Keturah and Lord Death

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“Keturah, tell us a story,” said Naomi, “one of your tales of faërie or magic.”

“Yes, Keturah, do,” said Beatrice, “but I would have a tale of love.”

The boys around the common fire groaned. “A story, yes,” said Tobias, “but a hunting tale, please, one of daring and death.”

The men murmured in agreement. One, whose face I could not see, said, “Tell a tale of the great hart of the lord’s forest.”

Choirmaster sighed. “I would prefer a godly story,” he said, “one to comfort your heart on a gloomy day.”

The fire crackled and leapt for a time, and then I said, “I will tell you a story that is all of those things, a story of magic and love, of daring and death, and one to comfort your heart. It will be the truest story I have ever told. Now listen, and tell me if it is not so.”

I was sixteen years old the day I was lost in the forest, sixteen the day I met my death.

I was picking new peas in our garden, which is bordered by the forest, when the famed hart, the hart that had eluded Lord Temsland and his finest hunters many times, the hart about which I had told many a story, came to nibble on our lettuces. I saw that he was a sixth-year hart at least, and I would have run at the sight of his antlers, spread like a young tree, had I not been entranced by his beauty. He raised his head, and for a long moment he looked upon me as if I had stumbled upon him in his own domain, so proud he was, and so royal. At last he slowly turned and walked back into the forest.

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