Page 119 of Cursed Shadows 5

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Daxeel’s whisper finds me.

It comes and goes, the broken utterings of my name,Nari, Nari, Nari.

I shut my eyes and draw the blanket over my head.

It fades away.

29

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Hedda is impatient.

She bothers me with her whining.

I escape her. I climb the terrace to Eamon’s favourite spot. I sit on the roof.

Sometimes, I might like to fall.

30

TWO MONTHS AFTER THE SABBAT

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I sit cross-legged on the floor.

The dirty rug scratches at the meat of my thighs, the curve of my bottom, but it is a distant sensation, as though I am not entirelyinmy body, but rather just tethered.

Hedda senses the illness in me. The disease of guilt veiled with grief.

She won’t leave my side.

The moment I parked myself on the floor in the lounge, she scrambled her overgrown limbs for me, then curled herself up in my basketed legs. She doesn’t fit like she used to; her growth is quick, perhaps quicker since we are in the warped time of the Midlands, or perhaps that I am so dull in the head that I can make sense of very little.

That dullness weighs down my lashes as I reach out for the edge of the rug. I tug it back, and the hit of musky dust is a punch to the face.

My body jerks with a suppressed cough.

It’s no use, that dust has fast travelled down my throat to settle in my chest. With any luck, it is poison, and it will kill me.

I smack my hand once, twice on my chest.

Hedda remains utterly unfazed. Her eyes flare in the dimly lit lounge, sharp green blades, and she watches as I reach for the exposed floorboards with one hand.

My nails cut into the edge of a particularly wonky wooden board. With my other hand, I spindle a small blade, then dig it into the slight gap.

I wrench the floorboard upwards until it bows.

It cracks, loud enough to cringe me to the bones.

Hedda’s ears perk.

I pry out the board, teeth bared, my shoulders set against the threat that the wood might snap and splinter all over us.

It’s clumsy work with Hedda pinning my crossed legs down, and that I have to reach over her and bend around her, but I set aside the board before digging out the small wooden box from the floor. It’s hidden to the eyes of others, not just by the wooden planks, but by the dusting of feathers and cotton that I sprinkled all over it when I buried it here.

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