To Pick a Lock

By Hannah Earley

The Demetren Fields had a reputation for attracting wanderers searching for answers to their woes. The wind was a wraith carrying the fields’ whispers to their ears, urging them toward its isolation on the outskirts of town. The tall, yellow grasses were roiling waves with the wild gales and grew into a mess of plants caught between living and dying. They were walls, stretching to touch the cloud-ridden sky and bordering the worn dirt paths that seemingly led nowhere. Life was scarce among the Demetren Fields until the occasional lost soul set foot inside its bleak confines and became lost to the outside world. To a reaper, it was the perfect place for a respite.

The blade of her scythe dragged in the dirt, wiping the remnants of her day’s work into the ground where it belonged. Exhaustion weighed every step as she trudged through the field, only stopping once she came upon a fallen, gnarled tree with a trunk thick enough to sit on. She settled against the rough bark and tipped her head back to observe the swirling clouds above, the first warnings of a brewing storm. 

Demetren was a ghost town, its population on a steady decline over the last ten years, but still, the harvest had drained her. The arc of her scythe grew heavy with the blood staining the blade, each taken soul adding to the weight. A tired act that contributed to a tired cycle of claiming the lives that he wished to join him in the shadows. With each life, she saw herself in them, claimed by him, but she was not allowed to die for she was his executioner. Though she was tired of her scythe and their blood, she did not have to join him in the shadows as they did. The darkness was a furnace, sweltering and thick enough that she would surely suffocate if she spent the remainder of eternity there with him. The blade burdened her instead. Walking the earth as a reaper still made her a prisoner of his, but one with loosened chains.

A cluster of white flowers grew to her right, somehow not smothered by the thick collection of knotted vines scattered along the tree’s trunk. She reached out her finger slowly, hesitantly, for she knew what would happen when she neared it, but some small part of her thought that perhaps they would not shrivel beneath her touch. She had not even brushed the petals before the flowers wilted and died. That was what she was now. That was what her touch did. A reminder of the binds that held her dear. She often wondered whether her mother suffered the same fate, wilted from illness at the hands of death. Had her father not prayed to him and given him her chains in exchange for her mother’s health, perhaps she would have wilted. She would never know for she was a payment, a sacrifice, and rarely did sacrifices see what they had been given up for. 

Footsteps crunched against the dried grasses, heavy and hurried. She snapped up, finding the handle of her scythe as she watched a figure stomp along the path toward her. The man halted, startled to find another wanderer in the lonely field.

“Apologies,” he said, clutching his chest. “I did not mean to intrude.” He was a mosaic of worry with deep creases between his brows, tangles in his brown windblown hair, and his hands red with irritation as he wrung them.

“No need to apologize.” Her voice was a whisper, sharp with the rasp of disuse. She was to follow her instructions silently, no more than that, but this man had spotted her. Perhaps she could spare a few words without him hearing. The man became still as a statue, gazing at her in a sort of wonder that she had not seen before. Men had strange values, she found. He certainly loved her beauty; her long raven hair, smooth porcelain skin, and dark gray eyes. She took a blade to her hair until flared like feathers, curling around her ears. She wrapped herself in layers of black fabric so his touch could not be felt. She kept her eyes leveled at his chest, never giving him the satisfaction of meeting his gaze and imagining her scythe finding its mark there. She could not kill death, but she could grasp onto what little control she had. As this man looked upon her, she supposed she appeared as more of a raven than a girl.

Beneath her stare, the man squirmed as if needles were pricking his skin. 

“I am Kane,” he said to break the silence, holding out his raw, cracked hand. She did not take it or return the introduction, only stared, pondering what circumstances could have brought this man to the fields, to her. After a moment, his hand retracted and his awed gaze fell to the side, where her scythe still rested within her grasp. 

At once, he straightened, glancing between her and her weapon. “I should go.” Kane turned toward the path that led him here. He took a step, and thunder cracked a sharp warning.

As he stepped away, she felt the tight pull of the tether that connected her to those marked to return to the shadows. Each target had an invisible string that she sensed and followed to their soul. He wanted this man’s soul, and she must collect it. She rose from the trunk, an automatic shift to assume her duty, but words fought their way to her tongue. She had never spoken to the marked ones, only acted, but she had spoken to Kane once. She could do it again.

“Wait!” she called after him. He paused, returning with slow, uncertain steps. The tether loosened as he drew near, her chest relaxing from the tension. “It has been too long since I’ve had company. Stay, please.”

He glanced to the sky, the shadows deepening under his eyes. “It will storm.”

“Stay long enough for four questions,” she offered. “And perhaps you can find your answer.”

He paused, rubbing his fingers. “May I ask you four?”

“I suppose,” she replied. “You may go first.” Upon a closer look, it seemed that he too could have been beautiful once with his tall frame, a pointed structure carved by marble but eroded by worry. 

