Trapped: Part 7 (End)

“Walk with me into the river,” the witch said when she arrived the next afternoon.

Today she carried no satchel, no flask, no golden cup. Rather than her wonted black dress she was clad in white. Carrying only a serpentine dagger as dark as her hair. Too twisting and ornate to be much use in any practical situation, the blade was nonetheless quite sharp enough to prove lethal in a ceremonial setting.

Leading him by his right hand, which had begun to heal enough over the past few days to stop bleeding, she guided him into the cool flowing waters. The chill of the river settled the icy feeling in his stomach and relaxed his muscles, tense with anticipation. The sun shone directly overhead when they came to the middle of the stream, just a little more than waist deep.

She faced away from him as he stood behind her, counting the seconds as they flowed past. The crucial thing was to take the witch by surprise, otherwise her magic would give her an advantage he could never overcome. He would get a headlock on her with the wounded right arm and disarm her with the left, pulling her beneath the surface where she would either drown or suffocate.

Become one with your purpose. I have no time for confusion now. This witch tormented you, lied to you, treated you like filth, and wants to kill you. There’s no time for indecision now. I’ll do it on three. One. Two —

“So how is it you planned on killing me, pet?” she asked without turning around.

“Mistress?”

“I’m almost insulted to see what a fool you think I am,” she said, finally turning to face him. “You think I don’t know you hate me as much as you love me? Of course I know. Your every move and gesture shows it. It’s in the very way you breathe, if only you knew how to listen. Even as I’m speaking you’re imagining eleven different ways of killing me. Aren’t you?”

“I don’t — ”

“Aren’t you?”

He hung his head. “I said I’d be your willing victim, mistress.”

“And perhaps you will. Let’s put it to the test then, shall we?”

With a fluid movement she came directly before him, placing the dagger’s handle in his bleeding right hand. Holding the tip of the blade so tightly that droplets of her blood trickled into the river, she pointed it directly at a spot just below her left breast. Then she let go of the knife, letting her bleeding hand drop into the current.

For a moment the water between them took on a reddish hue.

After another moment the crimson disappeared into the stream.

“I am entirely in your power, my love,” she said. “If you’re going to kill me, now is the time. You’ll have no resistance from me.”

He exhaled a low whimper.

This was his chance! To put an end to the creature that had brought so much pain and horror down on him. To set right everything that had been done to him. To…

But no.

Looking into those dark eyes, pitiless even in their softness, all the rage evaporated. He pitied her for the blood that flowed from the cut in her left hand. He regretted the small slit in her white dress the dagger cut just below her chest. And he felt, with a tremor of holy terror in his spine, the icy solitude of her immortal life.

No. She was entirely in his power now. And to have her entirely in his power for one moment was enough. He no longer needed to do it.

Or was it that cursing her with immortal life was the more horrible revenge?

Or was it that he loved her?

“I won’t do it,” he said at last.

“No? Goodbye then, pet,” she said, grasping the knife and plunging it into his chest with the speed of a viper striking its prey.

His vision already growing dim, he looked down to face the hilt sticking out from his chest. Blood spurted from the wound, pouring out to mix with the ongoing stream. He felt his body growing heavier and heavier as each moment slipped into the next.

“Now you have what you wanted,” he said, struggling to stand.

“Yes,” she said, eyes distant.

With one hand she held up his sinking body, while with the other she grasped the knife.

Then when she pulled the knife out he felt something he did not expect. Starting with his feet and hands, but running upward along his arms and legs to his torso. Incredible thing — beneath the surface of the water, like a ball of snow immersed in warm water, his body was dissolving into the river.

Before long his arms and legs had dissolved entirely. As the rest of his disintegrating body sank to the bottom of the river, he heard her say, “Thanks to you, I’ll go on into eternity, exactly as I am.”

With his vision leaving him, his form slipping away from him, and the separation between himself and the world slipping away, a sense of overwhelming joy seized him.

He remembered now. All his life he’d thought he was some tiny suffering speck of consciousness against the stupid background of everything. But no. No. How wrong he had been!

Somehow, somewhere, he’d forgotten it all.

But now he remembered he was the river. He had always been the river, always been fluid, always been dreamingly caught up in the flow of time. And if this was what they called death, well, what then was death but another name for Return?

In the last moment before it became meaningless to distinguish him from the river, he wondered: and what was life but Separation?

Then it was finished.

She was alone.

And she stood unmoving as the river flowed onward to die at last in the ocean.