When the fire had calmed, burned to nothing but embers and a few forlorn flames, she began to chant.
The shadows didn't understand her words, but they understood her request. They writhed in anticipation. A favour, yes, a favour...
They slithered into the fire, dancing as though the timber of her voice was a song. Then, suddenly, the fire erupted into a tornado of swirling flames - blue and red and star-white.
The shadows screamed, like howling wind, and in the heat they moulded, like clay, into human shapes, arms and legs black as sin. They circled the fire, took one another's hands.
She chanted loudly, lifting her voice, but it was stolen from her lips. The shadows said the incantations, in rasping voices, with black tongues. Her heart beat steadily in her chest, thumping her ribs so hard it hurt. It skipped a beat, painfully. She pitched into the circle of shadows, into the fire. It did not burn, but her heart pulsed and sipped another beat.
The shadows closed in, and another painful beat sent tears streaming down her face. Her hands moved to her chest, clawing at the flesh over her heart. She howled and screamed and twisted and raked her nails over her chest, drawing blood. Colours burst behind her eyelids.
Something picked apart her skin, and in a final searing heartbeat, something warm and wet slid into her hand. She gasped and opened her eyes, to see a beating heart in her palm.
The shadows reached with inky fingers, and she clutched it like a mother clutching her newborn baby, but they took it and covered it and whisked it away.
She watched them wrap it like a present, and lay it beside her, but her muscles were water, she coudl not reach for it.
Sleep washed over her, like a black tide, and she welcomed it to her bed of ashes and blood.
Art by Woraya Chotikul
Text by Lucie MacAulay
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