The noise behind him fell silent.
Henry shifted his attention back to the small book in his hands. Its coarse black cover bore the title in faded grey: A Toast to Death. Nothing else.
He opened it. On the title page, a single line of dedication was written in a fine, sloping hand: To Beedle the Bard-babbler — from Basil Blightsour with his slippery heart.
The ink was faint, as if the writer had feared bleeding through the page and had hovered his quill, using only its finest tip to whisper across the parchment. The word 'slippery' was written light and fast, its curving loops looking… well, slippery.
He turned the page. Dense, meticulous runes filled his vision, arranged in beautiful, rhythmic waves.
Henry squinted. Near the top, he recognized the rune for 'one'—the unicorn. A tiny, inky unicorn also rolled playfully in the bottom corner, smudging a few unlucky symbols nearby.
He painstakingly deciphered the characters for a long while before realizing this was another experiment log. The author, however, had crafted it into the form of a long poem, weaving in strings of ornate, decorative—and utterly baffling—runes between the words and lines.
What Henry could barely piece together involved entering a village, speaking with villagers on a rough path, then attempting to graft a villager's torso onto a horse, or attach a horse's head to a human body.
The gale howls, veiling the golden giant's eye in the sky / I, a mass of dark cloud / Cast the shadow of fate upon the village.
Death harvested a centaur's false self / I heard it, His strange laughter / Some secrets you may never seek, He cried as He departed / But the wind is my laughter / I howl with laughter, with laughter / For a little fish that slipped the net, a stalk of wheat left un-reaped.
Death did not see those horse-headed human monsters / They strolled about leisurely, kneeling to graze / I created a village of vegetarians.
Frowning, Henry flipped a few more pages. It was all like this. Bizarre, unsettling poetic accounts of experiments. One titled Breathing Suite (Part Three) described how the author sliced open someone's windpipe in time, attached a fish to it, then held them underwater to observe if they learned to breathe.
Further on, the author passionately detailed how to select suitable villages and find convenient tools, devoting many pages to berating those who dared criticize him. The poetry even stopped. Cowardly servants cannot grasp the joy of this—when blood flows, thrill and ecstasy shoot up my spine to heaven. If their God exists, He would surely clink glasses with me and Death… their Creator, the legend who had his followers feast upon his son, feast upon himself.
Later, the author seemed to have a grand plan that filled him with pride. After gathering a series of incredibly rare magical ingredients, the book stated: With preparations complete, I knew one thing remained to be sought: a beloved.
Henry stopped. Closed the book. Went to fetch a runic dictionary.
Besides 'beloved,' the word's other meanings were listed: "[Noun] kin, lover, chickadee, flower." Its variants: "[Adj.] dear, pertaining to a chickadee, pertaining to a flower, likable, heart-fluttering; [Adv.] lovingly."
Reading on, the author visited many, many villages in search of this chickadee or flower. He grew increasingly courteous, increasingly gentlemanly. But he never found the chickadee—or the flower. His frustration mounted. The villages that disappointed him were treated with escalating cruelty, leaving behind one blood-soaked patch of land after another.
Finally, by a small stream, the author saw a chickadee gazing at the sunset atop a mountain. In that instant, he felt his heart tremble. This, he thought, must be the chickadee. To catch the chickadee, I must be very, very careful.
He waited quietly. The sun sank into the valley. Night rose. Stars glittered. The chickadee spoke in a soft, bird-like voice, "Good evening."
"Good evening," the author said.
"I've heard of you. You mixed lion with goat. Man with cow," the chickadee said. "If you intend to do the same to me… might I ask you to wait until tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow?" the author repeated.
"I must return to prepare tomorrow's breakfast," the chickadee explained. "My parents will be terribly cross if they wake to find no food prepared."
"Oh, of course. I understand completely," the author said in the most tender, honeyed voice he could muster. "By all means, take as many days as you need."
(Henry flipped back to the earlier poetic sections, just to confirm this wasn't a romance novel.)
The next day, the chickadee returned to the streamside.
"I must also prepare my parents' food for the day after. Could you wait a little longer?" the chickadee asked.
"Not a problem," said the author.
