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Agatha Harkness was ten years old when she saw Death’s reflection in the frog pond.
Of course, she didn’t know it was Death then. She drew the natural conclusion that it was just another girl, who, like her, had wandered too far from the playground. Another firecracker of a child who had lost themselves in the woods that bordered Salem Elementary, and squatted down by the pond with the toads.
“Hi,” Agatha projected loudly, putting her hands confidently on her hips as she turned away from the water. She had been ready for a possible confrontation—conflict tended to follow Agatha like fruit flies—but she was surprised to find that there was no waiting fist for her when she turned around. In fact, there was no one there at all.
Bewildered, she whipped her head back to the pond, and saw the reflection of the girl again. Agatha frowned, and squatted down to face the pond.
The girl in the water grinned at her. It had a hint of mischief that Agatha recognized. Slowly, though, the girl’s smile faded, and her eyes slid over to the left. Agatha followed her gaze, and her small jaw clenched as her eyes landed on the sight she’d been trying to pointedly ignore. A dead frog—bobbing there in the water.
It hadn’t been dead when Agatha arrived fifteen minutes before.
But, well—Agatha had this bad habit.
It wasn’t a conscious one. She was by no means a frog strangler. Creatures just seemed to… lose their lust for life, when they saw her. As if they were holding onto the idea of breathing by only a thread a moment before she entered the scene, and then let go of that thread promptly as soon as she locked eyes with them.
Agatha had cried a lot about it. About the birds in the birdfeeder. About the neighbor’s cat. About Sparky.
She had never meant to kill Sparky.
Mom didn’t believe her. But she really hadn’t. It was all a great big misunderstanding.
She swallowed, wiping hard at her eyes. Stupid, pointless tears.
Agatha tore her eyes away from the frog, which was gathering flies, and looked back at the girl, expecting her to look afraid. Threatened. Scared.
Like all the other kids in the school after they heard about what happened.
Her mom had been the one to start the rumor mill. She’d gone to other moms “for advice,” she said, looking for guidance from every set of sympathetic eyes about how to deal with a troubled daughter. But advice became gossip became warnings, and soon enough every other fourth grader looked at her like she carried the plague.
But the girl in the water didn’t.
The girl in the water was smiling at her again. Softly.
Agatha’s stomach turned, and her skin crawled with something she’d never felt before—was it fear? Excitement? Embarrassment? No; it felt different. Like tiny bugs crawling up and down her arms. Like flies rumbling around in her stomach.
It would take her ten more years to understand exactly what it meant.
But in that moment, afraid and alone at the lip of the forest, the school bells tolling in the distance, Agatha could only frown. Was the girl making fun of her? How could someone look at a frog’s corpse and grin? There was nothing to smile about.
“I can’t control it,” Agatha said, angrily, on instinct. She didn’t really believe it herself at that point, but it was the only defense she had against the taunting.
But where her classmates would meet her with screams, or spit, or just plain disbelief, the girl in the water once again surprised her. She nodded up and down placidly. The pond rippled with the motion, and the girl’s image shimmered, briefly dissipating.
To Agatha’s utter surprise, losing the girl, even for that moment, felt like an unprovoked punch in the gut; a powerful, sudden longing aching inside of her stomach, replacing the buzzing. She understood this emotion. This was anger. This was sadness. She didn’t want the girl to leave. She wanted her to stay.
Except—that couldn’t be right. Because Agatha never wanted anyone to stay. Agatha didn’t like people . People were cruel either sooner or later, so keeping them at an arm’s length from the very start was the only way to get on with things. Just because this girl hadn’t been cruel yet didn’t mean it wasn’t coming. The other shoe was always ready above Agatha’s head, threatening like a guillotine.
Maybe it was because the girl couldn’t reach her, Agatha decided. There was no reason to build a defense against someone who was already behind a wall.
Whatever the reason was, she found herself whispering—
“What’s your name?”
The girl’s small, soft smile evolved into a devilish smirk. But just as it looked like she might really open her mouth and reveal something, Agatha heard a soft plop to the left of her. She looked over, her defenses raised to see that dreadful dead thing again—only to find that nothing was there. The frog was gone. Evaporated.
And when Agatha turned her neck again, eyes wide in alarm, so was the girl.
She would only realize much later that this was Death’s first attempt at a joke.