What Looks Back, Page 2

  Part 1:

  Set in a dark time, there once lived a noble keeper and his wife. In the small village they called home, life thrived as life often had in the age before technology. The keeper worked as the collector and organizer of certificates and documentation, holding a person's title, land deed, and social hierarchy in his keep. If a villager was struck ill, often he or she sought out the keeper, who referred to his documents, comparing symptoms to previous cases, and recommending the most successful healer of those symptoms. If a villager wished to be wed, he or she sought out the keeper, who referred to his documents, and recommended a suitable mate of similar status and wealth. If a villager died, their family sought out the keeper, who referred to his documents, and found the graveyard wherein the deceased's relatives lay.

  Tales set in dark times such as this, however, keep no such happy habits long, and one day the keeper struck ill. As was his routine, he sought out his documents and searched for similar symptoms. But he found none. Unfazed, he journeyed to the village's most successful healers, but they returned him home unhealed.

  Three days had passed since the onset of his symptoms, and in that time the keeper grew deathly ill. He collapsed, lethargic and with vision blurred, and soon lacked even the strength to refer to his documents. His wife continued her husband's duty with desperation, searching night upon day upon night through his mountains of documents for anything which might illuminate the means to her love's return to health.

  But time did as time often does in dark tales such as this, and the keeper began to fade as husbands desperately loved often do—and time ran short.

  His wife had one last desperate plan. She took to the road upon her husband's fastest steed, riding to the plain where orchids grew in a circle around a cold, barren land. This land was known as the Devil's Tramping Ground, where the Devil himself was rumored to pace counter-clockwise on nights where even the merriest crickets and owls were silent.

  The keeper's wife stepped into the unholy ground, as only the most desperate would do, and spoke.

  “I wish to make a deal,” she said.

  The crickets and owls silenced. Only the young, foolhardy trees had the nerve to let their leaves rustle.

  The keeper's wife rubbed from her arms cold and fear, but her course was set. “I wish to make a deal,” she said once more.

  The voice that replied was cold and dark, depthless, echoing and shivering the bodies of even the bravest. The keeper's wife was no different, and she gasped, but could not fill with air the newfound pit in her stomach.

  “What have you to offer?” the Devil said.

  As it goes in tales of lighter natures, perhaps the keeper's wife may have had a plan, or intended to trick The Devil, or fight it. But in this tale, such was not the case.

  “I have my soul,” she said.

  Silence. Then the voice resounded once more, and the keeper's wife knew the sooner this business was over the better.

  “And in return?”

  “Return to my husband his health,” she said.

  The Tramping Ground grew cold, so cold that even through the soles of her boots the wife's feet chilled. A knot bound inside her chest, and before even The Devil spoke, she knew her offer had been accepted.

  “It is done,” the Devil said. “You have ten years as per contract, then your soul belongs to me. Farewell.”

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