Page 81 of Cursed Shadows 4

I find Father in my mind.

In the grandstands of Comlar, his hands clasped and brought to his face, fingertips pressed to his silently murmuring mouth.

‘Spread your arms, child. Pretend they are lovely wings. Even weight won’t sink.’

My eyes snap open.

A determined clench firms my jaw as I slowly lean my weight onto my side. My shoulder digs into the bloody bog.

A hot metallic scent is quick to snare up my nostrils as my cheek flattens into the blood.

I roll, slow and careful, onto my back.

My boots twist with me, then slip free from the bog with a horrid slicking sound.

I am on my back.

I echo those words like a mantra in my mind, over and over.

I am one step closer to freedom.

Loosening a trembling breath, I spread out my arms, as though preparing to make a snow angel, but one in a bloody, sludgy bog.

I don’t sob with the shuttering of my heart. I weep, silent, a thick ball swelling in my slick throat. The fear isn’t hot blazes tearing through me—it is cold ice.

I swallow down the panic before it can overtake me. Consume me. Then, inevitably, kill me.

Tears trickle down my temples to my hairline, but it’s the shudder of my breaths that I try to sooth as I start the glacier process of writhing my legs.

Above, the skies have taken a pinkish hue. The first time since I landed that it has been anything other than the shades of stone. Bleached or dark, it has always been stone.

Must be the reflection of this dark red mud, flickering off the sheets of clouds.

I watch the clouds, their sunset hues, however faint, and still, I writhe my legs.

As he was in my mind, Father will be on the stands right now, face half-buried in his hands, hoping I remember his early lessons and lectures about the bogs around the village.

Somehow, just knowing that helps. It steels my resolve.

My right leg is the first to slip out of the sludge-trap.

The left leg takes longer, a good few minutes that endanger me so much more. One wrong lean of my weight on my upper body, one wrong twist or shift in my arms, and then the bog will start to suck me under.

Even weight distribution.

My mouth puckers around the steady, sharp breaths that I loosen. My lashes flutter around the tears prickling my eyes.

This is the scary part.

Hands trembling like dead leaves in winter winds, I bring them to flatten on my chest. Arms crossed, I straighten my legs out, and I look like a body prepared on a bed of sticks, ready to face her funeral.

No funerals for the dead on the Mountain of Slumber.

I swallow down the lump in my throat, feeling nothing but ice-cold dread sweeping through me.

But I have no time to spare on finding my nerve.

I roll.

---