The essential peter s be.., p.6
The Essential Peter S. Beagle, Volume 1, page 6
One of the few who stared at her frankly and with pleasure was young Lord Torrance, who usually danced only with his wife. Another was the poet Lorimond. Dancing with Lady Neville, he remarked to her, “If she is Death, what do these frightened fools think they are? If she is ugliness, what must they be? I hate their fear. It is obscene.”
Death and the Captain danced past them at that moment, and they heard him say to her, “But if that was truly you that I saw in the battle, how can you have changed so? How can you have become so lovely?”
Death’s laughter was gay and soft. “I thought that among so many beautiful people, it might be better to be beautiful. I was afraid of frightening everyone and spoiling the party.”
“They all thought she would be ugly,” said Lorimond to Lady Neville. “I—I knew she would be beautiful.”
“Then why have you not danced with her?” Lady Neville asked him. “Are you also afraid?”
“No, oh, no,” the poet answered quickly and passionately. “I will ask her to dance very soon. I only want to look at her a little longer.”
The musicians played on and on. The dancing wore away the night as slowly as falling water wears down a cliff. It seemed to Lady Neville that no night had ever endured longer, and yet she was neither tired nor bored. She danced with every man there, except with Lord Torrance, who was dancing with his wife as if they had just met that night, and, of course, with Captain Compson. Once he lifted his hand and touched Death’s golden hair very lightly. He was a striking man still, a fit partner for so beautiful a girl, but Lady Neville looked at his face each time she passed him and realized that he was older than anyone knew.
Death herself seemed younger than the youngest there. No woman at the ball danced better than she now, though it was hard for Lady Neville to remember at what point her awkwardness had given way to the liquid sweetness of her movements. She smiled and called to everyone who caught her eye—and she knew them all by name; she sang constantly, making up words to the dance tunes, nonsense words, sounds without meaning, and yet everyone strained to hear her soft voice without knowing why. And when, during a waltz, she caught up the trailing end of her gown to give her more freedom as she danced, she seemed to Lady Neville to move like a little sailing boat over a still evening sea.
Lady Neville heard Lady Torrance arguing angrily with the Contessa della Candini. “I don’t care if she is Death, she’s no older than I am, she can’t be!”
“Nonsense,” said the Contessa, who could not afford to be generous to any other woman. “She is twenty-eight, thirty, if she is an hour. And that dress, that bridal gown she wears—really!”
“Vile,” said the woman who had come to the ball as Captain Compson’s freely acknowledged mistress. “Tasteless. But one should know better than to expect taste from Death, I suppose.” Lady Torrance looked as if she were going to cry.
“They are jealous of Death,” Lady Neville said to herself. “How strange. I am not jealous of her, not in the least. And I do not fear her at all.” She was very proud of herself.
Then, as unbiddenly as they had begun to play, the musicians stopped. They began to put away their instruments. In the sudden shrill silence, Death pulled away from Captain Compson and ran to look out of one of the tall windows, pushing the curtains apart with both hands. “Look!” she said, with her back turned to them. “Come and look. The night is almost gone.”
The summer sky was still dark, and the eastern horizon was only a shade lighter than the rest of the sky, but the stars had vanished and the trees near the house were gradually becoming distinct. Death pressed her face against the window and said, so softly that the other guests could barely hear her, “I must go now.”
“No,” Lady Neville said, and was not immediately aware that she had spoken. “You must stay a while longer. The ball was in your honor. Please stay.”
Death held out both hands to her, and Lady Neville came and took them in her own. “I’ve had a wonderful time,” she said gently. “You cannot possibly imagine how it feels to be actually invited to such a ball as this, because you have given them and gone to them all your life. One is like another to you, but for me it is different. Do you understand me?” Lady Neville nodded silently. “I will remember this night forever,” Death said.
“Stay,” Captain Compson said. “Stay just a little longer.” He put his hand on Death’s shoulder, and she smiled and leaned her cheek against it. “Dear Captain Compson,” she said. “My first real gallant. Aren’t you tired of me yet?”
