Dance with Death

I must have passed out for a mere second, before I regained my senses, the invidious aroma of the spectres pungent scent , as it crossed the expanse of the dark Kitchen lumbering towards my husband , reviving me almost instantaneously. As it approached Chief Patissier, it threw back its hood to reveal its face, and he lept forward to embrace the figure, as one embracing death itself.

It was at this point that, despite being a woman of stoical nature and backbone, I lost all sense of reality; I remember sliding floor wards, the cold sensation of the flagstones on my skin and the sound of wooden clad feet hurriedly entering the kitchen, metal scraping on stone. The noise of a commotion and raised voices and the vague sensation of being lifted up by strong arms and then after that all was quiet and dark until I woke here in my bed with the figure of Madame Grognonne sitting at my side polishing her rifle quietly in the sunlight.

It was as if all was normal, and always had been thus, as if the strange events in the kitchen had never happened.

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The image above is of Ankou, who, in Breton Folklore, is the spectral personification of Death, his appearance usually is taken as a portend of death itself coming to take a member of a family. The Ankou is said to be the spirit of the last person to die in the area. It can be male, but more often is female, and is a tall, haggard figure in a wide hat with long white hair, or a skeleton with a revolving head who sees everybody everywhere. The Ankou is said to sometimes drive a deathly cart with a creaking axle and piled high with corpses. Bretons beleive if one is out late at night and hears a creaky axled cart coming along the lane behind you it's generally not a good idea to try and hitch a lift.