Page 66 of The Death Wish

A shadow cast across them, but Pitch dared not look up.

He knew Silas stood there, and it was difficult enough to look Lalassu in the eye.

If he glimpsed blame, or pain, or grief in Silas’s gaze, Pitch would not find his feet again. He bowed forward, touching his forehead to the mare’s cheek. She was warm. Her scent that of horseflesh, and summer days and wide open fields.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered.

Scarlet hummed their comfort. Silas knelt down beside him, one broad hand laying gently on Pitch’s back, the other caressing Lalassu’s nose. The ankou’s breathing was shallow, unsteady. His tears made dark marks against the mare’s pale coat.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Pitch said, again.

‘She knows.’ Silas rubbed his back, and kissed his hair. ‘And I know, darling.’

Go on now.

Pitch didn’t flinch at the voice, though he could not say who it belonged to. The lady perhaps. Lalassu’s own. One or the other. Both. He nodded, rubbing his forehead against the coarseness of the mare’s pale coat, the pressure behind his eyes unbearable.

It did not matter where the voice came from, only what it encouraged.

Pitch sat up, and with a gentleness he’d not known himself capable of, settled Lalassu’s head against the ground. The mare sighed again, and her mane lifted to caress his cheek. The pain behind his eyes intensified. A single, caustic tear pressed itself free, tracing a harsh mark down his face.

Red strands caught at it. Wiped it clear. Sanu stood over him, absorbing the hurt that ran from him in that watery way Pitch had always so derided in humankind.

Silas held him tightly, and drew him to his feet.

‘We must go.’

Pitch nodded, numb, and yet more sensitive than he’d ever known. He could not catch his breath, a pressure at his lungs that felt insurmountable.

The Red Horse traced her mane down his chest, over the strips of shirt that remained, and Pitch found his breath came much easier. He gulped at it, coughed as it filled lungs he’d forgotten to use. He gave her a grateful nod, and wished he could work his throat enough to say more.

‘Easy now, love.’ Silas guided him towards the mouth of the cave, his cheeks shining with spilled tears. ‘Izanami herself shall guide her home, when the time comes. She gives me her word on that.’

Pitch staggered, only now understanding the weight of what Silas carried with him every day. Indeed, what any who were human, and prone to grief, must carry. He’d thought himself familiar with loss, he’d imagined he’d grieved when Seraphiel fell. He’d not known true sorrow.

‘We can’t leave her like this.’

‘Nor can we stay. She is not alone, and wishes us onwards.'

Scarlet came to sit on Pitch’s shoulder, warming his neck as they nestled in close.

Pitch looked back only once; when Sanu called to him, her bray sending gooseflesh rising.

He lifted his hand, and fare-welled a horse he had never deserved, but who had carried him so well, nonetheless.

Chollima stood with her, guardians either side of the fallen Pale Horse. Fae magick made the black stallion’s coat gleam with sparks of blue. The earth was busy with movement, the gnomes and hobgoblins gathering around the mighty djinn steeds. Already the natural world was claiming one of their own. The moss grew upon Lalassu’s legs, and over her hindquarters. Already covering over the terrible damage done.

‘They bury her while she still lives,’ Pitch said, his pulses pounding. ‘We cannot leave her.’ He tried to go back, working against Silas’s hold.

‘It is her command I follow.’ He was the firmest he’d ever been, in voice and deed. ‘Do not go back. Do not waste this gift she gives us. She will return to the earth, and find new life there. It is the way of things, for all creatures of nature. And the djinn are nature at its purest. Keep on, my love.’

Sanu wove her mane in with Lalassu’s, their tails intertwining too. Together, as always, they weaved their magick. Building a forest of horsehair; a formidable barrier that crept over the shale and dirt and rock, like jungle vines and errant ivy, growing, concealing, taking on the shades of the moss and lichen. Just as those truly of nature took over the Pale Horse. Claiming her once more. Their plant life feeding off the djinn life she gave them.

The miraculous forest pushed from the earth and rose to consume what the wind and weather had stripped bare; moving up over the shale and climbing to reach the cave. The entrance vanished behind a wall of greenery; as deep and impenetrable as all the forests of the British Isles combined.

Pitch stood in the shadows, clasping Silas’s hand, feeling him tremble, hearing his tears begin. The light grew dimmer, the air warmer as the entrance sealed over.

The lady’s fine horses, those formidable agents of the djinn, protected them to the last.