Sheridan Bell: A Fool's Bargain

Only fools deal with Death. It’s fortunate for Taise that these fools abound: he makes his living off of them, after all. They come to him demanding fame, power, wealth, and in his official capacity as Death’s dealer, he can grant it to them — for a price.

Taise’s father was one of these fools, as was his father before him. At some point, it became a family tradition to sell your soul to the devil. Taise had never wanted any part of it, but circumstances change, and all of Taise’s grand plans had failed to factor in the boy with the kind smile.

“Come, Etta,” he said. The black ribbon wrapped around his wrist trailed along Etta’s fur as he looped its sister around her throat like a collar. He ran two fingers under it, checking that it was secure but not too tight, and Etta took the opportunity to try to lick his face. He smiled as he leaned out of her reach. “None of that, now. We’re going on a trip.”

He stood, grabbed an elegant knife from off his desk, and slid the blade slowly across his palm, releasing his magic and letting it flow through him. There was no flash or flare, no sparkling magic in opening a portal to the deadlands: he was simply here, and then he was there. When the world changed around them, the shaggy hound at his side whined and sidled closer. The steady tendrils of her magic added to his own, stabilizing and supporting him when he sagged against the strain.

Etta was bigger in the land of the dead — somehow, he always forgot. Here, her head was nearly level with his shoulder, nearly a full six feet, and her eyes glowed with crimson flame. She was still the same Etta, though, and when he gave her a grateful pat on the head, her tail wagged violently.

Taise laughed. The first time he’d come here, he hadn’t had Etta. Without her, he’d wandered lost for days. “Good girl,” he murmured.

An endless field of wheat stretched before them, the golden stalks swaying despite an absence of wind. There was no trail, no path, so Taise had no choice but to pick a direction and plow right through it, pushing stalks aside and ignoring the occasional cawing of the Slaugh. Once, he glimpsed black wings fluttering above and froze, slowly, slowly drawing his father’s scythe. The Slaugh usually only hunted easy prey, but you are worse than a fool if you underestimate the hunger of the undead.

Etta let him know when the coast was clear with a soft “whuff,” but Taise kept his father’s scythe out, moving forward. It felt like hours had gone by before he passed a shadowy shape, vaguely person-sized but featureless, formless. Wading onward through the wheat, it took no note of him. Taise was going in the right direction. The further he walked, the more of those shapes he passed, and finally, he came upon a stone fence that stretched onward in either direction without end.

Around him, the shapes shuffled one by one toward the wall, then through the wall, disappearing beyond. It would not yield for Taise so easily, but looking around, he found a wooden gate, and he drew on Etta’s magic until the gate yielded and let them through.

Beyond the gate, the colors of the world changed, shapes juxtaposed over the golden wheat fields like a badly exposed photograph. Shadows of buildings loomed out of nothing and the ghostly apparitions from before milled about. They had more shape to them, here, almost-people now with limbs and heads. When Taise took his next steps, he was met with resistance, like pushing against flowing waters. The apparitions didn’t have to struggle. Unlike Taise, they belonged here. The realm welcomed them.

Soon, the wheat disappeared and Taise entered a warped, empty version of Tamarley, the city both present and not, familiar and strange. He knew by now how the streets liked to rearrange themselves, so he relied on the thin, sharp wailing of the bean sídhe to guide him to the river at the center of the city, where Death stood on an overlook and supervised the coursing black water.

They cut a masculine figure today, but the deathly pale head they held in their hands was soft, beautiful. When they turned to Taise, the eyes opened, and Taise realized that for only the second time in his life, he’d surprised Death. When they spoke, their head opened but their mouth did not form words: “Wherefore hast thou come? It is not thy time.”

When Taise had first met Death, thirteen years before, it was in this same spot. Back then, they had said to him, “The first of thy family met me in this dead place, then traded for his life. Wilt thou give me the same?”

Taise had, not in so many words, told them to fuck off. That was the first time he’d surprised Death: they had stared at him, mouth open in a grimace, and he remembered worrying he’d gone too far. Then he’d realized it wasn’t a grimace at all; it was a smile.

“What wouldst thou desire?” they had asked him then.

To this day Taise didn’t know why he’d done it — perhaps because he quite literally had nothing left to lose. He was fourteen years old, and he had just died. But it wasn’t his death that haunted him in this afterlife, it was something else. So he’d told Death about the boy that saved him when he was lost. He told Death that he wanted to repay the debt, how he wanted more time, but only if it was with him. Death had grimace-smiled again, something in their dead-cold features softening. Maybe they found his honesty refreshing.

“This is not a deal, but a gift,” they had said. “I’ll grant thee five more years, so that you may find him. There is nothing to be repaid.”

Taise had, of course, accepted. To this day, he didn’t know if he regretted it. When five years came and went and he still hadn’t found his boy, he returned to Death and told Death of his failure. This time, when Death wasn’t surprised, Taise realized what he hadn’t at the start: Death’s gifts, as with their deals, were only tricks. They had known from the start five years wouldn’t be enough.

They made Taise a new offer: this time, ten years in exchange for Taise’s service in the Uí Anghau. Again, Taise had accepted. Perhaps that made him a fool, too.

“I found him,” he said to Death, standing with the river of souls at his back and Etta by his side.

“Two years remain on thy bargain,” Death said. “Will that truly satisfy thee?”

Taise had known the answer before he’d even stepped foot into this realm. Maybe he’d known it from the start. “No. I need more time.”

“And what wilt thou give me?”

Thank you for reading! This new site doesn’t have a handy like button like Substack did, so let me know what you thought in the comments!

A version of this story was published in this year's Queer OC Zine, and we were recently given the all-clear to share the pieces publicly. While this gives us a little more insight into Taise's past, it's only a preview of what's to come in the next Sheridan Bell mystery - coming late winter/early spring! In the meantime, if you haven't read the Coachman and the Cook short mystery I shared earlier this year, I've linked it above.

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