Ian Thornley



Ian Thornley grew up in the shadowlands of England, from which he eventually escaped. He lives in Auburndale, Massachusetts, with his wife, three children and a cat. His work has been published most recently in The Eclectic Muse and in an anthology, Poems for Big Kids. His epic, Song of a Son of Light, is featured here in The HyperTexts in full.

Reviews of Ian Thornley's epic Song of a Son of Light:

“The flawless meters, rhymes and rhythms of this exquisitely cadenced epic carry the narrative along with disarming ease towards the glowing intensity of the conclusion … The powerful accounts of battles, won and lost in the mists of a mythic past are gorgeous and haunting!”—Joe Ruggier, poet and editor ofThe Eclectic Muse

Song of a Son of Light, outlandishly for this age in which we find ourselves, is a supernatural epic fantasy in the tradition of Edmund Spenser’s The Fairie Queene. Discredited tradition, one would like to say? One would like to echo Ben Jonson’s terse dismissal of Spenser’s magnificently archaic epic, “Spenser writ no language.” But no, Ben, one mustn’t do that with Spenser. The Fairie Queene is too gorgeous, too magnificent for that. Its language is exactly right for the supernatural world it describes. All this may be said of Ian Thornley’s marvelous huge poem: mere fantasy, perhaps, but masterful in its language. Taste, relish its melody, power, and swiftness, reader!”—Richard Moore, Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet and author of the epic, The Mouse Whole



Song of a Son of Light

PROLOGUE

Though many wise old men have tried to trace
the origins of our especial breed
to answer for our beauty and our grace,
their truths, it’s true to say, have not agreed.

No scientist nor wizened prophet I,
but dull recorder of another’s rhyme,
a tale that begins with the earth and sky
newborn and in the infancy of Time.

I shall not venture untruths of my own,
nor offer how or why we came to be,
but will declare we’ve never been alone,
for we are twinned in our humanity.

Our sister’s path split long ago from ours.
She shuns the very light by which we see
and thus is absent from our fleeting hours
and lost, alas, to even memory.

Our youngest see her. They mute witness bear.
But as our children age, their sight grows sour,
and the older they grow the more they care
to strip imagination of its power.

Go hence! Find a baby and study him.
Ask what begets the twinkle in his eye.
My doubting friend, it’s neither wind nor whim
that makes him giggle so, or makes him cry.

It is our elven kin we lost at birth;
our twin of lesser weight, yet greater worth.



WINTER

1.

’Twas winter in the world, and happiness
was buried deep and sleeping sound as death;
and love and any trace of tenderness
had withered at the touch of winter’s breath.

Midwinter, and the boy lay cold as snow,
despite his coat of chimney-soot and lice;
lay wide awake and rapt in candle-glow
beneath an attic window etched with ice.

He watched the flame, its every faint and leap,
and as he watched his eyes grew wide with awe.
The other boys already were asleep
and so they did not see what Jacob saw.

A pair of golden wings was glimmering
about a slender body blazing bright.
And all around, a halo shimmering;
an angel bearing tidings in the night.

And Jacob heard the tolling of a bell
above the strain of sweet celestial sounds;
a welcoming, and summoning as well.
And Jacob’s boyish wonder knew no bounds.

And far away, the devil wondered too,
and woke his spy and told it what to do.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2.

The West Wind woke and to the city stole,
and combed its alleys, fretting for a fight;
a thing for every beggar’s bitten soul
to moan about anew this winter’s night.

Along the river now the West Wind flew,
and all about it cast its piercing gaze.
To London’s eastern end it blew
and came to pause above a squalid maze.

And there upon the riverbank it spied
a dwelling unfit even for the poor,
which craned its neck above the murky tide
and flaunted all its flaws like some old whore.

The West Wind rammed the crooked dwelling’s side
and wrestled from its roof consumptive groans.
But it held fast, for all the savage tried
to shake the very marrow from its bones.

And brawling thus, the bully caught the scent
of something more delicious than its wrath.
And so it stilled and softly coiling went
and for an attic window wove its path.

And through the glass it saw the candlelight,
and also saw the boy bewitched beside;
and twitching with a gust of frigid spite,
beneath the rotten sill the wind did slide.

The boy’s gray cheeks were painted red and gold.
His eyes were fixed upon the flick’ring fire.
His blackened hands the candle’s base did hold.
And in the draft, the dancing flame leapt higher.

The West Wind knew the secret of that flame,
and knew it was a thing no boy should know.
And so it struck and did the secret claim,
and kissed goodnight the candle and its glow.

And from the attic then that wind did slip
to prowl away the lesser hours of night;
and left the boy with wax upon his lip,
bereft of the bewitchment of the light.

The bully was abroad again and bold,
and would not suffer hope of any kind.
’Twas winter and the night was bitter cold;
but all was warm in Jacob’s heart and mind.

For winter could not penetrate his dreams,
where angels danced and moonlight dappled streams.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

3.

“Pray tell another tale, and make it rhyme,
and lend your telling teeth that it may bite!
And let its rhythms trick the tick of Time
so we won’t have to go to bed tonight!”

Old Memnon feigned a groan and disappeared
to fetch their cups of elderberry tea.
He passed them round, complaining through his beard,
and settled down with Caleb on his knee.

And then he cleared his throat and met their eyes
with all the twinkling mischief of his own,
and in that instant shed his gruff disguise
to play the uncle they had always known.

“I must warn you, this is not for the small.
You must have lived three centuries at least,
lest you to frank incontinence should fall,
and terror on your dreams should nightly feast.”

They were impressed. Old Memnon sipped his tea,
and looked at it lest he should see them quail.
They called as one: “But I am over three!”
And Memnon smiled and started with his tale.

“Beneath the northern star, far, far away,
there lies a barren wilderness of ice,
where a few poor folk have lived to this day
by paying with their souls the climate’s price;

and where the sun six months won’t show his face
for fear he’ll freeze and hang a bleary eye
above the blinding sorrow of that place,
and lose his lusty light and dimming die.

A tale the natives tell and swear is true
describes a hunter running from a bear.
Across the shifting flows of ice he flew,
yet he could not outrun its black-eyed stare.

At length a storm engulfed the hunter’s flight
and sucked him up and spun him through the air,
his coat become the canvas of a kite –
a tissue for the howling wind to tear.”

And here he paused to let the children see
the hunter somersaulting through the sky.
He stole a sip of elderberry tea
and then resumed his story with a sigh.

“That tempest did a most false mercy show!
It carried him beyond a day and night
then set him down upon a drift of snow
outside a cave that pulsed with emerald light.”

“Don’t go inside!” shot Caleb’s shrill advice.
A few sage cousins nodded their assent.
“But he craved shelter from the wind and ice,”
said Memnon mournfully, “So in he went.

He stepped into that mouth held open wide,
and sensed at once that he was not alone.
That cavern did the world’s worst secret hide.
Not all its fangs were wrought of funneled stone.

And he was assailed by the stench of death;
and all his spirit’s binding came undone;
and terror seized his throat and stole his breath;
and with a strangled cry he turned to run.”

“Run!” cried the children, who were breathless too
and had forgotten it was just a play
and not a single word of it was true.
But Memnon would not let them have their way.

“He’d barely gone a yard before he fell.
By some sly stalagmite the man was tripped.
And now he lay within the maw of Hell,
and by its fangs his very soul was ripped.

For looking up, a vision pierced him through
and turned his very spirit outside in.
And now, my sweets, your beds are calling you.
To tell you any more would be to sin.”

And trying not to smile, he made to rise.
His audience berated him with “No!”
He shoved young Caleb off, ignored his cries,
and gestured for the howling mob to go.

But they refused to move their swindled selves,
and mutiny was brimming in their eyes.
And faced with this disgruntled band of elves,
Old Memnon fell to faking great surprise.

“What was it in the cave?” rang Caleb’s plea.
“We shall not leave until we hear the end!”
Then Memnon laughed and took him on his knee,
and strove both sin and mutiny to mend.

“The hunter filled the cave with piercing screams.
A full day passed before their echoes died.
That sleeping secret swallowed all his dreams
and left his butchered spirit gaping wide.

And nightfall saw him stumbling out of Hell
and wading through the wilderness for home,
a servant to the sleeping secret’s spell.
Bewitched and blind, the raving wraith did roam.

His brothers found him stiff and nearly dead;
an empty shell of what he once had been.
And when they knelt and stroked his marbled head,
he whispered to the wind of what he’d seen.

And then they stood around him as a wall
and kept his wife and doting brood away.
They stood around their brother as a pall
till dead upon his frozen bed he lay.

They dug a hole for him and made it deep,
and for his tattered soul they shed a tear.
They swore they would their brother’s secret keep.
And all of them were dead within a year!

Now off you go!” cried Memnon with a wave,
“And tell your parents what you made me do.
And tell them that you told me you were brave,
and old enough to hear my horror through.”

And satisfied, the sleepy rabble rose,
put on their cloaks and thanked him for his tale.
Then Caleb spoke, and everybody froze,
reminded of an unresolved detail.

“But uncle, what’s the secret?” Caleb said.
“The secret of the cavern’s emerald glow.”
Old Memnon thought awhile then shook his head.
“Another time, perhaps. Now off you go!”

“Another tale that barks but has no bite!”
cried Caleb with the grimace of a scold.
“A tail that’s mute but barbed with deadly spite,”
said Memnon then, “and better left untold.”

And after that they left, not quite convinced,
yet glowing from their uncle’s company.
And hearing “Dragon” whispered, Memnon winced
and wearily reclaimed his cup of tea.

The tea was cold but Memnon drank it down
the taste of that accursed name to drown.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

4.

The stone in winter’s heart began to crack,
and centuries of granite cloak were shed,
uncovering a scaled and horn-ridged back
and barb-tipped tail thrice coiled around a head.

A sign. A tremor in a cavern’s wall.
A stirring in the dark and frozen north.
A quiet sign, yet still a piercing call:
“Beware, it wakes again and shall go forth!”

It hung there full exposed, so tame and still.
Exposed, yet there was none to strike it dead.
Alas, how many souls had wished to kill
what nestled as a newborn babe abed!

Exposed as well the creature’s fetid scent,
which found the frigid wind and warning went.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

5.

His tale had worked, for it had terror sown,
yet all who’d heard it now were sleeping sound.
The only sleep disrupted was his own.
The teller of the tale was terror-bound.

He dreamt that death was falling from the sky.
He dove and leapt to dodge its lunging flame
and felt his spirit riven by its cry,
as hurtling down, the clutch of talons came.

But with a gasp he woke before he died.
And he was drenched with sweat from fire or fear.
And trembling, Memnon rose and went outside
the fever of an old fool’s mind to clear.

The midnight air was thick with slanting snow,
the forest rendered silent by the fall.
And from the west a trickling breeze did blow,
and soft to Memnon’s memory did call.

For in its current Memnon caught a scent
he had not caught in countless scores of years.
And he was loath to suffer what it meant,
and thought it first a figment of his fears.

That scent belied the beauty of the night.
It sullied the fathoms of its silence.
Old Memnon closed his eyes and fought his fright
to reunite the world with innocence.

But Memnon failed, however hard he tried.
The scent remained and could not be denied.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

6.

Old Memnon watched and waited. Time went by.
He never told another tale again.
The source of all his tales had run quite dry.
Dejectedly, Old Memnon roamed the glen.

He searched among the woodland ways for signs.
Had other creatures caught the cloying scent
that mingled with the perfume of the pines?
And had they known or guessed at what it meant?

By looking to the ravens’ looping flight
and tracing in the air the shapes they drew,
and reading snow-runes scribbled in the night,
he soon convinced himself the forest knew.

The eldest of his kin sought Memnon out,
and they would hint at something in the air:
an irritating tingling of the snout;
a sense of doom; a dawning of despair.

And in response, contentment he would fake.
A malady, he’d say, was going round,
and he would say what herb they ought to take
and where in winter’s waste it might be found.

But this great lie he knew could not endure.
The air grew fouler still with every week.
And there was not a herb on earth to cure
the forest of the pox that made it reek.

Oh what a fool he’d been to tell that tale!
A tale that barked but had no bite, indeed!
Against him did his superstitions rail
until his conscience, bruised and worn, did bleed.

But in his heart Old Memnon knew full well
that some much darker force had had a hand
in opening that window into Hell
and letting dragon’s breath infect the land.

A force that was the bane of every elf:
the Cunning One, the King of Hell himself.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

7.

For one moon more upon that wall it dwelt,
and then it woke and drew a mighty breath
to resurrect the fury that had dealt
to legions of sweet souls most violent death.

Its over-rested eyes their focus found.
A thousand years of hunger now it knew.
It raised its head, its body’s whip unwound,
and then it leapt and from its coffin flew.

From darkness to darkness, reborn at last;
to feast again and nevermore to fast.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

8.

At length the truth was recognized by all.
The King would not deny it any more,
and so he called his Council to his hall
that preparations should be made for war.

The morning of the meeting, Memnon rose
and took a bracing walk to clear his mind,
which had become so cluttered with his woes
that any useful thought was hard to find.

He walked until the forest met the sea.
He’d hoped he’d chance to find her sitting there.
He leant himself against his usual tree.
and drank as sacred wine the salt sea air.

She sat upon the stone sea wall and wept,
yet knew not that she did nor why she might.
So long had she her sorrow’s secret kept
that it had slipped beyond her spirit’s sight.

She kicked the air above the pounding brine
and watched the clouds stampeding out to sea.
She searched among their number for a sign
on which to hang her hopes of breaking free.

Among the gray and graceless herd was one,
a pearl that far above the others flew,
and cut a reckless trail before the sun.
It sped along and ever smaller grew.

And she was with it, high above the crowd,
and from her tainted kingdom fled apace;
a maiden in a chariot of cloud
escaping far above the ocean’s face.

It melted as it sped across the sky.
The sun would not allow so bold a flight.
She watched it fade away. She watched it die.
And she was falling then from that great height.

While Memnon watched, entangled in her mind
and pulsing with his pity for her plight,
the West Wind struck her cruelly from behind
and meted out the malice of its might.

She slipped, yet reached behind her as she fell
and somehow caught her fingers on the stone.
She hung above the hunger of the swell,
the West Wind gnawing every knuckle’s bone.

Old Memnon heard her cry and saw her fall
and left his hiding place without a thought,
and took the hand that held the stone sea wall
and robbed the waves of what they might have caught.

And for a moment, after it was done,
they faced each other there upon the shore.
The moment passed, and then he turned to run
and Hannah cried her thanks above the roar.

When Memnon was enveloped by the wood,
he faced the wind, which vengefully did blow,
and though he knew it could not do much good,
he shook his fist at it and bellowed “No!”

And when he turned again, it knocked him down
and threw him in a semi-frozen bog,
which soaked his council robes and stained them brown
and left him cold and reeking like a hog.

In contrast, Hannah’s walk was trouble-free,
though nearing home she felt another’s gaze,
and all too well she knew whose it must be,
and would not raise her own to meet its blaze.

She kept her hazel eyes upon the door
until she reached the latch and went inside.
And through the window still those eyes did bore,
denying that their waking dream had died.

Behind those gray eyes bitter winds did blast,
unearthing pain and passions from the past.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

9.

Of a cursed race was I fallen born
to hurtle through the shadows of the earth
and feed on beauty and on virtue’s scorn
and on the very souls of love and mirth.

I am enslaved through my blood and my birth.
But show me a slave who has held such sway!
Show me a servant who has trumped my worth,
for I am lord of all that I survey!

I hate my master. Thus I serve him well.
For hatred is our faith. It is the creed
that lubricates the very cogs of Hell
and feeds our souls; the essence of our seed.

I understood with my first taken breath
the orders that my master never gave.
I do not strive for universal death,
but death for mine appointed foes I crave.

Through killing them is my sole pleasure found.
By murder to my master I am bound.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

10.

A dozen could the oaken table hold,
yet one chair stood still empty by the King.
One empty chair as in a song of old
that Uncle Memnon once was wont to sing.

The Elven King and ten wise elders spoke.
They mumbled round the pipes between their lips,
and mingled murmurs with the scented smoke
of mountain pine and tulip petal tips.

But all their puffing could not cleanse the air
of that foul breath for which they all were met.
Their wrinkled brows were furrowed with despair
and rheumy eyes were sorrow-ripe and wet.

And into their despair strode Memnon, late,
a crumpled vision breaking through the smoke.
And all agreed it had been worth the wait,
despite the rancid fuming of his cloak.

His mighty stench the dragon’s overpowered.
His muddy features briefly brought them cheer.
His soil contained a seed of hope that flowered
and quelled, albeit fleetingly, their fear.

The King remarked, as Memnon found his chair:
“You’re battle-scarred before the war’s begun!
I trust your foe is much the worse for wear,
and that you showed no mercy when you won.”

“Alas, my liege, the West Wind ambushed me,
and bog-bound there was nothing I could do.
But I have cursed it for its villainy.
Before the end its folly it shall rue!”

A wave of laughter swept across the room
then broke and left them beggared of relief,
to brood upon their fast-approaching doom
and fill the aching silence with their grief.

And in that silence swathed in smoke and smells
Old Memnon counted forty scrolls or more.
The oak was strewn with dragon-runes and spells,
and battle-plans were spread upon the floor.

Yet none, they knew, could guarantee its death,
so now the King addressed his friend again
with words that barely rose above his breath:
“Our only hope, as ever, lies with men.

Your task shall be to go among mankind,
for Memnon you best know that brittle breed,
and search among their souls again and find
a hero for our hour of greatest need.”

“But much has changed,” said Memnon with a frown.
“Their line declines with every passing year.
Their souls it seems are getting watered down,
and such a soul may not remain, I fear.”

“Diluted they may be,” the King replied,
“but I do not believe such souls may drown.
Until you prove that all of them have died,
I’ll have some hope on which to hang my crown.”

“But sire…” “Old friend, the dragon’s on the move
and doubtless drawing nearer by the day.”
“But sire…” “Old friend, you have a point to prove,
and till it’s proved there’s nothing more to say.

I bid you, Memnon, see this mission through
before the dragon comes to lay us waste.
And while we wait, our hopes shall be in you;
in your good fortune, Memnon, and your haste.”

So Memnon rose and bowed before his King,
and sped away to find so scarce a thing.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

11.

The church’s steeple pierced the winter’s chill,
and from the cliff commanded land and sea;
a symbol of the rev’rend’s iron will,
his rectitude and cold divinity.

That needle wore no cross of solid gold.
Instead, a silver cock’rel sliver-slim;
the jutting of its breast, though brave and bold,
beholden to the West Wind’s every whim.

The church’s walls were threadbare, flaking white.
Its windows for the most were narrow slits
to filter out the fancies of the light
lest they should overwhelm a Christian’s wits.

A dwelling in the church’s shadow stood,
and there Miss Abby Sunday luncheon served.
She helped herself and helped the Rev’rend Wood,
and gave the girl the little she deserved.

Miss Abby’s temperament was sorely tried
by serving to a servant in this way.
It pricked her prim propriety and pride
and strengthened her resolve to make her pay.

Miss Abby reckoned labor fair reward
for all the pity she’d so cheaply bought:
the years of tender care and bed and board
the Rev’rend Wood had given her for naught.

So she would run her ragged with her chores.
She’d worry her and work her to the bone.
She’d make her scrub the linens, pots and floors,
until their many stains became her own.

The housekeeper was not inclined to care
maternally or any other way.
At times she found her loathing hard to bear,
and then she’d wish the girl would run away.

She praised the rev’rend’s sermon while she ate,
with sweet potato tasting every word.
Her cutlery applauded on her plate.
She said it was perhaps the best she’d heard.

And though he seemed to bask in all her praise,
her words were incidental as the food.
The girl beside him stole his fleeting gaze
and stole his every thought and made him brood:

How swiftly does she ripen in her grace
and shed the scales that did her sex disguise!
Her mother’s beauty blossoms in her face
and waxes in the waters of her eyes.

I need but reach to cup a swollen breast,
but cannot reach a heart she will not show.
That heart is hers to hide, but not the rest,
those sweet and swollen secrets I would know.

And Hannah’s thoughts just then were miles away.
They’d flown beyond Miss Abby out to sea.
She watched a ship, its white upon the gray,
alone upon the ocean, fading free.

The rev’rend frowned and clicked his silver down.
He fixed his gray eyes squarely on his prey.
Miss Abby let her prattling unction drown,
lest it dilute whatever he would say.

“It might connote some gratitude, my dear,
if you would bring your restless mind to heel,
and make it sit and settle with us here,
at least until we’ve finished with our meal.”

So Hannah’s mind reluctantly returned
to guide her fork and suffer silence, spurned.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

12.

Old Memnon worried, wrestling with his doubts,
a stowaway upon that fading ship;
Southampton-bound, or bound for thereabouts,
with scarce enough provisions for the trip.

The West Wind bore them on, but charged a toll
from those who chatted idly on the deck,
for every sentence uttered there it stole
and thus all conversation it did wreck.

It drowned their words or blew them far away,
or tossed them high as scraps of flesh and bone.
Their remnant rained, and fell where Memnon lay.
And Memnon grew despondent at their tone.

“The world has changed,” he whispered through his beard,
reclining in his lifeboat hideaway.
“The differences are greater than I feared.
The old and new appear as night and day.”

But Memnon’s people’s need was now so strong,
he knew he could not falter in his quest
to find a soul to prove his worries wrong;
a soul who might withstand the devil’s test.

A thousand years ago or more he’d sailed
across the open sea for England’s shore.
And in his quest that time he had not failed.
He’d found a man to fight his people’s war.

And so again to England he appealed.
In England would his people’s fate be sealed.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

13.

