Rachel H. White           

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Time of Death
monotype print

Everyone will die, eventually, and it is only a matter of time. The fear of time, of age and change, and the fear of death go hand in hand. In art and myth, Death is often represented by a skeleton dressed in a black cowl and wielding a scythe. Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels make light of this subject by presenting Death as a character. Reaper Man is the first book in which Death is the main character:
And this is the room where the future pours into the past via the pinch of the now. Timers line the walls. Not hour-glasses, although they have the same shape. Not egg-timers…It's not even sand in there. It's seconds, endlessly turning the maybe into the was. And every lifetimer has a name on it. And the room is full of the soft hissing of people living. Picture the scene…And now add the sharp clicking of bone on stone getting closer. A dark shape crosses the field of vision and moves up the endless shelves of sibilant glassware. Click, click. Here's a glass with the top bulb nearly empty. Bone fingers rise and reach out. Select. And another. Select. And more. Many, many more. Select, select. It's all in a day's work, or it would be if days existed here.

Pratchett, Terry. Reaper Man. Harper & Collins, New York, 1991. pp. 4-5

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