Bergen, Norway, 1349

Kjell missed them: his parents, his three little sisters, his baby brother. Not so little anymore. He’d been gone for three years. The baby would be walking. The oldest of his sisters might be married. His mother would say it was long past time that he married. Maybe she would be right. There was a farm a day’s travel from theirs with four pretty daughters. At least, there had been four of them when he’d left. If there was even one yet unmarried, he might offer for her.

He’d left his parents’ farm to find his own way. He’d signed on with a merchant ship carrying dried fish. That time, they brought back salt from Lübeck. Other times it was cloth or spices. They sailed to ports far from the life he’d known in more than just distance; they were worlds away in sights and sounds and smells, each place foreign and fascinating. Oh, he’d been back to Bergen many a time over the years, but there had never been a chance to go home because it was an overland trek and because…well, because he’d always felt like tomorrow would be a good day to go, or the tomorrow after that.

But on this most recent trip he hadn’t just seen wonders, he’d seen the effects of the Black Death. His shipmates had lost friends and family. Men he met in other ports spoke of the sweeping plague that decimated families, towns, cities. So, Kjell decided he would not wait for the tomorrow after tomorrow to go home. Today was the day.

With a grin, he glanced around the harbor. There was an English ship newly arrived, carrying a cargo of cloth. The men from that ship bumped shoulders with the men from his as they all moved away from the docks. He found himself in the midst of a group of them as they shouldered past. They were like a tide, and he rode it until he cleared the crowd. One of the men from the English ship fell into step beside him. He was pale with dark rings beneath his eyes, his brow dotted with sweat. He tripped and fell against Kjell, mumbling an apology as he coughed into his hand. Kjell helped the man right himself then stepped away and moved on, heading for home.

“Kjell!” His mother cried as he walked through the door. She threw her arms around him, laughing and crying and he was not ashamed to feel the prick of tears in his own eyes as he looked at his brother and his sisters. He threw his arms around each of them in turn. His father clapped him on the back, and Kjell clapped him in return.

“You’ve grown wider,” his father said with a laugh, pressing his palms against the sides of Kjell’s shoulders.

“As have you, but in a different direction,” Kjell said, tapping his father’s round belly. His father cuffed the side of his head in good-natured play and they both laughed.

When the evening meal was eaten, tales of Kjell’s travels told while he dandled his brother on his knee and teased his sisters mercilessly, his father sent his siblings off to bed.

“Is it true what we hear?” his father asked once they were alone. “The Black Death? Is it truly so bad? They say it kills everyone, a terrible death. That it cuts entire families down within days.”

“I haven’t seen it myself,” Kjell said. “I’ve only heard it’s a terrible thing. They say it can go into the chest and starve a man of his breath. It can make tumors in the armpit or the groin, and then—” He broke off as his mother joined them.

She took his hands in hers and held them, her face lit with joy. “I am so glad to have you home.”

He was glad to be home. He’d been lonely these last months, for the thrill of adventure had faded after years on a ship and in unfamiliar ports. As his mother spoke of the crops and the neighbors, he was lulled into relaxation. His eyes began to feel heavy and slid shut for but a moment. He was tired beyond tired, more exhausted than he could ever recall.

His mother rested her palm against his cheek. “Rest, Kjell. Tomorrow is another day.”

He woke in the morning to find his head pounding and his skin clammy, his body trembling, hot one instant, cold the next. By that night, he had black swellings the size of apples in his armpits. Pain clawing at his insides, and he was so weak he could not stand.

Two of his three sisters and his brother fell ill the next morning.

His third sister and his mother took sick that night.

His father, who became ill last, died first.

The others followed within hours. They all died, save his mother who lay insensate, unmoving. Only the fluttering of her chest told Kjell she yet lived. He had heard tales that some survived. She could survive. He needed to believe it. The possibility that his mother might live was the tether that held his spirit to his body, the incentive he needed to keep fighting his own fight against the agony that consumed him.

He was sick in body, in mind, in spirit. Sick at heart. He had done this vile deed; he had brought this disease to them. He knew what it was. Plague. The Black Death. He knew it was the man from the English ship, the one with the cough who had visited this death upon him.