I do not hunt for humans any more.
My work is done among them for a time.
They are so steeped in enmity and war,
for me to interfere would be a crime.

Why should I, while much sweeter souls remain
for me to fall to culling as I may?
They’re few and far between and on the wane,
but I shan’t suffer soon from want of prey.

Why should I hunt for humans, when their taste
has so insipid grown it pains my tongue?
My waking hours are far too few to waste
on souls so under-salted, even young.

For gold and silver should I? For their wealth?
My brethren liked to lie upon a hoard,
a habit that was harmful to their health:
they ended lying squarely on a sword.

When all the earth and sky may be my den,
why lie my life away within a hall?
Why rob the very wealthiest of men
and take from man an agent of his fall?

I am a force of darkness, not of light.
Their trinkets are of little worth to me.
For what are gold and precious gems at night?
They are but shards of stone that none can see.

I covet not what humans covet most;
nor of a burglar’s bed shall ever boast.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

14.

At last she had been rescued from the day,
released into the custody of night.
Cocooned in quilted coverlets she lay,
and sleeping spread her spirit’s wings in flight.

And high above the ocean now she flew,
and something called to her and led her on.
A full moon lent the waves a silver hue,
and overhead a sea of diamonds shone.

And though the wind her soaring strove to stall,
it could not dull her dreaming or her joy.
She thrilled to hear her fate and heed its call –
a sound so like the calling of a boy.

So far above the silver sea she flew,
and closer to her destiny she drew.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

15.

It was a cold and bitter winter’s morn,
with fog and night still battling for the land.
The fog was born of curdled waters’ scorn.
Between the night’s black tentacles it fanned.

A weary band of warriors set out.
Along the filthy cobblestones it went.
There was no other living soul about.
This shadow-hour the city sleeping spent.

The company moved on in single file,
with heads tucked in and shoulders hunched around.
Their eyes half closed, they walked a frigid mile
until the padlocked brew’ry gates they found.

The leader was not scrawny like the rest.
His girth, indeed, gave out where theirs gave in.
Well-barreled were his belly and his chest,
well-stocked the swollen pantries of his chin.

He set about the op’ning of the gate.
He turned a key and swung it open wide.
He threatened for his fallow friends to wait,
and with a scowl he disappeared inside.

They floated by the gate, the ghostly four,
forever fading where the fog embraced.
Each one remembered nothing but this war.
What other life he’d known had been displaced.

These soldiers by a miser had been made,
with fat and meat as plentiful as pay;
a broomstick for a gun, a brush for blade,
and lash of tongue or whip to show the way.

Their shoes were full of holes and clothes were torn
as if they had been mauled by some great foe.
And each one looked as if he had been born
full-caked in cannon shot from head to toe.

The Master Sweep returned with horse and cart,
their battle-steed and chariot of fire.
And so they rode away to ply their art,
a band of whittled mercen’ries for hire.

They ventured to a wealthy part of town
and by a mansion cut their journey short.
And from the cart the boys came swinging down,
as pirates come upon a golden port.

They entered at the bidding of a maid,
and only at the closing of the door
did one bold ray of light the darkness raid
and pave the way with bravery for more.

And when the day was done, some tradesman’s door
restored them to the bitter cold of night,
and thus postponed the waging of their war.
Its end, as well they knew, was not in sight.

And by the shuffling of their blackened feet
they plodded on, as stooped as ancient men,
and made the wagon waiting in the street,
and faint and famished, lurched for home again.

The soldiers huddled close among their sacks,
the better to withstand the biting air,
which raked its teeth along their bony backs
and rifled through their soot-encrusted hair.

The night had won. The fog had left the land.
And now lone clouds swept loose across the sky,
and left the wide-mouthed moon to watch that band,
to watch the eldest boy who’d caught her eye.

She watched him there among the dozing boys,
quite safe for now; his master’s mind had turned
to adding up his pennies, copper joys,
and counting out the drops of gin he’d earned.

And Jacob watched the moon. He met her gaze
and asked for whom it was she seemed to cry,
but could not hear the answer in her rays.
She cried for him. Her sorrow filled the sky.

At length they reached the cobbled alleyway
which led their aching limbs at last to bed.
Beside his dwindling candle Jacob lay,
and listened for his master’s hobnailed tread.

And sure enough, his master’s footsteps came
staccato slamming every stair to death.
And Jacob quickly snuffed his candle’s flame,
then smelled the gin upon his master’s breath.

The Master wound a path around the four,
the slender shadows sleeping at his feet.
He slowly tapped his warning on the floor,
with only one awake to heed its beat.

He came to rest beside the largest one,
his cruelty stoked and reason choked with gin,
and kicked the boy for something that he’d done;
a punishment for some imagined sin.

The sin, perhaps, premeditated growth,
for lately he’d been prone to getting stuck.
He swung his boot again and spat an oath,
and cursed the sprouting swine and cursed his luck.

And now the Master’s drunken fit began.
The heavy boot was practiced in its work.
From rib to rib the hobnailed hammer ran,
with every blow eliciting a jerk.

For all the savaging of Jacob’s chest,
he did not cry nor any sound did make,
but waited for the fury to arrest.
He’d learnt that to react was a mistake.

The boot wore out its punishment at length,
and with a belch the Master tripped away,
now double-drunk from his display of strength
and all he’d spent in making Jacob pay.

And Jacob did not answer any ache,
but fell to dreams no brute nor boot could break.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

16.

He came to England’s green and pleasant land,
now gray and bleak constrained in winter’s grip,
and waited in the lifeboat he had manned
for night to fall before he left the ship.

And then he slipped ashore and sped away
to find the path he’d taken once before.
He’d thought that he remembered where it lay,
but now that he was here he wasn’t sure.

In vain he searched the naked wood that night.
He found a dozen tracks yet none he knew.
And panic found his heart and squeezed it tight,
and feeling it, still faster Memnon flew.

By noon next day he could no longer stand.
Beside a stream, defeated, Memnon sank.
He cupped the forest’s lifeblood in his hand
and of its essence, caustic cool, he drank.

It was a bitter draft that quenched his thirst
but not the need for which he had set sail.
Old Memnon struck the earth and loudly cursed,
convinced again that in his quest he’d fail.

Then looking up, he met another’s eyes.
Upon the other bank a stranger stood
and stared at him and stammered his surprise
at what the wind had blown into his wood.

The elf was old as England, stooped and frail.
His whiskers were as lichen on his bark.
Upon his eyes the years had laid a veil,
a cobweb to conceal their inner spark.

The stranger shook his head and turned to go.
He’d heard the curse and trembled at its weight.
Now Memnon rose and bowed a greeting low
and called to him, beseeching him to wait.

“I beg you, cousin, let me know the way
to Camelot and to the kind of men
made bright and bold enough to dragons slay.”
The stranger flinched, and turned to him again.

“So it is risen,” rasped the stranger’s tongue.
“And first upon the New World it shall feast,
for there the meat’s most tender-sweet and young;
most pleasing to the palate of the beast.”

And deep into a silence then he fell,
awash in memories of dragon days.
“Your only hope, of course, is Zeraquel,
with men too weak or wicked in their ways.”

That name was like a dragon-talon’s tip.
It stung Old Memnon to the very core,
and through his soul’s worst sorrow’s scab did rip,
uncovering a deep and fest’ring sore.

“Of Zeraquel,” he cried,“there’s been no trace,
no sign, no smell, no word nor woodland song!
Indeed, not one of us has seen his face
in seven hundred years or twice as long!

And I for one,” he cried, “am glad it’s so!”
Old Memnon’s face was flushed, his anger high.
“For he would be as impotent, I know,
as legend says he was in days gone by!”

“It’s plain you do not know of whom you speak,”
the other countered in a solemn tone.
“I know him,” Memnon cried, “and know he’s weak!
His faults run deeper even than my own!”

The English elf edged further out of reach
lest Memnon should attack him in his rage.
He’d felt a searing pain in Memnon’s speech;
and one, he knew, that he could not assuage.

Old Memnon cooled, and softly now he said:
“Between the two, I’d sooner choose mankind.
I won’t believe their finest souls are dead
until they prove impossible to find.

So show me, friend, the road to Camelot,
that I may see my journey’s purpose through.
For there I’ll learn if heroes live or not,
and know if that dread fear we share is true.”

The elf replied, but still his distance kept.
“That Camelot is gone; its souls as well.”
And in his sudden anguish Memnon wept,
and to his knees beside the brook he fell.

The other stood, and in his watching froze.
There was no change apparent in his gaze,
yet swift behind those clouds his pity rose,
and for his blighted kinsman it did blaze.

“The palace now,” he said, “in London stands.
And London lies behind you, to the east.
And there you’ll find the Queen of many lands.
The Queen might know a man to match the beast.

I wish you luck, my friend,” he added then.
And slowly now he shuffled from the brook,
and left him to the mercy-might of men,
and not of Zeraquel, whom he forsook.

’Twas not the choice he would have made himself.
But he was English, and an Old World elf.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

17.

The apple sat impassive on the slab
beneath the window in the rev’rend’s den.
The rev’rend’s brush betrayed it dab by dab,
corrupting what had once corrupted men.

But through the window now he saw her leave,
and from his work his mind was wrenched away.
Towards the old sea wall he knew she’d weave
to sit and spend the balance of the day.

He wondered at the force that fuelled her flight.
He wondered at the magic of the tide
that drew her out to brave midwinter’s bite,
as if she were the ocean’s chosen bride.

Or had she heard what he would never tell?
The sea had had another pretty wife,
who’d sought redemption in its icy swell
and let her sins be taken with her life.

Perhaps the sea had told her mother’s tale.
Perhaps the waves had whispered to the shore.
The rev’rend’s brow grew dark; his cheeks grew pale.
He turned away, resolved to paint no more.

These thoughts intruded, murdering his art
and tainting what he’d painted in his heart.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

18.

I do not speak with those I mean to kill.
My brethren did and, see, they did not last.
With words they sought to bend their victims’ will.
The time of my sweet-talking kin is past.

My master talks, for words to him are tools
with which he moulds the passions of his prey.
And they’re enough, when he’s abroad with fools,
to make them do whatever he may say.

I am no fool, and words mean naught to me.
I’ve learnt from all the errors of my kind.
I have no time for smooth-tongued vanity.
Their death, not words, is what my victims find.

There are no words to match my fury’s flames.
How many words on love have lovers spent?
A case in point! For all those lovers’ claims,
just show me those who’ve known what love has meant!

Who’ve known its truth and logic of its laws!
Known love, and not what they have wished of it!
If I but halfway opened up my jaws,
I guarantee the sum of them would fit.

So many bleeding hearts, yet none is true!
Their words, a world of wind! And to what end?
I know not, but I know what I must do.
And, verily, my purpose does not bend.

I take my only purpose where I please,
and wordlessly I smite my enemies.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

19.

A crescent moon was up and holding sway.
Against the dark her silver sickle swept.
Old Memnon’s legs at last had given way.
He’d slumped against a stump, and now he slept.

And in his dream he held his lover tight.
And he was young again and half as wise.
And circling in the sun’s bedazzling light
he saw the silhouette of love’s demise.

He lay beneath her, hands about her waist,
and now he felt her claim her passion’s throne.
And on her frenzied tongue his own could taste
the lust that lashed at her and made her moan.

A lust that so surpassed his own desire.
Her teeth were bared, her mouth was open wide.
A lust which set her very breath on fire.
With every thrust against him now she cried.

A frenzied love. Her lips were wet with blood,
her body bucking, brimming with its need.
And now she broke, and Memnon felt her flood
and scorch his tortured sex and take his seed.

She rolled from him and lay upon the ground.
Against his neck he felt her silken hair.
And now he heard a high and haunting sound –
the call of what was circling in the air.

Bewitchingly the herald hawk had cried.
He felt the urgent turning of her head
and heard how swift her sated panting died,
to leave a stricken silence in its stead.

And Memnon, dreaming, watched the theft unfold,
and felt again the ravages of grief,
his heart constricted tight, his marrow cold
with all-consuming hatred for the thief.

And in his dream he woke to find her gone.
He made to call, but dread had struck him dumb.
He hunted blind for all the full moon shone,
for Fortune had not wished for him to come.

At dawn he found her crying in her bliss,
and he beheld the one who milked her cries,
who broke away a moment from his kiss
to fix him with the emerald of his eyes.

And that was Zeraquel, who’d robbed his youth
of what had been its very greatest prize.
And jealousy had duly turned the truth
of all the many myths of him to lies.

Now Memnon woke, unrested from his night,
and youth was but a memory once more.
He squinted at the sun’s first rays of light
and grumbled, for his back was stiff and sore.

And slowly Memnon rose and set his stride
towards the east where London lay in wait.
And to his love of old now Memnon cried:
“Forgive this shadow of my former state!

It was not always so. Remember when
we were most constant lovers, you and I?
Fair Fortune, will you come to me again,
and spare the souls that otherwise will die?”

He listened, but her answer never came.
He watched for her, but she did not appear.
Yet she had heard Old Memnon call her name.
She’d heard him and had understood his fear.

Though she was fickle, she was ever fair.
She blew a kiss to douse his deep despair.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

20.

The worst of London’s woes and of its vice
were met and mingling freely in the air,
were teeming in the Fox-and-Hound as lice,
and sucking not on blood but on despair.

And swaying in those vapors and the din
of many brutal men, the Master stood.
Without a word he worked his mug of gin,
prolonging its demise as best he could.

Around him rumors rose and spread like mould.
Among the mess of gossip-smuts he swept
until he found a fragment made of gold,
a secret that demanded to be kept.

He pocketed his scrap and hurried home,
avoiding every passing stranger’s eyes.
He did not reel, nor drunkenly did roam,
lest thieves should strike and steal the evening’s prize.

Tomorrow he’d a pretty penny make.
If Fate would deal him fortune, he would take.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

21.

The forest died bequeathing him a field,
and faster Memnon pressed his questing flight.
He watched the rolling landscape slowly yield
to some great city’s many-steepled might.

And so to Memnon London was revealed,
its houses and its citizenry too.
He did his best to keep himself concealed,
as past the bundled populace he flew.

At last he reached the city’s cobbled heart
wherein he had to fight for every pace.
He ducked and wove and teased the crowds apart
and would not be deflected from his race.

He did not pause a moment while he ran
to wonder at the mob or wonder why
however hard he jostled past a man
the man would never look him in the eye.

When evening came, the natives hurried home
to thaw themselves before a fire and feed.
Then Memnon found it easier to roam;
the riddles of the cobbled streets to read.

And for a hallowed sign did Memnon search
above the arches wrought of ancient stone,
on every mansion’s gate, on every church;
the sign that bound this kingdom to his own.

He sought what Time, he knew, would never change,
whatever else its passing rendered strange.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

22.

The constellation of his change of suit,
the earlier start, the spring in his gait,
the glint in his eye, the shine of his boot
and gleam of his fresh-ploughed and polished pate

alarmed the boys who rode his lurching cart,
for that unlettered band one book could read,
indeed its every chapter knew by heart,
and to this almanac it paid close heed.

Young Jacob sat between his broom and brush.
The Great Unknown, he sensed, was drawing near.
As London at the day’s first touch did blush,
a strange excitement overcame his fear.

And all the while, the Master wondered how
when he beheld his patron he should bow.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

23.

At sunrise Memnon found the hallowed sign,
a token on a most impressive gate;
a hundred towering lances in a line,
commanding any visitor to wait.

The dawn had set the royal crest alight.
It bore the image of a unicorn.
A lion too, although a lion’s might
could hardly match the magic of that horn.

That spiral wand of gleaming pearly gray
provoked a surge of hope in Memnon now.
The palace stood but forty yards away.
He had to pass this gate, but knew not how.

As if he’d read Old Memnon’s mind just then
a guard appeared and pulled it open wide;
and beckoned not to him but to some men
that they should hurry up and come inside.

And now, behind him, Memnon heard a noise
and quickly turned around and stepped aside.
A band approached, of men and nags and boys.
An army’s charred remains, bereft of pride.

But there was one among that wretched crowd
who from the first commanded Memnon’s eye,
whose countenance though battered still was proud,
who held his bruised and weary head up high.

He gripped his broom as if it were a lance,
his splintered brush as if it were a mace.
About the boy the sunlight seemed to dance.
It cast a warrior’s glow upon his face.

And as he passed he met Old Memnon’s eyes,
and Memnon caught the glimmer of his grace,
and felt a joy that trumped his great surprise
and made him smile and made his heartbeat race.

An age had passed, it seemed, since he had smiled,
indeed since he’d known joy in any guise.
He followed, then, a captive of that child,
the broken army’s prisoner and prize.

And thus the two of them went in as one.
Their paths were joined, and Fortune’s favor done.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

24.

Old Memnon looked around and little found
but reams of satin fluff and golden braid
that strangled walls and windows tightly bound
and of each room a royal present made.

The palace guards did not obstruct his quest.
They stood about as lampposts in the day.
Their lights were down and flick’ring in their rest;
their slack swords sheathed in impotent display.

At last he caught the scent of majesty.
Two ladies in their silks went sweeping by
and left their wake upon the crimson sea.
And then he turned and in their wake did fly.

And Memnon hoped they’d lead him to his Grail,
that in his sacred quest he should not fail.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

25.

The Master’s troop was led through countless rooms
where royal linens dried, where game was hung,
where chambermaids had racked the royal brooms
and rows of bells for calling tinkling sung.

And Jacob gazed at every one in awe,
as if each room had been of silver made.
Some alchemy transformed what Jacob saw,
on everything a slip of beauty laid.

At length the maid who led the party stopped.
She pointed at a fireplace then she turned.
She never saw the Master’s bow. It flopped.
And how he scowled to have his valor spurned!

And then his vassals raced to reach the hole.
And Jacob reached it first and disappeared.
He climbed and slashed at shards of royal coal,
and every thrust a season’s crusting cleared.

And when he was delivered from that well,
He gazed at London from atop the earth.
The sight of it made Jacob’s spirits swell,
and with his kingdom now he shared his mirth.

The royal sun had won this winter’s morn,
had fought and had regained what was its right.
So Jacob and his realm were bathed in light
as all around him other sweeps were born.

And from the palace battlements that hour
there rose a cry a hundred voices deep.
Though treble in its pitch, ’twas bass in power.
It made a man of boy, and prince of sweep.

When Jacob turned and left the chimney’s rim,
he wriggled down in body, not in mind.
Although the darkness fully swallowed him,
the bulk of Jacob’s soul remained behind.

It lingered but another minute there,
the bastions and the kingdom’s breadth to haunt;
its charity and happiness to share;
its innocence and wonderment to vaunt.

And something in the kingdom seemed to thaw.
The sun the cause, perhaps; or else his awe.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

26.

The ladies stopped before the chamber’s door
to smooth their hair. And Memnon smoothed his own,
while through his heaving chest his heartbeat tore,
as if it meant to beat him to the throne.

He darted in before the door could close
and stood behind a butler, still as stone.
And Memnon saw a pink and pampered rose,
a monarch who was so unlike his own.

A medalled Prince was seated at her side.
A pride of nobles flanked the royal pair.
And at the new arrivals now they sighed,
approving of their finery and hair.

Unnoticed, Memnon stood and watched the game,
the timeless play of pettiness of court,
the curtseys, nods and blushes still the same
as when the very first had played this sport.

There were no gallant subjects standing by
with battle scars and valor, none at all.
The bravest soul to catch Old Memnon’s eye,
a faded portrait hanging on the wall.

Or else the soul of so immense a size
that lay beside the footstool of the throne.
A savage valor smoldered in its eyes,
and flickered in the fangs that gnawed its bone.

These souls, alas, were not of living men.
And Memnon felt his old despair again.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

27.

When Jacob was but part way down the hole,
his ankle scraped a dagger in the wall.
The sudden stab of pain his balance stole.
He dropped his broom and brush, but did not fall.

Now Jacob wedged his feet as best he could
and reached with one free hand to find the blade.
He found a barb, a rigid shard of wood;
a gate the chimney’s sentry must have made.

He grasped it tight and pulled. It would not yield.
He felt along its length until he found
within a hidden cove a nest concealed,
from which there came, just then, a rustling sound.

The sentry gave its warning loud and clear,
and Jacob should have understood it well;
had swept enough to know which sounds to fear
and know what liked to haunt a chimney’s hell.

But he ignored the sound, which swiftly died.
His fingers worked to free the dagger’s hilt.
They pierced the nest and burrowed deep inside
through broken twigs and tangled hair and silt.

Once more the tarry gloom was shot with sound.
Again he paid the warning little heed.
Around the hilt and hair his fingers wound
and by its very roots he pulled the weed.

And out it came. But something worse came too.
A monstrous rat now thrice provoked to kill
came scurrying and for his face it flew.
And there it let its brimming fury spill;

a royal rage that Jacob could not quell.
It rent his flesh and then it cast him down
into the pitch-black waters of the well,
And in the screeching darkness saw him drown.

A butler found him there and gave a cry.
He stood before the hearth and shook his head.
The mangled face proclaimed the reason why
the boy had tumbled down and now lay dead.

The Master picked him up and took him out,
removed him from his royal patrons’ sight.
The Master Sweep had not the slightest doubt
the boy had gone and fallen out of spite.

He found the cart and dumped him in the back.
In death he’d lie where living he had sat.
He covered up the body with a sack
then in his grief he turned away and spat.

And then he scurried back to do his work,
to mourn and most malevolently lurk.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

28.

The ladies in their drapery were done,
their curtseys spun, their exits finely played.
Her Majesty’s approval had been won.
Their stations were secure and fortunes made.

