Chapter Thirty-Five #2
He melted into the packed dirt; now heated by the inferno bearing down on him.
The roar of the fire was soothing, the crackle as it ate its way towards him reminding Lim of happier times spent around a bonfire.
Sitting with a cup of huangjiu in hand, enjoying the company of friends, other craftsmen, and villagers, in whichever town it was that he’d made his temporary home.
Occasionally those fires would be shared with a lover, usually another traveller who’d not stay long enough to complicate matters.
He sought trysts that left him free to concentrate on his first love: his trade.
So here he was, suffocating in an inferno, alone in his thirty-third year. He’d never preferred to be alone, not as the prince did; Lim simply had found no one that interested him more than the open road, and the next pair of shoes he’d design and create.
Not until it was too damned late.
He hiccoughed, the closest he could manage to taking a breath. Drool evaporated the moment it ran from the corner of his mouth; he had no strength to swallow.
This was the worst possible time to die.
A hot, rebellious tear fell from him.
Lim would have followed Xian to any distant land he needed. And expected nothing in return. Truly nothing. If he had never been asked into Xian’s bed, then so be it. He could live with simple closeness.
Lim smiled into the dirt, eyes stinging as sweat forced itself between his lids. How confounding that first meeting in Heng’s kitchen had been. Lim could easily lust within a second of laying eyes on a man, but never had such a deep longing found him so quickly.
The floorboards shook again; suffering under the heavy blow of a falling beam, or perhaps raining roof tiles.
Each sound marked the approach of death. Truly, this time.
Song Lim curled in on himself, trying to hide his mouth and nose from the worst of the heat.
Perhaps in death he’d dream of dancing with an unveiled prince in a pair of sublime slippers.
A hoarse tune found its way to Lim’s lips; a nonsense of notes little more than his death groans. In his mind though the melody was sweet as honey, and as soothing. The perfect notes for a perfect time spent with a man he’d never truly know.
His singsong was interrupted by an irritating scratching.
And the bark of a dog; rough bursts of sound penetrating the squealing, groaning death of the workshop.
Perhaps the poor thing had tried to flee the flames and trapped itself here. Pity they weren’t together. Then Lim would not die alone.
‘Xian.’ Lim wanted the prince’s name to be the last word he spoke.
Life did indeed slip away from a man.
Lim felt it pull from him like a rotten tooth.
Another piercing bark jolted him back into the scalding heat. Death was toying with him.
‘No,’ he gasped.
A scream erupted. A sound borne of diyu; a realm filled with the cries of sinners as they are punished after death.
Lim moaned into his downfall. Daemons were arriving to claim him, and drag him to that hell. Had he been such a terrible man?
A terrifying shriek curdled Lim’s boiling blood and arrived in tandem with an enormous splintering collapse of wood.
Debris rained down on him, and his lungs launched a hopeless quest to clear themselves.
He jerked like an eel pulled from the lake, flung onto his back, hips bucking and head smacking against the hard earth as his body went mad with trying to keep itself alive. Death would be a blessing.
A rush of air swept over him; blessedly cool.
The darkness behind his eyelids blazed; orange and yellows and all the hues of hell.
Finally, death had delivered him. Lim opened his streaming eyes. Pitch darkness had given way to an inferno. One that silhouetted a figure standing over him.
His mind fought what his eyes delivered. The square outline of the open trapdoor was there, the brightness of the fire beyond all too terrifying, but standing at the edge was an impossible animal.
A fox, large as a stag. A coat of rich russet red that seemed to shimmer in the heat.
Smoke billowing out of Lim’s tomb, parting around the creature as though it feared to touch it.
Lim’s groan shaped itself into a whimper. He’d died. And this was the hellhound come to claim him.
The huge fox leapt down into Lim’s grave—moving like the spill of water down a mountainside—and set its black-tipped feet next to Lim’s head.
He stared up at the creature’s white chest, unblemished by the soot and ash and cinders of an earthly fire.
White teeth, each with a knife-tip point, were bared, its black nose glistening.
Don’t eat me, Lim thought, his lips too scorched dry to speak.
The creature stepped around him, revealing signs of a dire injury now healed; thick scars running from foreleg to haunch, where no fur had regrown.
The fox dipped its head, pointed snout coming within an inch of Lim’s sweat-drenched face. Its heated breath forced him to close his eyes once more.
Was it not enough to die and be condemned to diyu? He was to be devoured by this hellhound?
He heard the animal shift, and he tensed. His shirt was grabbed at, and wrenched with such force Lim’s shoulders lifted from the ground. Only to find himself dropped a moment later.
‘Hey!’ His parched lips split.
