Chapter 1: I Hugged Death

“Wait, Angus! Wait for me!” the little girl’s voice whined.

“No! You have to run faster if you want to be on this treasure hunt!”

“Yeah, Joan!”

“Shut up, Courage!”

The three children were running across the familiar, verdant countryside of their home in the Kingdom Faithful. Angus was the eldest at eleven, his younger sister Joan was barely five. And Courage was the Mayor’s son, a tag-along if ever there was one. They were from the town of Bridgeside, named for the bridge that crossed the River Full at that place. It was the only bridge for miles either way along the river.

“We’re nearly at the waterfall!” Angus shouted back to his devotees. He rounded the curved corner of the adjacent forest and there was the waterfall, the great gushing of water tumbling over the grey-white rocks. Angus had seen this waterfall many times over and no longer appreciated its unique beauty. He stopped before it and looked at the scrap of paper in his hands. “There’s a cave near here apparently,” he murmured. 

“What?” Courage hyperventilated.

“A cave. Near here.”

“Do you think it’s behind the waterfall?”

“Like in the fairy tales!” Joan piped up. “The storyteller from the fair told one about the girl who got lost in the land behind the waterfall and then the nymphs bullied her and she cried. And the nymphs turned her into a statue but you can still hear her crying and her tears and stuff.”

“Whatever,” Angus said dismissively.

“They’re just stories, Joan,” Courage sneered.

“I know!” Joan protested. “But I liked it, and it’s about stuff behind waterfalls! I was right, wasn’t I, Angus?” But Angus was walking forward now, towards the waterfall and the cliff. He pressed himself against the cliff and looked behind the wall of water. “What are you doing?” Joan asked.

“There’s something back there.”

“But you’ll get wet!”

“Some things are worth getting wet for, Joan.”

Courage sniggered.

“Grow up, Courage,” Angus ordered.

“Yeah, Courage!” Joan repeated.

Courage sulked. 

Angus started to move along the cliff towards the waterfall and then started to sidle along a small ledge. Joan started to follow. “No, Joan. You stay here. It’s too dangerous for you. And Courage, you’re too large really.” Courage sulked even further. “I won’t be long.” And Angus disappeared behind the cascading water. 

_________

I had run down with everyone else as soon as the news had hit the town, and half an hour later, there was a great commotion rippling through Bridgeside. It seemed as though half the town had turned up to see what had happened at the waterfall. Angus’ mother, Madeline, was in tears and being supported by her husband, Angus and Joan’s step-father, Agrinn. The Mayor was there trying to keep everything in some kind of order. The baker’s wife and the baker’s apprentice were there providing hot buns and pies for everyone. The blacksmith, Nigel, my master, had gone behind the waterfall to see what he could find. Everyone was on edge waiting for the verdict. 

Finally Nigel returned through the water with his lantern. “There’s a small cavern back there. It’s tiny and very dark without a light. There’s a hole in the ground. It’s quite narrow. I wouldn’t fit down. I suspect that Angus fell down or climbed down and got stuck. I couldn’t see him or really hear anything, but the noise of the waterfall would drown out any sound down there so there’s no reason to start worrying.”

“Right, so we need someone to go down,” Mayor Naize announced. “Someone of a slight build, and old enough to know what to do.” 

“Might I suggest my apprentice, Maj?” Nigel said. 

My heart fell. Much as I wanted to know what had happened to poor Angus and to be able to contribute, I wasn’t particularly prepared for what I might find. My family was close to his, and I had watched him grow up since I was six and he was born. Eleven years I had known Angus and I dreaded to think. I had an image in my mind: blood and water and black hair soaked in the stuff and contorted angles and white eyes. The thought was sickening. But I was old enough to be responsible and slender enough, it seemed, to fit down this hole.

Somebody slapped me on the back, encouraging my good sportsmanship, and I stumbled forward into the gap that had emerged around me. “Good on you, Majesty,” the Mayor said. And I was officially elected without even volunteering as a candidate. Good old democracy.

Five minutes later I found myself edging along the stone ledge and under the cascading water, clutching a lantern and with a rope around my shoulder. Nigel was right behind me. 

The cavern was indeed very small. It was damp underfoot, and I could feel cold drips of water falling from the ceiling, but the waterfall had soaked me enough already so I didn’t much care. There in the middle of the cavern was the hole. In the lamp-light it appeared as a black void. It was like the entrance to the afterlife. I admit, I was scared. “Maj! Tie the rope round your waist!” Nigel shouted to me over the roar of the waterfall. When I was safely harnessed up, I started to clamber down the hole with the blacksmith holding the other end of the rope, keeping me safe and alive.