Kane observed her, tilting his head. “What is your name?”

“Priscilla,” she answered. Priscilla was one of many names. Death had only one, and because of the chains, she supposed it belonged to her as well.

“Priscilla,” he echoed as if he were feeling the fit of her name on his tongue. He dared two steps closer and the tether grew slack. “Why are you here?”

She paused, glancing at her blade and the space between them. Kane was close enough for her scythe to find his chest if she swung it. She should swing it, get it over with, and harvest the soul before he came looking. But with Kane, there was genuine interest in his question. If only she knew the true reasoning her feet had carried her to the Demetren Fields, what answer she sought.

“I am hungry,” she said. Hungry for an explanation. Hungry to be free of her chains. But that hunger would not be satiated.

Concern wrote deep lines into Kane’s gaunt face. He pointed further down the path. “You should have said something sooner. There is fruit.” She followed his gesture to a stout bush with yellowed leaves and red fruit growing on thorned branches. Before she could protest, he crossed to the bush and picked one of the fruits. He peeled the thin skin to reveal hundreds of black seeds embedded in the juicy interior. 

Kane held out the fruit close enough for her to touch. As it neared, the peeled skin browned and shriveled. She shook her head.

His brows knitted together as he inspected the fruit. “Spoiled? Hm.” He tossed it over his shoulder, and the seeds splattered across the path on impact. 

“Your next question,” she said expectantly.

His attention landed on her scythe, on how her fingers gripped the handle comfortably.

“Do you work nearby? I cannot recall seeing an active farm this close to town.” 

“I suppose I do.” Images of the blood, the stillness, and the shadows of her last venture through the town flashed through her mind. Each harvest was one of the three: bloody, still, or dark. She wondered what Kane’s harvest would be like.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked, puzzled.

“I work where I am told.” The tether hung between them. The wind whipped close to howling as the clouds began to churn. Kane opened his mouth to ask another question, but she spoke before he had the chance. “You’ve asked your four. It is my turn.”

Kane’s questions, though genuine, were shallow. If she was to speak to a marked one instead of appearing as a shade to carry out her instructions, she supposed she wanted to know if he deserved it, deserved to be relegated to exist in the shadows with him. Kane was lost, like her. He did not look at her with want but with fear and awe. Perhaps that was as genuine as his questions, or perhaps he simply wore a mask to obscure whatever his true nature may be. Perhaps answers were not given to those who wore masks, and that was why he had wandered so deep into the fields.

“Why did the fields call to you?” she asked.

Kane’s jaw ticked once, a slip of his worried countenance. “I merely needed somewhere quiet to think.” His hands closed into fists, pressing his dirt-caked nails into his palms. She placed her hand against her chest, feeling the tether tighten beneath her touch. Lies built foundations that one must crawl upon if they are determined to stay on. Kane seemed like he was crawling though she could not place her finger on why.

She pivoted on her heel, facing the hollow tree and the wilted white flowers. “What did you last dream of?”

The answer was immediate. “My Delilah.” The name was whispered as soft as a caress. “I dreamt of the last moment I saw her. She was perfect.” Another crack of thunder echoed as he sighed. “Her smile had enough spark to light a thousand candles. Her hair was as red as the blood pumping into my heart. Her love for me burned so bright, I thought it could be everlasting.” She closed her eyes, imagining the woman he described. The tether hummed beneath her palm. Like a painting, Delilah came to life detail by detail until she could see what he saw, the image he thought of.

Delilah stood upon a plush carpet, trailing her finger along a dusty mantle as she inspected each of the carved wooden trinkets displayed there. Light spilled from the fireplace, flickering against her ruffled skirts and fighting the darkness of the rest of the room. Kane approached her, a box held behind his back. His hair was combed, and his eyes looked restful but nervous. She turned at the sound of her name and flashed a bright smile. 

Gently, he took her hand. His thumb traced lines along her delicate skin until it faltered against a worn, silver band on her wedding finger. He frowned, took a deep breath, and dropped to his knee. 

A replacement ring, a sparkling clean gold band rested inside the box. He offered it to her, begged her to take it, to cast aside the old wedding ring for his. With him, she could be happier. With him, she could have everything she wanted. She was already his, he told her. With this ring, she could show where her true love belonged.

Delilah’s smile extinguished.

She held up her hand, her wedding ring, and claimed she could not replace it for she did not have the freedom to do so. The firelight flickered, illuminating the blue bruises on her left cheek, and down her arm. She already belonged to someone else and until that changed, she could not be his. With that, she vanished into the night, leaving Kane on his knee and his ring in its box.

