The dying have different priorities to those with their feet firmly planted in the world of the living. Survival, for instance, or, if the former cannot be achieved, last farewells. So it does not normally suit them to have to make introductions for some of the stranger, more shadowy guests that attend them in their twilight hours.
Apart from the King, who is expecting them, hardly anyone notices the arrival of his two too-slender visitors with skin the colour of oyster shells. Their delicate features have the disturbing sheen of lustreless pearl that make them seem already dead themselves, too impassive to be associated with the chaotic scene before them.
Today the King’s deathbed is a single foci of particular calm within a whirling maelstrom of activity. He says nothing, even when a priest floods the chamber with the cloying smell of incense. Often the dying are the least conversational about their situation, although whether this is by choice or circumstance, it is difficult to say.
With a little bow his gaunt guests face him, while the ensuing bustle surrounds them, they are ignored by wailing mourners, last rite mutterers, fresh linen gatherers, poets and apothecaries pressing salts to his nostrils. They inform him politely that they have heard his summoning plea, and they have arrived to grant him what he has asked for.
He may have his wish, but, they mention discreetly, there will be a cost, payable in instalments, which they will claim from him over the time he is in their custody – but he interrupts them, irritated. Of course, payment is no object, do they mock him? What cost is not worth paying for the prolongation of life?
He waves his Ministers forward to settle the bill, but the figures decline. The payment, it seems, must be paid by the King, and the King alone.
With another placid bow, they begin their arduous task.
What price does one pay for the extension of a life beyond its reasonable end?
It is difficult work, delaying the death of another living creature. To imbue the ritual with a sense of ceremony and showmanship one of the grey figures blows a cloud of shimmering powder at the king, which he inhales, only to glide gradually into a deep state of absolute motionlessness. His subjects’ initial horror make way for relief as they find he is not dead, but merely thrust into a hovering vague state of suspended animation. The strangers are congratulated at their cunning, and the gathered audience murmur amongst themselves this must be a trick to fool Death as they traipse off to celebrate and engage Bards to write songs of commemoration for the special occasion. The grey figures remain silent, they both know Death is neither so naive nor so benevolent when engaged as an adversary.
The spell has only just begun. Over days and weeks the skin is next to transform, its waxy mottled appearance marbles, then fades to a pearlescent sheen, before very gently swelling to a boggy corpulent state, distorting his figure until it is unrecognisable. The bloating renders his own skin so drum-like and taut stretched over the ever expanding form it is painful to observe, prompting the Queen herself to wonder if he will eventually burst into a puddle on the bedlinen. Puffy swollen eyelids weld shut over puffy swollen eyes, fingers swell grotesquely to envelop rings and convalesce into amorphous masses, legs become limb buds. Eventually there is relief as the tense skin pops to allow a slowly oozing golden nectar to spread like infection along his dormant form.
When it seems that fluid will overwhelm him, one of the watchful grey figures produces a sharp knife with a beautifully carved ivory hilt and slices precisely and decisively into the royal neck- and voila, with a gurgle and a spurt- produces a fine pair of gills for him to breathe through. He seems more comfortable after that.
The rest of the days they spend producing an endless number of little vials and remove aliquot after aliquot of his warm blood to replace it with cold, sluggish blood that runs like silt off the clay banks of a muddy river.
In total imprisonment and complete immobility, unable even to raise his voice in protest, the king lives with his new golden moist skin, cold blood and gills. He lives an enchanted life altered beyond all recognition, but alive, nonetheless.
The transformation complete, the debt is now paid in full. The Collectors now retreat silently from the palace, leaving the household gathered by the bed, not knowing if a blessing or a curse has ensued.
They leave behind a neat scroll written in flamboyant but neat ledger:
“For services rendered,
Payment:
1 x Transformatory Metamorphosis (Amphibious)
Received with gratitude.”
The members of the Court gathered look doubtfully at their glistening newt king. But by then the grey figures are long vanished.
