The Belle Dame

Prologue: The Marriage of The Beldam and Death

They say, that if you look carefully at a bolt of lightning as it strikes the night sky, you can see the hands of Death himself plucking his next victim from this lifetime and taking him into the next place. Death chooses that victim very, very carefully, for for him, this is not a victim but a gift he has given himself with God's blessing. The moment you're born you unknowingly have signed an unwritten contract that declares Death may have you at any moment he chooses.

He does not do so lightly, nor does he do it just for entertainment. He carefully plans each and every person's time, whether it's what you and I would call "an unexpected tragedy", or if it's someone in their old age that Death takes while they sleep peacefully in their bed. He understands people's fear of him, though he's gentle and as quick as the lightning flash. To tell you the truth, Death is not the one you should fear.

Only Death may claim souls, for when one claims a soul, a piece of your own shatters until in the end you're nothing. In order to exist then, you must consume souls, feed off of them.

The Belle Dame- no one knows her true name- has claimed so many souls that she hasn't one of her own, and must continue to have victims and claim souls to live. A Divorcee of Death, she can't be controlled or maintained by any other spirit in the universe. The only way to kill her is to deprive her of death, to starve her of the souls she desperately clings to for survival.

The Belle Dame quickly learned that life isn't worth living if she isn't being loved, however, the souls of children are just so much better than those of grown adults. The combination of unfulfillment and wonder makes for an excellent je ne sais quoi for the Belle Dame, not to mention the satisfaction of stealing souls from Death and leaving him grieving for more.

No child ever escaped her before in the centuries she'd been alive, not until years ago when a wretched girl cheated her way out of her fate. Life since then had not been easy for Madame. She'd been living off of bugs and the very smallest of the souls she could capture, but slowly rotting away for a quarter of a century, too tired to carry on. Perhaps this truly was the end for the Beldam.

Until thirteen years ago when the Davies family gave birth to their third child, a daughter who was blue at birth, and gave the Beldam something else to fight for.

"I'll have that one." She declared the moment Juniper Davies was born.

So she fashioned one more doll, this time with a red braid and a blue rain coat and striped leggings and red shoes. She sent her eyes into the world in the form of the thing, called Little Doll, and waited for years for the moment to be just right.

When Juniper Davies survived the umbilical cord mishap, Beldam laughed in Death's face, for only a coward would have let her get away with something like that.

"If I were you, I would have taken her." She sneered to him.

"Well you aren't me, and you can't have her." Death said in response.

Belle Dam laughed, the moonlight shining on her sickly thin form. She smiled sinisterly and tapped her fingers together. "Wait."