And he upon them, his precious family, all those he loved.

He had killed them all.

He lay shaking in his childhood home, surrounded by their bodies and he was too sick and weak to even tend to their corpses. He closed his eyes, despair and horror at what he had done moving sluggishly like an ichor in his veins.

The door burst open, letting in a blast of frigid air. A man filled the doorway, and beyond him, Kjell saw the stars of the night sky. He tried to rise, to warn him away from this place of death, but he was weak, so weak. And then he saw the man’s face, his lips drawn back to bare his teeth, his eyes crazed.

“Is not one alive?” the man cried. He sounded desperate, agonized.

Kjell’s mother moaned then, a sound that was little more than a breath.

The stranger lurched forward and fell upon her, tearing at her throat with his teeth. Kjell tried to rise only to find himself writhing on the floor as the pains in his gut sawed at him. Horrific sounds filled his ears, gurgling, gasping—these from his mother. And the sounds of the stranger feeding, greedy and vile.

It was no man that had come here this night, but a monster.

Or was there no man at all, only a thing conjured by Kjell’s fevered nightmares? Was he in truth alone here with only the dead for company? He could not separate truth from falsity.

Blackness shaded the edges of his vision, then the whole of it. His lids were weighted and he could not fight the darkness.

When he opened his eyes, the monster had become a man once more.

He sat by Kjell’s side and stared at him with sunken eyes, sad and full of regret.

“You are dying,” the stranger said.

He didn’t want to die.

“Are you certain?” the man asked, and only then did Kjell realize he had spoken the words aloud. “There are worse things than death.”

Kjell’s eyes closed, but he forced them open once more. And he saw his mother’s body. She was dead, her throat opened, but very little blood to mark the wound.

“You see?” the stranger said. “Things worse than death. I did not wish to do that. But I could not help myself.” He buried his face in his hands. “The farms in this land are days’ journey from each other. I stopped at three before I stumbled on this one.” He lifted his head and looked at Kjell once more. “They were dead. All of them. At every farm I passed, they were dead. The plague. And with each farm, my hunger grew until it became a living thing unto itself.” He paused. “I needed one alive. The hunger…”

“What are you?” Kjell asked.

“I am a creature of evil.” There were loathing and despair in his tone.

“I will kill you for what you have done here.” A fruitless vow. Kjell could barely summon the strength to speak, his words slow and slurred.

“Would that you could,” the stranger said with a bitter laugh. “But you cannot.” He looked away, then back toward Kjell. “You are so quick to pass judgment against me. I wonder what you would do in my place. You say you do not want to die. Well, I will give you that in payment for what I stole. A life for a life.” His tone was dark and ugly and made the hairs at Kjell’s nape rise. “You will see,” the man said. “You will see.”

He caught Kjell’s hand in an iron grip, and though he struggled, he was too weak and the stranger too strong. The man lowered his head and a sharp pain sank deep into Kjell’s wrist.

Bile crawled up the back of Kjell’s throat. He struggled and tried to jerk away, the sensation of teeth gnawing at him and the sucking pull of the man’s mouth made his stomach churn and his thoughts howl. He grew weaker and weaker, dark spots dancing before his eyes, and finally, he drifted away.

Drink.

Kjell’s mouth tasted like copper and ash. Like blood.

Swallow. An order.

Too weak to move, to protest, he swallowed. Again and again.

He knew not how long he lay there, insensate. When he opened his eyes, the man stood in the open doorway, the first rays of the sun touching the horizon, turning it from black to gray.

“Watch it rise,” the stranger said. “Watch as though it is your last sunrise.” He made a choked sound that might have been a laugh or a sob. “Because it is.”

Through the open door, Kjell watched the dawn until the bright ball of the sun was surrounded by a sky of uninterrupted blue. And then the man, this nameless man, this monster stepped through the doorway and stood in the light, arms outstretched to his sides. As Kjell watched, the stranger crumbled to ash, his clothes falling in a loose pile to mark the place he had last stood.