LUDIC LOG

Once upon a time, there was a boy who was death.

This was very long ago, so long that the sun shone differently than it does today. In these times, it was very cold in the south of the world, and it would grow hotter the farther north one would travel. And though it was still darkest at midnight and brightest at noon, those words had not yet been coined, and people reckoned the movement of time not by clocks, but by the sun's passage in the sky. There were still great animals walking the earth, huge and silent; they would cross the land but twice a year, once in one direction and once in the other, and their passage was to men as the passage of man is to insects. So you can see that this was very long ago indeed: or perhaps not so long, but in a different world than this.

At this time, death was everywhere, and is not held in the greedy hands of a few the way it is today. Death came and went, death was here and there, and one was very likely to see death any old place one went: any journey of more than two or three days, and you were sure to run into one death or another. For this was in the day when there were all sorts of death. It was not so long ago that everyone had his own death, no -- that was very long ago indeed. But these days everyone thinks death is the same and that everyone may as well have the same death. This was not the case so long ago, in the cold forests of the south where I set my tale; then there were a thousand deaths, and each one of them went hither and thither.

One day, to the cottage of a wheelwright, came the boy who was death. Here the wheelwright, whose name is lost to time but may have been called Carter, lived with his wife and their young son, younger even than the boy who was death. Carter and his wife loved their son very much, but they greatly wished for another child. But such was always denied them, and thus they doted on the one they had, calling him dear and spoiling him with meats and candies. The son was called Edward and the mother was Kate, and together they were happy in their simple home. Edward would study his chapbooks (for he was a bright boy, quick of wit though weak in his body), while Kate would make a stew and Carter would repair the wheels of a drover's wagon to earn their next week's meal. All was content, and save for the wanting of a brother for Edward they suffered no need in life. It was to this that came the boy who was death.

Fair of face he was, with jet hair and a perkish nose, and all looked right an handsome on him except when he smiled. Then he would assume a wicked character and his teeth would show, and they were the teeth of an animal. The boy who was death stood outside the window and called to Kate, Carter's wife. "Mother!" he cried! "Mother, I am home! Come out to me!"

Kate was overjoyed, for so great was her desire for a brother for Edward that she must have thought him sent by God as a blessing on their house. As she ran to the door to go to him and embrace him, the boy who was death smiled, and her husband and son saw him. "Do not go to him, wife," said Carter, "for I have seen his smile, and it is like a wolf's." In these days wolves were known to walk the roads in the form of men to get their daily meat.

"You are wrong, wheelwright," called the boy who was death. "I am not a wolf nor yet a man. I am death, and your wife will come to me still." With this he came away from the window and stood beneath the great chestnut tree. Still smiling his smile, which was that of a beast on the hunt, he waited and waited for the woman to come.

Many days and nights passed and as it would in the south, the weather became weary cold. The smile on the face of the boy who was death remained, but he became shook with hunger and with chills. Soon enough it began to rain, and as Carter sat at the hearth and whittled, not heeding his wife, she became overcome with pity. "He is, after all, only a boy," she thought, "not so different from our only son, and I would not have him suffer cold." So it was that when the wheelwright's attention was less than full, she ran out to the boy who was death, and she embraced him, and it was then that he had her.

In great despair, the wheelwright and his son buried Kate beneath the great chestnut tree. Carter wept over her cold body, over her cold grave, in the cold ground, while up above, in the tops of the branches so high that no one could reach him, the boy who was death taunted the wheelwright. Each day when he would come outside to work, the boy who was death called down to him. "You will no more marry, wheelwright," he would say, smiling his fanged smile and laughing a gentle laugh. "I am death, and I have your wife. Soon enough I will have your son. And then, when you have nothing left, I will have you too."

Each day, the boy who was death would taunt Carter the wheelwright, until one day he could take it no more. Fetching a length of rope he used to tie bundles, he set out to climb the great chestnut tree, so as to bind up the boy who was death and throw him down the well. But still the boy who was death taunted him: "I am death," he said, "and you cannot harm me, for to do so is to die. I will remain here all of my days and never will I let you forget your wife, and how she ran to me and took me in her arms. As long as I am here, that is all you will remember of her, until you have nothing left." Hearing these words, Carter could be strong no more: he threw his rope over a strong branch and fashioned for himself a hangman's noose. It was then that the boy who was death had him.

The next morning, the young son Edward came to the door and called out the boy who was death. "I have heard it said in stories that you like to play games," said Edward.

The boy who was death grinned a feral grin. "Have you a game to play? You will not win, because I am death, and I will take you yet."

Edward did not fear him, but only said his game. "We will wrestle, you and I," he said. "Each day as the sun sets we will have a match, and when you can defeat me two falls of three, then you will have me, but not before." The boy who was death agreed, and the next day they had their first match. Edward, though he was small and weak, was quick and clever, and he pinned the boy who was death after a great struggle. The boy who was death let out a whoop, for he was mightily pleased at this game. He demanded to play again, but Edward refused and told him that he had agreed to the terms of the game, and that they would wrestle again the next evening.

So it went the next day and the next, and so on through the cold winter and into spring, and as one year passed into another: Edward would work in the day, and study his chapbooks, and then in the evening he would wrestle with the boy who was death. Sometimes Edward would be pinned once, but never twice: each day, and another, and the next, he would emerge victorious. He soon grew to be big and strong, and the boy who was death stayed the same, for death never changes. It became harder for the boy who was death to win even a single fall, for Edward was now almost a man. But it did not matter to the boy who was death: he knew that Edward would someday flee, though to do so was to break their agreement, and on that day he would have him. Besides, the games of wrestling were great fun.

Finally, on a hot summer Sunday, Edward -- now a strapping fellow near his age of advancement -- was nearly late for their match. He came from the house, yawning and stretching, and looked at the boy who was death as if he were something new in the world. "What! Still here, are you? I grow tired of you. I grow tired of our game."

The boy who was death only smiled his big cat's smile and shook his coal-topped head. "You may grow tired, wheelwright's son, but I never do. You were almost late for our game, and one day you will forget. I am death, and on that day I will have you."

So it was that Edward began his last match with the boy who was death. It was a spirited contest, and the boy who was death contested fiercely though he was by now much outsized by the wheelwright's son. But just as the tide began to turn, Edward slipped his great arms around the throat of the boy who was death and began to choke him. "You are mistaken," said Edward; the boy who was death, robbed of all air, could not speak. "All these years you have thought we were wrestling, but it is only I who have been fighting. You have but been playing. Only I have something to lose. And now you will learn that I am not playing after all."

With that, he tightened his grip on the throat of his foe, and for the first time, the animal smile departed the face of the boy who was death. "I knew the day would come when you discovered that we have never been playing the same game," said Edward. "And on that day I finally have you, for I am death."