Death was everywhere, hanging a black cloud in front of the moon, giving chase on swift paws, screeching, lowing, roaring, but Bluma would not give up, would not stop, and every time the Dark One loomed up from a different angle, she turned and fled, farther and farther and farther into the cemetery, and she took a swerving side step around a low marker, and her toe caught and she slid and fell on her hip and landed on something cold and hard in her apron pocket, what was it, and as she rose and ran, she put her fingers into her apron and there it was:

The spoon.

Something behind her was whispering her name, and without dropping a step, she shouted, “Take it!” and threw the spoon away, and she ran and ran and kept on running.

But it was different now.

Something had changed.

The Dark Lady was no longer behind her.

She had followed after the spoon like a hungry dog after a bone.

Bluma collapsed behind a crumbling headstone, pressing her eyes into her knees. Softly, she began to sob, and each ragged breath pumped her little chest like an ancient bellows.

But scarcely had she allowed herself the latitude to cry when, again, she heard the terrible sound on the other side of the gravestone:

Footsteps.

Footsteps in the snow.

—

Oh, the Dark One was tired.

Her feet ached. And her hips. And her back. She ached in places that people do not live long enough to learn can even ache in the first place.

That idiot girl. Why had she run?

But this was a foolish question. They always ran if they had the chance.

Where was her instrument? She had seen the girl throw it aside. She had seen it land in the snow. It should’ve been right here, shining darkly in the moonlight.

But it wasn’t. She couldn’t find it anywhere.

Back and forth she tracked among the gravestones, time and time and time again, searching in circles ever wider and wider.

Where had it gone? She could not do her job properly without it. She certainly could not continue to entrust the transmigration of souls to whatever petty demons happened to be at hand. In fact, the more she thought of it, the more it seemed a monumental mistake that she had done so even once.

She was so tired that she had begun to make mistakes.

And in her business, mistakes could not be made.

This was nonsense. Her spoon was not here. And now she had lost track of the girl as well.

“Girl!” she called to the silent gravestones. “Bluma!”

But there was no answer.

There was never an answer when she called.

The Dark One muttered a heavy oath.