Page 110 of The Cinders

Perhaps in death he’d dream of dancing with an unveiled prince in a pair of sublime slippers.

A hoarse tune found its way to Lim’s lips; a nonsense of notes little more than his death groans.In his mind though the melody was sweet as honey, and as soothing.The perfect notes for a perfect time spent with a man he’d never truly know.

His singsong was interrupted by an irritating scratching.

And the bark of a dog; rough bursts of sound penetrating the squealing, groaning death of the workshop.

Perhaps the poor thing had tried to flee the flames and trapped itself here.Pity they weren’t together.Then Lim would not die alone.

‘Xian.’Lim wanted the prince’s name to be the last word he spoke.

Life did indeed slip away from a man.

Lim felt it pull from him like a rotten tooth.

Another piercing bark jolted him back into the scalding heat.Death was toying with him.

‘No,’ he gasped.

A scream erupted.A sound borne ofdiyu; a realm filled with the cries of sinners as they are punished after death.

Lim moaned into his downfall.Daemons were arriving to claim him, and drag him to that hell.Had he been such a terrible man?

A terrifying shriek curdled Lim’s boiling blood and arrived in tandem with an enormous splintering collapse of wood.Debris rained down on him, and his lungs launched a hopeless quest to clear themselves.He jerked like an eel pulled from the lake, flung onto his back, hips bucking and head smacking against the hard earth as his body went mad with trying to keep itself alive.Death would be a blessing.

A rush of air swept over him; blessedly cool.

The darkness behind his eyelids blazed; orange and yellows and all the hues of hell.

Finally, death had delivered him.Lim opened his streaming eyes.Pitch darkness had given way to an inferno.One that silhouetted a figure standing over him.

His mind fought what his eyes delivered.The square outline of the open trapdoor was there, the brightness of the fire beyond all too terrifying, but standing at the edge was an impossible animal.

A fox, large as a stag.A coat of rich russet red that seemed to shimmer in the heat.

Smoke billowing out of Lim’s tomb, parting around the creature as though it feared to touch it.

Lim’s groan shaped itself into a whimper.He’d died.And this was the hellhound come to claim him.

The huge fox leapt down into Lim’s grave—moving like the spill of water down a mountainside—and set its black-tipped feet next to Lim’s head.He stared up at the creature’s white chest, unblemished by the soot and ash and cinders of an earthly fire.White teeth, each with a knife-tip point, were bared, its black nose glistening.

Don’t eat me, Lim thought, his lips too scorched dry to speak.

The creature stepped around him, revealing signs of a dire injury now healed; thick scars running from foreleg to haunch, where no fur had regrown.

The fox dipped its head, pointed snout coming within an inch of Lim’s sweat-drenched face.Its heated breath forced him to close his eyes once more.

Was it not enough to die and be condemned todiyu?He was to be devoured by this hellhound?

He heard the animal shift, and he tensed.His shirt was grabbed at, and wrenched with such force Lim’s shoulders lifted from the ground.Only to find himself dropped a moment later.

‘Hey!’His parched lips split.

The fox took hold of him again, a mouthful of shirtfront, lifting Lim’s entire back from the ground, dragging him upright.Releasing him when he sat, hunched and dizzy and bewildered.

‘Go away,’ he mumbled.But did not cough.

A black nose, cool and wet, pressed at his cheek.Perhaps it was the venting of the smoke through the opening that made breathing easier, but Lim’s lungs filled with purer air, his mind shaping itself around coherent thought.