I am about to die. I could feel Death’s eyes watching me; could hear him breathing in the shadows. Every painted face resembled his face; my pale reflections in marble and glass were his reflections. As I ran through the labyrinth of desolate halls and crumbling corridors, I knew there was no possible chance of escape. I knew Death had come to claim me at last.

But I didn’t want to die. My life, a mysterious puzzle I hadn’t begun to solve, filled with unraveled mysteries and treasures I hadn’t yet discovered, was all I had left. My will to live was as strong as it had ever been yet I could not find my way. I was lost. Despair subdued and filled me with a sweet exhaustion. Is that what birds feel like when their wings are caught; as they beat frantically to escape the jaws of Death–do they feel such exhaustion? I was so tired of running. I so wanted to stop and catch my breath, just one breath.

Run.

Familiar whispers in familiar corridors. I had no choice but to obey them and so I ran. Long, dark halls swallowed me, my bare feet burned against the icy marble as my soles struck the tiles.

I burst through doors into eerily empty halls, passed windows open to the dead of night. I heard the raging stampede and its grunting as they chased me. I could smell the burning pitch of their torches and the acrid stench of their sweat. They were Death and they had come for me. I mustn’t stop running but my chest threatened to erupt. What was once sweet became agony.

I came at last to a towering pair of arched silver doors. I had nowhere else to run but through those doors and I was afraid of what lay beyond. Visions of a forgotten past haunted me. I shivered and trembled but there was no one near to rescue me. I hadn’t moved but the doors slid open before me untouched.

It was a grand hall as I knew it would be. How I knew it or where the knowledge had come from were mysteries, but I knew I’d been in the room many times before even though I couldn’t recall it in my mind. My eyes scanned the expanse of the circular chamber. Floor-to-ceiling windows with draperies, torn and tattered, billowing lifelessly in the chilly night air rose so far above my head they made me dizzy and overhead, what appeared to be open sky was no more than an immense splintered glass dome. Ahead of me stood a sparkling silver throne on a wide velvet dais, in front of which was an oddly-shaped silhouette. It almost looked like a strangely shaped animal. Confused and curious, I slowly crossed the room.

Torchlight flooded the chamber and illuminated the shadowy form. It was four men, not a monster as I had thought, as I’d hoped. A monster would have been better. A man, held up on his knees by two others, knelt in the menacing shadow of the fourth. I cried out in horror as the axe whistled through the air. I didn’t want to see the gruesome sight but it finished before I had a moment to blink. My stomach lurched violently as the kneeling man’s head flew high into the air and bounced once, twice, in my direction. The head rolled once and stopped face-up at my feet. The man’s crimson blood devoured the gleaming marble as the puddle crawled ever closer. I stared down into his kind brown eyes, saw his handsome face fixed forever in a drunken smile. On his bloodied head glittered a golden crown. My stomach heaved as the smell of copper filled my nostrils. I knew I would never forget that stench. The world swayed around me and I stumbled backwards. Tears blurred my vision and a strangled sob wrenched itself from my burning throat. My legs could barely hold me.

The whispering voice called to me from beyond the silver doors and I turned to it, hungering for its comfort and its safety but with a deafening crash my pursuers burst through the doors. They brandished torches and weapons at me, screamed at me–dozens of pairs of angry eyes glistened in the flickering light of their torches. I stood motionless before Death. I looked into His eyes. And then a light exploded before me—a cold white gleam on silver armor.

The knight struck out at me and I slipped as I fell into the pool of blood. I threw my hands up to catch my fall but they never touched the marble floor, instead I fell and fell down, down, down, into darkness.

