If you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later. -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

"You should not be here, child. You must go back." The voice was gentle and soothing. Everything it said sounded like perfect sense. And yet something nagged at the back of Kilan's mind. "Your parents will worry for you. They will weep for you. Is that what you want?" No, he didn't want to make his parents cry. But why? Why would they cry? He was fine. "Go home, child."

He didn't see why he couldn't wait a while. He wanted to sleep, and he was comfortable where he was. The cloth beneath his cheek was so soft, almost like feathers, though the arms around him were strangely cold.

Wait a minute. Cloth? Arms?

Kilan's eyes snapped open. At first he could see nothing. Wherever he was, it was so dark here that there was no difference between having his eyes closed and having them open. But slowly, he could make out shapes. They were just faint outlines at first, like trees seen through a thick fog, but as his eyes adjusted to the dark they became sharper and clearer.

He was in a strange, wide room built entirely from stone -- a strange, black stone so smooth and glossy it was almost like glass. It stretched on far longer than the longest corridor he had ever seen. Stone pillars rose from the floor at regular intervals, presumably up to the ceiling, which was so high it was impossible to see it through the darkness. A river that looked as if it were made of oil rather than water oozed its way slowly and noiselessly across the floor, flowing away into the shadows of the far side of the room. There was no furniture, no decorations on the walls, no sign that anyone had been in this place since it was built. Indeed, the room looked as if instead of being built, it had simply grown.

And yet there was someone here.

Kilan was sitting in their lap.

He tried to draw back, but found himself slipping and almost falling to the floor. The arms around him tightened and pulled him up.

"Do be careful. You wouldn't like to fall in that river."

It was the stranger he had hugged, the woman who had tried to take Varan. It seemed she had settled on an appearance; her face no longer between one age and another. Now she looked like a teenager or young woman, but with a curious haggard expression in the angles of her pointed face that made her seem much older. Her eyes were either white or a shade of blue so pale they might as well have been white. Her hair was black one minute, white the next, and a combination of the two after that. Her clothes were black, made of some fabric Kilan had never seen before, and draped over her shoulders was a cloak made from the long, fan-shaped black feathers of some exotic bird.

She was so odd-looking that he almost forgot to be afraid. He reached out to examine the feathery cloak more closely. The feathers were soft and silky to the touch.

"Who are you?" he asked, tilting his head back to look the stranger in the face.

She laughed. "I have enough names to fill a library, child. Which one do you want?"

He thought about this. "Which one's your favourite?"

Her thin eyebrows shot up almost to her hairline. She was silent for a moment. Her mouth opened and closed, as if she was searching for something to say. "Death, I suppose. It's short, accurate, and to the point."

Kilan was only eight, but he knew what Death was. He had heard of fishermen drowning in the lake. Three years ago he had helped his father bury his pet dzacei[1]. When he was still in the nursery, his nurse had told him stories of the gods and monsters of their people. Death had appeared in many of those stories, usually as the callous monster who took the hero's soul despite their friends' pleas.

Death in those stories had not been a woman in a feathery cloak. It had been a skeletal horror without eyes (Death is blind to the grief it brings, Nurse said) or ears (It cannot hear us when we cry) or a heart (What use has Death for a heart?).

"You can't be Death," Kilan said with all the certainty of a child who didn't know what they were talking about. "You're not a skeleton."

The stranger grinned, her mouth opening wider than a human's mouth could open to reveal rows of jagged, yellowed teeth. "And, of course, Death must look like a skeleton. Well, I think that can be arranged."

The skin of her face seemed to peel back to reveal the bones beneath. If Kilan had been older, he would have been terrified. Instead he watched in wide-eyed amazement.

"Are you convinced now?" the skeleton asked. How it could speak when it was only bones was a mystery.

Kilan nodded, finding himself at a loss for words.

"Good." Just like that, the skeleton was gone and the young woman was back. "Come, child."

She picked him up and held him against her hip with one arm as she stepped down from her seat. It was a throne, he saw now. A throne made of bones, on an island in the middle of the oily river. Death stepped over the river, even though at both sides it was as wide as a man was tall, and set him down on ground over on the other side.

"You should not be here, Kilan," she said.

"You know my name?"

"I know everyone's name, Grand Duke Kilan raunSærnor, ursoArásy chlang-il-Amendath-ag-Caranilnav tar Zjurkyu[2]."

Kilan pulled a face. "I hate that name. My tutors make me write it at the end of every essay!"

"Painful though your name is, it could have been worse. Much worse."

Kilan couldn't see how, but he suspected it might be a bad idea to disagree with Death.

"In this galaxy alone," Death said, stopping and staring off into the shadows. Kilan followed her gaze, but could see nothing, "there are over four thousand inhabited planets. On each of those planets, there are over a billion living creatures. I know the names not only of every single one of those creatures, but of every single living creature that is or ever has been in the entire universe. I know when they were born, where they live, and when they will die.

