March 27, 2024

Godmother Death
by Allister Nelson

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai Podcast.


​It was a cold night in Leipzig when I, Sieglinde, was born. I was the twelfth child of a woodcarver and washerwoman. We lived in a shanty by the opera house, and I grew up hearing the sound of music. Great arias poured out into the gutter. I collected them in my
memory like spilled coins.

“One by God, two by the Devil, three by Death,” papa always said. 

I was born an ill omen, on All Soul’s Eve, in a caul. It snowed the day I was a
newborn suckling infant on mama’s teat, and Johanna and Ilke and the rest of my
brothers crowded around my swaddled, nursing form. There was not enough food
or money to last the winter.

Papa often spoke--in the alehouse late at night-- of how he went into the woods on the night of my birth, walked miles and miles, begging for mercy, for a good godparent for me.

He meant to bargain with God. But God plays favorites, papa said. So, He turned my father away. God could not be my godfather.

Next came old Samiel, the Black Huntsman. He is wicked, papa thought, so
into the barrel of papa’s gun Samiel’s soul went.

Papa was always good at trapping things. Once, papa fit the moon into a
thimble and blotted out the night for a whole week. The crops in Leipzig didn’t
grow, and Mme. Friegler’s voice went to shards the whole time. When a cow was
born with two black heads, papa put the moon back to ward off God’s wrath.

So thereupon sauntered my new father Frederick, drunk off cheap ale., He went into the woods, into the darkest part of the forest, where sunlight never touched, and
winter always froze. He found a graveyard of souls.

Death was there, tending souls. And Samiel was still trapped in papa’s gun.
“Will you be my dear Sieglinde’s godmother, Frau Todd? I have a handsome
demon in exchange,” papa claims he boasted.

Death smiled. Frau Todd is just, after all, and always takes pity on souls.

“You know, Frederick, Heaven and Hell talk often about your penchant for
stealing things with sweetened words. Just last year, you bribed a sparrow to give
you two weeks off the back of summer so that you had more time to complete
the legs of a chair.”

“Though silver-tongued, Frau Todd, I am also an honest man. Is there any
punishment for bargaining?”

Death laughed. “No, dear Frederick, all is right in my eyes. I see you have a
good heart, and that Sieglinde will grow to be a great woman. So yes, you shall
free the Black Huntsman and set him back upon his Wild Hunt as Erl King, and I
shall be dear Sieglinde’s godmother. She cannot fail with me by her side. I will
make her rich, but moreover, kind.”

And so, it was the talk of Leipzig. At Peterskirche, a flock of black crows
attended my baptism, complete with their Lady in black lace. I grew up under
Frau Todd’s wing and inherited father’s tricksome tongue.

I was sixteen. Frau Todd had a cabin in the forest, where she taught me
women’s crafts: weaving souls. Dousing with spring-green twigs. How to bake the
best bread for my future husband. Frau Todd herself was married to Samiel the
Black Huntsman. But she lived alone, and only visited him when the moon was
full, or to deliver dinner. He ate souls that were too weak to pass on into Heaven
or Hell. As for what Death ate – anything hearty, bloody, and half-alive.

“Mama Todd, what would you trade for the jewel on your throat?” I asked Frau Todd the day fall came.

Frau Todd smiled. “Only a fresh beating heart, Linde.”

So, I baked a blackbird’s heart into a veal pie. The bird’s heart was alive by
my magic, bloody and thrumming, when Frau Todd bit in.

“I see you are becoming quite the thief of life, just like your father,” Frau Todd smiled, her blonde hair and winsome blue eyes beaming.

She wiped the blood on a pearly napkin, then devoured the rest of the pie. Into
my hands, Frau Todd placed the jewel. It was a large ruby that glimmered with
black stars.

“What are the virtues of this stone, Mama Todd?”

Frau Todd was skinny as a spindle, dainty and precise, and always wore
white, with a red ribbon in her hair. Almost skeletal, but not unpleasant, with long
honey-colored hair, and eyes that burned like the sky. I felt she was always
watching me. “That is the Jewel of Nocht. It can set to sleep anyone who you
direct it at.”

I had much fun, setting my schoolmarms to sleep. Frau Todd had made us
rich, and I and Johanna and Ilke all attended a girl’s Catholic finishing school. Ilke
was even learning opera from Mme. Friegler. I was a stickler for poetry. But the
nuns did not like me slipping away to kiss cute choir boys and woo schoolgirls
with sweet-smelling hair. So, I enchanted the nuns into snoring.

“Linde, it is dangerous what you do!” Johanna giggled, embroidering a rose
and thistle. She loved sewing. Mama was now a fine lady, but her hands would
always be cracked from her time with lye and river rocks as a washerwoman.
Mama did not want her daughters to know pain. And her sons had all made
papa’s woodcarving business a booming industry. They each carved different
parts of tables and shipped them out of Rostock to international waters. “You’re
too much like papa, Linde. One day, it will do you in.”