And Memnon knew the time at last had come
to carry out the purpose of his quest.
Despite the doubt that loomed to strike him dumb,
the Queen of England had to be addressed.

He showed himself and bent his greeting low.
“Your Majesty, most humbly do I bow.
I stood before your forbears long ago,
and so I stand and bow before you now.

Your Majesty, your kin and mine are twinned,
and though we live apart and seldom meet,
there’s much we share: the sun and moon, the wind,
the air we breathe and earth beneath our feet.

But there is something else, your Majesty,
which twins our kin and binds us in our fate.
For since our birth we’ve shared an enemy
who fuels our wars, our avarice and hate.

That foe is now upon us, and we need
a man of most uncommon strength possessed.
The kind, it seems, that only you can breed;
the kind, it seems, that England suckles best.”

And now from his petition Memnon rose
to find the monarch staring at the floor.
The Prince who sat beside her seemed to doze.
The flanking nobles boredom blandly bore.

Only the mastiff met Old Memnon’s eye;
forgot its bone and cocked its ears for war.
He forced himself to have another try.
He primed his voice and spoke to her once more.

“Your Majesty, most humbly I request
a favor which may never be repaid.
Pray, give me of your knights the very best
that he may dice the dragon with his blade!”

Old Memnon closely watched the English Queen
as he delivered each beseeching word,
and it was plain that he could not be seen.
He was a ghost whom no one saw or heard.

And Memnon would have stood there stupefied
and reeling from the force of Fortune’s blow,
if he had not at that same instant spied
a sign that made him quickly turn to go.

The mastiff saw old Memnon clear as day,
and at these latest words of his had frowned.
And now it growled and cast its bone away
and for Old Memnon’s bearded throat did bound.

Its prey had turned, and for his life had flown;
had bolted through the door and down the hall.
The mastiff now pursued its living bone,
its every muscle lusting for a maul.

The Prince awoke. The butlers gave pursuit.
Her Majesty’s complexion blanched with fright.
While Memnon kept his distance from the brute,
he could not break the bound’ry of its sight.

At length he tried a door and burst outside,
and through a dormant garden drove his flight.
Yet still the mastiff would not be denied
and closed upon him, aching for a bite.

A host of butlers followed in their wake
and now the Royal Guard had joined the chase.
The mastiff’s pace increased, as did its ache,
and Memnon knew he could not win this race.

He glimpsed a yard where nags and carts were parked,
and for its cover now Old Memnon dashed,
while at his back the foaming mastiff barked
and fangs in sweet anticipation gnashed.

Old Memnon nimbly wove between the wheels
and wound his trail around the horses’ hooves,
yet still the hound drew nearer to his heels,
unhindered by his complicated moves.

But now a war-horse kicked with all its might
and sent the mastiff sprawling on its back.
And Memnon chose the wagon on his right,
and jumped inside and hid beneath a sack.

The hound was up and snarling as it crept;
had found his scent and closed in for the end.
But someone caught its collar as it leapt
and from its prey its dripping jaws did bend.

Within the open cart a dead boy lay.
The butler stared, then led the hound away.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

29.

Old Memnon lay beneath the reeking sack
and drank its soot with every breath he took.
He’d not foreseen so fierce an attack.
Afresh he felt the shock of it and shook.

And Memnon felt the shock of his defeat;
of finding man so utterly deranged.
How had the human soul grown so effete?
His kin would not believe how much they’d changed.

And to the quiet of his grief there came
the rasping sound of someone else’s breath,
that seemed to Memnon as a flick’ring flame
that strove against the certainty of death.

And Memnon raised a hand towards the sound
and brushed a lock of hair, an open sore.
And then a face his gentle fingers found.
He traced the molten mask its features wore.

He understood its suff’ring in relief.
Yet more than understanding was his gain,
for at the very zenith of his grief,
this other spirit somehow stole his pain.

He closed his eyes and slept. And when he woke,
the cart was on the move and it was dark.
A man was laughing at some private joke,
and far away he heard a mastiff bark.

How merrily the Master lurched along
and did his quarter pound of pennies count,
remembering a long-forgotten song!
How pleased he was, appraised of their amount!

A contrast to the ashen ghosts behind
who had no songs to sing and sat in dread
with stinging eyes closed tight to make them blind
and keep them well averted from the dead.

They did not stop outside the brew’ry gate,
but at the house beside the River Styx.
The Master had a job that could not wait,
a certain broken boy he had to fix.

The other boys got down and ran inside.
The Master parked the cart upon the bank
then tipped it up. The river opened wide.
The waste slid in and like a stone it sank.

The moment did not tax the Master’s eye.
Upon the morn another boy he’d buy.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

30.

And how the River Thames enjoyed their taste!
For they were both imbued with spice most rare;
more flavor than the suicidal waste
and murdered waifs who were its standard fare.

It took them in its mouth and pulled them down
and then it let the morsels struggle up.
It played with them and slowly let them drown.
The river waited patiently to sup.

But on this night its palate played too long,
for as its pair of delicacies bobbed,
some silent soul by lamplight rowed along
and with a hook the river’s banquet robbed.

The dripping bundle then was brought ashore,
through empty alleyways was swiftly borne.
It passed in silence through a surgeon’s door,
a secret lest it draw the neighbors’ scorn.

The operating table had been cleared.
A row of scalpels caught the candlelight.
A purse was passed. The boatman disappeared.
The surgeon eyed the body with delight.

The night had brought this boy to test his art.
The surgeon liked dissecting children best.
He chose a blade and moved to make a start
but something did his eager hand arrest.

A twitch among the scalpels caught his eye.
He turned to see a scalpel hit the floor.
Another twitched, and then he saw it fly
just past his nose and stick within the door.

How quick the surgeon was to drop his blade!
And for his neighbors’ bosom now he flew.
A poltergeist upon his art had preyed –
a fact the surgeon’s science would eschew.

And as the surgeon ran he swore his knife
would nevermore affront the afterlife.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

31.

Of course he’d fought to keep the boy afloat.
Of course he’d followed where the boatman led,
and robbed the man who would have cut his throat
without confirming first that he was dead!

How else could he have acted, Memnon mused,
when Fate had bound the two of them as one.
At no point had he felt himself confused.
There’d been no doubt in anything he’d done.

No doubt he’d had to take the boy away,
for if he’d left him he’d have surely died.
Of all the deaths Old Memnon strove to stay
this death was one he’d known could be denied.

He’d carried him and met the Thames again,
and followed it until the docks he’d found.
And from the ravings of some drunken men
he’d gleaned where every waiting ship was bound.

And then he’d pilfered from the dizzy throng;
had pocketed the contraband supplies,
and left them to the warbling of their song,
and crept aboard before their clouded eyes.

And when he’d found his favored hiding place
and laid the boy upon the splintered board,
he’d lowered what he’d pilfered to his face
and two small drops of contraband had poured.

And what a splendid cough had been provoked!
And joy in Memnon’s all-too-heavy heart.
He’d drunk himself and though at first he’d choked,
he’d soldiered on, succumbing to its art.

And now the morn had come and they were gone,
and rolling with the river’s lazy might.
The sun was up, and on the pair it shone.
And Memnon’s eyes were closed against its light;

against the fury swallowing him whole;
against the dragon delving for his soul.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

32.

My lord has told me what he thinks of me.
I am the sword he holds in his right hand.
His favored blade! And so I ought to be,
for none can equal me in any land.

Though of his left hand’s blade he’s never told,
myself, I’ve guessed the secret of that hand.
For isn’t he a cunning one, and bold,
and doesn’t he their weakness understand?

It’s love! And oh how wise he is to use
the stuff of their poetry against them!
Because of his left hand we shall not lose,
for that one tide they’ll never think to stem.

How many more than I has that hand slain!
For out of love has he Betrayal forged;
and Jealousy; and love’s most brutal bane,
sweet Vengeance, once conceived forever gorged.

He strikes with that left hand among his foes,
and they take up his cry and give it throat.
And then he smiles and slips to the shadows
to watch the bloodbath privately, and gloat.

Oh I may be my master’s favored blade,
but I am not the worst he ever made.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

33.

’Twas Sunday and she shivered on the pew,
too cold to notice what the rev’rend said.
Her neighbor’s nose was dripping now, and blue.
She glimpsed the glass that loomed above his head.

And lo, the clouds were parted by the sun,
and through that one great window facing east
a legion of its golden rays did run,
illuminating Michael and the Beast.

And Hannah’s eyes were drawn into the light,
were drawn into the battle in the glass.
She stood within the moment shining bright
and watched what long ago had come to pass.

The dragon lay beneath the angel’s heel
and felt the righteous fury of its foe,
the angel’s rod of battle-smelted steel
thrust deep to mete his final, fatal blow.

And Hannah flinched and felt upon her cheek
the dread heat of the mighty dragon’s breath,
and heard the riven creature’s curdling shriek
defy before it dwindled down to death.

But frozen in that glass it did not die.
A flame still leapt within the dragon’s eye.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

34.

We do not fall into their trap and cry
“We’ve won the war!” But we shan’t lose, I know.
But for a few brief blinks of Time’s great eye,
my lord’s enjoyed the better of his foe.

How could we be defeated? Honestly!
Their view’s as shallow as our own is deep.
They slowly rouse to blissful charity,
ejaculate, and then go back to sleep.

How could we lose to one so loath to learn,
so prone to spurn the lessons in mistakes;
to one who can’t recall which way to turn
along the road his every struggle takes?

I’ve marked the many errors of my kin,
and thus shall never lose, if never win.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

35.

When they had reached the wide and open sea,
were far from land at last and westward-bound,
the West Wind did that trading vessel see,
and smothered it and sniffed it like a hound.

And what a shock to find Old Memnon there,
a stowaway so carelessly concealed!
And who was this who drew his doting stare,
the West Wind wondered slyly as it wheeled.

And through the gath’ring clouds the wind did rise
and for its master’s sanctu’ry did wind,
to share this secret sure to spark surprise
and more, for well it knew its master’s mind.

Besides that wind, another found him there
within the clouded crystal of a sphere.
A vision rendered bright as this was rare,
and seldom was a meaning made so clear.

It drew from the beholder such a sigh,
the softest rustling of an angel’s wing,
as forces fear to doubt itself and fly.
A sigh that did of some sweet solace sing.

But as one’s truth may be another’s lie,
what pleases one may scorch another’s eye.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

36.

The boy awoke upon the seventh day,
beheld the jewel of Memnon’s twinkling eye
and guessed that he in heaven’s bosom lay.
And God was there, and seemed about to cry.

And God was as gray as a dappled mare,
and older than the oldest man he’d met.
A tangled mess, the beard and windswept hair,
and lined the ruddy cheeks, and glist’ning wet.

He lay in heaven, rocking on a cloud.
The breeze was cool, the sun was on his face.
The Lord’s own flag was raised and flying proud
atop a mast and latticework of lace.

And God Himself had come to watch him there,
and let him sip the water He had brought.
And mercif’ly the mighty Lord did stare,
as still as stone, so very deep in thought:

In all my years I have no equal seen.
Though framed by mangled cheeks and by a brow
his bruises render yellow, brown and green,
bewitching are the eyes before me now.

Their brimming blue, a calm and crystal sea
that laps against a shadow-slip of shore,
with every thought and passion swimming free
as flecks of golden light about each core.

Indeed, it seems his very soul does shine
as if it is a sun within his eye.
It casts its light from deep within that brine
and effortlessly reaches for the sky.

And when that soul shone thus, he thought of him
and nothing else. His mind would not be drawn.
But when those eyes were closed and light grew dim,
his doom would call and hold him fast till dawn.

And then he’d wonder how he’d tell his kin
that he had stood before the English Queen
and done his best her sympathy to win
and yet had been unheard and quite unseen.

Their hope, so frail, a babe too early born,
would surely die upon his pointed breath,
and all his kin, by worry over-worn,
be left with but the certainty of death.

He knew, of course, he only had to lie,
to say the best of men was on his way,
and then some reassurance he would buy
to help them brook the infinite delay.

But Memnon knew the truth he’d have to tell.
He’d shun false paradise for honest Hell.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

37.

The West Wind had repaired to its foul bed,
a corner of the earth that light deplored,
a kingdom where no man or beast would tread
except the servants of that dark realm’s lord.

Now soft against its master’s lap it leant,
its mischief coiled and quiet, at its ease.
Its master sifted through its every scent;
from specks of dust intelligence did tease.

And chewing them, that he should taste their truth,
he choked upon a barbed and bitter grain,
which stuck in his throat like a stubborn youth,
still green yet ripe enough to cause him pain.

And now that lord, the Cunning One, did frown
as inwardly he played the future out.
He bade his spy this small surprise to drown,
and thus dismiss this whisper of a doubt.

A whisper, faint, yet heard above the noise,
above the echoed cries of other boys.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

38.

Oh never had a ship more slowly sailed!
For every breeze and current was a blight.
Against the elements Old Memnon railed,
yet nothing he could shout would set them right.

The weeks went by and still the weather played,
and Memnon might have leapt and swum for land
had not his young companion needed aid –
the kind requiring Memnon’s sleight of hand.

And in this one respect, he understood
there was a silver lining to the cloud:
The blindness of mankind was for the good
when one was forced to pilfer from a crowd.

Neglected bread and cheeses he procured,
and drink enough to slake his patient’s thirst.
The boy was healing well, though far from cured;
a brighter silver lining than the first.

So Memnon cursed and cared and vittles stole,
and inch by inch towards his home did roll.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

39.

Alone he stood, and looked upon the wood.
The Elven King allowed himself a sigh.
He had prepared his realm as best he could,
and he himself was quite prepared to die.

He’d lost his children when it last had come;
had lost his queen, his heart, the time before.
The loss of all he’d loved had left him numb,
a soul within a shell and little more.

Yet blazing was his pity for his kin,
that they should have to face what now drew nigh;
should have to fight a war they could not win;
that so much love, so many dreams, should die.

They hadn’t long, he knew. It would be soon.
Its fetor lay upon them as a pall.
They might not live to see another moon,
nor feel the kiss of Spring before their fall.

And while he thought of Spring and hope just then,
he heard the sound of footsteps drawing near,
and turned his thoughts to Memnon once again,
and wondered when his friend would reappear.

And wondered if he’d found a man of worth.
If not, it boded poorly for them all.
Not just his kin, but every soul on earth.
If there was none to fight, the lot would fall.

The breathless messenger had curtly bowed.
The King’s attention rallied to his realm.
He stood there tall, his visage stern and proud,
and took his father’s sword and shield and helm.

And grimly now the Elven King strode out,
beneath his bearing burying his doubt.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

40.

The devil’s servant skimmed the ocean’s face
and wrestled to restrain its violent breath.
Towards the trading ship it ran apace,
a messenger in flight, deliv’ring death.

It caught the waves’ attention as it went,
and slyly stoked the ocean’s latent might.
And to its purpose, thus, that force was bent
until it fully shared the West Wind’s spite.

The ship was but a day away from land
when Memnon saw the sky turn battle-gray.
The sailors saw it too, and were unmanned,
for they foresaw the horror on its way.

The morning of their journey’s final day,
as they approached their final port of call,
the West Wind found at last its floating prey
and bellowed for their blood and dove to maul.

It howled a cry of murder on the deck
and lashed the rigging’s web to make it whine.
It shook the brittle mast and broke its neck
and drew the waves to brutal mounts of brine.

The sailors’ screams were nothing to its cry.
Their terror was as nothing to its wrath;
a wrath that flew as lightning through the sky,
destroying every object in its path.

The waves were stallions, wild and white with rage.
They charged against the warped and rotten shell,
the husk that was the wailing sailors’ cage,
and swiftly they consigned the ship to Hell.

But not the lifeboat with two souls inside.
It rode the stallions’ rage and stayed afloat.
It snubbed the wind and pricked its bloated pride
and it, in turn, blew harder on that boat.

It rose and fell. From crest to crest it leapt.
It would not be distracted from its course.
And closer to the shore the lifeboat crept,
despite the West Wind’s protests, shrill and hoarse.

And with its curses ringing in his ears,
his eyes closed tight against the lashing spray,
Old Memnon plumbed the wisdom of his years,
and wondered if this was his final day.

The answer came directly, soft yet clear:
that Fate was bound to further living lend,
had long ago appointed far from here
the place where some time hence he’d meet his end.

And Jacob marked his smile and held it fast,
and held the body offered as a shield,
and knew the devil’s onslaught could not last,
for this gray god some greater power did wield.

The West Wind cursed them both, and cursed the hand
that worked to thwart its will beneath the foam;
that bore them up and on towards the land;
that guided its appointed victims home.

So now the wind changed tack and used its power
to fashion of the foam a tidal wave,
and set them teet’ring high atop a tower,
too high for any hidden hand to save.

The boat was thrust into the tempest’s eye,
its pupil black with fury, gaping wide.
And on towards the shore the boat did fly,
where rocks were set as teeth against the tide.

And through the hail and rain Old Memnon saw
the fast-approaching angle of the land,
and knew what bones were bedded in that jaw –
a berth of jagged boulders, not of sand.

And Memnon knew he’d have to seize control.
He took his patient’s arm and bade him stand.
And as the velvet crest began to roll,
as one they leapt towards the hurtling land.

The boat was tucked beneath the toppling crown
and sucked into the stomach of the sea.
And Memnon and the boy went tumbling down,
a shipwrecked pair, storm-wracked yet flying free.

And Jacob lost Old Memnon as he fell
and twisted through the tempest’s loud attack.
He thought that he was falling into Hell.
He saw a flash of white then all went black.

He did not hear the jilted ocean roar,
nor hear the gloating echoes from the shore.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

41.

They were all looking now, their lunch long cold.
The Rev’rend Wood himself had quit his chair
to stand and watch the monstrous storm unfold
beyond the veil of his reflected stare.

But only Hannah’s eyes were true enough
to see the giant wave that swept their way.
For all the tempest’s bluster and its bluff,
she read its purpose through the writhing gray.

Its malice set her tinder-soul alight.
She held her breath. She clenched her fists and fought.
She braced herself against the tempest’s might,
determined to deny it what it sought.

Beside her, Abby’s eyes were wide with awe,
the wrath of God in everything she saw.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

42.

He’d woken with his face against the ground
upon a ridge above the seething sea,
and had not ventured far before he’d found
what he was seeking cradled in a tree.

The birch stood dead and stripped of all its skin,
a bleached and branching bone above the shore.
Dead to the reaping wind and to the din,
it had not bent from bearing what it bore.

It held a body in its bony hand,
unconscious, bleeding, broken, cold and wet;
had borrowed from the ocean for the land
without a thought for who might pay the debt.

Old Memnon took him gently on his back
and with his fist he bade the storm farewell.
He made his way uphill along a track,
and as he neared the house his heart did swell.

He lowered him and laid him by the door,
and marveled at the mettle of his soul,
the like of which he’d seen but once before.
The parting took an unexpected toll.

“Perhaps we’ll share a better dream some day,”
said Memnon. Then he knocked and ran away.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

43.

Old Memnon took the shortest path he knew,
and homeward by the new moon’s light he sped.
The dragon-stench grew stronger as he flew
and fouled his hope and filled his heart with dread.

He passed through glens where widowed willows wept,
and birch enrobed in moonlight silver shone;
where needled pines the night’s black ceiling swept,
and ancient oaks and alders urged him on.

And now a different scent was in the air,
and cloying through the dragon-stench it came.
A scent that damned Old Memnon with despair:
the sweet yet bitter aftertaste of flame.

And Memnon hurried up a mapled hill,
and from its peak surveyed the lands below.
And all the wood was silent now and still.
He listened, and the silence seemed to grow.

A silence of a depth that made it loud;
a silence of a breed no sound could break;
a silence, not an absence but a shroud
hung heavily upon some murder’s wake.

And to his homeland now Old Memnon cried,
but all his words were turned and flung straight back
with vehemence and tips of flint supplied.
With Memnon’s cries the silence did attack.

And Memnon stood defenseless in their path.
Those echoes pierced the calfskin of his soul
and set his spirit bleeding by their wrath.
His final drop of hope the silence stole.

Then down into his homeland Memnon sped,
a desert now, with dunes of cinder sand
and splintered boughs and pieces of the dead;
the remnant of his brethren and his land.

In places smoke still coiled about the night,
revealing thus how freshly wrought was death.
The wafting of the new moon’s silver light,
the whisper of a nation’s final breath.

He wished himself abed beneath the dust
and dead to all the horrors spread above,
in death absolved of unrequited trust
and kin to those who’d blessed him with their love.

He cursed the doom that deemed he should survive.
He railed against the fate that left him there
to pace among the ruins so alive;
to weep his well of tears and witness bear.

For every butchered soul he staggered by,
Old Memnon wept and cursed his empty hands,
and cursed the beast that stalked the earth and sky,
eternally to plague love’s fairest lands.

When he could walk no more, Old Memnon knelt
and begged the dying fire to take him too,
that guilt should turn to dust and mourning melt,
and death upon his weary flesh should chew.

He knelt there through the waning of the night.
The flame was spent. The dragon would not bite.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



SPRING

1.

Sweet Spring was in the forest now, newborn,
her virgin green fresh-daubed upon each limb,
unfurling secret folds as yet untorn,
and singing soft her life-affirming hymn.

And Hannah heard her music on the breeze
above the noisy chatter of her thought,
and looked in wonder at the waking trees,
and woke as well and blossomed, freshly wrought;

rejoicing that her fortunes had been turned
by what that storm had cast upon her deck:
the broken gift that Hannah had not spurned
but taken up and tied around her neck.

