Hello, children. It’s time for Death.

Oh, you didn’t think I spoke? I do. I’m fantastically verbose, and transcendently literate, and quite frankly, I’m disappointed you would think otherwise. I’ve seen all the greats, you know, and learned from them – taken bits and pieces here and there – and everything that humanity has known, I have known, too. In fact, I’m responsible for most of history’s adoration – nothing defines a career quite like an untimely visit from me. You’d think I’d be more widely beloved for my part in humanity’s reverence, but again, you’d be mistaken. I’m rather an unpopular party guest.

Popularity aside, though, I have to confess that humanity’s fixation with me is astonishing. Flattering, to be sure, but alarming, and relentless, and generally diabolical, and if it did not manifest so often in spectacular failure I would make more of an effort to combat it – but, as it is, people spend the duration of their time on earth trying to skirt me only to end up chasing me instead. The funny thing is how simple it all actually is. Do you know what it really takes to make someone immortal? Rid them of fear.

If they no longer fear pain, they no longer fear death, and before long they fear nothing, and in their minds they live eternal – but I’m told my philosophising does little to ease the mind. Not many who meet me are given the privilege to tell about it. There are some exceptions, of course, yourself included – though this is an anomaly. In general, as your kind would have it, there are two things a person can be: human (and thus, susceptible to the pitfalls of my profession), or deity (and thus, a thorn in my side). This is, however, not entirely accurate, as there are actually three things a person can be, as far as I’m concerned.

There are those I can take (the mortals);

Those I can’t take (the immortals);

And those who cheat (everyone else).

Let me explain.

The job is fairly straightforward. In essence, I’m like a bike messenger without a bicycle. There’s a time and a place for pickup and delivery, but the route I take to get there is deliciously up to me. (I suppose I could employ a bicycle if I wanted, and I certainly have in the past, but let’s not dip our toes into the swampy details of my variants of execution quite yet, shall we?)

First of all, it is important to grasp that there is such a thing as to be not dead, but not alive; an in-between. (Requisite terminology takes countless incarnations, all of which may vary as widely from culture to culture as do colours of eyes and hair and skin, but the term un-dead seems to serve as an acceptable catchall.) These are the cheaters, the ones with shoddy timing, who cling to life so ferociously that I – by some sliver of an initial flaw that widens like the birth of the universe itself to a gaping, logic-defying chasm of supernatural mutation – simply commune with them. I exist beside them, but I can neither aid nor destroy them. In truth, I find they often destroy themselves; but that story, like many others, is not the story at hand.

Before you say anything, I should be certain we’re both clear that this is not a vanity project. Are we in agreement? This is not my story. This is a story, and a worthy one, but it doesn’t belong to me. For one thing, you should know that this all starts with another story entirely, and one that people tell about me. It’s stupid (and quite frankly libellous), but it’s important – so here it is, with as little disdain as I can manage.

Once upon a time, there was a couple in poor health, cursed by poverty, who were fool enough to have a child. Now, knowing that neither husband nor wife had much time on earth left to spare – and rather than simply enjoy it – whatever enjoyment is to be taken from mortality, that is – I’ve never been totally clear on the details – the husband took the baby from his ailing wife’s arms and began to travel the nearby path through the woods, searching for someone who might care for his child. A boy, by the way. A total snot of one, too, but we’ll get to that later. After walking several miles, the man encountered an angel. He thought at first to ask her to care for his child, but upon remembering that she, as a messenger of God, condoned the poverty with which the poor man and his wife had been stricken, he ultimately declined.

Then he encountered a reaper, a foot soldier of Lucifer, and considered it again, but found himself discouraged by the knowledge that the devil might lead his son astray – (– which he most certainly would have, by the way, and he’d have laughed doing it. Frankly, I could go on at length about God, too, but I won’t, as it’s quite rude to gossip.)

(Where was I?)

(Ah, yes.)

(Me.)

So then the man found me, or so the stories say. That’s actually not at all what happened, and it also makes it sound like I have the sort of freedom with which to wander about being found, which I don’t have and don’t appreciate. In reality, the situation was this: The man was dying, so for obvious reasons and no paternal motivations, there I was, unexpectedly burdened with a baby. They say the man asked me to be the child’s godfather; more accurately, he gargled up some incoherent nonsense (dehydration, it’s murder on the vocal cords) and then, before I knew it, I was holding a baby, and when I went to take it back home (as any responsible courier would do), the mother had died, too. Okay, again, I was there to take her, but let’s not get caught up in semantics.

This is the story mortals tell about a man who was the godson of Death, who they say eventually learned my secrets and came to control me, and who still walks the earth today, eternally youthful, as he keeps Death close at his side, a golden lasso tied around my neck with which to prevent me, cunningly and valiantly, from taking ownership of his soul. Which is so very rude, and I’m still deeply unhappy with Fox for not putting a stop to it (“never complain, never explain” he chants to me in the voice of someone I presume to be the queen).

Fond as I am of him, he does chronically suffer from a touch of motherfucker – a general loucheness, or rakery, if you will – so I suppose I’ll just have all of eternity to deal with it. And anyway, this is my point, isn’t it? That this isn’t my story – not at all, really. It’s Fox’s story. I just happen to be the one who raised him. Why did I name him Fox? Well, I’m slightly out of touch with popular culture, but I’ve always liked a good fairy tale, and out of all the things he might have been (like dutiful or attentive, or polite or principled or even the slightest bit punctual), like an idiot I merely wanted him to be clever. Foxes are clever, after all, and he had the tiniest nose; and so he was Fox, and just as clever as I’d hoped, though not nearly as industrious as I ought to have requested. He’s spent the last two hundred years or so doing . . . well, again, that’s not my story, so I’ll not go into detail, but suffice it to say Fox is . . . Well, he’s a mortal, put it that way. And not one I would recommend as a friend, or a counsellor, or a lover, or basically anything of consequence unless you wish to rob a bank, or commit a heist. I love him, but he’s a right little shit, and unfortunately, this is the story of how he bested me.

The real story.

Unfortunately.

Excerpted with permission from Masters of Death, Olivie Blake, Tor Publishing Group.