“Say Johanna?” I mused, clacking my nails on my chalk tablet. “How much is
the smell of a thistle worth?”

“Do thistles smell?”

“To birds.”

“Then I’d say… they’re worth laughter. Laughter can’t be sold, and often,
laughter is a lie,” Johanna chuckled, used to my joking. “Shall I trade this thistle
and rose?”

“Only their smell, dear Johanna.” I tickled her. She burst out laughing in tears as I hit her sweet spot.

Thistles smelled like rain, I learned.

That night, at Frau Todd’s house, I used the smell of roses and thistles,
perfected in Johanna’s virginal mind, to sweeten Frau Todd’s stew.

Frau Todd’s face was electric. “This stew has life in it!” she beamed. “Linde,
you are so clever with your magic.”

Frau Todd gulped it down, but it never seemed to cling to her thin, thin
shape. Death is always hungry, it seems.

“I have the best teacher, Mama Todd,” I demurred.

We finished the soup in companionable silence as the fire crackled.
“Sieglinde, it is time,” Frau Todd said, her hair from her blond chignon
falling a bit to her shoulders. “You are sixteen now. I will teach you my secrets.”

It was the moment I had been angling for, caressing Frau Todd’s tongue
with delicious concoctions. Though I loved her like a godmother, I wanted more
power.

“Are you sure, Frau Todd?” I said innocently.

“Do not act the sheep when you are a wolf, Linde. You are as wily as me.”
Frau Todd smiled. “You are a clever girl, my Linde. Come see my final secret.”

She took me deep into the heart of the forest.

A patch of heart-shaped purple herbs bloomed with fiery orange flowers.

“These are my precious deathsflower, goddaughter” Frau Todd sighed
sweetly, inhaling their overripe scent. “Crush and make a powder medicine of this
for any patient you have. If I appear by the head of their bed, they will survive,
and you may cure them. But if I appear at the dying man or woman’s feet, my
Linde, I mean to drag them to either God or my husband Samiel. There is no
stopping me then.”

“Thank you, Frau Todd,” I said, tears in my eyes, and hugged her.

I set up shop in Berlin in the Old City. The deathsflower grew wherever I
went, in secret gardens and groves, appearing only for me. I made my way as a
physician, in a time when Europe was being electrified and Prussia was bending to
welcoming women into the arts and sciences. Some thought me a quack, but I
cured when I could cure, and put to sleep with my Jewel of Nocht those bound for
brighter shores, Frau Todd a vigil keeper at their toes. The families always felt
overwhelming peace under my care, and godmother often took tea with me in my
little flat by the opera. I still fancied the arias and had just seen Cosi fan Tutti for
the first time. It could not beat The Magic Flute, but it had its charms.

“Where do you take them, Frau Todd, truly?” I asked her over tea one day. I
was so dark in comparison to her, a night girl, black hair, black eyes, tan skin,
freckles and moles. I was beautiful in a way Death was not, and she was glorious
in a way I could never be. Where Frau Todd was youthful, I would always be
mortal, and where my magick worked in little tricksy ways like papa had taught
me, hers was vast. Little slices of time and place I could carve up, bottle, and trap
were mine.

All the stars were my godmother’s. Great gaseous balls. With angel’s hearts. Beating, bloody, winged hearts that only Death could eat.

Frau Todd smiled dreamily. “And what if God has as much appetite as I, or
Samiel?” she teased. Only, I could not tell if she was serious or not.

“So, a Heaven’s Gate is the same as a Hellmouth? God eats His chosen
souls?”

I shivered. Night set over my heart.

Death’s lips thinned.

“A grave is a grave, my Linde. We all rot, in the end. Except for me, of
course.”

The King of Prussia was marked for death. Some say he had crossed a witch
on his campaign in France. Most thought it was a Hapsburg blood sickness. All I
knew was, there was land and a title and limitless purse for any lass or man that
could cure him.

I hauled my belongings to court, my cart and best oxen and phials of
medicine, and my precious deathsflower went deep into his palace. Finally, it was
my turn.

The Jewel of Nocht gleamed like a rose on my chest, Frau Todd was at his
head, and nodded serenely. Smiling, I cured the king.

There was a ball held in my honor. I was named Lady Sieglinde, First of Her
Name. The royal coffers were mine. So was a palace back in dear old Leipzig – the
King had done his research.

I charmed the corsets off many lasses for a tussle in silken sheets, then sang
the britches off several noblemen. With Frau Todd’s help, I distributed birth
control made especially by my cultivated strains of sacred herbs throughout the
palace, and I grew even more popular.

But most on my mind was Princess Hilda. She was beautiful – curvy, brown
ringlets, always dressed in green like Lady Greensleeves. I set to courting Hilda in
secret, sang her the eponymous song meant originally for Anne Boleyn, even
wrote her some of my poems.