A boy! Of all the things she could have found
upon the threshold of her sorrow’s hall!
A sodden heap of rags upon the ground;
a bleeding body, buckled by the wall.

And Hannah heard the card’nal’s courting song
and felt its trilling breast within her own,
and sang a song herself and skipped along
towards the waiting ocean and her throne.

A boy! She had not called to them at first.
Instead she’d knelt and looked, and touched his face,
and drunk the sight of him with such a thirst
that bound her tongue and made her heartbeat race.

And only when she’d quenched it had she cried;
and only when she’d sobered all her joy.
So when they’d come to look at him she’d lied,
displaying little interest in the boy.

No interest when she’d helped to hold him down
for setting bones, nor in his muffled cries;
no interest in the doctor’s guarded frown,
nor in Miss Abby’s disapproving sighs.

And steadily throughout those first few days
she’d felt the pressure of her guardian’s eyes.
But she had fooled the probing of his gaze,
for she had fed his queries only lies.

And so he had decided he could stay!
It seemed he had believed she did not care.
And then her mask had melted clean away,
and she had smiled and met the rev’rend’s stare.

The day was bright, the sea was meek and mild,
and Spring was fresh and fragrant in the air.
She sat upon the old sea wall and smiled.
A host of suns were dancing in her hair.

There was but one direction to her thought:
the boy who lay abed still fast asleep.
The ocean’s fingertips her musings caught
and drew them down to waters black and deep.

And now the ocean’s face grew iron still,
the restless motion of its mettle tamed.
And from its depths a murmuring did spill –
the voices of the spirits it had claimed.

So many voices issued out of time,
their lines entwining as they left the dead.
They formed a layered mesh of rhythmic rhyme,
which first obscured the sense of what was said.

The more she listened, though, the more she heard,
for repetition drove the meaning through.
Her soul received the message and it stirred,
and higher then her soaring feelings flew.

“And we have held a hero in our hand,
have cupped his naked soul and weighed its worth,
and we shall sing his praise unto the land,
and news of him shall spread throughout the earth.

The drums of war shall beat, its trumpets blast,
and he shall fight and be the darkling’s bane.
A Son of Light is come again at last,
and by his might we deem the night shall wane.”

And while the whisp’ring rose, the clouds rolled in.
The sky, which had been clear, grew dark as doom.
Then lightning struck the ocean, sharp as sin,
and stung the spirits calling from their tomb.

As Hannah turned away and ran for home,
the ocean woke and broke its brittle calm,
and with a fury ground itself to foam
and crushed its captives, silencing their psalm.

A deluge overtook her as she fled,
and Hannah slipped upon the muddy track.
And soon her hair was plastered to her head,
and dress was drenched and clinging to her back.

Yet on her face still Hannah wore a smile;
one wrought by thoughts no devil’s wrath could rile.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2.

When Memnon would not die that cursed night
among the smold’ring ashes of his kin,
with eyes ablaze he rose and took to flight,
and through the forest did his mourning spin.

He neither drank nor ate, nor could he sleep;
his thoughts unwound; his feelings came undone.
He wandered taut with tears yet would not weep,
too raw to rest, too weary now to run.

The days and nights became as one to him,
a seamless twilight for his dying’s quest:
the sun forever overhead and dim,
its passion spent yet shying from the west,

and moon bedecked in robes of mourning gray,
a widow watching, waiting for the morn.
Perverted were the rules of night and day.
The earth had ceased its turning. Time had torn.

And the West Wind galloped through that twilight
to find him out, his purpose to corrupt.
But reaching him, that denizen of spite
had not the heart his death-march to disrupt.

Oh what a web was wrought of Memnon’s pain!
The more he spun, the thicker grew its thread.
It bound him up and all his strength did drain
till from his grief he hung, as good as dead.

Such strength may grief possess, all mourners know,
as might a dragon slay with but one blow.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

3.

The rev’rend sat at work, his sermon wrote,
and through his hand his newfound fervor tore.
He rolled the words around his tongue and throat
and tapped their meter out upon the floor.

The paper gasped beneath his biting quill,
and maple moaned beneath his beating sole.
And thus the rev’rend’s sermoning did spill
and stain the snow-white pages black as coal.

His style of sermoning had lately turned.
Now lambs in need of shelter did abound.
Fresh parables of charity were churned,
and tales of shameless sinners lost and found.

And though the boy had prompted such a change,
he’d barely cast a thought the urchin’s way,
except at times to recognize how strange,
how very strange it was he’d let him stay.

Another mouth to feed and child to rear,
if he should live and prove the doctor’s lie.
His liniments and doctor’s fees were dear,
and if he mended there’d be more to buy.

But it had all been worth it for that gaze,
the gratitude in Hannah’s hazel eyes;
her love for him laid bare, and what a blaze!
How often had he wished for such a prize!

Since then he’d hardly looked upon the boy,
but he had watched and noticed more and more
how radiant she was; how flushed with joy;
how many marks of womanhood she bore.

An angel she appears before me now.
To look upon her beauty is to feed.
I cannot turn away; she won’t allow.
She forces me to look and fuels my greed.

And he wrote of the leper lying lame,
and of the many men who passed him by,
and urged his flock to heap a righteous blame
on those who would have left him there to die.

My tongue could tell how sweet the taste would be.
Oh Lord, avert my eyes and pity me!

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

4.

For days he lay entrapped within a swoon,
and grinding pain and fever held him tight.
He slumbered through a cycle of the moon
with death beside him, readying to bite.

He dreamt that he was tumbling from a height.
Headfirst he fell through clouds of sulfur smoke
that burnt his nose and sabotaged his sight,
and snagged within his throat to make him choke.

He had to fight for every breath he won.
He fell towards a light that brightly shone.
It seemed as if he fell towards the sun,
but long before he landed it was gone.

And now he dreamt that he was borne along
a woodland path with secrets overgrown,
and he could hear the echoes of a song
lamenting someone’s death; perhaps his own.

And there he dreamt a dream within a dream.
He floated with an angel at his side.
They flew above a silver-speckled stream
and let its merry music be their guide.

Though still he lay, his soul ran wild and free
and glimpsed refracted rays of destiny.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

5.

In caring for him, Abby shook her head.
From dawn to dusk she did the beggar tend.
At times, she jerked his bones about the bed
as if she meant to murder more than mend.

And Hannah only made her temper worse.
It seemed the girl was always in the way,
Except when she was not, and then she’d curse
and call her back and order her to stay.

The girl must pull her weight. So Abby thought.
She must not turn away from those in need.
And so the art of tending Abby taught,
and Hannah gladly followed Abby’s lead.

Too gladly, Abby couldn’t help but see.
And when she seemed too happy with her work,
she’d send her off to fetch a tray of tea,
but quickly, mind. She would not let her shirk.

The rev’rend sometimes called the girl away,
and Abby would be left to tend alone
and sink beneath a burgeoning dismay
that turned her token sympathy to stone.

And then if he should cry or writhe about,
she’d shriek at him and cruelly pin him down,
until he’d lie so still his life she’d doubt.
But then he’d take a breath and make her frown.

’Twas not from spite Miss Abby acted so,
nor from a wish to see his suff’ring end.
’Twas born instead from rumors whispered low.
A murmuring did Abby’s conscience bend.

A scorpion thought had crept into her mind
to whisper with some certainty of doom.
And round her greatest fear its tail did wind
and make it bloat within her feelings’ womb.

The boy was a distraction, Abby knew;
and his arrival she would ever rue.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

6.

She left her room, her footsteps feather-light,
and through the cloister corridors did creep.
And certain floorboards creaked with all their might
and tried to wrest the rev’rend from his sleep.

At length the midnight walker reached her prize.
She sat upon the stool beside his bed.
She sat and savored him: his moon-brushed eyes,
the wreath of moon-swept curls about his head.

His breathing came as waves upon a beach,
and washed upon a fair and foreign land.
With every breath his shipwrecked soul did reach
and try to gain some purchase in the sand.

She closed her eyes. Their breath became as one.
Enraptured Time its mortal pace did slow.
They bathed in moonlight warmer than the sun,
and in that warmth did Hannah’s yearning grow.

And what a garden then was Hannah’s heart!
Her happiness in every hue did bloom,
reflecting all the best of loving’s art,
but not its pain, and nothing of its doom.

And Jacob neared his long confinement’s close,
awaking to a fragrance lush and new.
His fresh-appointed soul bestirred and rose
that it might find where that fair blossom grew.

Now Hannah heard the groaning of a board,
and Time was sent careening at the sound.
The rev’rend slept, but Abby was abroad,
and for the moonlit chamber she was bound.

Cat-like she crept towards the bedroom door
with claws outstretched to catch the midnight mice.
And with another fanfare from the floor,
she raised the latch and entered in a trice.

Beholding then the moon-bathed boy abed
beneath a rugged mountain range of quilt,
Miss Abby was bewitched. Her bluster bled.
Her claws and all her sparring wits did wilt.

A girl again. A sparrow slight and shy.
Rapt. Caught in a dream by the bedroom’s spell.
Naked dancing love in a bold boy’s eye.
So sweet. She swayed upon the brink of Hell.

And then upon her stocking’d heels she turned
and parted from the room as one possessed.
Her ghost with long-imagined passion burned,
and sparrow’s wings were beating in her breast.

The quilted mountains crumbled in her wake
and fell into the ocean’s deep embrace.
When Hannah rose she found the boy awake
and looking up in wonder at her face.

And Jacob raised a hand towards her cheek.
Could she be real, or was she of his dreams?
Alas, too far away for one so weak.
She melted in the moon’s reflected beams.

And then he closed his eyes, his gaze outworn,
and left her to the silence all too soon,
to drift alone towards the distant morn
and feel the desolation of the moon.

Before she left, a kiss she did bestow.
She lingered on his lips and in his tide,
and bared herself beneath its ebb and flow
and let her breath be taken as its bride.

By this enchantment he was born again,
to soar above the ranks of mortal men.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

7.

Among the hemlock, fir, black spruce and pine,
the large-toothed aspen, elm and yellow birch,
the moss and lichen, looking for a sign,
Fair Fortune ran and desperately did search.

She’d walked this wood of old and knew it well,
and knew which of its many paths to take.
And as her footsteps fell they wove a spell,
and bluebells woke and opened in her wake.

For all the radiance of the greenwood then,
it dimmed before the beauty of her face,
a beauty coveted by elves and men
yet not attained for long by either race.

A beauty that was softened by her fear
for one among the many souls she swayed.
She’d loved this one of old and held him dear.
Too late, she feared, she hurried through the glade.

By chance or else contrivance mystic-wrought
at last she gained the knoll that harbored him,
and found a fish the forest’s net had caught,
whose clouded eyes were dull and deathly dim.

Unblinking Memnon sat as still as stone,
his cloak moss-flecked and fully drenched with rain,
his body bent, with ivy overgrown.
She found him as his lifeblood’s last did drain.

Upon his waning soul she cast her light,
and called him to the glowing of her grace.
She knelt and wrapped her arms about him tight,
and wrenched his withered frame from death’s embrace;

then laid him down and made her song his name,
and bathed his ashen features in her grief.
And with her love she kindled Memnon’s flame
and doubly, thus, to death she played the thief.

When Memnon woke and once again could see,
he wept so much he made himself quite blind.
He sank beneath a wave of memory
and tragedy afresh did flood his mind.

For days awash in sorrow Memnon wept.
With every tear he shed he lighter grew.
And Fortune stayed with him, her vigil kept,
until the worst of Memnon’s grief was through.

And then he found he was aware of her:
the contrast with his own decrepit state!
And Memnon felt forgotten feelings stir
and answered them with self-directed hate.

And when it had become too much to bear,
Old Memnon rose one morning with the sun
and curtly thanked Fair Fortune for her care,
and turned away and from her sight did run.

But Fortune would not let him take his leave,
and when he sped away she sped as well.
Among the maze of boughs the two did weave
till Memnon tripped upon a root and fell.

And Fortune came and offered him her hand,
but stubbornly he tarried by her feet.
The gesture stood, but Memnon would not stand,
nor would he turn his head her gaze to meet.

“Although I’ve left love’s season far behind,
the sight of you such giddy passion stirs
as turns to mush the mettle of my mind;
the focus of my mourning’s fury blurs.

I’ve held that hand before, immortal one.
It led me into paradise to play.
But when our time of ecstasy was done,
the pain I knew my very soul did flay.

There is no place for me in paradise.
I cannot bask within your beauty’s light.
The devil has me clamped within his vice
and there I’ll die, but not without a fight.”

Then Memnon turned and fixed her with his gaze,
a single purpose burning in his eye.
And Memnon’s battered soul again did blaze
as when in youth he’d let his passions fly.

“There stands a beast between my grave and me,
who rests and rises with the devil’s tides.
If you have ever loved me, hear my plea,
and show me where the devil’s servant hides!”

“I shall,” she said. And gratefully he sighed,
and took her hand, and flew at Fortune’s side.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

8.

One day the rev’rend preached of something new:
a boy the sea had set before his door;
of how his faith had told him what to do;
of how he’d set to mending him and more.

He told his congregation he had healed.
A miracle perhaps, but it was true.
And then unto the flock he was revealed.
Miss Abby held the door and helped him through.

And then the pews let forth like creaking decks,
with sailors shifting weight so they could see.
The flock became a fleet of craning necks;
and Jacob swayed as if he were at sea.

“Behold the waif who stands in front of you,
a boy who once was broken, rendered whole.
But were he a Mohammedan or Jew,
it were the same sad slate of human soul.

No Christian parent ever showed the way.
No Christian prayer has ever eased his heart.
But all his past is set aside this day,
for here and now his life afresh shall start.”

And he spoke to them of his master plan,
and of the obstacles they’d surely face
in molding him into a Christian man,
possessing but a glint of Christian grace.

At length he turned to Hannah while he spoke.
And deep into her eyes his vision bored.
He let its smarting focus slowly stroke.
And softly now, the Rev’rend Wood implored:

“Our Lord has challenged all of us to love
those wretches whom the devil may have bought.
Therefore must we their failings rise above,
and learn to love them as Our Savior taught.”

And some who at the devil’s boy did stare
now marveled at the cunning of the beast,
who’d fashioned for the boy a face so fair,
with eyes that seemed not wicked in the least.

“And surely with the summer drawing nigh,
you’ll have some chores with which his sloth to break.
Through honest work his wretched soul we’ll buy,
and of his clay a Christian King we’ll make!”

Then all the congregation, barring one,
recalled the many labors that were due,
the tasks that marked the season of the sun;
the jobs an orphaned Hercules could do.

And Jacob slipped beneath the waves and sank.
The weight of all those labors held him down.
Awash with hemlock’d pity, Jacob drank,
and there before the altar he did drown.

But then he caught a glance that pulled him free,
that drew him from the waves and let him dry.
And Jacob stood as Christ upon the sea,
and gladly sipped the nectar of her eye.

A nectar that the rev’rend could but note.
It made his sermon stick within his throat.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

9.

And so the rev’rend sent him out to learn,
quite unencumbered by a book or pen.
He’d asked each childless home to take its turn
to school him in the ways of working men.

From those with children he was kept apart
lest some suspected fault should slither out
and so infect the brood and taint its heart –
an edict to assuage a nagging doubt.

So Jacob ably set to washing down
and carting as desired from day to day.
And soon it was the verdict of the town
that over him the devil held no sway.

A skinny lad, yet tougher than the tide,
they never saw him once admit defeat.
In Jacob they began to take some pride,
and all his tutors started to compete.

The menfolk taught the skills of village life,
and readily he took to one and all.
He learnt to ride, and how to use a knife,
and learnt to hold a high-sea helm and haul.

And Jacob in return gave something more
than each new task attempted neatly done:
a ray of light that made each mundane chore
a rainy day anointed by the sun.

The womenfolk dealt fish and greens to him,
the currency of any mother’s care.
And all the food and labor stoked his vim,
and he was hardened in the salty air.

And gone now were the stains of his old trade;
his scars of battle faded, save a few.
In this new land was Jacob freshly made.
With years of compound interest now he grew.

Of all the villagers, he liked the best
the lighthouse-keeper living all alone
within his tower beset from east and west
by waves that sought to smash his spit of stone.

He liked to sit upon that granite crest
and listen to the battle roar and whine.
And sitting thus, his greatness once was guessed.
The keeper chanced to see its herald sign:

he saw a pair of osprey nesting near
desert their young to hunt and bring him food.
That nature’s lords should hold this child more dear
than any of their own voracious brood!

Of this the keeper told no living soul,
for well he knew what miracles could do.
Dark tongues could paint their telling black as coal,
or virgin white for jealousy to woo.

That lined and leathered watcher of the sea
would let him do whatever brought him joy.
He shared with him his laughter, tales and tea,
and could not help but grow to love the boy.

And of his tales, young Jacob loved the best
the ones of wars he’d fought in days long gone.
And from those days a relic he possessed:
a bayonet, now caked with rust and wan.

And he would have him hold that rusty blade,
and show him how to lunge with it and sweep.
And many shadow thrusts the two would trade
before they’d laugh and crumple to a heap.

The keeper laughed, but taught him how to kill,
for one day hence, he sensed, he’d need this skill.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

10.

By timeless tracks she hurried to the west
with Memnon at her heels, and in his eye,
revenge! They neither spoke nor paused to rest
while swiftly through the forest they did fly.

At length they reached a valley sloped with fir,
where shadows draped a crescent lake in doom.
No creature called, nor any life did stir,
and little of the daylight pierced the gloom.

They stood awhile upon the valley’s lip,
arrested by the grimace of the lake.
And then from Fortune’s side did Memnon slip,
and down he went, his sweet revenge to take.

Fair Fortune blew a final kiss to him
and watched the valley swallow Memnon whole.
And when he’d gone she quit the valley’s rim
and back towards the east again she stole.

He started his descent as one possessed
of strength unparalleled and iron will.
And through the ranks of shadow wraiths he pressed
to find his kinsmen’s butcher and to kill.

But Memnon’s confidence was soon dispelled.
The valley’s hidden demon doused his ire.
His hunger for the kill was swiftly quelled.
His courage waned, and doubt displaced desire.

Around his soul the shadows wove a wreath,
and he became a creature of the shade.
He thrust his dagger back into its sheath,
and wondered why he’d ever drawn his blade.

The day wore on and would not show the beast,
the dragon hiding somewhere in a hole.
And flocking to him now came fears to feast,
and terror slipped its cord around his soul.

And just as it was tightening its noose
he chanced to spy a hillock by the lake.
And then his dagger rose and cut him loose,
remembering the thirst it longed to slake.

And quickly Memnon gained the hillock’s brow,
and on its crown he found a gaping crack.
He caught his breath and braced for battle now.
And with a cry he launched his dread attack.

He landed hard and stumbling swung his blade,
and screamed into the belly of the cave.
And though he slashed, no coup de grace was made.
The more he missed, the more it made him rave.

Alas, Old Memnon battled quite alone.
His dagger only smote the musty air.
His war-cry only broke upon the stone
to dampen to the silence of despair.

And when at last he’d swallowed his defeat,
a bitter pill of shame and raw reproof,
he gave a sigh to sound his slow retreat,
and sat upon the cavern’s mossy roof.

The night was come. The moon was up and bright
and through the valley’s gloom her silver speared.
And Memnon felt the favor of her light,
which reached his soul and all its shadows cleared.

And now upon the lake he cast his gaze,
and knew at once that something was amiss:
no twinkling play of silver-sequined rays.
The moon would not reflect in that abyss.

And thus the moonlight gave the night away,
and showed Old Memnon where the dragon lay.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

11.

When Jacob’s days of laboring were done,
no fresh-baked treats could ever make him stay.
The women guessed he was compelled to run
by some Church law he’d sworn he would obey.

And Hannah rushed the duties of her day
to purchase from the evening one light hour
when some pretence might let her slip away
and foil the dread-reach of the rev’rend’s power.

And then within the forest’s fringe they’d meet,
and talk until their secret thoughts were told,
and let their longing guide their timid feet
till love bewitched their lips and made them bold.

Of stolen hours a paradise was made,
where love ran wild and naked through the trees.
Its giddy fragrance overwhelmed the glade.
Its laughter lingered long upon the breeze.

Of windfalls, thus, of slender twigs of time
they made among the forest boughs a bed.
And there they learnt love’s rhythm and its rhyme,
and passion burned until in bliss it bled.

And they were young and old, carefree and wise.
What love alone may grant, life’s sweetest prize.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

12.

The rev’rend and Miss Abby wielded rules
and leaden silences and much chiding.
In love’s great play they took the part of fools,
hunting happiness forever hiding.

But those two clowns wore very different stripes.
They shared in naught, it seemed, but name of fool.
Their different motives made for different gripes;
but griping they were similarly cruel.

The rev’rend worked to keep the two apart.
Too late, he feared, he’d woken to his foe.
He strove to build a wall round Hannah’s heart,
whose secret windows only he would know.

Miss Abby, for her part, disliked the pair
excessively as one. No appled eye
for Abby. In her loathing always fair.
A quality perhaps, however sly.

Of course they never saw themselves as fools.
Indeed, they saw the picture in reverse.
If they should have to use unpleasant tools,
the wrongs they worked so hard to mend were worse.

But each could see the fool the other played.
The rev’rend was appalled by her decline,
and he resolved to find another maid
to better fit the shape of his design.

The rev’rend’s jester’s bell to Abby’s ear
played not of pettiness nor bottled ire,
but tolled for the unfolding of her fear,
for she had weighed and measured his desire:

at lunch, a glance above a glass of wine
that lingered far too long; his tightened jaw,
the hunger in his howling eye. She’s mine!
A sip as if of blood. This Abby saw.