“Never,” he said. “Please stay.”
“Stay,” said Lorimond, and he, too, seemed about to touch her. “Stay. I want to talk to you. I want to look at you. I will dance with you if you stay.”
“How many followers I have,” Death said in wonder. She stretched her hand toward Lorimond, but he drew back from her and then flushed in shame. “A soldier and a poet. How wonderful it is to be a woman. But why did you not speak to me earlier, both of you? Now it is too late. I must go.”
“Please, stay,” Lady Torrance whispered. She held on to her husband’s hand for courage. “We think you are so beautiful, both of us do.”
“Gracious Lady Torrance,” the girl said kindly. She turned back to the window, touched it lightly, and it flew open. The cool dawn air rushed into the ballroom, fresh with rain but already smelling faintly of the London streets over which it had passed. They heard birdsong and the strange, harsh nickering of Death’s horses.
“Do you want me to stay?” she asked. The question was put, not to Lady Neville, nor to Captain Compson, nor to any of her admirers, but to the Contessa della Candini, who stood well back from them all, hugging her flowers to herself and humming a little song of irritation. She did not in the least want Death to stay, but she was afraid that all the other women would think her envious of Death’s beauty, and so she said, “Yes. Of course I do.”
“Ah,” said Death. She was almost whispering. “And you,” she said to another woman, “do you want me to stay? Do you want me to be one of your friends?”
“Yes,” said the woman, “because you are beautiful and a true lady.”
“And you,” said Death to a man, “and you,” to a woman, “and you,” to another man, “do you want me to stay?” And they all answered, “Yes, Lady Death, we do.”
“Do you want me, then?” she cried at last to all of them. “Do you want me to live among you and to be one of you, and not to be Death anymore? Do you want me to visit your houses and come to all your parties? Do you want me to ride horses like yours instead of mine, do you want me to wear the kind of dresses you wear, and say the things you would say? Would one of you marry me, and would the rest of you dance at my wedding and bring gifts to my children? Is that what you want?”
“Yes,” said Lady Neville. “Stay here, stay with me, stay with us.”
Death’s voice, without becoming louder, had become clearer and older—too old a voice, thought Lady Neville, for such a young girl. “Be sure,” said Death. “Be sure of what you want, be very sure. Do all of you want me to stay? For if one of you says to me, no, go away, then I must leave at once and never return. Be sure. Do you all want me?”
And everyone there cried with one voice, “Yes! Yes, you must stay with us. You are so beautiful that we cannot let you go.”
“We are tired,” said Captain Compson.
“We are blind,” said Lorimond, adding, “especially to poetry.”
“We are afraid,” said Lord Torrance quietly, and his wife took his arm and said, “Both of us.”
“We are dull and stupid,” said Lady Neville, “and growing old uselessly. Stay with us, Lady Death.”
And then Death smiled sweetly and radiantly and took a step forward, and it was as though she had come down among them from a very great height. “Very well,” she said. “I will stay with you. I will be Death no more. I will be a woman.”
The room was full of a deep sigh, although no one was seen to open his mouth. No one moved, for the golden-haired girl was Death still, and her horses still whinnied for her outside. No one could look at her for long, although she was the most beautiful girl anyone there had ever seen.
“There is a price to pay,” she said. “There is always a price. Some one of you must become Death in my place, for there must forever be Death in the world. Will anyone choose? Will anyone here become Death of his own free will? For only thus can I become a human girl.”
No one spoke, no one spoke at all. But they backed slowly away from her, like waves slipping back down a beach to the sea when you try to catch them. The Contessa della Candini and her friends would have crept quietly out the door, but Death smiled at them and they stood where they were. Captain Compson opened his mouth as though he were going to declare himself, but he said nothing. Lady Neville did not move.
“No one,” said Death. She touched a flower with her finger, and it seemed to crouch and flex itself like a pleased cat. “No one at all,” she said. “Then I must choose, and that is just, for that is the way I became Death. I never wanted to be Death, and it makes me so happy that you want me to become one of yourselves. I have searched a long time for people who would want me. Now I have only to choose someone to replace me and it is done. I will choose very carefully.”
