Late at night, Than listened for her voice among the multitude praying to him. So many voices all at once, “Please don’t take my son! He’s all I have!” and “Don’t let the cancer take her. Help her to recover.” As if he had a choice. People are born, they live, and they die, and there was little the gods could do to alter their experiences. In many ways, Than thought, the gods were the slaves of humans, each with a duty to help maintain the world and to keep all of its creation in balance. The gods served the world and its inhabitants, not the other way around.
At last he heard her voice echoing above the mountains of Colorado. He flew to her and listened.
“I hope my parents feel no pain,” Therese whispered, and her voice lifted up to him and into the clouds like sweet, soft music, like something his mother might have once sung to him. “I hope my dream was true, and they really are in the beautiful Elysian Fields, perfectly happy.”
Than looked down upon Therese where she sat on her bed with her little dog. “I miss them, Clifford,” she said out loud. “I miss them so much!” She hugged her dog and sobbed.
A knock at her bedroom door brought her beautiful face up again. “Yes?”
“Can I come in?” A woman, a redhead, too, stood behind the door.
As Therese and the other woman spoke, Than wondered if he were acting too hastily in his decision to pursue Therese. She was, after all, the one and only girl he had ever met alive. Once he changed into mortal form, he could meet other girls and make a more informed decision. What was so special about Therese? As soon as he had asked himself the question, he answered it: she was the only soul in the centuries of his existence to have willed herself to the outskirts of the Underworld and to get close enough to him to touch him. This alone set her apart. Also. she hadn’t come to him in a proud, arrogant, threatening way. She hadn’t realized she had left the dream world and was close to dying herself. She had believed herself to be the author of her own dream, and in that dream, she wanted her parents alive. Who wouldn’t? If she had exerted her will and demonstrated strength, she had done so in ignorance. She had not set out to challenge him.
She hadn’t come like Sisyphus to bind him so humans could not die. She hadn’t come like Hercules to steal Cerberus. She had not come like Orpheus first to persuade with song and then to defy a broken agreement.
She had come, put her arms around him, and told him he was lovely—so lovely—and she had kissed him. Who in the history of time had ever done that to Death?
And the deal with Hades required Therese to do something that not just any mortal could do. He wasn’t sure that even Therese could do it.
Plus, he had only forty days. Why had his father chosen forty days? To Than, this seemed an arbitrary number. Why not one hundred? Why not twenty? At any rate, forty days seemed hardly enough time to make a selection among the billions of girls on earth. No, unless Therese was less than she seemed, he would spend his time courting her. He would not do like his father had his mother and take her unwillingly. Than had seen how her resentment had poisoned her relationship with his father. He wanted to win Therese’s heart.
From the conversation below him, he came to understand that the woman was Therese’s aunt, Carol, and this woman was now encouraging Therese to visit her friend, Jen. Than soon learned where Jen lived, and so he turned his attention to her, to see if he could use her in his efforts to meet Therese in the flesh.
When he found her, he was surprised to hear her praying to him. Most mortals prayed to a different god, unless they or someone they loved were dying or already dead. But this young woman was asking for death?
“Everything would be easier for everyone else if you just took me. Then he could come back, and they’d all be a happy.”
Than saw a way to befriend Therese. He would first study Jen and her family.