He’d looked away when she had raised her eyes,
had coughed and then assumed his former guise.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

13.

Old Memnon stood beside the mound and stared
at the canopy of the darkling’s tent.
Beneath its veil the dragon lay abed.
Towards the water now Old Memnon went.

And as he waded in he drew his blade.
He breasted the abyss and swam away.
And thus he launched his living’s last crusade:
to kill the devil’s servant where it lay.

The water’s touch was cruel and cold as ice.
It stole his breath, but could not turn him back.
Across the lake Old Memnon’s blade did slice,
yet left no lasting trace of its attack.

And when he dove, the water made him blind.
Great tendrils hooked his limbs and held him fast,
and some colossal presence gripped his mind,
bombarding it with echoes of the past.

And Memnon heard the voices of that night
when all his kin had fled before the beast;
their piercing cries, as talons checked their flight;
the sounding of the fury of its feast.

Through fathoms loud with murder Memnon fell.
The sleeping dragon’s summons drew him down.
He sank into the slaughterhouse of Hell,
and slowly in the dragon’s dream did drown.

He smelled their burning flesh and tasted blood
upon the fangs that tore his kin apart.
And over him their agonies did flood,
and took complete possession of his heart.

Forgotten was the purpose of his quest.
His dagger now could have but one last use:
to plunge without delay into his chest
and from these terrors cut his spirit loose.

But then he heard a voice that called his name;
above the wailing chorus, Caleb’s cry:
“Oh Uncle Memnon, save us from its flame!”
And at the sound he woke and would not die.

And Memnon turned and kicked against his weight,
and fought to reach the air with all his strength.
The tendrils slipped away, released the bait,
and Memnon, gasping, gained the shore at length.

And lying with the earth against his breast,
Old Memnon swore he’d never quit his quest.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

14.

Towards the curtain’s fall Time drove them on,
towards the resolution of their play.
And then one morning one of them was gone,
had risen in the dark and slipped away.

Not one of them had heard him in the night.
Not one among the three had seen him fly.
But he had woken up and taken flight
and hadn’t left a note explaining why.

Miss Abby spoke as if she did not care.
She told them both that just the night before
he’d said he had to tend to some affair –
an urgent matter he could not ignore.

But they could plainly see that Abby lied.
Her over-even voice betrayed surprise.
The shock she felt was far too great to hide.
The children read its tremors in her eyes.

With Abby now the ruler in his stead,
a kind of peace descended on the home.
As ruler, Abby spent more time in bed
and gave the children ample time to roam.

And all alone she’d sit and wonder why
he’d left like that, with all of them abed.
And then her fear would thunder its reply,
and she would have to credit what it said.

She wondered if and when he would return,
and whether still with that desire he’d burn.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

15.

He did not launch another rash attack.
The second time he took the utmost care.
He conjured patience, set his temper slack,
and gravely for his vengeance did prepare.

He’d felled some trees and built a sturdy raft
he kept beyond the tainted waters’ reach.
He’d picked the stones he’d carry on his craft.
And now he sat and whittled on the beach.

Of silver birch a giant spear he’d made.
He’d filed its head of flint for many hours.
And now against its shaft he worked his blade,
and chiseled runes to multiply its powers.

He worked until he’d whittled through the day,
and then he scaled the mound and climbed within.
And down upon his bed of moss he lay,
to sleep, to dream, but never save his kin.

And every night his torture was the same:
the terror in the voice that called his name.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

16.

When the world was young and the forest new
a savage wind went wrecking through that glade.
Against a stand of oaks its fury blew,
and they were torn asunder by its blade.

And when that wind beset the broken heap
and lashed it till its last dry leaf was torn,
no witness in the wilderness did weep,
so fresh the fear of it and of its scorn.

It came to pass that one who was in need
found shelter in that decimation’s shade,
a haven from the devil and his breed
and from the ruthless wind that ruled the glade.

He was the remnant of a noble line,
diminished in nobility and might.
His face betrayed the pain of the divine
through eyes some god had wrought of emerald light.

He waited there and watched the world grow old.
He’d venture forth, but always he returned.
In times of greatest danger he was bold.
In times of peace, adventuring he spurned.

And now he stirred and opened up his eyes.
And there was light. And then he gave a sigh,
and at the sound the sun began to rise,
and birds began to sing, and dew to dry.

Within his den of fallen trees he woke.
The time was come again to leave that place.
He chose a willow staff and donned his cloak,
and let the hood droop down to hide his face.

And Zeraquel went out to greet the earth.
He sympathized with every step he took,
for he had known her almost since her birth,
and long had shared the pain she’d had to brook.

Majestically he moved among the trees,
perceiving change and pain with every pace.
At length he felt a bully of a breeze
assault his hood and try to free his face.

And when it failed, the West Wind dropped behind
and followed him to find out where he went.
And hard upon his heels the wind did wind,
suspicious of a long-forgotten scent.

And something else provoked the wind’s alarm:
a red-tailed hawk, which had the stranger spied,
swooped down and landed soft upon his arm
and turning to his hood a greeting cried.

The stranger whispered in an ancient tongue,
and now the wind swung round to seize its chance.
The hawk took flight, and back the hood was flung,
and on the naked face the wind did dance.

The stranger stood and met the West Wind’s eye.
And now the wind remembered what it smelled.
And for its master then that wind did fly.
And tight to its intelligence it held:

that Zeraquel was come, was come again
to walk the earth, a friend of elves and men.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

17.

He’d walked the wilderness and thrice had spurned
the very devil when he’d heard him call.
And afterwards the rev’rend had returned
and prodig’ly had crept into the hall.

And wordlessly he’d claimed his former place.
Miss Abby hadn’t asked him to explain.
But she had scrutinized the rev’rend’s face,
and she had found his features etched with pain.

And then one morning while she made the bread
and sweated with the kneading of her dough,
she thought she heard the rev’rend’s heavy tread,
but never thought to ready for a blow.

The scorpion in the shadows of her mind,
whose subtle noise had plagued each restless night,
at last its lethal weapon did unwind.
And cocked for killing now it sought the light.

He came into the kitchen on a smile.
His bearing gave no hint of what he’d say.
He made no sound but sat there for a while
and licked his lips, examining his prey.

And soon it was his silence more than bread
that made her sweat; the glist’ning of his teeth
that drove her heart to drumming out her dread.
A silence tense with screaming underneath.

And when he spoke, his words lashed out at her,
and Abby saw the scorpion in the light,
the dagger of its lunging tail a blur.
It struck, and there was murder in its bite.

It held her fast where it had pierced her breast
and pumped her full of venom as of seed.
The weapon twitched with pleasure where it pressed,
and when it finished slowly did recede.

It left its poison dripping pink with blood,
its prey benumbed, beholden to its art,
which checked her fear and stemmed her anger’s flood
and fixed a frigid clamp around her heart.

He’d said that she could have a day or two,
but Abby left the kitchen there and then.
She packed her bag and left to live anew.
And from that day Miss Abby shunned all men.

And Abby’s dough? Miss Abby’s dough grew old.
It drooped, and in the end succumbed to mould.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

18.

Though Abby and her worldly goods had flown,
about the rev’rend still that lady fussed.
Her seeds of disapproval had been sown
and now they bloomed and damned him for his lust.

Their petals shrieked at him from every room,
they lined his path and fell beneath his feet,
and every one of them bespoke his doom,
rejoicing in the end that he would meet.

And in his lust he drowned. He drank it deep.
He’d surface in the midnight retching fire.
Self-pity’s balm would soothe him back to sleep,
to wake again to wrestle with desire.

Now village women came to cook and clean,
but none of them were ever asked to stay.
He did not wish his secret to be seen.
’Twas better that at night they stayed away.

And Hannah was her master’s servant now.
The rev’rend had her tend to all his needs,
but still an hour of leisure would allow –
an act of mercy wrought by Abby’s seeds.

And he allowed himself to touch the girl.
He’d press her hand, or brush a naked arm,
or let his finger tame an errant curl
so gently as to give no hint of harm.

But Hannah did not buy these gestures’ lies.
She read them well. And when she turned her back
she felt the coarse caressing of his eyes
and feared that some day soon he would attack.

She did not speak to Jacob of her fears,
but Jacob shared them all, for he was wise
to men’s most wicked ways and through the years
had learnt to read the menace in their eyes.

The rev’rend’s eyes were brimming full of death.
And Jacob smelled the sulfur on his breath.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

19.

Beyond the reach of light the West Wind flew
and found at last the smold’ring lap of Hell,
and whispered to its lord of what it knew;
informed him of the march of Zeraquel.

The devil darkened as his anger rose.
He called his first battalion to his sight,
and ordered it to strike against his foes,
to crush the remnant of the Sons of Light.

And then the gates of Hell were opened wide.
And through them first in fury went that force.
The West Wind flew before it as its guide,
and for the distant greenwood set its course.

And second, when that howling pack had swept
beyond the borders of eternal night,
between the gates a shadow scuttling crept
and followed with its hunger to the fight.

The devil’s realm fell silent now and still,
as if the very air did brace for war.
And one last shadow sallied forth to kill,
one mightier than all who’d gone before.

And to his coming all the earth was blind,
so tightly was he swathed in night’s black gauze.
He followed all the others, far behind,
as guarantor and champion of their cause.

The Cunning One sat quiet as his land,
his scheming simm’ring over countless fires
whose everlasting flames his hatred fanned
with breath bespeaking death and black desires.

Of those desires, the blackest of them all,
that his most favored servant should not fall.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

20.

The rev’rend prowled the dark of midnight’s womb.
Towards its sweet forbidden fruit he crept,
and came at last to stand outside the room
wherein his unsuspecting quarry slept.

He paused and an eternity he took
to raise the rusty latch and hold its tongue.
And when he’d teased its muzzle off its hook,
he brought it slowly back, and out it swung.

And at that very instant Hannah woke,
with every instinct primed and on its guard.
And terrified, she neither moved nor spoke,
but lay there with her senses straining hard.

He stood upon the threshold of his kill.
’Twas not his first and would not be his last.
He drew a breath to fortify his will,
and soft across the threshold then he passed.

Her body now was rigid and benumbed.
Beneath her quilt she lay and held her breath,
and listened to the night, its fathoms plumbed
to find its hidden messenger of death.

And Hannah heard his breath and that first pace
above the echoed pounding of her fear.
She did not move, but how her heart did race!
She heard his footsteps falling, drawing near.

And slowly through the fathoms now he went
until he reached the corner of her bed
and drew another breath and caught her scent,
which turned the black of midnight’s gloom to red.

And Hannah felt the looming of his weight,
was smothered though he stood there shadow-light.
And now she felt a sudden rush of hate
and braced her slender body for a fight;

resolved that when he struck she’d rake his face
and vent a furied hatred in her cries,
that she’d deny the hunter his embrace,
would tear his flesh and gouge his glinting eyes.

He did not strike. He turned and left the room.
He closed the door and left his quarry there,
a maiden lying marbled in her tomb,
yet still alive and hungering for air.

And Hannah did not sleep again that night,
but shook with every aftershock of fright.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



SUMMER

1.

Spring’s maids had completed her wedding gown.
The season of creation’s work was done.
The bridegroom glowed beneath his golden crown,
his majesty encompassed by the sun.

She moved towards him. Shadow-fast she went.
The few who saw could not suppress a sigh.
She reached the groom and by his kiss was spent.
Thus Summer came and Spring, fresh wed, did die.

Yet no one wept who saw her slowly fade.
Instead at Summer now they stared in awe:
the Lord of Storms, with lightning for his blade,
was come again, upholding Nature’s law.

And they held a feast to mark his coming,
a festival of music, mirth and light.
And his passion echoed in their drumming.
They danced as if possessed of his great might.

A ballroom was made of the village square
and all came out to revel there as one.
And in their midst, there shone a whirling pair
whose joy surpassed the radiance of the sun.

But one man reveled not. He stood apart,
those whirling lovers torturing his gaze.
A poison long in brewing burned his heart.
His drunken passion’s panting fanned the blaze.

Beyond the throng, the lighthouse-keeper stood
and smoked his pipe and gladly shared his joy
with two who had been tempted from the wood
by many dreams and visions of a boy.

The first of these, who wore a patchwork cloak,
enjoyed his mirth as she had always done,
but closely watched another while he spoke,
while Fortune’s wheel of fire so quickly spun.

She watched the rev’rend standing by the crowd
and read the fret and focus of his eye,
and heard his tortured spirit howling loud,
and felt the piercing anguish of its cry.

And now she whispered in the keeper’s ear.
She told him of the danger to the pair.
And off he strode to act upon her fear,
to break and redirect the rev’rend’s stare.

Her daughter stood in silence at her side,
a wreath of wild white roses in her hair.
The fawn-girl watched the reveling, wide-eyed.
And Jacob was the object of her stare.

She was bewitched, suspended in a trance.
Beneath her doeskin dress her goose-bumps rose.
And how she wished to share so sweet a dance,
whose passion made her quake and curl her toes!

Whose passion to the rev’rend was a pin
that pricked his soul and made its juices bleed
till naught remained but jealousy within
to whisper the instructions he would heed.

The rev’rend neither blinked nor turned his head,
and heeded not a word the keeper said.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2.

The sun was blazing with a passion now,
yet still that valley bathed in winter’s light.
And black the clouds that loomed above its brow –
an army poised for some colossal fight.

Old Memnon heaved his vessel to the brink
and leapt aboard and struck out from the shore.
And to his great relief it did not sink
beneath the weight of all the stones it bore.

And when he neared the center of the lake
the clouds attacked. The trap they’d set was sprung.
And they became a many-headed snake
with lightning in the fork of every tongue.

And then the West Wind stoked that serpent’s gall
and set it spinning, whipping up a gale.
And heavily the rain began to fall
and drench the vessel Memnon fought to sail.

And where the squall was worst, his paddling ceased.
And from the raft he pushed his heavy stones
to plummet straight to Hell and to the beast
to wake it up, if not to crush its bones.

And now he gripped his spear and held it high
and strove to see between the sheets of rain.
And through the tempest’s wrath cut Memnon’s cry:
“Come out, you coward worm, and meet your bane!”

His stones went drifting through the darkling’s hall,
deaf to its dreams and to its horrors blind.
Through many layers of darkness they did fall
until the sleeping demon they did find.

Upon its bed of ash the dragon lay.
It slept the gloating slumber of its kind.
And each sweet memory of blood did play,
did echo through the ages of its mind.

The stones rained down upon its hide of scale
and innocently tumbled to its bed;
enough to make the dragon flick its tail,
but not enough to break its slumber’s thread.

That one unconscious flexing of its spite
did so disrupt the depths, a great wave rose
and swept across the lake with brutal might
and brought Old Memnon’s hunting to a close.

It struck the raft and wrenched the spear away.
The whittled birch was lost to Memnon’s reach.
And lightning spurred the rout and lit the way,
and Memnon rode the wave towards the beach.

Unnoticed, Memnon’s weapon pricked the deep,
accelerating, twisting as it fell
towards the furrow where it lay asleep;
towards the dragon’s heart and heart of Hell.

The wave dashed Memnon hard against the shore.
And now the tempest’s consternation grew.
The West Wind howled and drowned him in its roar
and bolts of lightning strove to run him through.

Yet Memnon rose, though still too stunned to rise,
for someone wrenched his body from its swoon.
He turned and met a pair of emerald eyes
within a face familiar as the moon.

“You’re come!” he cried without a trace of joy.
“But come too late as usual, I fear.”
The other, smiling, countered: “Where’s the boy?”
And then, just then, the dragon did appear.

For Memnon's delving spear had reached its mark,
had struck a scale and torn it clean away.
The dragon had awoken in the dark
and from its bed had leapt to douse the day.

As a leviathan of old it breached
and shed the threads of its quicksilver gown.
And for the warring heavens now it reached
with fire for breath and lightning for a crown.

It pierced the serpent’s ring and then it turned,
and far below it glimpsed its running prey.
With lust for blood its palate freshly burned.
Its talons flexed and fangs the air did flay.

And for the hillock now did Memnon fly
as down the dragon dove to make its kill,
and rocked the valley with its dooming cry.
It watched as Memnon climbed the mossy hill.

And close behind another followed fast,
and though his face was fully out of sight,
the devil’s servant knew him from the past:
an enemy. A guardian of the light.

And pounded by the rain they scaled the wall
and made the ledge and twisted through the crack,
and safely to the mossy bed did fall
before the dragon struck the hillock’s back.

It fell upon the mound and found its door
and worried it and scraped it with its claws.
Against the stone the dragon’s fury tore,
and slowly teased apart the cavern’s jaws.

And Memnon took his cue from Zeraquel.
Against the cavern’s wall he swung his blade.
With desperate hacks they chipped away the shell
and slowly through the mound a tunnel made.

At length the dragon lay upon the mound.
It pressed its belly flat against its side,
and with its own the cavern’s mouth it found,
and through those parted lips its passion pried.

It filled the cavern with its fumes and fire.
And how its passion made its prisoners choke!
Yet still their whirling daggers would not tire
of tunneling through granite, earth and smoke.

They battled harder in its passion’s wake,
though burning beards set flames about each face.
And when the last clod fell, they saw the lake,
and burrowed through and slipped to its embrace.

And deafened by the storm and by its ire,
the dragon never heard its fleeing prey.
And blinded by the steam of its desire,
it never saw its quarry swim away.

It tore the belly of the cavern out
and sifted through the entrails for their scent.
And then the dragon raised its swindled snout,
its thirst unquenched and temper tightly pent,

and through the tempest’s noise the dragon howled,
and cursed its foes, and all the forest fouled.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

3.

Half-drowned they reached the lake’s most distant shore
and waded out and darted for the shade.
They heard the thwarted dragon’s piercing roar,
its oath of vengeance sworn to all the glade.

“The boy! Where is the boy? The one you found?”
And Memnon now recalled the broken one,
the bundle he had left upon the ground,
the eyes in which he had beheld the sun.

And to the east he turned his streaming face,
and challenged Zeraquel to match his pace.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

4.

And in the east a day of doom drew nigh.
With each new dawn the lovers’ peril grew.
Increasingly, they nursed an urge to fly.
But though they spoke of flight, they never flew.

For youth and love endowed them both with hope.
They saw his state yet hoped it would improve.
They bound themselves in optimism’s rope,
and held within its coils they could not move.

Despite its blessings, hope was now their curse,
delaying while the threat grew ever worse.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

5.

The Summer’s coming was forgotten now,
The garlands of his triumph brittle dry.
As much as his majesty would allow,
he bent beneath the burden of the sky.

Heavy with heat and with his stores of rain,
and groaning with unbounded appetite,
He scorched the earth, her energies did drain,
and in her forced submission found delight.

A beginning beckoned, an end drew nigh,
and some great doom was deathly close at hand.
“Beware! Beware!” the very earth did cry.
Her warning echoed grimly through the land.

And Jacob woke to weeping late one night,
and ran to find his love and saw she slept.
And then, attracted to the mourner’s plight,
he walked the house. And soon he knew who wept.

He stood outside his room and heard his grief,
regret its key and pain its tortured tune.
And Jacob stood as silent as a thief
and shared the haunting music with the moon.

And from the depths of it there rose a cry,
a cry for help, a piteous cry of need.
And startled from his trance, the guilty spy
retraced his steps and left the man to bleed.

Heavy the day, yet heavier the night,
for men’s worst fears and demons shun the light.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

6.

Now thrice the pair had seen the Sun God bow,
and thrice they’d watched the waxing moon arise.
The crescent lake was far behind them now,
with echoes of the dragon’s hunting cries.

They rested in the dappled silver light
and fleetingly did Memnon meet that gaze
which first he’d met upon a fateful night
when love had left him wiser to its ways.

A twinge from that old wound. He felt it still.
Its edges, frayed, had never fully wed.
It festered in his soul against his will,
for shards of love lay trapped within its bed.

And then, as if he read Old Memnon’s pain,
“Forgive me if you can,” the other said.
But Memnon wouldn’t settle with his bane,
and kept instead the silence of the dead.

His silence lived a moment then it drowned.
“How did you find the boy?” asked Zeraquel.
“By accident,” said Memnon, then he frowned.
“Or was it Fortune’s doing? Who can tell?

Just how important is he?” ran his voice.
“He is our only hope,” was the reply.
“Well swear to me you’ll give the boy the choice!
The right to choose his path, to live or die.”

“Of course he’ll have a choice! It must be so,
for potent is the power of choice with men.
If once he’s heard me through he answers ‘No’,
I swear I won’t petition him again.”

Old Memnon nodded, yawned and then lay down.
“Where did you find him?” Zeraquel inquired.
“Beneath a shroud, before he tried to drown…”
And Memnon turned and to his dreams retired.

And Zeraquel was left to watch his rear,
which he was glad to do. It made him smile
to sit beside a soul he held so dear.
He watched his back and let him sleep awhile.

And when an hour had passed he broke their rest,
and swiftly they resumed their urgent quest.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

7.

The mighty sun bereft the sea and rose,
and for the village bent its every ray.
It would not let a single sinner doze,
for Sunday now was come, the rev’rend’s day.

The rev’rend had his sermon’s script in hand
and paced his bedroom hounded by a voice,
a muffled tongue he could not understand,
his conscience calling, offering a choice.

At length he shut the madd’ning whining out.
He calmed himself before his mirrored eye.
He clenched a fist and choked a ling’ring doubt,
and prayed the waiting hours would hurry by.

The villagers were in their Sunday best.
They labored in the heat to climb the hill.
The cloying air constricted every chest,
and beads of sweat from every brow did spill.