“Oh, we were so foolish,” Lady Neville said to herself. “We were so foolish.” But she said nothing aloud; she merely clasped her hands and stared at the young girl, thinking vaguely that if she had had a daughter, she would have been greatly pleased if she had resembled the Lady Death.
“The Contessa della Candini,” said Death thoughtfully, and that woman gave a little squeak of terror because she could not draw her breath for a scream. But Death laughed and said, “No, that would be silly.” She said nothing more, but for a long time after that the Contessa burned with humiliation at not having been chosen to be Death.
“Not Captain Compson,” murmured Death, “because he is too kind to become Death, and because it would be too cruel to him. He wants to die so badly.” The expression on the Captain’s face did not change, but his hands began to tremble.
“Not Lorimond,” the girl continued, “because he knows so little about life, and because I like him.” The poet flushed, and turned white, and then turned pink again. He made as if to kneel clumsily on one knee, but instead he pulled himself erect and stood as much like Captain Compson as he could.
“Not the Torrances,” said Death, “never Lord and Lady Torrance, for both of them care too much about another person to take any pride in being Death.” But she hesitated over Lady Torrance for a while, staring at her out of her dark and curious eyes. “I was your age when I became Death,” she said at last. “I wonder what it will be like to be your age again. I have been Death for so long.” Lady Torrance shivered and did not speak.
And at last Death said quietly, “Lady Neville.”
“I am here,” Lady Neville answered.
“I think you are the only one,” said Death. “I choose you, Lady Neville.”
Again Lady Neville heard every guest sigh softly, and although her back was to them all, she knew that they were sighing in relief that neither themselves nor anyone dear to themselves had been chosen. Lady Torrance gave a little cry of protest, but Lady Neville knew that she would have cried out at whatever choice Death made. She heard herself say calmly, “I am honored. But was there no one more worthy than I?”
“Not one,” said Death. “There is no one quite so weary of being human, no one who knows better how meaningless it is to be alive. And there is no one else here with the power to treat life”—and she smiled sweetly and cruelly—“the life of your hairdresser’s child, for instance, as the meaningless thing it is. Death has a heart, but it is forever an empty heart, and I think, Lady Neville, that your heart is like a dry riverbed, like a seashell. You will be very content as Death, more so than I, for I was very young when I became Death.”
She came toward Lady Neville, light and swaying, her deep eyes wide and full of the light of the red morning sun that was beginning to rise. The guests at the ball moved back from her, although she did not look at them, but Lady Neville clenched her hands tightly and watched Death come toward her with little dancing steps. “We must kiss each other,” Death said. “That is the way I became Death.” She shook her head delightedly, so that her soft hair swirled about her shoulders. “Quickly, quickly,” she said. “Oh, I cannot wait to be human again.”
“You may not like it,” Lady Neville said. She felt very calm, though she could hear her old heart pounding in her chest and feel it in the tips of her fingers. “You may not like it after a while,” she said.
“Perhaps not.” Death’s smile was very close to her now. “I will not be as beautiful as I am, and perhaps people will not love me as much as they do now. But I will be human for a while, and at last I will die. I have done my penance.”
“What penance?” the old woman asked the beautiful girl. “What was it you did? Why did you become Death?”
“I don’t remember,” said the Lady Death. “And you, too, will forget in time.” She was smaller than Lady Neville, and so much younger. In her white dress she might have been the daughter that Lady Neville had never had, who would have been with her always and held her mother’s head lightly in the crook of her arm when she felt old and sad. Now she lifted her head to kiss Lady Neville’s cheek, and as she did so, she whispered in her ear, “You will still be beautiful when I am ugly. Be kind to me then.”
Behind Lady Neville the handsome gentlemen and ladies murmured and sighed, fluttering like moths in their evening dress, in their elegant gowns. “I promise,” she said, and then she pursed her dry lips to kiss the soft, sweet-smelling cheek of the young Lady Death.