I lay on my back in a soft nest of sweet grass, surrounded by dark purple bushes and thick black trees. Obscuring the sky was an indistinct cloud of mist that tickled my face and neck. The world felt different as I climbed to my feet; unreal and as insubstantial as the mist circling the small clearing but through the brush I spied a stooped cloaked figure beside a smoking cast iron cauldron. Her white hair fell down her crooked back like withered straw but it was the song she hummed that drew my attention. The melody called to some dark corner of my mind. It was a song I’d heard before in a life I no longer remembered, but I was suspicious of the stooped old woman and her cauldron. I inched closer to the brush to better see her face. She never looked at me, merely stirred the contents of her cauldron first one way and then another as thick yellow smoke plumed up from the pot. It smelled like burning pitch and blood.

“Why hello, dearie.” Her voice was thin and frail and it startled me. I never imagined she could see me huddled in the bushes as I was. There was no hope for it now. I picked my way through the brush to her cauldron and she turned around to look at me. I stifled a gasp. Her eyes, a bright emerald green, were vicious dots on her melted face. Her lips were cracked and bleeding and three large, hairy moles dotted her long, hooked nose. Her toothless grin and the glint in her luminous eyes chilled my blood.

“You’re not lost are you?” she cooed.

“I... I don’t know,” I answered, my voice echoed strangely. “I don’t know where I am, I don’t know who I am.”

“But where did you come from, hmm?”

“I...” A confused impression of terror floated behind my eyes and I cringed away from it. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to know it. “I don’t know,” I finally said.

“Such a shame,” she replied with a soft tut. “Look at you, all skin and bones. You must be famished. Would you like something to eat?” Her grin nearly split her melted face in two as she watched my gaze dart from her eyes to the cauldron and back. “I admit my Witches’ Brew is an unpopular treat. I doubt a pretty little thing like you would find it appealing. Have a treat, hm?” From the shadows of her cloak she withdrew a small round orb the color of sapphires and midnight. She turned it in her hand and what little light filtered down through the emerald canopy sparkled over that rich blue skin like moonlight on crystal. It made my mouth water and I realized I was starving. But it couldn’t be natural, this fruit. The old woman chuckled as she polished it on her cloak.

“What is it?” I asked her.

“An apple.” I tore my eyes away from that enthralling color and searched her face. She smiled benevolently back, her scary eyes twinkled with innocence. There was something lurking in the simplicity of her words, I knew I shouldn’t trust her but the apple... “Beautiful, isn’t it?” she said.

“I’ve never seen anything so marvelous,” I answered. “It’s blue.”

“I grow them special,” she crooned. “The color was so striking I made an orchard of them.”

“You don’t want it?” I couldn’t stop staring at it.

“How kind of you to think of me,” she smiled, “but there are more treats near my cottage and I have plenty of Brew for a fortnight. Take the apple, if you want it. You may call it a gift...”

Slowly, she extended her hand with the apple cusped invitingly in her palm. Slowly, I reached for it.

“Hmm,” I muttered as it dropped into my outstretched hands. I pulled it to my face and inhaled its unusually sweet aroma. “It looks delicious, ma’am.”

“I promise you it tastes as good as it looks,” she said. Her voice came to me from a great distance but I was held only by the apple; so blue, like the night sky hammered into an orb of glass and smelling so good, like honey and vanilla and some other tangy erotic smell I had no name for. Another swirl of impressions, images flashed too quickly in my mind. I swayed and my stomach snarled with hunger. I held the world in my hands, all the world contained in that extraordinarily blue little fruit. I knew there was ecstasy in its flesh, pleasure and happiness and joy waiting for me. I brought it to my lips and bit hard into its crisp sweet flesh with my teeth.

I sighed in pleasure at the taste. No other flavor compared. I chewed happily, grinning in comradery with the old woman who knew the secret of these magic apples. She grinned back and as I took another bite, her eyes flashed.

There was fire in my mouth, in my throat, in my belly. A sudden vicious ember that flared up in one heart beat and consumed me. I choked and the apple fell from my hand. I coughed and gasped but couldn’t get a breath. My blood boiled, the forest swayed and the world, a kaleidoscope of twisting colors, tilted up to meet me. The last thing I saw was the old woman’s face peering down at me, emerald eyes glowing, cracked lips grinning.

“Good night, my dear,” she sang. “Dream sweet.”

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