And when it reached the church, that regiment
was broken from its battling in the heat.
But it had sacrificed for sacrament
and thus could claim a vict’ry in defeat.

And now the pews complained beneath the weight
of battle-weary folk and two souls more,
whose weight stemmed not from fat but force of Fate
that drew them to a far more deadly war.

The rev’rend reached his pulpit and began.
He spoke to them of God and His dismay,
his sorrow for the wickedness of man,
and of His plan to wash it all away.

His weary patrons nodded to the tale,
the womb-familiar lilt of each refrain.
But none of them could see the ark set sail,
and none could hear the cries or feel the rain,

except the lovers listening hand in hand.
They cowed beneath the fury of the sky
and they beheld the drowning of the land,
the scores of bloated bodies floating by,

and wept with Noah as the cyclones blew,
and wondered at the meaning of the curse.
So many dead, the living left so few.
And in their hearts they knew which fate was worse.

And when the prayers were done they rose to leave.
The rev’rend saw them though and called them back.
Today he would not grant them a reprieve,
lest mercy shown should muddle his attack.

On Jacob now a sentence he pronounced:
an errand to a village far away.
And by this stroke his enemy was trounced,
and would not rear his head again this day.

And Jacob looked to Hannah as he turned
to venture south along the coastal road.
And in the rev’rend’s eyes his malice burned,
and traces of his deepest secret showed.

He led her home and had her close her eyes.
He placed a ribbon’d box upon her lap.
Suspicious and confused, she took her prize
and opened it, and fell into his trap.

She lifted from the box a summer gown
so finely made, and all a milky white,
and fashioned of a cotton soft as down.
Yet she did not reward him with delight.

“It is a dress your mother used to wear,
and one she would have wished for you to own.”
And now its touch was more than she could bear,
the touch of one she loved yet had not known.

The rev’rend smiled and sent her from the room
and told her to put on her mother’s gown;
the relic he had rescued from her tomb;
a treasure Fate had not seen fit to drown.

And Hannah slipped into its close embrace
and felt again the comfort of the womb.
And when her master called, she dried her face,
and in her mother’s arms she left her room.

She found him at his easel blending tint.
He’d pulled his collar off and bunched his sleeves.
The sun had found a knife and made it glint,
and set aglow a row of canvas sheaves.

A moment passed before he looked at her,
before she set his pupils gaping wide.
And then the rev’rend’s sleeping sex did stir,
but still within its dormancy did hide.

He did not speak, but motioned to a chair
beside an open window, bathed in light.
He watched as she submitted to the glare,
then mixed his reds until they bled as bright.

And Hannah questioned him about the dress;
about the mother she could not recall.
He answered with a quickening caress;
an imprint of a face upon a pall.

She burned beneath his stare. Her beauty blushed
and smarted in the sun. She breathed the air
yet drowned, while on his fevered brushstrokes rushed
to raise the dead and innocence ensnare.

And Hannah closed her eyes against her tears;
against the piercing light; against her fears.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

8.

He braced against the heat of that high noon,
and visions rose before him from the sand.
He stumbled through his dreams from dune to dune
and strange they seemed; too strange to understand.

The sea at left, its succor out of reach,
and to his right the forest with its shade.
He walked the path between the wood and beach,
and for the Sun God’s pleasure did parade.

Cicadas clicked their throbbing hymn to heat,
their overlapping loud incessant hum.
A desert throbbed beneath his falling feet,
and Fate throbbed too, for now the hour was come.

And Jacob closed his eyes and battled on.
And brighter still, it seemed, the Sun God shone.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

9.

The rev’rend paused to pour a glass of wine,
and went to join his victim in the light.
He offered her the nectar of the vine,
and she declined as he had thought she might.

“You have her looks, but she was not so shy.
She drank for me, and you shall do the same.
Just take a sip. It’s easy if you try.
Just take a sip, in your sweet mother’s name.”

She held the glass and took a wary sip.
She would not meet his eye, that ball of fire.
The rev’rend glimpsed her tongue, its glist’ning tip,
and shuddered with a surging of desire.

She had no choice. She drank to quench her fear.
With every sip the rev’rend urged her on.
“That’s right, my girl. Another one, my dear.”
And so he soothed. And soon the wine was gone.

He filled the glass again and left her side,
retreating to his easel and his brush.
She sipped again, and dreamily she sighed,
and felt her face and all her body flush.

And from the canvas now her mother stared,
and brazenly her daughter’s beauty bared.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

10.

The parched sea licked its salt-encrusted lips.
It lapped at the shore. It lapped at the shore.
And soft between the wrecks of sunken ships
a voice came rising from the ocean’s floor.

A woman’s whispers found the breathless air
above the gentle throbbing of the sea,
and found the boy who walked in blank despair,
and wound about him, echoing her plea.

“Go back, my love, go back!” the woman said.
And urging never had a softer sound.
And Jacob heard the voice and turned his head
to find a source for it, yet none he found.

He carried on, the whisp’ring in his ear,
until he met an osprey on the track
that puffed its breast and screeched at him in fear
and beat its outstretched wings to drive him back.

And struck with fear for Hannah, Jacob turned
and ran so fast his feet the desert burned.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

11.

I am a bird. And I would wing away.
I hear a voice. It calls me to the sky.
The hunter eyes me now. I am his prey.
Before he takes to feeding I must fly.

I am a bird, with blood upon my beak.
I’m caged and chained and fastened to this chair.
And heavy are my wings, and oh so weak!
They cannot free my body from his stare.

She sat and drank her mother’s still-warm blood.
And every sip did fan her master’s flame.
She sighed as through her soul the wine did flood.
And when she flushed again it was for shame.

And through his lusting soul her sigh did ring.
A sigh to signal she’d been rendered tame.
A sigh as some bewitching sylph might sing.
The sigh her mother once had sung the same.

And with the flame now tearing at his heart
he fell upon his prey with furied speed.
And though she kicked, he pulled her legs apart
and raised the hem and dipped his head to feed.

And Hannah writhed and beat her wings of lead,
yet did not have the strength to thwart his will.
With years of bottled hunger now he fed,
and of the daughter’s nectar drank his fill.

And then he paused and raised his blazing eyes
and wiped his mouth and pulled her to the floor
and lay upon her, deaf to all her cries,
and at his britches feverishly tore.

And Hannah craved the swift release of death
beneath the brutal grinding of his weight,
yet still she screamed for help with every breath,
and still she fought the hunter and her fate.

And now she bit his ear with all her might,
and though he jerked she would not let it go.
His hands went to her neck and squeezed it tight.
And all the while he jabbed at her below.

And death would soon have found her where she lay,
but for the sudden crack of brass on bone.
And then his lust went limp and rolled away,
revealing thus his sex of gleaming stone.

And Jacob raised her gently from the floor
and led her quickly from the bloody room.
They left the rev’rend’s house and closed his door,
and shut his demon up within its tomb.

And swift into the forest now they fled.
They flew from him, and blind with fear they ran.
And Hannah’s summer dress was flecked with red;
the rev’rend’s blood, the tainted blood of man.

The sun declined and slowly slipped from sight,
and left them to the mercy of the night.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

12.

And that same night two others left the glade
and found the rev’rend’s house and crept inside.
And in that tomb Old Memnon grew afraid,
perceiving what its silence strove to hide.

He searched with Zeraquel through every room,
and all of them were empty save the last,
which held the rev’rend dangling from his doom,
his tongue engorged and bulging eyes aghast.

And now a distant cry the silence rent,
and claimed the dead and cursed the living’s ears.
A cry of sheer delight in some new scent.
A cry that multiplied Old Memnon’s fears.

They heard the devil’s laughter in that cry.
The dragon’s hunt had changed, and they knew why.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

13.

They’d run into the forest terror-bound;
had fled into its labyrinth of dreams,
which spread its store of berries on the ground
and suckled them beside its swollen streams.

At first they hadn’t talked of it at all,
and she had shrunk from him and his embrace.
Her shame had wrapped her feelings in a pall.
Her love had caught the pox of her disgrace.

But Jacob’s love had never burned so bright
and was not quenched by being turned away.
It was a love no devilry could blight,
for over it his soul alone held sway.

He’d cursed himself for leaving her alone.
And he had told her she was not to blame.
He’d heaped her pain upon him as his own.
And he had cursed the rev’rend for her shame.

And so he’d soothed his lover from afar,
as deep into the forest they had swept.
He’d washed her wound to mitigate her scar.
He’d watched her as she’d run, and wished she’d wept.

But she was not to weep until they lay
beneath the moon that night upon the ground.
And then her shame’s tight shackles fell away,
and Hannah wept and Jacob’s shoulder found.

And with her arm across her lover’s chest,
she sobbed out loud, succumbing to her pain.
And tenderly his lover he caressed,
and held his tongue and let her sorrow drain.

And when the sobbing ceased she raised her head
and searchingly she met her lover’s gaze.
And Jacob saw that still her sorrow bled,
and to his lover’s face his hand did raise.

He wiped her tears and from his twinkling eyes
he reached his soul into her eyes above,
and in those rippling waters found his prize:
a point of light, the pearl that was her love.

And far above the world the moon did gleam.
But now a shadow passed across its face,
and darkened thus the sleeping forest’s dream,
and damned its rest and deepened its disgrace.

No solitary bird, no lonely cloud,
that shadow-sweep the sailing of a shroud.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

14.

How sweet a scent! A scent from ages past,
when human love ran deep and free of doubt.
So tempting an enchantment does it cast,
I find myself compelled to snuff it out.

I have not hunted humans for an age,
but these two souls are worthy of my skill.
Their love has trumped the tenor of my rage
and set its course towards a different kill.

So sweet a love must not outlive the night.
In feasting on such souls shall I delight.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

15.

The dragon saw the lovers far below.
And down towards those figures now it flew,
towards a prey of many years ago,
a prey it had resolved to hunt anew.

The lovers heard a screeching overhead
and rose and scanned the heavens for its source,
and saw the streak of shadow-wrath and fled,
for they could not mistake that shadow’s course.

And in pursuit the dragon’s fury came.
And they could hear the hunger in its cries.
It howled for them, and loosed its tongue of flame,
and cast away its shadowy disguise.

Fair Fortune may have led them in their flight,
but if she did the lovers knew it not.
They scurried in and out of dappled light
and in their terror, arrow-swift they shot.

And on a brackened slope the lovers found
a cavern’s mouth, a partly hidden gap.
They burrowed through and in its darkness drowned,
and hunkered in the cavern’s reeking lap.

The dragon smote the bracken-bearded hill
and with its tongue it groped the laden air,
but only found the scents that ruled that swill:
the fetid sweat and excrement of bear.

It raked the undergrowth with tail and claw,
among the boughs and branches cast its eyes,
yet never found the cavern’s covered maw.
And thus, this night, it could not claim its prize.

And being so denied, the dragon reared
and from its muzzle sent a stream of flame.
And in a flash the gentle slope was seared,
and every living blade succumbed to blame.

Denied their souls, denied its rightful kill,
the dragon gave a shrill and curdling cry.
And then it left behind the blackened hill
to heap its foul abuses on the sky.

And through their fear the lovers passed to sleep,
while others in the cave their watch did keep.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

16.

They’d hurried to the hunted children’s aid.
The dragon’s howls had spurred their rescue’s speed.
But drunkenly that night the West Wind played,
delighting in the dragon’s latest deed.

It frolicked on the cursed and blazing hill,
and wrapped its tongue around the dancing flames.
It sucked the smoke and let its bellows fill,
then went in search of fools for fun and games;

and Zeraquel and Memnon chanced to meet.
It let them taste the smoke upon its breath,
and giggled at the frenzy of their feet
as through the wood they scurried, racing death.

And where the West Wind willed, the puppets flew,
their panic adding pleasure to its play.
Figures-of-eight and triple-hoops it blew,
and soon the puppets’ strings began to fray.

And when they had their third full-circle run,
the puppets dropped, relinquishing the chase,
resolved to wait until the play was done
before they’d rise again their trail to trace.

The West Wind bucked and danced a vict’ry jig,
and buffeted each breathless bobbing head,
and buried each beneath a scalding wig,
a crown of vapors hot as molten lead.

And through the gusting of the wind’s guffaws,
there came to them a very different sound:
the drumming beat of feet or heavy paws.
And they could feel their coming in the ground.

And swiftly now they climbed the nearest tree,
and settled there and silently did spy.
And from the rafters of the canopy
they saw the wolf-men come and heard them cry.

And through the branches Memnon’s vision bored
and found their black manes glist’ning, sleek with grease;
on every back a bow, and crescent sword
that clamored in its scabbard for release.

The wind had called to them and made them halt.
They turned their heads and cast their serpent eyes,
and every shape and shadow did assault
for some small sign to lead them to their prize,

but did not search that tree; no spies did spy;
the bristling of the wind misunderstood.
Enraged, it watched the devil’s servants fly
to hunt their quarry elsewhere in the wood.

The two came down and followed in their wake,
for now they knew which path they ought to take.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

17.

“Who are they mother?” “Soldiers of the night.”
“They fill my soul with dread. Why are they here?”
“They have been sent to thwart a Son of Light.
And they are not the only ones, I fear.”

“Why must the earth be sullied by their kind?”
“I do not know, my child, but it is so.
There’s light and dark in every heart and mind.
And neither shall the other overthrow.

Without the night we would not have the day.
The question, child, is which of them holds sway.”

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

18.

The lovers woke in filtered morning light
and in among the shadows they beheld
the clan of bears with whom they’d shared the night;
who’d masked their scent and had their peril quelled.

They quit that haven hewn within the hill,
and set off slowly down the blackened slope.
And they were lost, but were together still;
were lost, with love alone to fuel their hope.

They could not name the secret of the night,
knew nothing of the devil and his arts,
but they had heard its howls and feared its bite,
and still that fear lashed cruelly at their hearts.

And warily the lovers walked the wood
to find what peace and nourishment they could.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

19.

With Zeraquel he’d chased the devil’s band,
who’d run the night right through without a rest.
They’d followed hard and kept them close at hand,
and now they reached a narrow gully’s crest.

And here his wise companion held him back.
And as the devil’s men went running down,
a wave of arrows broke upon the track.
And Memnon heard their cries and watched them drown.

And Zeraquel and Memnon looked around,
yet of the hidden archers saw no sign.
Then soft behind their backs they heard a sound
and turned to face a dozen bows in line.

A dozen bows, a dozen barbs of flint,
a dozen arrows nocked and craving flight.
Within the archers’ hoods their eyes did glint,
and challenged them to flee or else to fight.

“Old Memnon?” shot a question. “Is it you?”
“Indeed, that rogue is one of those you’ve caught.”
And now the dozen barbs of flint withdrew,
for Memnon’s words their fealty had bought.

The hoods were taken back, and one stepped forth,
like Memnon, with a beard of tangled gray.
“Pray, do not think we did not hurry north.
The dragon found us though and barred the way.

It fell on us, and few of us were spared
the agonies of its unbridled lust.
We reached your kingdom late, and we despaired,
for not a soul was stirring in its dust.”

And Memnon then embraced his distant kin.
“I know of this, for I myself came late.
I grieve for all your losses, Svengolin,
and shall avenge them if it pleases Fate.”

“And may I live to do so at your side,”
said one who wore a crown and bowed to him.
A beardless youth, yet ancient in his pride,
and handsome though his countenance was grim.

“And who might be this Prince,” asked Memnon now,
“who seems both father-wise and mother-fair?”
And gravely he returned the other’s bow.
“What vengeance we are granted, we shall share.”

“His name is Haldin,” Svengolin replied,
“and on his shoulders rest his people’s woes.
And we would know the fellow at your side,
who held you back and saved you from our bows.

But first we must bestir ourselves and fly,
for fell men swarm and some great storm draws nigh.”

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

20.

They gathered ripened berries in the heat
and ate them by a brook, upon its brim.
Its waters sang to them and cooled their feet,
and drew the lovers in at last to swim.

And Hannah, naked now, became a sprite,
and from her lover’s grasp she slipped away.
She met his protestations with delight,
and overwhelmed her lover’s pleas with spray.

Behind a final splash she disappeared
and wriggled through the waters’ sun-shot haze.
And swift between her lover’s legs she steered
and breached for him and gloried in his gaze.

And Hannah tried to teach her love to swim.
But Jacob quickly judged it best to fail,
for then her hands would not let go of him,
and longer in his lover’s arms he’d sail.

And failing also made her laugh the more,
as when he got some water up his nose;
and botched his washing up upon the shore;
and tried to sink, but left behind his toes.

And afterwards the lovers lay to dry,
and fell asleep beneath the brooding sky.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

21.

The fawn-girl watched. The witch her cauldron stirred,
begetting thus a cloud of purple smoke.
Beside the woman’s feet a black cat purred,
and licked its paws and scrubbed its silken cloak.

The woman whispered something to the mist,
and then she swiftly raised a silver knife,
and drew its blade across her naked wrist.
And with her blood she brought the broth to life.

The fawn-girl thrilled to hear its thund’rous cry;
to see the lightning flashing in its eye.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

22.

The air was dense. Foreboding was the sky.
A red-tailed hawk alighted by their bed
and woke the lovers with an urgent cry,
and met their gaze before it turned its head.

And with the bird they looked into the wood,
and through its shadows glimpsed the shapes of men.
They gathered up their clothes and quickly stood
and through the glade went running once again,

and heard the hunters’ coarse and murd’rous cries,
the trample-crack and panting of pursuit.
The devil’s men were closing on their prize
and soon they would be near enough to shoot.

As fell and fiendish hounds the wolf-men raced,
their nostrils flared and lips retracted, taut.
They had his scent and soon his blood would taste.
They would not rest until the boy was caught.

Now one among them stopped and took his bow,
a raven-feathered arrow swiftly drew.
And when he’d taken aim he let it go,
and straight towards his quarry’s back it flew.

The hawk was watching though and saw it fly,
and when that hunter judged the moment right,
it dove for it and caught it with a cry,
and with its speckled breast it broke its flight.

And with a startling rage the tempest broke,
and hurled its rain and hailstones from the sky.
A whirling dervish of a wind awoke,
and from the earth great trees as weeds did pry.

The West Wind in this havoc did not play.
Its malice did not foul the howling air.
That wind was absent, brooding far away.
Its master had not sanctioned this affair.

The lovers’ flight was swallowed by the storm,
their senses dulled to all but Nature’s ire.
And blindly did the devil’s soldiers swarm.
The tempest quenched their fury and their fire.

And steadily the tempest grew in wrath.
And soon they could not run without its leave.
It blew the wolf-men back and blocked their path,
and granted to the lovers a reprieve.

It spared them but it rent their flight in two.
They lost each other in the driving rain.
Beholden to the tempest’s will they flew.
And for her lover, Hannah cried in vain.

She battled with her voice until it broke.
And still in scorn, it seemed, the heavens cried.
She fell against a hollow stump of oak,
and used her dregs of strength to crawl inside.

And Jacob ran with the wind behind him.
The glade surrendered to his hurtling might;
would not oppose the wind nor witch’s whim,
nor hinder in the least the hero’s flight.

At length the tempest knocked him from a crest,
and down a steep and rugged slope he fell,
until a mighty boulder met his chest
and stole his breath and consciousness as well.

The witch’s rain found Jacob where he lay,
and washed his scent and worries clean away.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

23.

The witch’s tempest had not finished yet.
And now the woodland bathed as well in night.
Within a mountain’s womb the elves were met,
around a fire that pulsed each face with light.

When Svengolin arose they turned to him.
“The darklings wax, and Love’s beset with fear.
But in this waning hour by Fortune’s whim
we’ve chanced upon a soul we hold most dear.

Well met, old friend, and your companion too!
And though you find us war-weary and weak,
in friendship’s name there’s naught we would not do.
If you would have us help you, cousin, speak.”

Then Memnon spoke: “I’d tell you of despair
and of the pain of grief and stifled rage.
In short, I’d speak of all the ills we share,
and speaking thus no ills would I assuage.

And so I’ll ask my friend to speak instead;
to shed the secrecy that cloaks his power;
to shuffle off the silence of the dead
and speak of light in this our darkest hour.”

And now in the warmth of the mountain’s womb
the other rose, and towering tall stood he.
And all who met his gaze beheld their doom,
a fleeting shadow in an emerald sea.

And many guessed that this was Zeraquel
before he spoke and cast his story’s spell.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

24.

“Although I cannot claim you for my kin,
your blood and line have been as such to me
through all the ages since the birth of sin,
when we were crossed and bound in destiny.

The birth of sin and love so long ago
and all the wars they’ve spawned have notched my life.
This pock-marked face of mine hides worse below:
a spirit sundered by a subtle knife.

My brothers and myself, we forged that blade
of a jealous, bitter and lustful ore.
With blows from hatred’s hammer was it made
upon our fallen pride, fresh-stung and sore.

Hither we came as from a distant star
and marveled at the paradise we found.
Our presence though, its purity did mar.
Our footprints were as scars upon the ground.

Yet we forgot the earth, its hills and streams,
when first its infant twins we did behold:
the one of blazing grace, alive with dreams;
the other strong of limb, and fair and bold.

Babbling bright were they, and their laughter loud.
Their hearts were trusting and their friendship free.
We threw upon their nakedness a shroud.
We taught their tongues to taste and eyes to see.

And we were gods aflame in the earth’s dawn.
And all life worshipped us and stoked our fire.
And from that blaze the subtle knife was drawn.
And we were blind to it and its desire.

It bathed the dawn in blood. It murdered trust;
turned brother on brother, father on son;
infected every soul it slashed with lust,
that by their blades its vict’ry would be won.

