Death arrived in color.
Not black. Not the gray of last words. It came in chalk—sun-soft, stubborn—dragged across the square by a boy with river-wet cuffs and a jaw set like a lock.
By noon he had covered half the cobblestones with scenes nobody wanted to see.
A bed unmade and forever cooling.
A door left open for someone who wouldn't arrive.
A pair of shoes waiting beside a chair that would forget its owner's shape.
"Who's child is he?" someone whispered.
"The River's," someone else said, not joking.
Leona stood at the fountain with her lamp unlit. The boy's hands were a frenzy, but his strokes were precise. He drew like a witness trying to finish before the courtroom adjourned.
Nia approached, shawl tight. "He began at dawn," she said. "Never looked up. Refused bread, refused water."
Jonas hovered with the camera and, for once, didn't lift it. "Some images shouldn't be asked to pose."
The boy sketched a procession next: a line of figures carrying a long plain box, but the box was made of light. Above it, seven faint strokes hovered—three ripples, a crescent, a flame, a circle, two lines that crossed and refused to meet. The River's signature.
Leona stepped closer. "Who taught you to draw like this?"
The boy did not answer. He picked up white chalk for the outlines of hands, then dusk-blue to shadow knuckles that had done too much work. He used the base of his palm to smudge sorrow into something less sharp.
"What's your name?" Leona asked gently.
He lifted his eyes for the first time. They were river-colored—clear when still, storm when thinking. "I don't use it," he said. "It won't be here tomorrow."
"Why not?"
He looked at the square the way a physician looks at a map of weather. "Because tomorrow is a funeral."
"Whose?"
He pointed to the long plain box of light. "Ours."
The chalk snapped in his fingers.
By evening, Vale had gathered. People stood around the drawings as if around a body. The chapel windows kept their color to themselves. The bridge did not glow; even miracles, Leona thought, know how to take off their shoes.
Pastor Ellison approached with his collar in his pocket—tonight a man, not a pulpit. "Child," he said gently, "who told you tomorrow is a funeral?"
"Nobody told me," the boy said. "I saw it when the River reversed. Some things swam upstream that shouldn't have. Death among them. He lost his way."
Leona crouched to meet his gaze. "So you're painting the path back for him?"
He shook his head. "I'm painting his mistake. So we don't repeat it."
He drew another scene: a well reflecting a sky that didn't match. A hand reached down with a cup; the reflection reached back with a knife. He shaded the knife until it disappeared, leaving only the shape of a cup that could not be mistaken for anything else.
Nia winced. "He's too young to know this."
Leona didn't answer. The River hummed beneath the stones—low, respectful, as if the current had removed its hat.
The boy added a final panel: a small figure standing on tomorrow's date scratched at the edge of the fountain. Above it, in the stubborn white of last snow: DO NOT ARRIVE ALONE.
Jonas found his voice. "Who shouldn't arrive alone?"
The boy looked at Leona, not for permission but for endurance. "The living."
Vale lit lamps. The square breathed. Leona set hers on the rim of the fountain. The blue flame straightened, as if standing attention.
"Tell me," Leona said. "What did you see? Where?"
"In the culvert," the boy replied. "There is a place where the River keeps the dreams the town forgets to finish. Death was there—sorting, quiet, touching nothing. He was smaller than I thought. He was tired. I asked him if he was coming tomorrow. He said, 'Someone will call me.' So I came here to make sure nobody does."
"You think drawings can stop a funeral?" someone scoffed at the crowd's edge.
The boy shrugged. "They can delay a war. Why not practice on time?"
Ellison ran a hand through his hair. "Leona…?"
"Let him finish," she said.
The boy took a piece of yellow and drew a circle around the entire square—one continuous line that looped through benches, across steps, kissed thresholds, and came to rest at the river's lip. He turned his chalk sideways and thickened it until the circle became a ribbon.
"What is it?" Nia whispered.
"A procession," the boy said. "For the living."
"Tomorrow?" Leona asked.
He shook his head. "Tonight. Before Death forgets he's tired."
They began as strangers do—awkward, too many hands offering the same help. Leona organized gently. "Pairs," she said. "No one walks alone. If you came with your shadow, bring someone else's."
They formed along the chalk ribbon. Children carried candles in cups so wax wouldn't burn courage. Old men walked at the pace of old knees. The boy stood at the head. He held no candle; his hands were still chalk-white, which was light enough.
Leona lifted her lamp. "This is not a defiance," she said. "This is an attendance. The River reversed to return what was borrowed. Tonight we return what Death mistook—the future."
They walked.