“Lila the Werewolf” is the second of my Joe Farrell adventures, and one of only two I’ve ever written—forty years apart!—about werewolves. Which is odd, when you think about it, as fascinated as I’ve always been with shapeshifters. The producer I sold it to managed to sell it simultaneously to two other producers before his death. I’ve never begrudged him the scam—he bought me great lunches and told me wonderful jokes in Yiddish, which I almost understood.
Lila the Werewolf
Lila Braun had been living with Farrell for three weeks before he found out she was a werewolf. They had met at a party when the moon was a few nights past the full, and by the time it had withered to the shape of a lemon, Lila had moved her suitcase, her guitar, and her Ewan MacColl records two blocks north and four blocks west to Farrell’s apartment on Ninety-eighth Street. Girls sometimes happened to Farrell like that.
One evening, Lila wasn’t in when Farrell came home from work at the bookstore. She had left a note on the table, under a can of tuna fish. The note said that she had gone up to the Bronx to have dinner with her mother, and would probably be spending the night there. The coleslaw in the refrigerator should be finished before it went bad.
Farrell ate the tuna fish and gave the coleslaw to Grunewald. Grunewald was a half-grown Russian wolfhound, the color of sour milk. He looked like a goat, and had no outside interests except shoes. Farrell was taking care of him for a girl who was away in Europe for the summer. She sent Grunewald a tape recording of her voice every week.
Farrell went to a movie with a friend, and to the West End afterward for beer. Then he walked home alone under the full moon, which was red and yellow. He reheated the morning coffee, played a record, read through a week-old “News of the Week in Review” section of the Sunday Times, and finally took Grunewald up to the roof for the night, as he always did. The dog had been accustomed to sleeping in the same bed with his mistress, and the point was not negotiable. Grunewald mooed and scrabbled and butted all the way, but Farrell pushed him out among the looming chimneys and ventilators and slammed the door. Then he came back downstairs and went to bed.
He slept very badly. Grunewald’s baying woke him twice; and there was something else that brought him half out of bed, thirsty and lonely, with his sinuses full and the night swaying like a curtain as the figures of his dream scurried offstage. Grunewald seemed to have gone off the air—perhaps it was the silence that had awakened him. Whatever the reason, he never really got back to sleep.
He was lying on his back, watching a chair with his clothes on it becoming a chair again, when the wolf came in through the open window. It landed lightly in the middle of the room and stood there for a moment, breathing quickly, with its ears back. There was blood on the wolf’s teeth and tongue, and blood on its chest.
Farrell, whose true gift was for acceptance, especially in the morning, accepted the idea that there was a wolf in his bedroom and lay quite still, closing his eyes as the grim, black-lipped head swung towards him. Having once worked at a zoo, he was able to recognize the beast as a Central European subspecies: smaller and lighter-boned than the northern timber wolf variety, lacking the thick, ruffy mane at the shoulders, and having a more pointed nose and ears. His own pedantry always delighted him, even at the worst moments.
Blunt claws clicking on the linoleum, then silent on the throw rug by the bed. Something warm and slow splashed down on his shoulder, but he never moved. The wild smell of the wolf was over him, and that did frighten him at last to be in the same room with that smell and the Miro prints on the walls. Then he felt the sunlight on his eyelids, and at the same moment he heard the wolf moan softly and deeply.
The sound was not repeated, but the breath on his face was suddenly sweet and smoky, dizzyingly familiar after the other. He opened his eyes and saw Lila. She was sitting naked on the edge of the bed, smiling, with her hair down.
“Hello, baby,” she said. “Move over, baby. I came home.”
Farrell’s gift was for acceptance. He was perfectly willing to believe that he had dreamed the wolf; to believe Lila’s story of boiled chicken and bitter arguments and sleeplessness on Tremont Avenue; and to forget that her first caress had been to bite him on the shoulder, hard enough so that the blood crusting there as he got up and made breakfast might very well be his own. But then he left the coffee perking and went up to the roof to get Grunewald. He found the dog sprawled in a grove of TV antennas, looking more like a goat than ever, with his throat torn out. Farrell had never actually seen an animal with its throat torn out.
