My name is Death (part 1)

Warning: the following content contains mention of death.

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By: Audrey Yeung

My name is Death. I go by many names, of course. People have called me Grim Reaper, the Devil, Hell, Hades and others I won’t go into, but essentially, I am Death.

I was not always Death.

I used to be just like you, an ordinary human. If you would care to listen to my story, I will tell you how I came to be as I am.

For fifty centuries, I have been Death. Fifty centuries ago, I was a human named Jonas Calvus and I lived in a village far away, a village which no longer exists. Back then, all villages were special. Villages had not felt death. They were large and people were happy. Sickness, death and war were things no one had ever heard of before. Until one day, it happened. About two weeks after my sixteenth birthday, my mother saw something terrible.

She had clasped her small crystal that dangled on a gold chain around her neck: her seeing crystal. I had seen her do this every morning but that day was different. She clasped the crystal around her neck, closed her eyes and collapsed onto the ground. I was shocked and quickly bent down to help her.

“I see…” my mother whispered. Her voice sounded raspy and strained. “Darkness. Eternal darkness!” She was breathing fast and heavily. After a while, she calmed down and disappeared into her room in haste. After two hours, my father came back from his workshop and we heard a loud BOOM! coming from my parents’ room. My father and I banged the door open and my mother was lying on the floor, unmoving. She was not breathing - a condition which was foreign to us, us who had never before seen death.

My father, realising she wasn’t going to wake up, looked devastated. He unclasped the gold chain and took it to the living room. The wooden shelves were filled with books and the drawers were filled with herbs and colourful liquids. He removed the crystal from its chain and smashed it on the table, shattering it into pieces. He then took a small vial of golden liquid from one of the drawers, scraped the crystal bits into the vial and poured it all into his mouth. Then, I understood what he was doing. He was trying to see what my mother had seen. When he did, he clutched the bookshelf for support and nearly fell. My father looked at me straight in the eye.

“Death...horrible...darkness…” he moaned. I did not understand the word ‘death’ but I saw something in my father’s eyes that made me shake. Later, he felt completely fine again, but I worried that he would meet the same fate as my mother. My father left and came back with one of the Elders.

“Castinia. You must go to Castinia. The village of magic. Cadmus — who I believe is your uncle — will help you. Go now. Take a horse.” he told me.

“My father saw the future. He could go with me.” I said.

“No. Your father is needed in the village. You must go alone. In the meantime, we will attempt to look for any clues your mother might have left, but it is unlikely we will find anything.” Reluctantly, I saddled myself on a horse. The trip to Castinia took roughly twenty minutes. Once I reached the village of magic, I knocked on the door bearing a sign that read ‘Cadmus’. I had never visited my uncle before, as he had only visited me, and I was intrigued to see his home. “Who is it?” he called.

“It’s me, uncle. Jonas Calvus.” I said, grinning at the sign. The door swung open and I walked inside. Mahogany shelves full of books covered every inch of the walls, except a few shelves that were filled with potions and elixirs of every colour. Cadmus sat at his desk with a thick dusty book, flipping through pages every once and a while, until he shut it, turned around and grinned at me. He had dark hair that was nearly all grey and he looked at me through small round glasses with kind blue eyes. He stood up and raised his eyebrows at me.

“Well then, Jonas. What do I owe the pleasure of your visit?” he asked. Then, I told him of everything that had happened that morning and by the end, Cadmus was sitting on the chair, brows furrowed.

“I’ve read about such things before. Didn’t think it was real, though.” he muttered. He scanned the shelves of books and finally removed a book. The cover was pitch black and the words on the cover were silver. Cadmus blew the thin layer of dust off and riffled through pages until he found the page he was looking for. I saw his eyes moving, reading everything and committing it all to memory as best as he could. He slammed the book shut, replaced it back on the shelf, and removed an object from the shelf of potions. The object was covered with a red cloth and Cadmus placed it on his desk, removing the cloth. It was a crystal ball, albeit a very dusty one. It looked like it hadn’t been used for decades. Turns out, this was the case.

“My crystal ball. I haven’t used this in decades.” he said. Cadmus placed both hands on the sides of the crystal ball, not touching it. He then whispered something to the crystal ball very quietly. The crystal ball shone with a bright blue glow. My uncle stared at the crystal ball intently, and right when he stopped, there was a firm knock on the door.

To be continued...