“It is,” Death said. “But few enough people think to ask, and even fewer exercise that right. Fewer still see the game through to completion. Most give up within a matter of turns.”

“Are you so good?”

“I am as skilled as you might expect of one who has had as much practice as I have, though my skill is not solely the reason for concession.”

“Certainly you’ve had more years to practice than most people,” I said. “But how much of that time did you devote to a serious study of the game?”

“A little here, a little there,” Death said. “It adds up. In particular, I have spent more time than most masters of the game learning to play under the peculiar conditions that govern the game in this between-place.”

“What peculiar conditions?” I asked.

“There must be judges, for an impartial contest,” Death said. “No move may be made if the judges deem it illegal.”

“What is the penalty for attempting an illegal move?” I asked, with more than a touch of trepidation.

“Nothing,” Death said. “It is withdrawn, as if it had never happened, and play continues.”

“Must all the judges agree?” I asked, looking for the trap or hitch.

“No, there are three of them and majority rules,” Death said.

“Who are they?” I asked, expecting it to be either angels or demons… and not knowing which one I’d rather have.

“A council of theologians,” Death said. “We have had other judges, but none remained sufficiently interested long enough.”

“I will probably lose,” I said. “But… I think I’m going to challenge you anyway, and I’m going to have to see the game through until I’m checkmated. That’s what life is, right? Struggling against death until the last moment?”

“Sometimes. There is such a thing as acceptance,” Death said. With the wave of a hand, a chessboard appeared on a pedestal. A trio of figures appeared in the mist that swirled around us, though they kept their distance. “Our judges… they will remain some distance away, unless their judgment is needed. You may have your choice of sides.”

“I’ve heard that white has an advantage in going first,” I said. “That if you’re playing white and you play a perfect game, you can’t be beaten. Do you suppose that’s true?”

“Do you suppose you’ll play a perfect game?” Death asked.

“I concede the point,” I said, but I chose white anyway. There seemed to be a better chance that Death would play perfectly than I would.

The opening moves of the game seemed nothing particularly remarkable to me. It was only when I reached for my knight and moved it out of the back row that the judges came forward.

“False move! False move!” two of them cried.

“That was a perfectly valid move,” the third one said. “But I’m outvoted. As usual.”

“What’s wrong with the move?” I asked.

“You moved your knight one square over and then two squares up,” one of the objectors said.

“Yes?” I said.

“Knights move two squares in one direction and then one square perpendicularly.”

“No they don’t,” the third one said. “They move just as the white player described.”

“It’s the same results either way,” I said. “Fine, though. I’ll move the knight two squares forward and then…”

“Stop!” the other objector said. “That isn’t how the knight moves at all. The knight moves one square diagonally in any direction, and then one square orthogonally in a direction outward from its square of origin.”

“Oh, it does not!” the theologian who hadn’t objected to my original move said.

“‘Orthogonally’, indeed,” the first theologian said.

“But… listen,” I said, having taken a moment to decode the new claim and what it meant in terms of squares on the board. “All three methods you’re describing end up with the same set of squares as valid destinations. You’re all stating the same rule a different way.”

“We most certainly are not!”

“The very idea!”

“It is frankly insulting that you would take the true rule and lump it together with the unfounded suppositions and fallacies peddled by these charlatans!”

“Okay,” I said. “Let me try a different tack. You’re just describing different ways for calculating the valid moves the knight can make, but the knight does not actually cross through any squares. All the actual rules of chess care about is the destination square. So if you can all agree that the destination is valid, can I make the move?”

“You’re suggesting that the path doesn’t matter?”

“The very idea!”

“Your sophistry has no place in a serious game.”

I sighed and looked at Death.

“It is possible to win a game without the use of knights,” Death said. “But I’ve had more practice at it than most. Do you wish to continue?”

I knocked my king on its side.

“Look on the bright side,” Death said. “Before this occupation was arranged for them, they spent all their time arguing about more important destinations than that of a chess piece.”

“Who?” Loki said, quirking an eyebrow.

“New boy,” the All-Father said. “Roman, I think… looks a bit Jewish.” He shrugged. “I like to keep up with the times. You know that.”

“A new Jewish god?” Loki said, shaking his head and clucking. “I know someone who’s not going to like that.”

“I didn’t actually bring you over here to gossip about the neighbors,” Odin said. He turned his baleful eye back towards the fast-cooling corpse, a tiny sharpened sprig of mistletoe protruding from the neck. “This is a bad business, Loki.”

“Is it?” Loki asked. “I thought it was the family trade.”

“What?”

“Death, oh Gallows-God. Is that not what of you spoke?”

“I don’t mean death,” Odin said. “I mean this death. Baldur was the best of us.”

“Best-loved, surely,” Loki seemed to agree.

“The others are in a kind of shock-trance right now. They’re overcome with grief,” Odin said. “When they come to their senses, I fear grief will turn to anger, and the anger of a god is a fearful thing. Especially when it lacks direction. I’ve already removed his poor brother to a safe location.”

