Page 5 of The Simurgh

‘Breathe, idiot.’

He stabbed his elbows at his coffin and rolled his shoulders, angling so he could shove against the roof that sank down over him. The pain that came was eye-watering. But panic had the bit between its teeth now. Pitch teetered on the edge, one tiny nudge away from mindlessness.

He was trying, gods he was trying…but his breaths were too shallow.

‘Hold firm,’ he begged of himself. ‘Hold fast.’

A tiny shrill hiss came at his ear, pulling him back from his precipice. He exhaled.

‘Scarlet?’

A squeak was his reply and a pat, an infernal, irritating pat of a tiny hand against his earlobe.

The will-o’-the-wisp was with him.Stillwith him. His mind shifted some more of its fog, bringing back to him the memory of Scarlet using Silas’s bandalore to try and free him.

The bandalore Pitch had placed in his pocket in the chaos of Sybilla’s fall.

A very undignified sound escaped him. His hand flew to his side, to where the pocket of Silas’s coat should be. He couldn’t stop the moan that escaped him. The coat was gone. So was his shirt and his corset. He found himself clad only in his breeches.

His sudden, brilliant euphoria waned.

Scarlet whisked down the length of his body. The creature brushed against him until it found his hand, nudging against his fingers like a needy kitten.

A very solid metal kitten.

‘What the blazes?’ He made the mistake of lifting his head, rewarded with a painful thump against his confines. ‘Shitting bloody fuck.’

Scarlet took hold of one of his fingers. Pitch quickly stifled the paltry flame, even though it would likely only warm, rather than harm. The wisp wriggled its way into his clenched fist, nestling in against his palm. For the second time since the tiny critter had showed itself, Pitch exhaled in a long, fulfilling breath.

‘Scarlet,’ he whispered. ‘Is the scythe with you?’

The wisp shimmied and danced against his palm. A yes if ever there was one. He carefully explored the hard little lump in his grasp. And a smile spread across his dry lips. The creature wore the tiniest suit of armour. There was a squeak as his thumb moved across what felt like a marble, but was likely Scarlet’s head.

‘You wear the bandalore?’

Scarlet leapt from his hand, zipping up over his belly, light as a feather, and ticklish as one too. It balanced on his chin, planting minuscule hands across his mouth. It murmured something, nonsense words so far as his ears could tell, but his heart, or whatever that confounded place was that gave one hope, knew better.

Silas’s scythe was with them.

Guiding the ankou to where they lay?

Pitch could think of it no other way. To consider the oaf lost like Sybilla would drive him madder than those in the Fulbourn. The very least he could do was stay sane, after all that had been sacrificed for him, and the beast.

If the ankou lived…Pitch swallowed down the doubt…the ankou lived and he would come. And it would do Silas no good if he were to rescue a dribbling, mumbling lunatic.

Scarlet hissed. A remarkably serpentine sound from the creature.

‘What is it?’

Hands slapped again at his lips. He grew still. Listening into the dark.

The silence was near as thick as the darkness, another feature of this prison painfully reminiscent of the abaddon. If not for Will Scarlet being with him, he might have thought himself in that despicable place. The human world just a figment of his decrepit, maddened imagination whilst he rotted in that pit beneath White Mountain.

A sigh came from far within the blackness, like a distant steam train were slowing on the approach to its station.

The press of Scarlet’s hands to his lips intensified, the creature kneeling upon his chin to give itself greater leverage. But he understood. And both he and the will-o’-the-wisp held like statues. Waiting.

The sigh came again. A little louder. Closer. And at last a sliver of light found its way through the black veil that surrounded him. It came from above, the bleakness peeling open and illuminating his confines.