As we lay in my palace’s bed – Hilda was there to “study mathematics with
the King’s savior” – Hilda asked: “My dearly beloved Linde, what is that jewel?”

“What is the truth worth to you, my Hilda?”

She had eyes like a doe. I realized then, all like a crashing train, that I was
deeply in love.

“A rose.” Hilda beamed.

“And a thistle?” I said, shaking.

Hilda giggled, staring at the silver astrolabe over my room and study.

“Whatever you say, snake charmer.”

I went home, and bought the rose and thistle embroidery from Johanna,
and I gave it to Hilda… wrapped with a promise ring.

We met back in Berlin.

“Let’s run away to America, Sieglinde, together,” Hilda beamed, ravishing
me with kisses. Heat grew in my legs. She made love to me to claim me.

“I cannot do that Princess Hilda. My medical license, my land and holdings,
my livelihood, are all here.”

Hilda soured. “Am I worth anything to you but my title?”

“Hilda, you are the blackbird heart in my pie.”

The comely princess forgave me, kissing me through tears. “You say the
funniest things, strange Sieglinde.”

The next day, Hilda accepted a marriage offer from the Duke of England.

I was bereft. I wanted to bargain, but for once I had nothing to give.

Death is always hungry. And never hungrier than when it comes to
Maidens. Death and the Maiden, entwined. Hilda fell sick with her father’s blood
illness in a week. The King of Prussia said: “Anyone who can cure Hilda gets to
become King. The engagement to the Duke of England is annulled. I will hand over
my crown to whoever saves my daughter.”

I disguised myself as a man. Court had forgotten the King’s Savior, secure as
I was in my palace in Leipzig, but I had not forgotten the riches of palace.

The riches all paled in comparison to my beloved. I cursed myself every day
for not sailing away to America with her, starting over.

I cut my hair, donned men’s britches, and rode in through a storm on my
palomino gelding, death like a decaying rose in my shadow.

There Frau Todd stood, at Hilda’s feet. Hilda was comatose.

“Mama Todd, you cannot take her, I love her!” I pleaded, on my knees. It
was only us alone in the room.

Frau Todd grew steely. “My Linde, this time, I win.”

I grabbed the Jewel of Nocht, and with its ruby beam, I put Death to sleep.

My godmother collapsed in a pile. I moved Hilda’s bed so that her face was by
Frau Todd’s breast, and her feet were by the wall.

I leaned in to administer deathsflower tincture. The purple and orange
swirls brought life back to Hilda’s lips.

“Sieglinde, my beloved, is that you?” Hilda asked, sleepy-eyed, reeling.

But Death dragged me away, away from Hilda’s embrace.

“Why, Mama Todd? Give me this one thing!”

“A heart is worth a heart, my Sieglinde.” Frau Todd was oddly happy. “I get
to show you my favorite part of the forest. My beautiful Cave of Souls.”

I awoke, scared shitless, in a cavern.

Candles, candles everywhere on dank lime scale walls, blinding me. Tall
tallows for children, half-burnt for the married, stubs for the old and ill.

“Where is mine, godmother?” I asked.

“Putting me to sleep was a neat trick. Just like Samiel did to rape me. When
I was simply a girl. That is why I had to marry him, you see. It was the beginning of
time, when a woman’s first blood meant something, my little linden tree. I was
born from a linden tree, just like your namesake, Sieglinde. In fact, I was once
called Eve,” Frau Todd mused. She held a sharp knife.

“Where is it!”

“What is a soul worth, my Linde?” Death’s blue eyes shone like stars.

“A mother’s love,” I pleaded.

“I never loved you, Sieglinde. Death cannot love. Fond of you, yes. But the
only thing I love is hearts.” She showed me a pool of wax, candle flicker. “This is
you. You will feed me.”

“No – Uglugh!”

Eve reached deep into my chest and carved out my heart with her paring
knife.

Swallowed, now
I see
all.

Death is just. Death is not merciful. Death is not kind. And now I live in the
first woman’s chest, a caged blackbird, trilling my mournful tune. She feeds me
with tears over her unfaithful, ruinous husband. She cries over dead newborns.
Over war-grizzled veterans who take their lives. She comforts them all.
We walk through the ages, my cage Frau Todd and I.

Now, we are never
alone.

                                                                  💀💀💀


Allister Nelson is an avid fan of fantasy romance, world mythology, and writing! She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, Tea Witch, armchair occultist, cult aficionado, Taylor Swift Truther, and big time navel gazer. She loves to cook, bake, bike, and play with her husband and dog. She enjoys taking them on long walks, and watering them occasionally. A lifelong Washingtonian, she loves writing diverse fantasy romances with a dash of intrigue and spice! 

---