He set off across the island and came to her little house and leaned his staff against her low door and went in. There was peat burning in her hearth, but nobody was there, and all he saw was a pile of rags and sticks beside the fire. When he bent over it, he saw that two rounded chunks of what he thought was wood were hands, the fingers twissted and the knuckles swollen, and he saw that two roots were feet; and he saw that her hair, that had been black as a raven’s wing, was white, and her eyes were like milky, and her skin was as wrinkled as an old apple. He moaned, and he knew what had happened: he had forgotten time, for, although he was a child of time, he was free of it, and what to him had been only an hour of his rage had been to her all her life.
“Now I may love you,” he said, and he raised her up and embraced her and put his lips on hers, and her spirit flew out of her body. He put her on her bed and then sat in her chair as he he always had, tears running down his worn cheeks, and after an hour he rose and took his staff and walked away.
And before he had even reached the sea, he had forgotten her utterly, for that is the way of Death, who, if he could not forget, would run howling to the great rocks of Gribun and throw himself down to the waves crashing below – as was only right, for what would become of us without Death?.
A lovely story. Thank you.