Free Ghosts and Other Lovers by Lisa Tuttle Page B

could be no doubt. His utter stillness sent a chill through her. And then, almost as if he were signaling his contempt for her, a black-suited, pale-fingered arm was outstretched. It fell just short of her father's stooping shoulders, but if he moved so much as a step back those fingers would touch him. And there was nothing Alida could do about it. She could not reach Death first, as she had done before. This time, her father stood between her and Death.
    Her only hope was to make her father come forward, out of Death's reach, toward her. If she could warn him in time, call him to her --
    She screamed, calling him by the infantile name she'd ceased using years before, two syllables he had not heard for fifteen years. Perhaps he didn't understand; perhaps he only recognized the terror and the longing in a woman's scream.
    The sound made him turn to look, and Alida came running, moving toward him faster than she had ever moved in her life. She saw the expression on his face change, and with part of her mind she wondered what he saw to make him look so terrified. Whatever it was, it made him step backward, almost stumbling away from her.
    Backward, within easy reach -- and yet the man in black did not take him. As she knocked open the little iron gate and flung herself forward, Alida did not even wonder why.
    Then her arms were around her father and she was holding him tight, feeling him die.
    This death was not like the other two, the ones she had received second-hand, charged and painful from the hands of the man in black. For this death was hers, and she gave it.
    She felt his bones shatter like glass beneath the pressure of her arms, and when she put her lips to his it was to suck out his last, shuddering breath. She lanced his soul and let out the life, and pumped his body full of death, and then she let it fall.
    No pain, this time, but only an exquisite relief, a rich, heady pleasure. She stood, breathing hard, watching the shadowed entranceway, waiting for the man in black to come out.
    When he did, when he stepped into the failing light and showed himself to her, she saw that he had the ordinary face of a stranger. He was a mortal man once again, having passed the burden, or the gift, of death to Alida.
    She reached out with long, cool fingers to caress the human face before her. She closed his eyes and gave him the rest he had been longing for. Letting his body fall beside that of the man who had once been Alida's father, Death vanished about her business.

The Walled Garden
     
W hen I was five years old I saw the future. My future. After that, I was unable just to wait and let it happen. I had to go looking for it.
     
    My sister Jean is three years older than me. As children we shared a room and had the same bedtime. I can remember her complaints about being treated like a baby -- like me -- and put to bed while it was still light. A docile child myself, I would sleep whenever I was told, but Jean, grumbling and protesting, kept me awake as long as she could, for company. She talked to me, and she told me stories. She loved making up stories; she loved things that had not happened. She pulled me along to explore the land of What-if: what if we moved to a different house, or what if we came home from school one day and there was no one here? What if all the grown-ups disappeared? What if people came from another planet and took us away in their flying saucer? When I was very young, it's true, she confused me with her questions and her stories, so that sometimes I lost track of what was real and what only imagined. She made me want a life that didn't exist; she made me cry for the loss of things I'd never known.
    One summer night when I was five and Jean was eight, as I remember, she was particularly restless. Outside, it was still as light as day, a fact the thin curtains drawn across the windows couldn't disguise. I lay there in my little bed, twin to hers, patiently waiting for Jean to begin one of her stories,