When sixteen-year-old Keturah follows a legendary hart into Lord Temsland's forest she becomes lost, and eventually Lord Death comes to claim her, but when she is able to charm him with her story, she gains a reprieve of twenty-four hours, if she can find her one true love.
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
—from “The Chariot” by Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
“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.
I meant only to peek into the trees to see more of him. I thought only to follow the pig path a little way into the forest in hopes that I might have a new story to tell of him at the common fire. I thought I saw him between the trees, and then I did not, and then I did, and after a good long while I turned about and realized I was lost in the wood.
I walked a deer-trod that wove its way for a time along a ridge above a ravine. Far down in the cut I could hear water, a creek, but I could not see it. The way was too steep. Trees grew upward out of the sheer face of the ravine. Some had fallen and lay like blackened bones in the clutches of the upright trees.
I left the path in hopes of finding an easier way to the creek, but soon I could no longer hear the water at all, and I could not find the path again. Still I walked.
Trees, which had once seemed benign and beautiful to me, blocked the sun, fell before my path, tore at my hair, and yielded no fruit but bitter leaves. When night fell, I slept at times, and each time I dreamt that the forest went on forever.
After three days of wandering, I reconciled myself to God and sat under a tree waiting for death. I thought sorrowfully upon Grandmother, who would be weeping by the window. I thought upon my dreams that would never be realized: to have my own little cottage to clean, my own wee baby to hold, and most of all, one true love to be my husband.
I slept and woke at intervals in my upright position against the tree, wishing dearly that I might not have to spend another night in the dark wood. I had not enough water in me to make tears, but my heart wept with longing to see Grandmother and Gretta and Beatrice and my beloved Tide-by-Rood.
At dusk, death came to me in the form of a man.
He was dressed in a black cape and came mounted on a black stallion. Beneath his hood I could see that he was a goodly man, severe but beautiful, not old but in the time of his greatest powers. My courage failed me. I wanted to escape, but I was too weak to stand. My limbs seemed rooted in the ground beneath me. The tree I leaned against cradled my shoulders.
I remembered the good manners Grandmother had taught me with her switch and paddle. When he had dismounted and was coming toward me I said, “Good Sir Death, forgive me if I do not rise.”
His steps slowed. “You know who I am, then?”
“I do, sir.”
The dusk deepened, as if the gloom unfurled from the folds of his cloak.
“Is it Keturah?” he asked. His voice was calm and cold, and thrilled me with fear. “You are the daughter of Catherine Reeve, whom I know.”
“Yes, sir.” He knew my mother indeed, but I did not. She had died giving birth to me. “I regret to say, sir, that, as in the case of my mother, you have come before I was ready.”
