Serpents and Stairways

Chapter V? - Part 4

Dinah was taken aback—the answer seemed obvious, but if so, what was it? Because his grandmother was in grief? Because she wanted so?

"Because it's not his time yet," she said.

"But life, it is so exhausting," the spirit said, and Dinah realized in terror that she had no idea which language they were speaking in, "Alive are in constant pain. Memory which your neurons hold, feelings caused by the swaying of your hormone levels—you call that beauty. But do you see the waters behind me? Drop by drop, it was filled with words spent on letters by those who departed willingly. Heartache is pain of the body. Those who are here with me don't need a body anymore."

Dinah bit her lip—a habit that would now be stuck in her arsenal of gestures for years to come. She wanted to say that the girls at funerals she attended wouldn't have agreed with the fox. She wanted to find some sarcastic quote about the value of living. She could've, after all, tried to beg in tears the mistress of these shores to change her mind—that would've worked with her mother just a few years before.

Dinah sniffled, her nose clogged with blood clots—what should she do? All things aside, she was only a thirteen-years-old girl, even if she had learned the first cantica of the 'Divine Comedy' by heart.

And maybe that was why she chose the tactic that never worked. Audacity.

"That all sounds very interesting," Dinah said, "but that's not how things work."

The enormous fox stretched out towards Dinah, nearly poking her in the stomach with her muzzle. The girl stood as still as she could—only her knees were trembling under tension—and pushed the glasses up her nose with a tap.

"If that thing breathed, they'd certainly fog up" she thought, lowering her hand.

Enormous egg-white eyes weren't blinking.

"Then how do things work?" The Fox finally asked.

"Well, the rule is to offer me a test of some sort. And when I pass it—to give back Timur without further ado." And, drunk on adrenaline, Dinah added, "It's quite shameful not to know that at your age."

The ancient pulled back her muzzle, and Dinah noticed protruding bodies of other foxes that she was either absorbing or releasing into/from herself.

"Ford's kin. What good is your quick wit, assembled on a line out of the truths you wish for?" the being said, "Why have you brought this morsel of flesh to me, Isengrim? So I can kill it in time's stead?"

Dinah looked back and saw that the black wolf behind her had grown to the size of their interlocutor. Its lunar eyes glimmered silver. Constellations, nebulae, comets and supernovae were dancing anew on its hide. Was that reassuring?

"That is my gift to you, brother," finally said the fox in response to the silence, "bring the girl my whisker."

One of the figures stepped out—a boy with fox ears, tail, and freckles specked in shadows on the glowing surface of his cheeks. Dinah clenched her teeth looking at his serene face.

"But.. That can't be?"

The boy was holding something long and white, something that looked like a whip.

"I say that pain—is meaningless and heavy. You—that you need a test. So have it: prove your love is stronger than pain, girl. With your own hand, strike yourself with this whip—just four times and we're even. And strike with all your might, I'll know if you hold back."

Dinah took the whip.

In every story she remembered, the pain was real. The mermaid struggled for every step she took, Elisa tore nettle with bare hands and endured the stinging needles. But could she do something like that for Timur? Anderson's kristian sacrificiality was so unlike Mr Wolkov's covenant to break the rules that she could break. But the First Fox, too, had arrived on these shores long before Saviour and Destructor were crucified.