“I don’t understand,” she said.
There was a slave who did not have a name, but could sing more beautifully than anyone who has lived before or since. One day her master’s beating was too hard. She closed her eyes, and saw Death wearing her own bruised and battered face.
There was a baby whose mother feared shame. In the same night that she birthed that child, she left him in a drift of snow, and called herself merciful because she did not shed his blood. That baby wailed away his breath, and closed his eyes, and saw Death wearing his own face, grown to the adulthood he never had.
There was a boy. There was a girl. There was a man, a woman, there was anyone at all. For each of them, there is only one story. They close their eyes, every one, and they see Death.
And Death was the end of every story.
Juliet had walked into death, and so her story was ended. Why had she hoped to achieve anything after?
She realized that she was bowed to the ground and shaking. She realized that she was no longer the Juliet. She was a mortal like other mortals, and she was helpless. She was going to die.
She was dead.
Dead, and walking down to the final end, from which no dead soul returned.
How had she ever thought she was different from the quiet crowd around her? How had she ever thought herself special enough to outwit Death and heal the Ruining?
It was done before, she told herself. It can be done again.
But she could no longer believe it.
She thought of Runajo, who had fought so long despite believing all was hopeless. She thought of Romeo, who had walked into death, though he had believed all his life that the dead were only dust and nothingness.
She might be doomed to fail them. But she could refuse to break her promises.
Slowly, she raised her head. “If Death waits for us all,” she asked, “then where is Death?”
The reaper bowed its head and folded its wings about it. “The dead keep their own calendar,” it said from among its feathers. “You have hardly begun your death.”
The feathers shivered and turned to smoke, and the reaper blew away on a silent wind.
The dead continued to walk past her. But Juliet was still.
If she wished, she could stay here. Perhaps she would turn into a monster, as the people at the festival had. But she would not have to learn what terrible truth waited at the bottom, the fate of all the world.
She was very much afraid.
And yet she turned, and began to walk farther down.
36
AT LAST JULIET REACHED THE end of the slope, and saw what lay at the bottom of death.
Dust.
An endless plain of soft, gray dust.
Some of the dead hesitated when they reached the bottom; they stood at the edge, among the last pebbles and dried-out moss of the slope, and turned themselves this way and that, looking for a path. But there was no path, only the flat gray surface stretching on forever.
Most of the dead did not pause. They did not speak, either; they walked forward, slowly, inevitably, looking neither to the right nor the left. The dust puffed up in little swirls around their feet, and settled back to fill their footsteps as if they had never been.
Juliet did not hesitate. She marched forward, step by step.
It was less crowded on the plain. Occasionally, two of the dead walked hand in hand, but most wandered by themselves. At first they strode confidently forward, eyes fixed on the horizon—or nervously, glancing side to side and over their shoulders. Whether fear or hope drove them, they were swift and full of will.
But farther out, the paces of the dead slowed. Their eyelids drooped low, their shoulders slackened. Their faces drained of hope and fear alike; and one by one, they knelt.
Juliet did not understand at first. She saw an old woman kneeling on the ground, and pitied her weariness. Then she saw a young boy drop to his knees, and she wondered.
Then she saw a man sink to the ground and begin to dig.
The silence and the vastness of the plain had numbed her at first, but now she felt a cold worm of fear, burrowing around her heart. She stepped closer to the man and said, “What are you doing?”
Softly, serenely, the man replied, “I am digging my grave.”
The gentle words set her heart pounding in a sudden spasm of mortal fear. Wildly she looked around, and all around her she saw other souls digging into the dust with their hands. Some had been working awhile already; they knelt in holes, up to their hips or up to their chins.
They did not look at her. They did not speak. They were ready for rest and ending, and Juliet felt like her heart had turned to a cold stone in her chest, because she was not ready. She was not, and the simple peace in their faces was the most terrifying thing she had ever seen. How long until that peace overtook her as well, quenched her will, undid her?
Grimly, she marched forward. She had faced the reapers. She was ready to face this.
But here on the empty plain . . . there was nothing to face. Nothing but the flat gray plain that stretched infinitely onward, fading into shadows without even the line of a horizon. She walked ever forward; she saw no more wandering souls, only those who had turned to digging. She saw holes fully dug, with the dead curled still at the bottom. She saw the dust shiver, and collapse, and fill the holes. And the dead did not stir.
She walked on.
She was alone now. She saw nothing before her; when she looked back, she saw nothing except the same trackless dust.
“I am looking for Death,” she whispered, then sucked in a breath and shouted, “I am looking for Death!”
But her voice was muffled by the everlasting stillness of the air, and there was no answer. No reaper appeared to tell her a story, and as she looked around at the darkness and the dust, she thought perhaps it was because this was the only story, this place where all stories crawled to end.
Perhaps this was the true face of Death.
Her feet and her eyes were heavy. She felt very tired, yet there was a strange energy to her hands. She realized she was constantly flexing them, that a strange hunger itched at her fingertips.
She wanted to dig.
The realization drove Juliet forward. I cannot give up, she thought. I must not give up. But every moment the hunger grew more acute, and her heart felt like the dust at her feet, dry and crumbling and helpless.
She wanted so very much to rest.
She thought, Romeo, but he was not here. If her journey had taught her anything, it was that even love could not turn Death aside. (Did he already lie buried in this plain?)
And then she realized that she had stopped walking.
Juliet looked down at her feet. She knew that she had to keep walking, that this was the last moment she could avoid this fate—
But she couldn’t. She could only stare at the dust, and hunger for it.
Slowly, inevitably, she dropped to her knees. She swayed a moment, alone in the darkness.
Then she began to dig.
The dust was soft and silky between her fingers. She knew that this was her doom, that she was failing in her quest; but each handful of dust scooped aside was as helplessly satisfying as a yawn, and she could not stop herself.
She thought, Perhaps I can rest, and her eyes stung with tears as if she were alive. Even now, at the last abandoned moment, she did not want to give up. Here at the bottom of Death’s kingdom, she did not want to die. But for all her love and bravery and weary, stubborn loyalty, she had found no hope. No answer.
Nothing but this gentle dust.
She dug. She remembered Romeo, who kissed her and swore that she mattered, even though she did not have a name. She remembered Runajo, who said that all the world was dust, and in the same breath swore to save it. She remembered Paris, who was nothing to her, and who was everything, because he was the kin she had longed to have.
She remembered Arajo’s smile. She remembered Justiran dying in her arms. She remembered the crowds in the Lower City. She remembered a cat sniffing at her fingertips.