"I have known the day of your death, Kilan, from the moment of your conception. You should not be here. Your time has not yet come. Take my hand, and I will return you to the land of the living."

A half-formed question floated somewhere in Kilan's mind. It slipped away when he tried to focus on it, but at last he remembered what it was.

"Where's Varan?"

Death turned to look at him. There was no sorrow or joy, no emotion whatsoever, in her face or her voice. "She was fated from before her birth to die at the age of ten on the twenty-seventh of Tevaill[3] in the year 2518. Cause of death: a blow to the head while falling from a statue."

The world dropped out from beneath Kilan's feet.

"No!" he screamed, grabbing fistfuls of Death's cloak. "No! She can't die! Bring her back!"

"It is not in my power to raise the dead just like that. Everyone has a time to be born and a time to die. Attempting to change without compensation that will have a catastrophic effect on the rest of time. Nothing can be given except in exchange for something of equal value. Do you understand?"

"No," Kilan said angrily. "Just that you won't bring her back."

"I cannot give a life without taking a life." Death placed her hand under his chin and tilted his head up to look her in the eye. Her hand was as cold as bone against his skin, and there was a strange emotion he couldn't understand in her eyes. "I can return her to life for at most ten years. More than that would damage the fabric of reality. But I can do that only if you give me ten years of your life."

Oh.

Kilan had never given his death much thought. He had known, on some level, that he was mortal, and that being mortal he would eventually die. There was a world of difference between being aware of something and being confronted with that something.  Ten years, to someone who had not yet lived that long, might as well have been a hundred years.

Did he like Varan enough to give up so much of his life? She had always annoyed him, stolen his toys, scribbled on his books, gotten him in trouble with the governesses and tutors.

But she was still his sister.

It was his fault she was dead.

Some people might think it was very brave and noble of Kilan to agree to Death's terms. Others might say it was the height of foolishness. Kilan didn't feel brave, or noble, or even foolish. He just felt lost and afraid.

"I will." He forced himself to look Death in the eye as he spoke. His throat had become strangely tight. It was so hard to get the words out. "I'll give you some of my life."

Words are far more than a collection of letters. They are more than even their meanings. With some words, one can build up an empire, or bring joy to a heart. With other words, or even with the same words said in a different way, one can destroy a world or tear a heart in two. The creatures from fairy-tales and ghost stories understand this better than humans ever could, for without words their stories could not be told. That is why one must always be very careful of what one says to anything that isn't human.

If only Kilan had known that.

Death smiled. "So be it. Now, sign here."

She handed him a scroll and a small knife, both of which seemed to have just appeared in her hand. Kilan took them and examined them dubious. The scroll was made of a leathery sort of yellowed parchment and covered with long, jagged lines in red ink that he thought must be writing of some sort. A metallic scent clung to it that should have reminded him of something, yet didn't. The knife was made of bone, not metal, with strange symbols carved into it.

"Sign with what?" he asked. "I don't have a pen."

"You don't need one. Make a small cut on your arm -- or hand, if you prefer, but the arm has fewer nerves and will be less painful -- and press it against this line." She pointed to a blank line on the scroll.

Kilan's eyes widened. He looked at the knife, so small and innocuous-looking in his hand, as if it was a snake about to leap up and bite him. "Do I have to?"

"To confirm our contract, yes, you do."

He searched her face for some sign that she was joking. She was smiling, but it was not the sort of smile someone wore when they were joking.

The knife handle was cold and smooth to the touch. Its blade was narrow and razor-sharp. Kilan took a deep breath, rolled up his sleeve, and lightly pressed the blade against the back of his arm. It was so sharp that it opened a small cut at the first brush against his skin. He shuddered and dropped it. It fell straight down and landed heavily on the stone floor, with a loud thud that seemed hardly possible for such a small object to make.

Kilan pressed the parchment against the cut as if it was a bandage. He held it there for some minutes. Death watched him the whole time, with an eerie smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

At last he thought the bleeding must have stopped by now, and took the parchment away. On the line Death had indicated, written in red, was his name.

"That," said Death, holding out her hand, "seals our bargain."

Chapter Footnotes:

[1] dzacei = A small mouse-like flying creature often kept as a pet.

[2] The House of Caranilnav does not use traditional surnames. Instead they have a long list of who they are descended from and where they live. Kilan's surname means, quite simply, "Kilan son of Særnor, born to Arásy of the Amendath branch of the House of Caranilnav, from Zjurkyu". (This system began as a convenient way of distinguishing between six or seven Princess Olzrans, or explaining which of the twenty or so Duke Irlinfeds was meant, and became more and more complicated over time.)

[3] Tevaill = The month roughly equivalent to June and July. The Carann Empire's calendar has eight months of fifty-one days each: Asinia, Geall, Tartok, Caurno, Rámur, Tevaill, Besvun, and Zasór.