Priscilla opened her eyes. A proposal born of false hope and destroyed by broken freedom. Delilah’s fading smile haunted her memory. She saw herself in Delilah, in the crushed hope that she could ameliorate one situation by taking a deal orchestrated by others who wanted nothing more than to claim her. Delilah was forced into the confines of her ring, forced to choose between one or the other. Priscilla was forced into the confines of shadows, forced to choose to live within them or add to them. They were stuck between lines that were not drawn by them.

Kane loved Delilah, but the woman would not choose him. Perhaps he had told another lie, a half-truth, crawling faster upon his foundation. She met his gaze, narrowing her suspicion. He flinched upon its return. 

“A caged man searches for a key. A caged woman picks the lock. Who walks free first?” She rounded his side at a steady pace, forming a slow circle, an invisible cage. Kane did not take his eyes off her as she circled, as he considered his response. 

“The man,” he answered as she concluded her second circle. “Surely finding a key would take less time than attempting to pick the lock from inside the cage.” An expected but disappointing answer. A rush to the simplest solution, though she never specified the location of the key or if the man would be able to grasp it from his vantage point. 

“I did not say the man would find the key,” she countered. 

Kane shook his head. “Every lock has a key. He must find it.” Priscilla stepped behind him, forcing him to peer over his shoulder. How simple his thinking must be for there to be only one solution to a problem. 

Details painted across her vision once more, until Delilah took form.

Delilah stood on ruined wood, tracing the outline of a growing puddle of blood with a transfixed stare. The hem of her dress soaked in the spreading edge, a crimson stain on the otherwise pristine white fabric. Her chest heaved panicked breaths as she glanced between a crumpled figure on the floor and Kane’s smoking gun. Crickets chirped in the still night, filling the silence of the tense room. The fireplace did not roar. Kane did not drop to his knee. Delilah did not smile.

He told her that she was free, that she could replace the ring because the obstacle did not stand in their way anymore. Instead, Delilah’s husband bled his life into the earth, into the shadows. Kane thrust the gold ring at her. Take it, he begged. He was corrupted by her love and she must take the ring in return. He freed her and she would never have to bear that man’s mark ever again. Delilah sank to her knees beside her dead husband. The twin silver band to hers rested on his stiff finger. She slipped it into her palm, next to her own. She pressed them tightly in her fist and lifted her head, facing the ring box as if it were the barrel of Kane’s pistol.

She thanked Kane for his offer, but his friendship was nothing more than a distraction from a husband that she did not want. She did not seek to put another band on her finger after she removed one. She did not have the same love in her heart for him as he did for her. She could not choose him when she had the opportunity to choose herself.

With that, she dropped the twin rings at his feet.

They clinked against the wood like a gunshot, a wound opening directly at Kane’s heart. He demanded that she take them, but she would not listen. Delilah turned her back on him again, and stole into the night, away from her husband and Kane.

Kane’s foundation cracked like the thunder above. The memory of the true last meeting between himself and Delilah echoed through her mind. Not the first proposal, but a second demand that she take the ring she did not want. He was no mere wanderer like he claimed. He took life and love into his grasp and was angry that it did not turn out as he pleased. He marked Kane for consequence.

She must dole out the punishment.

Delilah’s hands were coated in the blood that should stain Kane’s hands. She had freed herself. In man’s pursuit to claim her, she picked the lock. Kane chose the key. Delilah walked free while Kane walked to the Demetren Fields, to a reaper.

“I disagree,” she said. “Picking a lock can serve as a key when there is not one and when there is one. One makes that choice because keys are not always a guarantee.”

Kane’s gaze dropped to his clean palms as she rounded to face him.

“Final question: which is worse, a murderer, a thief, or a liar?” she asked.

“A liar.” His words echoed, carried by the winds through the fields as if the grasses were an audience to their exchange. 

Priscilla absorbed his response, taking half a step back. “You’re picturing Delilah and yet, you are worse.” At once, rain began to fall, blurring the grasses, the path, and the splattered fruit until they could only see each other. The rain could not mask the instant rigid fury that sparked through Kane as his fists clenched and he straightened to appear more imposing. If anything, he resembled the hollow tree that she had sat upon, too empty to do any damage.

“She was everything to me, and she left me behind,” he managed through grit teeth. “She let me hope for a future and then ruined me. We are done here.”

Priscilla ignored the dismissal. “You are worse because you are all three. A thief for attempting to claim her when she is not property to be taken. A murderer for being so blinded by love that you took a life. A liar for trying to place the blame on her for actions you made of your own volition. She did not love you, and you were too much a fool to see that.” She read his sins as if they were before a jury. The grasses whipped their waves with the storm winds in approval. Never had she forced the marked ones to hear their wrongdoings, to know why she had been sent. Never had she thought of the possibility of letting a marked one walk.

She envisioned the strange look he would give her as he trudged away from her, from the fields, and returned to Demetren–the place of his guilt and anger. She wondered which path he would take; to wallow in his lost love, in a pain that would never be soothed, or to move forward and search for something new. 