“Is that wise, if you fear undirected anger?” Loki said. “It seems the simplest course would be to allow the mob’s fury to be vented against the killer.”

“I fear this is no simple matter.”

“Meaning?”

“Hodur was the spear; he was not the hunter. Some hand, unseen by us, guided his shot.”

“Why are you telling me this, All-Father?” Loki asked.

“Because I must ask something of you,” Odin said. “Something new. Something that has never been done.”

“I have been known to do that, once or twice,” Loki said.

“I’ve often warned you to guard your cleverness, lest it get the best of you,” Odin said. “Remember that business with the dwarves? But now I would have you unleash it.” He gestured to the grisly scene beneath the tree. “Look. Seek. Find. Learn. Do whatever you must, but find for me these three things: who killed Baldur? Wherefore did he die? And how may his death be revenged?”

“You ask much.”

“You have done harder things for me before.”

“Yes,” Loki said, turning away and surveying the corpse himself. “I have.”

“He was beautiful,” Odin said. “Even among gods. He still is. Even empty as a mead-hall on Ragnarok, is not his body perfect?”

“Yeah,” Loki said. He shaded his eyes against the sun with his hand. “Shame about the little prick.”

What it is in fact is the world’s largest known carnivorous plant. Like the sundew or the Venus fly trap, it lures in its prey and then closes its appendages around them in order to supplement the poor nutrition in the soil with what it can plunder from the corpse.

Unlike its smaller cousins, the whispering willow does not subsist on insects. It requires larger prey. Its scent is said to be inviting, but as scent markers do not have as strong or direct a hold over humans as they do over insects, the willow offers other inducements and this is where the other part of its name comes from.

In ages past, travelers walking alone through boggy parts of the world might have heard a soft voice on the breeze bidding them to come and rest their heads in the shade of an inviting tree, or one promising love and riches and all the secrets of the universe. The trees are fewer in number these days, but they are still out there, still whispering, still tempting travelers to stray from the path, to stumble in closer.

“All natural male enhancement,” whispers the hangman’s tree. “Fuck her like a pro today. Work from home. I made fifty-seven thousand dollars from Google. You can, too. Your insurance company doesn’t want you to know. Housewife’s secret: whiter teeth today. Learn the one method to a flat stomach. Cialis tabs…”

It seemed the other side was having problems, too. He’d watched as their nerve and manpower dwindled, and the massed charges had given way to smaller and smaller groups. They didn’t charge, they peeked their heads cautiously over the embankment or rose with distressing casualness into his line of sight. He’d just kept plugging away with his rifle, though, and now it seemed like the enemy couldn’t muster more than one man at a time.

Every once in a while there were two or even three, sometimes with fresh recruits who didn’t even have a uniform. This had taken Jerry by surprise the first time it happened, but not long enough to stay his hand. It had been a long war, after all. Terror can have a monotony all its own, and Jerry welcomed the break. That had almost got him killed once or twice, he was sure. Once the bastards had sent a man over the top with a white flag of truce. Jerry hadn’t lowered his rifle. There was only one of him. Relief was coming, he knew, but until it got there he was alone. They wouldn’t be surrendering to him.

Maybe they wanted his surrender? Not likely. He’d seen the eagerness in the bastard’s face, the elation when he got close. He was way too happy for a man in a war zone.

Probably gone right round the bend, Jerry had thought. Probably hiding a pistol or a grenade. He just can’t wait to blow me away and he doesn’t care what happens to him.

Also, there was something disconcertingly familiar about his face. After he’d been at it for so long, the faces of the enemy had sort of blurred out. He didn’t see them as individuals any more. You couldn’t, or you’d go round the bend yourself. But this one had got in close and something about his face had almost stopped Jerry cold. He knew he couldn’t let anything slow him down or he’d be stopped for good, so Jerry had blown him away, and the bastards hadn’t tried that again.

But they hadn’t given up. Like a drippy faucet, the enemy came over the top reliably but irregularly. Sometimes it was almost continuous, sometimes there’d be a maddening delay when it seemed like they’d finally stopped right up until the moment a head popped up again.

There was one now. Jerry hardly needed to take aim. He’d become a machine; mechanized warfare, incarnate in a man. He squeezed the trigger. There was a report. The man fell back. This had become Jerry’s life, since the rest of the machine gun crew had gone crazy. One by one they’d given up and ran right across no man’s land, right over the embankment and into the arms of the enemy.

Shell shock. It had to be. They’d all had some close calls with artillery bursts, especially that last one just after they’d fed the last belt through.

Jerry had watched in horror as each of his mates scrambled out of the hole. He’d waited for the inevitable, for the shots to ring out and shatter their skulls or the machine guns to tear them pieces. They had never come. The enemy wasn’t going to waste the ammo. Instead the bastards had taken them alive and then sent them back after Jerry.

Their poor broken brains had been so receptive to the enemy’s lies that they’d believe anything, and spout it back out.