The fox took hold of him again, a mouthful of shirtfront, lifting Lim’s entire back from the ground, dragging him upright. Releasing him when he sat, hunched and dizzy and bewildered.
‘Go away,’ he mumbled. But did not cough.
A black nose, cool and wet, pressed at his cheek. Perhaps it was the venting of the smoke through the opening that made breathing easier, but Lim’s lungs filled with purer air, his mind shaping itself around coherent thought.
‘I’m not dead,’ he rasped.
The creature wasn’t trying to eat him. This was no hellhound, because this wasn’t hell.
The fox’s back brushed at the sagging floorboards above, slinking in behind Lim, and nudging its head between his shoulder blades. The beast growled. And nudged him again.
‘Alright.’ Lim dragged himself onto his knees, pausing to catch his breath.
A harrowing groan melded with the torturous grind of timbers. The fox barked. That same sharpness of sound from earlier.
Lim staggered closer to the opening, hoping to use a casket to leverage himself to his feet, but he’d never been so weak. His arms trembled, strengthless as grass jelly. He leaned against a crate, trying to summon the strength to push himself to standing.
The fox went onto its front knees and lowered its head beneath his outstretched arm. A firm push upwards had Lim lifting.
With a startled cry, Lim clutched at the silk-soft fur as the animal straightened its legs. He bit the inside of his cheek, closing his eyes as dizziness threatened to overwhelm him. His feet were numb, his legs nearly as useless as his arms.
Something brushed his hip, slipping over his stomach, and rounding the other hip. He was encircled, and did not have a drop of energy left to fight it. Even his eyelids refused to lift to see what was being done.
Lim’s body lifted, the wrapping at his waist firming against him.
He whimpered as he was dragged up against the animal’s side, his toes barely touching the ground.
The fox growled, and Lim found strength enough to open one eye.
They stood beneath the open length of the trapdoor, and he’d been lifted high enough that he could drape his arm over the animal’s shoulders.
And swing his leg over the fox’s back.
Lim’s mind grabbed at the thought; holding it like a prize.
He dug his shaking fingers into the soft fur and summoned a shred of strength from his all-consuming weakness. Lim groaned through a parched throat, willing his leg to do as he bid; he’d never ask a thing from it ever again.
The pressure around his waist aided him, pushing him across the animal’s back, his leg dragging over its haunches, dropping on the far side like a sack of grain.
Lim now lay upon the fox’s broad back, but too far forward, his face pressed into the scruff of the animal’s neck.
But he could barely lift his head, let alone seat himself properly.
The pressure at his waist took care of that, tugging him back so the fox’s shoulder bones pressed into his chest rather than his belly.
Whatever encircled him now removed itself and went instead to run the length of his back. Pinning him in place.
The fox leapt. Rising towards the blazing, crackling madness of the inferno.
Lim’s head jerked back, drawing a weak cry from him, his hands clutching at the thick fur with feverish terror. If not for the pressure at his back, he’d certainly have tumbled straight back down into his overheated grave.
They soared upwards through the opening, rising above the flooring in one tremendous leap. Straight into the very depths of chaos.
The fire roared with the fury of a hundred dragons.
The fox landed upon the fragile remnants of the floorboards. Lim whimpered, adjusting himself against the animal; long years spent upon a horse’s back led him to lift his knees higher, his arms tighter around the animal’s neck. He dared to look up only once.
Flames towered over them, weaving and lashing and ferocious in their appetites. Chen’s roof gaped open, all but destroyed; black smoke blotting out the stars and the fireworks whose crescendo could not match the holocaust beneath it.
He buried his head in the fox’s fur, his hands searching for more to hold; finding more scars within the softness. Exhaustion had his body shaking, and he feared he’d not have the strength to cling to the animal much longer.
The creature pushed on. Beneath Lim’s body, the creature’s muscles shifted.
The fox’s pace was breathtaking, its lithe turns performed with silken smoothness as it negotiated the maelstrom.
There was an undeniable elegance in its race; this wasn’t the panicked motion of a mindless animal.
They moved as though in the strangest of dances.
A step left, a sweeping turn right, a rise to surmount an obstacle ahead.
Lim clung tight, turning his head in towards his shoulder to protect his eyes from the debilitating heat.
He glimpsed what held him so securely against the animal’s back; the thickness of its tail, the bushy coal-black length covering him so entirely the bristles were there at his shoulder; tickling his cheek as he turned his head.
Lim’s delirium led him to think of Xian’s jet black hair.
Of how the animal’s graceful movement compared to the beauty of the prince’s dance.
Barely had those thoughts bloomed, and Lim was struck.
A blow to the back of his head plunged him into darkness, ending all thought of his huli jing.