’s the last waltz.
    I SUSPECT THERE’S NO SUCH THING .
    “You know,” said Miss Flitworth, “I’ve been wondering all evening how it’s going to happen. How you’re going to do it. I mean, people have to die of something , don’t they? I thought maybe it was going to be of exhaustion, but I’ve never felt better. I’ve had the time of my life and I’m not even out of breath. In fact it’s been a real tonic, Bill Door. And I—”
    She stopped.
    “I’m not breathing, am I.” It wasn’t a question. She held a hand in front of her face and huffed on it.
    N O .
    “I see . I’ve never enjoyed myself so much in all my life…ha! So…when—?”
    Y OU KNOW WHEN YOU SAID THAT SEEING ME GAVE YOU QUITE A START ?
    “Yes?”
    I T GAVE YOU QUITE A STOP .
    Miss Flitworth didn’t appear to hear him. She kept turning her hand backward and forward, as if she’d never seen it before.
    “I see you made a few changes, Bill Door,” she said.
    N O . I T IS LIFE THAT MAKES MANY CHANGES .
    “I mean that I appear to be younger.”
    T HAT’S WHAT I MEANT ALSO .
    He snapped his fingers. Binky stopped his grazing by the hedge and trotted over.
    “You know,” said Miss Flitworth, “I’ve often thought…I often thought that everyone has their, you know, natural age. You see children of ten who act as though they’re thirty-five. Some people are born middle-aged, even. It’d be nice to think I’ve been…” she looked down at herself, “oh, let’s say eighteen…all my life. Inside.”
    Death said nothing. He helped her up onto the horse.
    “When I see what life does to people, you know, you don’t seem so bad,” she said nervously.
    Death made a clicking noise with his teeth. Binky walked forward.
    “You’ve never met Life, have you?”
    I CAN SAY IN ALL HONESTY THAT I HAVE NOT .
    “Probably some great white crackling thing. Like an electric storm in trousers,” said Miss Flitworth.
    I THINK NOT .
    Binky rose up into the morning sky.
    “Anyway…death to all tyrants” said Miss Flitworth.
    Y ES .
    “Where are we going?”
    Binky was galloping, but the landscape did not move.
    “That’s a pretty good horse you’ve got there,” said Miss Flitworth, her voice shaking.
    Y ES .
    “But what is he doing ?”
    G ETTING UP SPEED .
    “But we’re not going any where—”
    They vanished.

    They reappeared.
    The landscape was snow and green ice on broken mountains. These weren’t old mountains, worn down by time and weather and full of gentle ski slopes, but young, sulky, adolescent mountains. They held secret ravines and merciless crevices. One yodel out of place would attract, not the jolly echo of a lonely goatherd, but fifty tons of express-delivery snow.
    The horse landed on a snowbank that should not, by rights, have been able to support it.
    Death dismounted and helped Miss Flitworth down.
    They walked over the snow to a frozen muddy track that hugged the mountain side.
    “Why are we here?” said the spirit of Miss Flitworth.
    I DO NOT SPECULATE ON COSMIC MATTERS .
    “I mean here on this mountain. Here on this geography,” said Miss Flitworth patiently.
    T HIS IS NOT GEOGRAPHY .
    “What is it, then?”
    H ISTORY .
    They rounded a bend in the track. There was a pony there, eating a bush, with a pack on its back. The track ended in a wall of suspiciously