Death - Reform

A piercing blue light was heading up the road. No cart could move that fast. There was a roar like the scream of a camel who has just seen two bricks.

The light reached the bend, skidded, hit a rock and leapt into space over the gorge.

There was just time for a hollow voice to say OH B-

. . . before it hit the far wall in one great, spreading circle of flame. Bones bounced and rolled down to the river-bed, and were still.

Susan spun around, scythe ready to swing. But the music was in the air. It had no soul to aim for.

You could say to the universe, this is not fair. And the universe would say: Oh, isn't it? Sorry.

You could save people. You could get there in the nick of time. And something could snap its fingers and say, no, it has to be this way. Let me tell you how it has to be. This is how the legend has to go.

She reached out and tried to take Buddy's hand. She could feel it, but only as a coldness.

'Can you hear me?' she shouted, above the triumphant chords.

He nodded.

'It's . . . it's like a legend! It has to happen! And I can't stop it - how can I kill something like music?'

She ran to the edge of the gorge. The cart was well on fire. They wouldn't appear in it. They would have been in it.

'I can't stop it! It's not fair!'

She pounded at the air with her fists.

'Grandfather!'

Blue flames flickered fitfully on the rocks of the dry river-bed.

A small fingerbone rolled across the stones until it came up against another, slightly larger bone. A third bone tumbled off a rock and joined them.

In the semi-darkness there was a rattling among the stones and a handful of little white shapes bounced and tumbled between the rocks until a hand, index finger reaching for the sky, rose into the night.

Then there was a series of deeper, more hollow noises as longer, larger things skipped end on end through the gloom.

'I was going to make it better!' shouted Susan. 'What's the good of being Death if you have to obey idiot rules all the time?'

BRING THEM BACK.

As Susan turned, a toe-bone hopped across the mud and scuttled into place somewhere under Death's robe.

***

Soul Music p246-247