28. LONDON
The darkness in solitary isn’t black. Not really. It’s a smorgasbord of pantomime purples and gloomy grays. The color is thick enough to swallow my tongue if I don’t keep singing.
There’s a new song in my head, one which has sprung up from a part of my noggin I’ve not heard from before.
The wolf is in the larder,
The snake is in the hall,
The kitten’s in the briar patch, waiting for the fall.
The owl is in the belfry,
The sparrow’s in the mud,
The king is in the iron room,
Dreaming of the flood.
As the song plays on repeat, I realize the pipes are shivering.
Pressing my ear against the cold, weeping stone of the wall, I focus. Most people hear nothing but the drip-drip-drip of the prison’s leaky heart, but I hear the threads that connect, well, everything.
One has the best sound of all.
Wump, wump, wump.
With the occasional wump-ppp.
But that’s not the vibration that captures my attention right now.
It’s a different, frail light thing. The kind of thread that could be woven into a butterfly wing, if I were a tiny weaver with a tiny loom.
I close my eyes and breathe in the note—it’s like a guttering candle, flicker-flicker-gone- not gone.
Fooled you.
Those wily candles.
The wolf is in the larder,
The snake is in the hall,
The kitten’s in the briar patch, waiting for the fall.
The owl is in the belfry,
The sparrow’s in the mud,
The king is in the iron room,
Dreaming of the flood.
I start to hum again, a low, buzzing frequency that matches the Null-wards.
I’m waiting.
I don’t know what for, but I’ll be ready.