The third day. The fourth. The fifth… By the seventh day, the author's patience wore thin. He followed the chickadee under an Invisibility Charm to its home, intending to kill its parents. Then they wouldn't need tomorrow's food.
The sight that greeted him was shocking. From floor to ceiling, the corners were piled with talismans, prayer beads, and holy water meant to ward off evil. A young man waited inside. At the sound of the door, he looked up, relief washing over his face as he rushed forward to embrace the author's chickadee.
"Oh, heavens, Chickadee, I've been so worried," the young man said. "You tricked your family away, convinced the whole village to leave… but what about you? That demon will discover it all one day."
"Don't be afraid, my chickadee," the chickadee said gently, releasing the man and studying him for a moment. "Why didn't you leave?"
"How can you say that!" the young man cried. "Because I love you! Don't you know that yet? I'm not afraid of death. Death can't separate us, Chickadee. If that demon really comes, I can—I can—I can at least grab his hair and bite his arm!"
The chickadee—the beloved—said, "Hush, not so loud. I know. I love you too."
A wave of dizziness hit the author. The word 'love' struck his head. He wondered if he'd ever heard a more nauseating word.
(Henry checked the dictionary again. In runic script, at least, 'love' and 'beloved' were two words with no visible connection.)
Dizzy, the author revealed himself. "She is mine!" he declared.
A scream. A splash. He was drenched head to toe in holy water. The author wiped his face. Whatever he was, he couldn't believe anyone thought this would work.
His gaze shifted to the bucket-wielder. The young man clutched the pail, utterly bewildered, watching water drip from the author's hair as if expecting him to melt like a slug in salt.
The author took a step forward.
"No!" The freckled Muggle girl shouted, lunging. A gleaming kitchen knife flashed in her hand. She drove it into the author's chest. Before he could process it, she gripped the hilt and gave it a savage twist. "Go back to hell!" she yelled.
"You wish to kill me?" the author asked, incredulous, almost amused. He caught her wrist.
She struggled too violently. He let go. She yanked the knife out and sliced his throat. The young man was there too, jabbing at his side with a pitchfork, or thumping the back of his skull. Thump. Thump.
The author felt a flicker of impatience. A fish poked out of his trachea. He stuffed it back in. Felt his neck. It seemed fine.
He waved a hand. The pitchfork in the man's grip bent under an unseen force. The young man was flung backward, crashing into the heap of useless charms.
The author turned to the woman still holding the knife. "You are trying my patience, beloved," he warned.
"I am not—your beloved!" she spat, stabbing at him again. "I have my own love! I have parents who love me!"
"You don't understand love at all!" the young man cried, his dirty face suddenly alight. "Love isn't about what you want to get! It's about what you're willing to give up!"
A sharp, sudden pain lanced through the author's chest. Then, before anyone understood what happened, his heart was in the woman's hand.
"And you?" the author mocked. "Willing to dig your own heart out?"
His answer was the young man's determined charge. He threw himself onto the author's robes, biting down hard, dragging him away from the woman. A tearing sound. The robe ripped. The woman knelt, smashing his heart against a stone with all her strength.
Finally, the author grew angry. The angry author killed them. Picked up his heart. Brushed off the sand. Shoved it back into his chest.
Perhaps some grit got inside. Sometimes, afterward, it didn't work as well as before. It grew lazy. Unwilling to hold so much knowledge, so much curiosity. It felt uncomfortable at the sound of weeping.
Later, according to a tiny footnote, the author was caught by more… respectable wizards during a black-market trade. He knew every wizard present. He didn't expect help from any of them. He was right.
He had an escape prepared, of course. Everything was proceeding normally. Then he was struck, damnably, by the memory of that young Muggle—whose name he never even knew—foolishly, laughably throwing himself onto his robes, mouth open to bite. He remembered the Muggle girl. He remembered he still hadn't truly felt love.
One day, while reviewing this abandoned experiment, he suddenly realized his initial quest had been for a beloved, not 'his beloved.' But because he had never known what love looked like, he had always silently criticized the flaws of his subjects. When he finally caught the faintest scent of love's flower, he killed the pair of lovers.
"I concede. Love is the most annoying thing in the world," he wrote. "A toast, Death, to our shared failure."
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