“If I had to do it again, I would,” he said. The shadows beneath his eyes darkened as rivulets of water streamed down his tired face. She too was tired. “I only regret that I did not take her with him and let them rot together.” From his pocket, he dug the three rings and tossed them into the mud, two silver and a gold. Priscilla watched as the mud encased the rings and as Kane took his leave. For the first time in her days as a reaper, she did not raise her scythe to satisfy him, she decided to because it would satisfy her.

The moment she swung her blade, the Demetren Fields stilled.

The grasses halted, the winds slowed, and the storms ceased crying. Blood erupted from Kane’s chest, dripping into the rain puddles. A pained sound escaped his lips as he grasped at his chest. Her hold did not falter. 

“I believe the fields have answered us,” she whispered into his ear. “You were sent here because of your actions and I was sent to learn your story. I am consequence and I have come to collect.” She ripped her scythe from Kane. He gave one last startled look, the same one he wore when he first came upon her, then crumpled to the ground, unmoving. The grasses wavered once like a nod, like she had gotten the answer correct. Compared to her arrival, the grasses appeared thicker. Graves could easily rest within the fields, blocked from the rest of the world. Perhaps that was what the Demetren Fields were, a hidden graveyard for lost folk.

As she wiped her blade with the edge of her sleeve, the hair stood at the back of her neck. Shadows swirled darker than the clouds and cast her into night. She felt his arrival before he even stepped forth. When a tendril of shadow caressed her cheek, she knew he was there.

Death had many forms, but he reserved his true appearance for her. A thin, lace veil covered his face and as she turned toward him, he removed it. Art depicted Death as an imposing, haunting creature but it did not capture his gray skin, the color of rot. His smooth white hair tumbled to his shoulders, to a black suit that he wore as armor. Art did not capture his youthful appearance when an immortal being should be as withered as their true age. Death’s black eyes roved over the scene, sparing a glance at the body.

“I could not hear you until you swung your scythe,” he stated flatly.

“I was simply harvesting his soul,” she replied, adding, “as instructed.”

Death narrowed his gaze to the ruined fruit, the wilted flower, and the halted thunderstorm. “I could not sense you,” he repeated, close to a snarl.

“Yet you found me,” she said, staring at his chest, the spot where she would bury her scythe. “As I know you always will.” At that he seemed to relax, his scrutiny softened, and he inclined his head to Kane. The wet soil split around his body, inching around his limbs as if the ground was feeding. The soil engulfed and buried him until he was nothing but a lump in the ground. The lump sank, the earth swallowed, and Kane was claimed by the shadows. 

Death took her hand in his and she forced herself not to flinch. His thumb traced the calluses lining her palm, the blood crusting her skin. He wiped it away with a gentleness so foreign it startled her. 

“Do not forget where you belong. You cannot hide from it.” He tapped her chest, where she felt her tether pull tight around her heart, constricting its beat, her breath, and any sign of life that still lingered inside her. She gasped for air but no relief soothed the pain. Heat flushed from the shadows, the sweltering suffocation she feared was so close. His thumb sharpened to a blade, cutting lines into her skin instead of tracing it. She wrenched her hand from his grip, clutching it to her chest. Death turned his back to her.

She hated that her submission was not a choice. She hated that he held her chains so dear that she feared his grip would never loosen. He made her into what she was and he decided what she did. Kane and Death, she concluded, were more alike than she realized. 

As she stared at the spot where she would bury her blade, she decided that like Delilah, she would refuse to be claimed.

“Come along.” He beckoned her to the shadows. “There is more work to be done.” She followed, allowing the tendrils to surround her and the darkness to sting her vision. For now, she was stuck with chains wrapped around her heart, but she had found a way to disobey him. To decide whether she wanted to participate in his cycle. To judge the marked ones rather than simply taking them. She would learn their stories, hear their woes, and provide them answers whether they walked free or joined the shadows. They would not be harvested for him. They would be harvested if she chose it.

She cast one last look at the Demetren Fields, at the yellow grasses, now stained red. At the winding path that led her there. At the spot where Kane once stood. There would be more places like this, with lore thick enough to shroud herself in, away from Death’s prying eyes. She would find them and haunt them. His domain may be the shadows, but hers could become the places of stories.

As she backed away, the Demtren Fields burst into motion.

She took her place beside Death. She would defy him, break her chains, and become something new.

Like Delilah, she would pick her lock.

Hannah Earley is an aspiring writer and recent graduate of Elmhurst University. She loves to write stories about the monsters lurking in the shadows, the lost people who encounter them, and finding the strength to overcome the dark. When she is not writing, Hannah can be found with her dogs, playing Zelda, and watching movies with her sister, sometimes guessing the ending before it plays out.