And mountains broke apart, and oceans fell.
Amid the chaos, vengeance naked ran.
And all the earth, it seemed, became a hell
to host the suffering of elf and man.

And we presided over those dark days,
and endlessly we strove to sate our greed.
We plucked fair maids and taught them pleasure’s ways.
We tilled the sweetest wombs and sowed our seed.

And of that seed, monstrosities were born!
Devoured their mothers fresh in their birth-slime,
and fouled the reeling earth with seething scorn.
Our demon spawn. The children of their time.

They took as many forms as evil may,
and waged a war of conquest on the light.
And all too soon, alas, their ranks held sway,
and forced the sun itself to flee their might.

Your kin sought shelter then as best they could,
had not the strength to battle such a foe.
They hid among the rustlings of the wood
whose many secret ways they’d come to know.

But man was splintered by the demons’ might.
And thus the human creed, ‘To each his own.’
A few brave men stood fast, prepared to fight,
and dying saw their brothers overthrown.

But many bent to kiss the giants’ feet,
and bound themselves in shackles cold and cursed.
And to their masters fed their children’s meat,
and served their blood to slake their masters’ thirst.

We fled from those who had usurped our throne.
My kin and I were scattered far away.
Unblinking, blank, undead, and cold as stone,
beyond the realm of conscience then we lay.

And slowly we awoke to agony
when sorrow soaked our tarnished souls at length,
as blood when it restores vitality
brings searing pain as well as life and strength.

And we recalled with horror what we’d done.
We’d raped your innocence, had fathered strife,
had brutalized the earth, betrayed the sun,
and all because we’d forged that subtle knife.

We rose and stumbled through the black of night,
and with our tardy guilt we went to war.
We rallied elves and men prepared to fight,
and then into our enemy we tore.

At first the battle’s favor bent our way.
Our foes had grown too confident and slack.
And many of their legions did we slay
in that first furied flush of our attack.

Among their foul ranks, though, there was a band
of our own brothers, which was then revealed.
And for the first time we could see the hand
that held the knife and did its cunning wield.

And the strongest of all my kin was he
who held the knife, a father to the rest
and bound we knew to some great destiny;
of all my brethren, he who was most blessed.

We called to him. We begged him to relent,
yet he would not, and forward now he came.
And by his will the battle’s tide he bent.
His will alone ten thousand spears did tame.

And we retreated. But there was no rout.
The darklings paused to gloat and curses call.
We dressed our wounds and bound and smothered doubt,
and though we faltered then, we did not fall.

And in that lull, the sun renewed did rise,
and by its light we charged ahead again.
The darklings cowered and covered up their eyes
and fell beneath a wave of elves and men.

And we beset their ranks, my kin and I,
and our swords were aflame and burning bright
as blazing comets coursing through the sky.
Swift death we dealt the demons of the night.

Those demons stood around their lord in rings,
ensheathing him in every shade of spite.
They beat against the sunlight with their wings
and raised the ashes of an age of night.

No light could pierce that cloud, nor could we breathe,
yet by its stench our gasping wills were spurred.
Within that cloud the soul of sin did seethe,
its malice masked, its stark corruptions blurred.

And to that fetid star we long laid siege
and fought against its outer elements.
Enslaved by birth and blood-bound to their liege,
those demons were his gates and battlements.

We broke those gates with blades reduced to steel,
then onward to the darklings’ keep we drove.
And layer by layer their fortress we did peel,
though harder still against us now they strove.

But then the battle halted with a cry
from one who stood and fought at my right hand.
‘O you who once I loved, before you die
pray tell me so that I may understand:

was it for this that we followed you here?
To bathe in blood? To torture all things fair?
The time to pay our foul deeds’ debt draws near,
and of our guilt, the greatest is your share.

Explain yourself, for you were always wise.
What prompted such a fall? What prompts it still?
What artful web was spun before your eyes
to sour your soul, compelling it to kill?

Pray tell how such a love as yours could cease!
You were most high and held most dear by all.
You could have sighed and sired eternal peace,
yet further than your brothers you did fall.’

No answer came. And how the silence stung!
It found our souls and dealt a serpent’s bite.
The darklings’ lord, our brother, held his tongue
and used the pause to magnify his might.

Our champion called again: ‘The time has come!
It was for this I traveled with you here.
So let the trumpets sound and beat death’s drum,
and ready now to die upon my spear!’

He flew at him and we were at his side,
yet we were not so fast or strong of limb.
He cut and thrust and for his brother cried,
and came at last to stand in front of him.

The demons turned to heed their master’s call.
We leapt to stop them rushing to his aid,
and thus the devil’s rescue we did stall.
He stood alone, but held that subtle blade.

And the wills of his soul and blade were one.
As one they moved to counter every thrust.
He lunged towards the champion of the sun
and they became a blur of battle lust.

And in our champion’ s lust his match he met.
As white and black they were, as day and night.
And furiously the dueling barbs did fret,
with light eluding dark, and dark the light.

And all around, the sparks of combat flew
and legions fell, and still they battled on.
They would not rest till one the other slew.
The sun blazed now, and through the pall it shone.

At last, our champion cast the devil down.
Above his foe he raised his rod of flame.
And with a fearful tight’ning of his frown,
he let his judgment loose, and down it came.

But at that moment, hatred’s weapon flicked;
a final twitch as death came driving on.
The subtle knife swept up, and death was tricked.
It blocked that righteous blow, and then was gone.

Our champion’s blow had shattered all its art.
A thousand shards its malice had become.
But one small sliver found our champion’s heart,
and pierced his soul and struck his judgment dumb.

The lord of darkness slithered swift away
to find a hole in which to hide himself.
He left his slaves to run in disarray
and flee before the wrath of man and elf.

And though I saw the devil turn and fly,
my better brother called. I went to him,
and held him in my arms and watched him die,
his spirit wane, its embers ebbing dim…”

And now he closed his eyes and bowed his head,
and let the silence eulogize the dead.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

25.

The oaken stump the storm’s worst fury stole.
It soothed the girl to sleep in its embrace.
And visions were begotten in that hole
which plumbed her past and did her future trace.

In one of them, she lay upon a rack,
a giant shadow looming at her side.
And she was chained, spread-eagle on her back.
In vain she fought her bonds. In vain she cried.

The shadow swooped and fell to its attack,
and in the rush she caught the rev’rend’s eye.
And somehow Jacob came and held him back,
and from its prey the predator did pry.

And Jacob, blessed Jacob, set his might
against the rev’rend and his black desire.
But flames appeared and swallowed up the fight,
and Hannah lost her lover to the fire.

And Hannah willed herself towards the flame.
She could not bear to live if he were dead.
And out of that inferno now there came
a pair of eyes; a dragon’s gleaming head.

Those eyes her soul and sleeping’s shackles broke.
One look at them, and instantly she woke.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

26.

“The devil then his winding wormholes found,
and into them he drew his tattered host.
He claimed a realm a league beneath the ground,
but lingered at the surface like a ghost.

Diminished was his power without the knife.
Yet still a store of weapons he possessed.
He set its many bastards sowing strife.
And of them all, the dragons served him best.

With runes remembered from his days of might,
he put on these most treasured slaves a charm;
a shield to long protect them from the light –
that none save man could do them mortal harm.

Had he not seen so many of them turn?
Had not they been the easiest to tame?
The dragons’ fire eternally would burn
if faulted man alone could douse their flame.

The rest is in your songs. How they came
with talons, flames and fangs, and terror spread,
and all your sweetest sanctuaries did claim,
and fed upon your kin or left them dead.

Do you remember what your fathers made?
A sword was forged and given unto men.
Do you recall the first to bear that blade
into the darkness of a dragon’s den?

That dragon was the first to meet its end.
By other hands, in time, still others fell,
for men of worth came forth to elves defend;
to dragons smite and break the devil’s spell.

Eleven slaves were slain, but one remained.
The twelfth of them, the strongest, has survived.
And through the ages, men of worth have waned,
while those who heed the devil’s lies have thrived.”

“But was there not a thirteenth dragon too?”
asked Svengolin. And Zeraquel replied:
“There was, but it renounced the life it knew
and bound itself in doom, and all but died.

But mark my words, the time is come again!
For one is brought to you by Memnon’s hand,
plucked by chance from the teeming ranks of men
across the sea in some forsaken land.

He’s here, and he is hunted night and day.
The fell men’s cries bear witness to his flight.
Your task shall be to rob them of their prey,
and mine shall be to arm him for his fight.”

And now Old Memnon’s voice the cavern filled:
“Remember Zeraquel, he’s but a boy!
He’s never held a sword, has never killed,
has little known of life, still less of joy.”

“I shan’t forget it, friend. I know it well.
He’ll make his choice, as I have said before.
I would not make him face the wrath of Hell,
nor make him ride unwillingly to war.”

These tidings set the elven souls aflame,
and some got up at once to search for him.
The others stirred, and restless they became,
and with excited babbling they did brim.

When Haldin rose, the murmurs did abate.
“You bring good news indeed, when hope was lost.
But how can you be sure this is his fate?
That finding him will justify the cost?”

And Zeraquel responded with a smile.
“I can’t divine the secrets of my eye.
The devil said not what begot his guile,
and now for want of knowledge nor will I.”

He laughed, and in his laughter he was joined.
And by that music, hope was freshly coined.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

27.

In search of Jacob now did Hannah roam,
enswathed in mist, in swirling shades of gray.
She stumbled on the warm and sodden loam
and fought to keep her coiling fear at bay.

For hours, or days, or weeks perhaps, she walked,
and round her hope the wisps of mist did wind.
And by the fell men’s baying she was stalked,
at times so close, at others far behind.

And all the while with visions she was racked.
With hunger and fatigue, fell dreams attacked.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

28.

’Twas broken sleep that night, if sleep at all.
It was the last that several there would know.
For Fate swept swiftly on towards the fall,
and helpless in its current they did flow.

And eagerly they’d risen with the sun
and ventured from the mountain’s chiseled hall
to find the boy, to find the chosen one,
for he alone the remnant’s doom could stall.

A third of them had gone with Zeraquel.
A third of them with Svengolin had run.
A third with Memnon and their Prince as well
had sped away. The hunt had now begun.

As fetor on the dawn’s fresh breath there came
the echoes of the devil’s henchmen’s cries.
Old Memnon led his band to join the game,
to stand between the devil and his prize.

The hunt was on, and it would end in death.
And all the wood, it seemed, now held its breath.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

29.

And through the forest Hannah stumbled on,
and cast her eyes for him against the gray.
But in her heart she knew that he was gone,
that he was dead or dying far away.

And now in front of her the vapors cleared.
Some magic forced the swirling mist to part.
And there a woman’s wrinkled face appeared,
with twinkling eyes that seemed to read her heart.

“Your love is lost, but pray do not despair,
for you are doomed to find your love again.
But there will come a time when you must share
that love of yours with all your fellow men.

For he in turn is doomed, as you must know,
to test the very balance of the earth.
And when that time is come, pray let him go
that he may spread his wings and test his worth.”

She would have argued with her destiny,
but now the mist became a dragon’s head,
which swallowed up the woman and her plea
and chewed upon the truth of what she’d said.

And Hannah closed her eyes and met that maw,
and felt its fangs and scenes of horror saw.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

30.

And Zeraquel ran quickly with his band
and tried to close upon the fell men’s cries.
But through the forest now a thick mist fanned
for anyone to wear as a disguise.

Towards the cries he steered his regiment,
but then as if on some command they died.
So onward in pursuit his party went
with nothing but his instinct for a guide.

And day gave way to night, and night to day,
and still he led the hunt yet found no prey.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

31.

Towards him now the silent fawn-girl stole
through brambles and the bracken of the hill.
She knelt beside him with her wooden bowl
and marveled at his face, so pale and still.

And on his lips the girl bestowed a kiss
that woke the boy, and also woke his pain.
“Come Princeling, put your pretty lips to this:
a witch’s broth to make the throbbing wane.”

She held the bowl for him and Jacob drank,
and struggled to his tongue’s great horror hide.
But though the brew was bitter swill and rank,
before he’d drunk it all his pain had died.

Now Jacob met her gaze. Her eyes were wild.
He glimpsed in them the mountain lion’s pride;
the dreamscape of a forest-fostered child,
where black bears roared and gray wolves moonward cried.

And to his body now she turned her gaze.
He saw her smile, and suddenly recalled
his nakedness. And then his cheeks did blaze.
and while he dressed, he felt her laughter scald.

And then she bade him come and skipped away.
He found her hard to follow, for she danced
around him as they went, in private play,
and cast unsettling glances while she pranced.

She sang to him while leading him along,
and wrapped him in the rhythms of her song.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

32.

“Why do you weep?” Fair Fortune softly spoke,
and Hannah dried her eyes and looked around.
The speaker, though, the coiling mist did cloak.
It would not share its secret, save her sound.

“A dragon found me with its piercing call,
and such was its desire I could but heed.
And willingly before it I did fall,
and raised my belly up that it should feed.”

And Hannah felt the dragon’s talons rend,
and sorrow welled again within her eyes.
“Will I betray my love before the end,
and turn my passion’s promises to lies?”

“It may be so,” ran Fortune’s firm reply.
“Love sits upon the flimsiest of thrones.
Though lovers swear their love will never die,
the earth is strewn with stricken lovers’ bones.

The current of your dream runs deep and true,
but no one’s fate is ever cast in stone.
Now hear me, for a choice I’ll offer you:
to stay with him, or leave the wood alone.

If you should choose to leave your love behind,
the dragon’s lust shall never be your bane.
Another life and other loves you’ll find,
and find a ripe old age before you wane.

If you should choose to stay, your way is fraught.
I’ll take you to your love, and love shall fly.
But love, however cunning, shall be caught,
and dreams may come to life before you die.”

Fair Fortune’s speech no counseling contained,
for Hannah’s fate she would not sculpt or sway.
But over all her words compassion reigned;
their tenor did their target’s grief allay.

She watched the girl, whose tears had ceased to flow.
If pain she felt, or doubt, it did not show.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

33.

She herded him into a grove of pine,
and hidden in its midst a hut they found.
Upon the door was carved some ancient sign,
and sprigs of thyme lay scattered on the ground.

She went to him and kissed him once again,
her cheeks abloom and eyes alive with joy,
for she had lived her life away from men
and she was quite bewitched by this first boy.

“The Prince is come!” triumphantly she cried,
then hurried through the door and disappeared.
And Jacob took her lead and went inside.
He closed the door and through the gloom he peered.

A witch was at a cauldron stirring slow
within the furthest shadows of the room.
And at her feet a cat was purring low,
and rubbing now and then against her broom.

She called to him, but did not turn her head.
“You’re wounded, Jacob. Let me tend to you.”
Her voice was deep and would have mustered dread
if there had not been some sweet softness too.

He crossed the room, and when he looked at her
he caught his breath to stifle his surprise.
The crooked nose and chin, a field of fur,
belied the beauty brimming in her eyes.

But as the sun dispels the night at dawn,
her blemishes were routed by their light.
And deep into those eyes his soul was drawn.
And he was rendered naked to her sight.

She smiled and hushed him when he tried to speak,
and rubbed some leaves about his battered head.
Submitting to her care, he stood there meek.
And while she worked, the old witch whisp’ring said:

“Now bind the warrior’s wounds and make him whole.
Awake what inner strength still dormant lies.
Restore what confidence misfortune stole.
Now boy be gone, and let the man arise!”

Abruptly did her incantation end,
and then she ladled broth into a cup.
“Now take this soup, and give it to your friend.
If he’s asleep, be sure to wake him up.”

She pointed to a door, and in he went.
It was a cupboard with a narrow bed.
A man lay on his side, his body bent,
with blankets bunched up high above his head.

He spoke to him, but garnered no reply.
He gently turned the heavy blankets down.
In fever’s grip the naked man did lie,
his few teeth chatt’ring loudly through a frown.

It was the lighthouse-keeper lying there.
He roasted as he battled foes unseen.
The stench of rotting flesh was in the air;
the bandage round his chest stained brown and green.

Now Jacob took his hand and called his name
until at last the lighthouse-keeper woke.
The sight of Jacob did his suff’ring tame.
He smiled at him then summoned strength and spoke:

“I heard the sea, the warnings of the wood,
and found that you were gone, and feared you dead.
I came for you, to help you if I could.
But you have come to succor me instead.

They hunt for you, the ones who ambushed me
and tortured me with blades as black as coal,
and probing hooks that taught such agony
as would have wrenched from any man his soul.

But thankfully I knew not where you were.
And when they thought me dead, they cut me free.
And in my blood I lay, and did not stir
until the girl came by and rescued me.”

And Jacob bade him drink the woman’s draught,
and held him while he sipped the steaming brew.
His wound was opened by the witch’s craft.
His fever and his pain were blunted too.

And Jacob saw that pus did freshly drain
and stain anew the bandage that had dried.
The keeper closed his eyes and seemed to wane.
But when he spoke, his eyes were open wide.

“The hour is nigh, and soon you’ll have to fight.
I would have liked to battle at your side,
to bask, however briefly, in your might.
And oh how gladly then would I have died!”

“But who am I to fight? What hour is nigh?”
ran Jacob’s voice, his questions laced with dread.
But now the keeper had but strength to sigh,
and strength to shift but slightly in the bed.

And from beneath the sheet he drew a blade;
his rusty bayonet he did proffer.
And Jacob took its hilt, and watched him fade;
his edges bleed, his leathered features blur.

He touched the keeper’s hand and said goodbye,
and left him lying there, content to die.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

34.

When Hannah had decided, thus she spoke:
“Should I betray my lover in the light,
or secretly beneath the night’s black cloak,
a dagger up my sleeve and out of sight?

There’s greater treachery in taking flight,
for he will think that I am lost or killed.
He never would suspect me of such sleight.
He’s mined my soul and knows with what it’s filled.

I would betray my love on either path,
but I’d betray myself on only one.
I will not damn my soul nor draw its wrath
for leaving him before our love is done.”

And soft towards her now Fair Fortune came.
And Hannah blushed her beauty to behold.
She split the mist. It melted in the flame
of golden braids and eyes so bright and bold.

And with those eyes she weighed the girl awhile.
And then she kissed her lightly on the lips,
and pulled away and fixed her with a smile,
and touched her breast with gentle fingertips.

But Hannah would not let her fingers stay,
and saw how quickly then her smile did fade,
and heard the woman sigh with such dismay,
it cast her beauty suddenly in shade.

“Then follow me,” she said, and turned away.
And doomward now Fair Fortune led her prey.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

35.

When he returned sweet scents suffused the air.
Upon a table now a feast was laid.
The fawn-girl, smiling, led him to a chair
and filled his plate; of meats a mountain made.

By candlelight they shared the witch’s feast.
And Jacob heard her whisp’ring in his mind,
and murmurs heard of some infernal beast,
the last of them, and cruelest of its kind.

The fawn-girl never let his cup run dry,
and when his plate was clean she served him more.
The witch’s fare a hero’s strength did buy.
And Jacob’s body thus was fuelled for war.

But little conversation did they share.
At times, the fawn-girl’s foot his own would brush
and she would burn his eyes with such a stare
as would have made the hardest hero blush.

With food and sweet enchantments he was fed.
Exhaustion overcame him in the end.
And then the fawn-girl showed him to his bed,
And swift to sleeping’s depths he did descend.

From there his soul went soaring far and wide,
with dreaming’s golden compass for a guide.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

36.

She’d followed her, and now the two did climb.
And Hannah wondered who she was, this sprite
whose gaze it seemed could pierce the mists of Time
to glimpse events beyond the bounds of sight.

She’d asked her many questions on the way.
The fortune-teller though had answered none.
She led her through the mist with naught to say.
The time for speech was past. The wheel was spun.

At last, the densely wooded ridge was won,
and Hannah sat awhile to catch her breath.
The mist had thinned and now allowed the sun
to set the glade aglow before its death.

And in that moment couched in amber light,
Fair Fortune turned and swiftly skipped away,
and left the girl alone to face the night,
and face the doom remaining to the day.

When Hannah stood, she met a pair of eyes
that struck her mute with wonder and surprise.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

37.

Along the ridge Old Memnon led his band
and keenly cast his hearing and his sight,
and cursed the wolf-men swarming through the land,
and cursed so swift a waning of the light.

At length he heard some rustling up ahead,
and then he turned and bade the others wait.
And quietly between the boughs he sped
towards the noise; towards the twilit bait.

And Memnon then was overcome with joy.
The sight was such an unexpected treat!
Although he’d known she might be with the boy,
he’d never dared to hope that they would meet.

Now Memnon dragged his feet along the ground,
attempting thus to soften her surprise.
He saw her straighten when she caught the sound,
and when she turned he met her hazel eyes,

and softly spoke: “I’m glad to find you safe.
We’ve met before. Perhaps you don’t recall.”
And helplessly he stood before the waif,
and watched her eyes roll back, and broke her fall.

And quickly now the others gathered round.
And Memnon told them who it was they’d found.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

38.

Above blue oceans, racing clouds he sped,
his arms outstretched in lithe and supple flight;
and over ocher deserts flecked with red,
and chiseled mountain peaks of dazzling white;

above the stark excrescences of men;
their cities’ roofs and steeples he did skim.
And plains he passed, and forest, moor and fen,
and all the earth was thus revealed to him.

What glorious speed! He named his joy aloud,
his laughter’s echoes dancing with the light.
He rested for a while upon a cloud,
then up he leapt in blazing moonward flight.

The sun exposed her face, its pearly skin,
the parted lips that hinted at despair.
He looked into her eyes and found within
a sadness that his spirit could not bear.

And from that boundless misery he fell.
The sun went out. The darkness held him numb
and set him in some alleyway of Hell,
where tolling bells declared the hour was come.