The war’s over. The fighting’s over. You can put down your gun and join us. You have to see it, Jerry… on the other side of the trench. It’s beautiful, Jerry. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen.

Jerry knew if he let the stress get to him, he’d be next, but he also knew that relief was coming, reinforcements were coming. He couldn’t last forever, but he just had to hold out five more minutes. He couldn’t lose his nerve. He couldn’t let anything slow him down. He had to keep fighting.

And so he’d done the only thing for his comrades he could do: he’d put them out of their misery. Eventually the bastards stopped sending them, and now it was down to just one man. Not one man, Jerry thought to himself. Can’t kill the same man more than once. One man at a time.

It was coming up near midnight in the foxhole. Jerry spared a glance down at the last cigarette, but only a glance.

No smoke rises from the farmhouse chimney. The frozen tide of snow has piled up against its windward side, almost completely obscuring the windows on that side. The snow has made inroads onto the other sides, creeping up to cover much of the bottom panel of the front door. There is no path cleared between the house and the barn, or anywhere else.

Not far from the farmhouse, a wolf paws at a snowy burrow, scenting its slumberous occupant. Soon it will catch another scent, and it and its fellows will make their way towards the farm.

Spring always comes, but not always in time.

If only because somebody found the heart.

“So you keep saying,” the fastidious salesman said.

Not turning her head, she shot him a glare out of the corner of her eyes. She hadn’t liked his attitude when she’d come in, and it had only gotten worse the longer she stayed in his dingy little shop. She was already half an hour past the end of her lunch break and not only had he failed to produce the shoes she was looking for, but she was pretty sure he was rolling his eyes at her when she wasn’t looking.

“Perhaps if you could elaborate on what it is you’re looking for?” he said.

“I’ve told you,” she said. “I need a pair of really killer shoes for a party tomorrow night.”

“Well, are you looking for something with a tasteful heel, or…”

“I told you at the beginning,” she said. “I don’t care about any of that in particular, I just want the best pair you have. Something killer.”

“But ‘best’ is relative to taste, and of course, there’s also the matter of coordination,” the man said. “Perhaps if you could describe the outfit you’ll be wearing with…”

“Don’t be impertinent,” the woman said. She kicked the heel of one of the shoes she was wearing against the floor to dislodge it from her foot, then did the same with the other. The salesman winced. “What I wear is none of your business. You obviously don’t want me here, but I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of storming out. I’m not leaving until you bring me a pair of really killer shoes.”

“One pair of ‘really killer’ shoes,” the salesman said. “Got it. I will be back with you in a moment.”

He walked over to the door and flipped the sign on it around, then headed into the back of the shop. He came back out half a minute later, holding a pair of sleek black shoes with high stiletto heels and a faint pattern like snakeskin.

The woman looked at them doubtfully.

“Are you kidding me with these?” she asked.

“I assure you, I’m not,” he said. “These are the most killer shoes in the store. You won’t find a pair like them anywhere else, and what’s more, I don’t bring them out for just any customer.”

“Well, I suppose it won’t hurt to try them on,” she said. She sat down on the bench with a long and aggrieved sigh. The salesman handed her the shoes and then stepped back towards the window. She slipped one on and found it had a pretty decent fit. She put the other one on.

“You may feel a little pinch in the toes,” the salesman said.

She gave him a withering look.

“I guess you don’t know much about feet,” she said, as she rose to hers to try walking around in the killer shoes. “These fit perfectly.”

The salesman twisted the rod to close the blinds as the woman took her first step. The smugly superior look on her face turned into a grimace of pain and she screamed as she suddenly felt a biting prickle in the fleshy part of her big toe.

“‘Little’ pinch?” she said, rounding on the salesman. “What are these, some kind of trick… hey, what the fuck?”

It was as if whatever had nipped at her toe had decided that it liked what it found. The front of the shoe flexed, widening around her toes like a mouth opening, and then it closed, severing the tips of her toes with an audible crunch. The shoe wriggled back further up her feet, something in the toe of it munching and crunching as it went.

The woman screamed in pain and reached for the ravenous footwear, but then the other shoe lurched to life. She tumbled over backwards, landing hard on her backside as the shoes worked their way through her feet and towards her ankles. The back ends of the shoes and the long heels flexed to encircle her legs to pull the really killer shoes along. Tears streamed down her face as she tried to kick them off , to no avail.

“Please help me!” the woman begged as the shoes contorted and stretched themselves out to take in her calves. The wet smacking sounds they made as they devoured her legs were almost obscene. The right one, which had received a bit of a head start, was nearing her knee.

“But I have,” he said. “You asked me for really killer shoes, and I gave them to you. Now, let’s see how you will be paying for them today. Apart from the obvious.” The salesman grinned like a Halloween pumpkin as he went and picked up the handbag the woman had left on the bench. “Oh, you’ve got quite a few credit cards, I see. Fortunately, we take all of them. Things are going to get a little messy when they finish your thighs, so I hope that you will excuse me if I don’t stick around much longer. If you’re very lucky, you won’t, either.”