The chalk ribbon kept them to the slowest person's hope. When they reached the culvert, the boy stopped and knelt. He set a small square of white on the mouth—one blank pane like the confessional glass when it chose to hear.
"Will he come?" Jonas asked.
"He already did," the boy said. "He's in the habit of early."
The culvert exhaled. Something colder than night brushed the skin—a politeness, not a threat. A figure formed, not bone in a robe as legends imagined, but a shape drawn with eraser strokes, as if the artist had nearly reconsidered him into absence.
"Good evening," Death said awkwardly, in a voice the River quickly harmonized so it wouldn't startle anyone. "I think I'm lost."
"You are," the boy said. "We are correcting you."
Death tilted his almost-head. "Cor—"
"—recting," Leona finished. "You traveled backward with the River by mistake. You arrived in a tomorrow that doesn't belong to you."
Death looked at the chalk, at the circle that held the town like an answered prayer. He sounded almost embarrassed. "I don't often apologize."
"Even creation does," Nia said softly. "We learned that yesterday."
Death considered this, then nodded. "Then I apologize. I will come when called and not sooner."
"Tomorrow's funeral?" Ellison asked.
Death sighed. "Postponed. Not canceled. I'm not cruel; I'm consistent."
The boy pointed at the chalk ribbon. "Walk with us to the bridge, then leave by the old road where forgetting goes. It will take you home."
Death looked at the River, which had begun to glow faint gold the way metal does when remembering the forge. "May I?"
The River lifted a small wave like a bow. Death stepped into the procession—not at the head, not at the tail, but near the center, where mistakes learn to keep pace.
They walked, and the town watched itself escorted by what it had feared, and found fear bearable when seen at arm's length.
At the bridge, Death paused. "You're kind," he told the boy.
The boy shrugged. "I'm busy."
Death almost smiled. "Then I won't keep you."
He stepped off the ribbon and took the old road, which the River drew for him in a straight soft line that didn't cross anyone's door. He did not look back.
The chalk did not smudge.
After, people didn't cheer. They touched the drawings gently with the edges of their shoes, the way you touch a name on a grave—careful not to claim it and grateful not to need to.
The boy sat on the fountain rim at last, more tired than small. Leona handed him bread. He ate like hunger remembered him suddenly. She offered water. He drank like a promise.
"What should we call you?" Nia asked.
He wiped his hands on his trousers; the chalk became dust and then light and then nothing. "If I answer, I stay," he said.
Leona nodded. "Then don't answer. But tell us what you need."
He looked at her lamp. "A blue flame that never argues. And somewhere to sleep where the River can hear me."
Leona smiled. "You'll take my chair and the braided mat beside the window. The River never misses that corner."
He stood, wobbled, then steadied. "Tomorrow," he said, "someone will try to call him again."
"Who?" Jonas asked, too fast.
The boy shook his head. "Sadness has many accents. I can't tell which mouth she'll borrow."
Leona touched his shoulder; he flinched at kindness and then didn't. "We'll attend," she said.
He exhaled, one weight lighter.
Night laid down without theatrics. The chalk ribbon held its shape under dew. The drawings faded a little—not erased, just modest. Vale smoked a small dinner from every chimney; grief ate with gratitude and did not spoil the pot.
In the cottage, the lamp burned steady. The boy curled on the braided mat with his knees under a blanket woven from other people's winters. He slept without noise, the kind of sleep that happens after your body forgives you for asking too much of it.
Leona sat at the desk and opened a new page. The title came without effort:
Child of Tomorrow's Funeral.
She wrote while the River listened. At the window, the blue flame reflected twice—once in the glass, once on the water. Each reflection kept the other honest.
Caleb tapped the door and entered on the hush, placed a folded paper by her elbow, and left. She opened it.
If sadness calls, make her walk to the water. She hates the distance. — C.
Leona smiled, folded it back, and tucked it into the ledger where courage keeps its annotations.
The boy turned in his sleep. "Don't forget color," he said to dream or lamp or River.
"We won't," Leona whispered. "Not even for death."
Before dawn, she walked to the square alone. The chalk ribbon glowed thinly as the River exhaled a veil of mist over the stones. In the gray, the drawings looked like instruction more than omen—lines a hand could follow.
She stood on tomorrow's date scratched at the fountain and pressed her palm to it. The River answered with a pulse she felt in her ribs: not warning, not relief. A schedule.
"We will not arrive alone," she said to the water and to the day and to the leftover echo of Death's apology. "Not anymore."
The River's hum agreed. And just before the sun unlaced the night, the chalk lifted once—light as breath—and settled with new resolve, like a promise that had remembered itself.