The Bargain

The village of Lavenham lay under a perpetual veil of smoke and ash. The plague carts had stopped coming weeks ago because there were simply too many bodies to collect. Every night the church bell tolled to mark the hour another soul slipped away. Mary, the apothecary’s widow, had grown used to the sound of the bell. She kept a candle burning in the window for her husband. The rats would have picked his bones clean in the burial pit by now. Her fingers were stained with herbs and soot, her voice was hoarse from whispering prayers that seemed to go unanswered.

One evening, as a thick mist crawled through the town, a figure appeared at Mary's door. Cloaked in black, face hidden behind a mask shaped like a beak, he spoke in a voice that was neither young nor old.

“You wish for it to end,” he said.

Mary nodded, trembling. “For all of it. The pain, the hunger, the dying.”

“Then you must offer something living,” the stranger replied. “Something you love more than yourself.”

She hesitated. There was nothing left to love.

Or so she thought. Then she remembered.

In the cellar, beneath rotting herbs and empty jars, a small white dove nested in an old mortar. Her husband had found it once, nearly dead, and nursed it back to health. It had stayed with them ever since, a quiet heartbeat of life in the house of the dead. With tears and shaking hands, Mary retrieved it from its nest.

“I give this to you,” she said.

The man bowed. “Then your wish is granted.”

That night, the bell did not toll. The air was still and silent. When Mary stepped outside, she saw the stars. The sky was clear for the first time in months. The stench of decay was gone. Streets once lined with corpses now shimmered with dew. She fell to her knees, sobbing, and whispering heartfelt thanks to the silent sky.

But when she looked more closely the next morning, the truth began to rot at the edges of her joy. The flowers did not move in the wind, the birds did not stir, the dew did not dry, and every single soul she saw (every man, woman, and child) stood motionless with their eyes open, and their skin pale and waxen.

Lavenham was perfect and still, so still.

And Mary’s wish had been fulfilled.

She wandered the silent streets. She called names that would never answer. Until, finally, she heard the faintest flutter behind her. Turning, she saw the dove, her dove, watching from the churchyard cross. It's feathers were now blackened like soot.

That beautiful, innocent creature tilted its head and, in the voice of the masked stranger, whispered.

“Peace is what you wanted. Peace is what you’ll keep.”

When the bell finally rang again, it was not from the tower.

It came from deep beneath the ground. It was not a chime but a groan, as if the ground itself remembered the pain of the past.

And that bell, well, it was calling her name.

By E. M. Page

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