Inkspell

23. COLD AND WHITE

There they were again. Mo felt them coming closer, he saw them even though his eyes were closed – White Women, their faces so pale, their eyes colorless and cold. That was all there was in the world, white shadows in the dark and the pain in his breast, red pain. Every breath brought it back. Breathing. Hadn't it once been perfectly easy? Now it was difficult, as difficult as if they had buried him already, heaping earth on his breast, on the pain burning and throbbing there. He couldn't move. His body was useless, a burning prison. He wanted to open his eyes, but his lids weighed down as heavily as if they were made of stone. Everything was lost. Only words remained: pain, fear, death. White words. No color in them, no life. Only the pain was red.

Is this death? Mo wondered. This void, full of faint shadows? Sometimes he thought he felt the fingers of the pale women reaching into his agonized breast as if to crush his heart. Their breath wafted over his hot face, and they were whispering a name, but it was not the name he remembered as his own. Bluejay, they whispered.

Their voices seemed to be made of cold yearning, nothing but cold yearning. It's easy, they whispered, you don't even have to open your eyes. No more pain, no darkness. Stand up, they whispered, it's time to go, and they entwined their white fingers with his. Their fingers were wonderfully cool on his burning skin.

But the other voice wouldn't let him go. Indistinct, barely audible, as if it came from far, far away, it penetrated the whispering. It sounded strange, almost discordant among the whispering shadows. Be quiet, he wanted to tell it with his tongue of stone. Be quiet, please, let me go! For nothing but that voice kept him imprisoned in the burning house that was his body. But the voice went on.

He knew it, but where from? He couldn't remember. It was long ago that he had last heard it, too long ago…