The chute was narrow, just like Nigel the blacksmith had said, but large enough for Angus to have fallen. I descended about ten feet until my feet hit the ground. “I’m at the bottom!” I called up. “Send a lantern down!” In the darkness, I surveyed the area. It was quieter down here, the roar from the waterfall was now a muffled gush. There were more waterdrops and echoes of waterdrops dripping musically from the ceiling onto the floor. A minute or so later, a lantern was lowered down the hole. I took it and held it up to illuminate the cavern I was standing in now. It appeared to be a long, cavernous tunnel that disappeared to the the right around a corner thirty feet away from where I was standing. I stepped forward and inadvertently kicked something. I looked down and found Angus’s corpse at my feet. 

I knelt down beside the body. The image I had imagined earlier was so much messier and noisier (for some reason there was noise in my mind - not any specific noise, just generic noise) than this. There was a pool of blood around his head, glistening coolly and evilly in the light from the lantern. The boy had cracked his skull open. “Oh Angus. You silly boy,” I remember muttering. Angus’ eyes stared gauntly at the wall, not white but full of the same colour, the same sky blue, from when he was alive. I swallowed and closed his  eyes gently and respectfully. “May you be protected in the afterlife.” 

I stood back up and called, choking, up the tunnel the news. And then slowly I tied the rope around the corpse and watched it ascend the cruel shaft that had ended the boy’s life. As I waited for the rope to fall back down, my eye caught a piece of paper that had been lying close to where Angus had fallen. I picked it up and held it close to the lantern. It appeared to be a map with instructions. A treasure map. “Maj?” Nigel called down. “Here’s the rope.”

“Tie it off to something up there. I’m going to explore this cave.” I ignored his protests and commands and started to tread down the tunnel. It occurred to me as I walked that beyond the noise of the dripping water, there was another sound. Quiet. But definitely there. A breathing, soft breathing. A whimper. “Hello?” I called out. My voice echoed horribly, reverberating off the cold walls.

I turned the corner and sitting in a simple, stone throne before me, in a bath of blue light falling from a pinpoint hole in the ceiling, was a person. It didn’t move or say anything. Indeed, it seemed to be dead, and that would have made perfect sense, having been stuck down here for eternity. It was a woman, I figured, with very dark eyes. She was wearing a simple golden crown, rich red gowns and gold shoes. I approached slowly, very aware of where I placed my feet. The closer to her I got, the more I noticed about her. Her body was skeletal, appearing as though someone had crudely stretched a sheet of skin over a bag of bones. Her once-jet black hair was thin, faded and old. And then I noticed that the eyes were not dark but non-existent. Just two empty sockets. And it was the water falling from the ceiling onto her face that created the effect that she was crying. 

But as I moved even closer, I realised that there was no water dripping from the ceiling here. She was actually crying. “Hello?” I repeated, in a gasp this time. “Are you alright?” Of course, the answer to that was obvious. “What are you doing here?” The woman didn’t reply. “A boy just died back there. Didn’t you hear him? Who are you?”

The woman’s head lolled forward and the eye sockets stared blankly at me. I stepped back, my stomach hugging my heart, so it felt. “Death.” Her voice was deep and moaning, cracked and full of despair. I shivered. The hairs on my arms stood on end and I came out in goosebumps. I didn’t dare reply. She continued eventually: “I have spent an eternity with death. I have hugged death. And so I am death and I hate death and I want death.” I was frozen, petrified with fear. “It’s been so long.” Her skin stretched thinly to accommodate her speech. She seemed to be near translucent. “Who are you?”

“My name is Maj.”

“Maj… How majestic.” There was the possibility that she smiled at that point, although I didn’t quite get her joke. So she added a suffix to my name. It wasn’t like anyone else had done that all the way through my life.

I stood in terror and in awe at this feat of nature. It was ridiculous. She could not be this old. She should have died hundreds of years ago. “A name like that deserves a royal title. Take the Crown,” she ordered me. “But do not wear it for you shall suffer great pain in the end.” She attempted to lift her arms to remove the garment, but she was either too weak or too old or both to do so. She gave up. “Take it.” I slowly approached with great caution, reached out and took the crown from the woman’s head. She sighed a glorious and pitiful sigh and her body disintegrated into dust, leaving a small skeleton in red robes bathed in blue light. 

I found myself two feet back from where I had been standing. I had jumped at spontaneous disintegration. The anonymous woman had finally been granted death at the removal of the crown. With no longer the life and will, the arms fell to the skeleton’s side and a heavy object fell from the folds of the robes. It hit the ground with a heavy thud that echoed through the cavern. I moved forward, still aware of the skeleton in case it should move again, and discovered the heavy object to be a book, the pages were gilded and crumpled, the hard cover, fraying. I picked it up and backed away from the body hastily, and as soon as I was around the corner, I ran to the rope and escaped the cave of death.