And from his belt he drew a sword of fire,
and by its light saw serpents all around.
And as he moved ahead they did retire.
Too willingly, it seemed, they gave him ground.

And to the alley’s end at last he came.
Against a wall a mound of serpents writhed.
And Jacob cried and raised his sword of flame,
then brought it down and through the mountain scythed.

No serpent could his mighty blows withstand.
Their hissing bled, their venom flecked his face.
His sword assuaged its hunger in his hand,
and lost to killing’s lust his heart did race.

Then looking down, he glimpsed a pallid breast
beneath the severed tails that wagged at death;
a glimpse of one the serpents had possessed,
and robbed of love before they’d robbed her breath.

Now fear put out his flame. His lusting died.
He dropped his fiery blade and kneeling down
he raised his lover up. And how he cried!
And in the void his misery did drown.

Her hair was torn and plundered of its gold.
Her lips were splayed upon the devil’s rack.
He held his lover limp and marble cold,
then felt her stir and let his grief go slack.

And now she writhed as from her mouth there rose
a mighty serpent, striking for the kill.
He saw its dripping fangs and felt them close,
and instantly from dreaming he did spill.

And for his love, hysteric’ly he cried.
He rose, and for the door did Jacob race.
The old witch though was quick to reach his side,
and would not let him take another pace.

“Be calm! Be calm! You’ll find your lover soon.
You’ll look for her before this night is done.
But I must beg a favor of the moon,
and till I have, I cannot let you run.”

And with her eyes and by her moon-wrought art,
she calmed the worried waters of his heart.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

39.

A crescent moon was out and unobscured.
The elven band was on its guard and still.
The girl was up and seeming fully cured.
She’d shared the elven fare and drunk her fill.

Old Memnon had enveloped her in love.
He’d laid her down and watched her while she slept.
The moon as well had watched her from above
and turned to silver every tear he’d wept.

And when she’d woken he had let her feed
and had not said a word throughout her meal.
He’d sat with her and let affection bleed;
affection Hannah could not help but feel.

And only when she’d finished did he speak.
And then he told her who and what they were,
and who it was they desperately did seek,
and noted what his tidings wrought in her.

He made no mention of the devil’s force,
and of the dragon whispered not a word.
He planned to tell her all of this, of course,
but not tonight, for quite enough she’d heard.

And dimly she recalled those smiling eyes,
recalled them from the depths of infancy;
remembered him as one who’d heard her cries;
as one who once had bounced her on his knee.

And now his words reached deep into her soul
and turned her sense of order inside out.
They shattered rules. Realities they stole.
They cast her strictest certainties in doubt.

Yet many of her doubts and worries waned
when Memnon chanced to speak her lover’s name,
for then she knew the greatest truth remained:
that love, for all she’d learnt, was still the same.

How glad she was to learn he wished him well,
and glad to learn his party sought him too!
She answered him, and of their flight did tell,
and wondered at how much of it he knew.

He left her with a smile and lay nearby,
and soon his snoring signaled that he slept.
And then she heard a distant howling cry,
and at the sound, again her worries leapt.

But Hannah would not let her fear run free,
and hid it from the elven company.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

40.

He’d worried that they hadn’t found him yet,
and to distract his angst away he’d crept
to verify a proper watch was set:
a dozen archers circling where they slept.

Then Haldin had returned to where he’d lain
upon the loam beneath a square of sky,
and heard a distant cry the silence stain
and turned. And then the girl had caught his eye.

And though her face was partly turned away,
he’d seen in it a fleeting look of dread.
And Haldin watched her now from where he lay.
Her dress seemed woven of a silver thread.

She was the first he’d seen of humankind,
and by her beauty he had been surprised.
He wondered what was in her heart and mind,
the elements her prettiness disguised.

He worried that the look she’d quickly tamed
betrayed in her an all-too-human trait:
the fear for which the race of men was famed,
as much as its capacity for hate.

But when the night was pierced with other cries,
he found himself compelled to think again.
She stowed her fear beneath a steely guise,
and taught the Prince a little more of men.

Her eyes were wide, he saw. Her jaw was set.
Her arms were locked and clasped about her knees.
And now a gusting breeze began to fret
and spread its hissing menace through the trees.

And soon a wind was coursing from the west,
and Haldin watched it pulling at her hair.
Yet still she held her knees against her chest,
and still her courage battened down despair.

And soon the wind was whining with its spite,
and tearing at the branches with its hook,
and agitating pools of silver light.
And Haldin watched, and saw that Hannah shook.

And now he took his cloak and went to her
and gently wrapped her up against the night.
And in his spirit something sweet did stir
which soothed the pain engendered by their plight.

And Haldin sat himself at Hannah’s side,
and in the dappled moonlight they were twinned.
And in the distance hunters howling cried,
but they could barely hear them through the wind.

And of the fell men now Prince Haldin spoke.
He told her whence the men had come and why.
And Hannah listened, safe beneath his cloak,
and with her own she held the Prince’s eye.

Then Haldin told her of the devil’s beast,
and thus the measure of her terror took.
Yet Hannah did not startle in the least,
and Haldin saw that she no longer shook.

And then he told her fragments of his tale,
and soothed her with its lilt and its refrain.
And slowly now the wind began to fail.
The darklings’ cries as well began to wane.

And long before the Prince’s tale was done,
before he’d fully worked his story’s charm,
and long before the rising of the sun,
he felt her rest her head against his arm.

And there her head remained until the day.
And Haldin would not move for fear she’d wake,
nor sleep himself lest sleeping he should sway
and such a precious bond too soon should break.

He held that fleeting intimacy tight,
and mourned so soon a passing of the night.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

41.

The crescent moon mourned openly that night,
the conscience of the star-bespeckled sky,
and shed upon the world her tears of light,
distilled of all the grief of years gone by.

Upon a flat-topped hillock Jacob stood.
The fawn-girl and the witch were with him there.
He gazed in wonder at the dappled wood
and deeply did he breathe the nectar’d air.

Before his eyes, the treetops rolled away,
their canopy an undulating lawn;
the garden where his fate and fortunes lay,
approaching with the silent stealth of dawn.

And to the north and west loomed mountains black.
With gruesome teeth were those horizons hung:
a dragon’s muzzle waiting to attack;
a dragon’s fury aching to be sprung.

The witch had built a fire and stood close by.
Her hands were raised and wordlessly she spoke.
Her fingers plucked the air and sparks did fly
and wound their crimson tails within the smoke.

And as they rose, their crimson turned to white.
As shooting stars above the hill they burned.
And thus the witch’s beacon split the night,
a favor begged, and all discretion spurned.

The fawn-girl sat cross-legged on the ground.
Her eyes were closed, her hands upon her knees.
Her head was cocked that she should catch the sound:
the faintest sign; a drumming on the breeze.

And Jacob, bathed in light, now grew afraid,
for well he knew the wood was darkling deep.
He drew the lighthouse-keeper’s rusty blade
and gave the shades of night a warning sweep.

And from the north and west the first cries came,
the howls of devil’s men who’d caught the scent.
Then from the south and east he heard the same.
Now closer to the fire the old witch leant.

And louder rang the chanting from her lips,
and faster ran the strumming of her rune.
And sparks were flying from her fingertips
as now her blazing eyes beseeched the moon.

And with the baying of the fell men near
and drawing tight round Jacob as a noose,
his strength became entangled in his fear
and naught but death it seemed would cut it loose.

But then he felt a jolt, a surge of hope,
a pain that made him thirst for every breath;
that cut to shreds his hesitancy’s rope,
forbidding doubt and any thoughts of death.

The fawn-girl heard it then and gave a cry.
The witch’s chanting ceased. Her hands were still.
And now the first black arrow pierced the sky,
and others followed needling up the hill.

Towards them too the moon’s sweet favor swept,
deliv’rance in the flowing of its mane.
And from the forest now her champion leapt:
the hope of men and elves, and devil’s bane.

The witch spread wide her arms and cried her thanks.
Towards her at a gallop came the steed,
its hide of silver rippling on its flanks,
its horn declaring its enchanted breed.

It halted at the threshold of the fire,
with arrows falling fast to left and right.
It bowed its head and whinnied its desire,
its patience now the measure of its might.

The witch bade Jacob mount the steed in haste.
And swiftly then the fawn-girl mounted too.
He gripped a tuft of mane, she held his waist,
and at the witch’s word the stallion flew.

And Jacob knew no fear upon its back,
enfolded as he was within its light.
The moment seemed to snag and Time ran slack,
yet lightning-flung and furied was their flight.

And those fell men they met along the way
were trampled by those hooves of pearly white.
And soon the pair had galloped far away,
though not beyond the devil and his bite.

The West Wind woke and violently it blew,
but could not match the stallion’s moon-swept pace.
The fell men howled, and after them they flew.
They hunted on; would never quit the chase.

The fawn-girl pulsed with joy and closed her eyes,
and let his flowing curls caress her face.
She savored him, her living’s sweetest prize,
and let her loving flow in her embrace.

They galloped on, and fainter grew the cries.
And round his waist less tightly pressed her arms.
And now the bleeding sun began to rise
and bleach the wood of midnight’s subtle charms.

And then the arms around him came undone.
He turned his head and saw her hit the ground.
He pulled the stallion’s mane to break its run,
and urgently he turned the steed around.

She lay upon a bed of broad-leafed fern,
her body crumpled up. She did not stir.
He called to her but naught came in return.
So Jacob quit his steed and ran to her.

Her eyes were closed and locked in death’s long sleep.
Upon her lips a stream of blood had dried.
Between her shoulder blades was buried deep
a sturdy shaft, with raven feathers tied.

He buried her before the rising sun,
his sorrow welling, waxing in his eye.
And Jacob mounted when his work was done
and rode away beneath the bloody sky.

And something deep inside him died that dawn.
His innocence, perhaps; a boy; a fawn.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

42.

Her hair had caught the crimson of the sun,
and Haldin marked her beauty and her grace.
Beside Old Memnon now did Hannah run,
as through the wood the elven band did race.

And Fate as well went racing on its course.
And they could not resist its raging flow,
which flung them with an elemental force
towards the moment when they’d find their foe.

And now it came. A troop of darkling spies
attacked their party, keening for the kill,
and lashed at them with iron blades and cries
that cut them down and disemboweled their will.

But Haldin quickly roused the elven band,
and at their head he countered the attack.
In front of Hannah, Memnon took his stand
and fought to turn the darklings’ onslaught back.

The fell men, though outnumbered, mighty were.
In strength each one was worth three elves or more.
Such potency the devil did confer
on those he sent abroad to fight his war.

His men possessed the greater battle lust,
and from the first they had the upper hand.
They split their prey and at its splinters thrust,
and swiftly whittled down the elven band.

But just as Memnon’s strength began to yield,
his anger rose and seized the reins of thought.
And now it swung his blade and slung his shield
and would not let him slacken as he fought.

They came at him on waves of elven blood.
They struck at him to rob him of his prize.
And furiously Old Memnon met the flood.
His anger flashed as lightning in his eyes.

The more elves fell, the more fell men he faced,
and longer grew the odds that he would live.
To Memnon’s side now noble Haldin raced,
for Hannah’s life his own too glad to give.

And side by side the elven kinsmen strove
to hold their ground, to match the darklings’ might.
But far too many of the darklings drove,
and there could be no balance in the fight.

And soon the Prince was battered to his knees,
and by a crushing blow his shield was rent.
And Hannah turned and ran between the trees,
and after her the darklings darting went.

Then all was lost, it seemed. Though Hannah fled
those hounds were swift and gained with every breath.
And in their wake in vain Old Memnon sped.
He could not stay the certainty of death.

Yet over all their grunts and greedy howls
the devil’s men now heard a different sound:
a cry that froze their tongues between their jowls
and gave them cause to doubt and turn around.

And they beheld a steed, a streak of light
that broke upon them faster than a thought,
and brought its blazing rider to the fight;
his arcing bayonet. And they were caught.

And down the darklings fell to steed and blade
as they went coursing through the melee’s heart.
Then onward sped the stallion through the glade
to where the darkling hounds pursued the hart.

Their claws were closing, stretching for her gown,
but just before they caught her they were clipped.
As stones their foaming maws came crashing down,
and then their headless trunks as if they’d tripped.

And from the stallion’s back now Jacob leapt.
He ran to her and to her lips he bent.
He held his lover tightly as she wept,
enfolded in her softness and her scent.

The stallion reared then galloped off apace.
To rout the fleeing darklings now it ran.
And Memnon, panting, stared at Jacob’s face
and marveled at the boy become a man.

And Haldin and his kinsmen stared as well.
And for the moment they forgot their dead,
and wondered at this man, and Zeraquel,
recalling word for word what he had said.

And Haldin and those few survivors knew
that what wise Zeraquel had said was true.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

43.

The unicorn had swept him to the fight,
had found the battle’s heart and run it through,
and brought him to the brink of Hannah’s flight,
and somehow he had known what he must do.

And now his blade lay bloodied on the ground.
He held his love and she began to weep.
And he could sense the others standing round;
could sense the others’ silence, eerie deep.

And he was numb yet felt a distant pain
to hold his lover tightly to his chest,
to feel his neck grow wet with sorrow’s rain,
to feel her lips, the heaving of her breast.

And slowly what was numbing him did melt.
And Jacob’s pain came nearer now and grew
until unbridled agony he felt,
and with that pain, a piercing pleasure too.

And now the others grieved; their heads did bow.
They knelt and set to laying out their dead.
And one of them, he saw, approached him now.
And Jacob saw the crown upon his head.

“We honor you, and thank you from our hearts.
And for your safety now we must away.
This war was long in coming. Now it starts!
The battle of our age is underway!”

And then he bowed as if before a throne,
and came to him and offered him his hand.
And Jacob clasped it firmly in his own,
before the other turned to face his band

and nodded once, and led them all away.
But one of them awoke as from a trance
and shouted to his kin and bade them stay,
and turned them to the lovers with a glance.

“I cannot let you do this, I’m afraid.
How can we ask so sweet a love to die?
There’s naught but death awaiting in this glade –
a truth I dare you, Haldin, to deny!”

And Jacob heard these words and turned around.
He’d felt the love beneath that warning’s roar.
And at Old Memnon’s tangled beard he gazed.
And he remembered him, and so much more.

And in his arms his love no longer wept.
She too had turned her head, and still had grown.
And he could feel her heart and how it leapt.
And it was beating faster than his own.

And Jacob heard the one named Haldin sigh,
and saw his sorrow as he drew his blade.
“I’d die myself before I’d let it die,
but we must hold them till his choice is made.”

“Then let him make it now!” the other cried,
“Before we lead them further down this path.
Explain the choice, and see if he’ll decide
to face the dragon’s flame and devil’s wrath.”

Then Haldin glared at him and came his way,
the mark of fury branded on his brow.
“Too many of my kin have died today.
He’ll make his choice, but shall not make it now.”

It looked to Jacob, then, as if they’d fight.
The other drew his sword and flashed his ire.
But neither of the brandished blades could bite
before his lover spoke and doused their fire:

“This choice, it seems, should not be rashly made
if it concerns a war that must be won.
We thank you all for coming to our aid,
and now we’ll go with all of you, or none.”

They recognized the sense in what she said.
The elven blades were quickly sheathed again.
And then they ran away, and left their dead
to share a bed with butchered devil’s men.

And Jacob saw the other hang his head
and curse his fortune even as he sped.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

44.

He took him for a wizard, mystic wise,
the one whom they had said was Zeraquel,
and knew the soul behind those emerald eyes
would name his choice and would his future tell.

“You have not seen its face, yet sense its might.
You felt it on the night it came for you.
And thus a soul may compensate for sight.
I know you not, yet know what you could do.

You’re chosen, Jacob, destined for a fight
against the scourge of love and hope and mirth;
a man to set an ancient wrong to right;
a man, indeed, of most uncommon worth.

But know that death shall stalk you all the way,
if this should be the path you choose to take.
To face the dragon’s fire or turn away:
that is the choice. And it is yours to make.”

“To let me take you home, or else to burn!”
said Memnon now, his desperation clear.
“To save this love of yours, you must return.
Or else the dragon’s wrath will claim it here.”

“But where is home?” asked Hannah of them all.
And Memnon answered quickly: “By the sea.”
And then a silence settled like a pall
and claimed the life of Memnon’s certainty.

“The rev’rend’s home?” asked Jacob of him now.
But Memnon dropped his gaze and shook his head.
And Jacob read the furrows in his brow,
as Zeraquel announced: “The rev’rend’s dead.”

Then Jacob met his lover’s tender gaze,
and in that look were countless feelings shared,
and many roads considered, many ways,
until but one remained to be declared.

“We’ll go with you,” she said, “and meet its might.
We shall not turn away from what was meant.
And we shall hope our love outlives the night.”
And then her lover nodded in assent.

And Jacob met the wizard’s emerald stare,
and found no trace of exultation there.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

45.

Again within the mountain they were met,
with Zeraquel looming in the fire-glow,
conjuring words that would their passions whet,
that they should be prepared for the morrow.

And Jacob sat at Zeraquel’s right hand,
with Hannah softly pressing at his side,
his arm about her body as a band,
caressing her, possessing her, his bride.

“Pray, in your mourning leave some room for mirth,
for though we sway upon the brink of doom,
this day of death was brightened by a birth.
A star is come to challenge night’s great gloom.

Tomorrow for the mountains we must make,
for there resides the blade that he must wield.
Its patient thirst the dragon’s blood shall slake,
when they are met upon the battlefield.

Tonight is for the kindling of your flame,
the fire that you shall bear with you to war.
Remember who you were and whence you came,
and let your pride in recollection soar!”

And to the slow low beating of a drum,
Svengolin rose and rolled his tongue in rhyme.
A minstrel did a harp’s sweet heartstrings strum,
and of his verse made music most sublime.

Their heads were tilted back, their eyes did close,
and all were borne away upon the sound.
Now other voices woke and softly rose
and through the coiling smoke their ballads wound.

And Haldin’s eyes to Hannah’s face were drawn.
In broken seconds he would feed his heart.
He knew she was as fleeting as the dawn
and knew that all too soon their ways would part.

There were songs of laughter and songs of praise,
and songs that told of vict’ries long ago,
which set their failing battle-pride ablaze
and melted fear and let its liquor flow.

And Jacob held to Hannah in that cave.
He felt adrift without her at his side.
He did not feel heroic now, or brave,
and from their stares of wonder wished to hide.

So closer to his lover’s cheek he leant.
He knew that he had changed since he was lost.
And Zeraquel had told him what it meant.
He feared that it had come at some great cost.

And in his heart he sensed a change in her,
though outwardly his lover seemed the same.
Beneath the surface some new tide did stir,
too deep and indescribable to name.

The joy she’d felt in finding him again
had from the very first been tinged with pain.
And now within the mountain’s throbbing den
she felt that simple pleasure swiftly wane.

For deep within the shadows of her soul
she’d locked her dreams and lately Haldin’s look.
And from that place distracting tremors stole
to tempt at her foundations till they shook.

There were songs of duty, of honor’s price,
of loyalty’s demands and wisdom’s pain;
of Fair but Fickle Fortune and her dice,
and all the unsuspecting souls they’d slain.

The emerald eyes of Zeraquel were fixed
upon the fire. They plumbed the pulsing red,
wherein the ores of destiny were mixed
and Fate’s infernal appetite was fed.

There were laments, slow agonies of death
in which no voice above a whisper rose,
each note a pulse of cold and rasping breath
until the sigh unanswered at the close.

In other songs for fallen friends they mourned.
Their voices soared as angels overhead
and all of grief’s most morbid trappings scorned,
rejoicing in their memories instead.

Now ancient Memnon left the elven throng
and came to sit beside the human souls,
imagining, perhaps, a future song
in which these two might play the leading roles.

But Memnon did not trust his love of old,
and so he urged them now again to flee.
“I fear that to our doom you have been sold,
and that you do not share it willingly.

I swear there’s naught but sorrow if you stay.
Pray, do not rush to meet an elven fate!
With all my heart I beg you, run away!
I’ll lead you home before it is too late.”

And Jacob turned to meet his lover’s gaze
and saw the sorrow Hannah strove to hide,
and chose again his path in Fortune’s maze.
And then he turned to Memnon and replied:

“I shan’t forget the beard that rescued me;
the eyes that did my broken spirit tend.
For that alone, dear friend, I would not flee
but help you if I could before the end.”

And Memnon could but smile and shake his head
and with a heavy heart rejoin the elves,
reluctantly accepting what he’d said.
He could not help if they’d not help themselves.

Then from a distance, Memnon heard him say:
“Besides, I am a murderer of men.
If I returned, a heavy debt I’d pay,
and I’d be sure to lose my love again.”

This puzzled him. He would have countered it,
for well he knew what Jacob said was wrong.
But now among his kin did Memnon sit,
and heart-and-soul they drew him to their song.

It was a song that told of ancient times
and of the first of their great people’s line.
Their sacred names in reverential rhymes
were passed among them now as holy wine.

And then a song of love’s rewards did tell
in music hushed and feathered as a kiss.
The next with love’s unbridled need did swell
to quiver on the breaking point of bliss.

Upon the lovers’ minds that music fell
until their moods were drenched in its sweet rain.
And on their restless hearts it cast its spell
to passions wax and worries set to wane.

And from the cavern now they took their leave.
And how their rising passion made them race!
Through knots of winding tunnels they did weave
until they found a quiet open space.

Its shadows pulsed and danced with ember-glow,
to echoes of the distant elven song.
The lovers lay and let their passion flow,
at first in kisses feather-light and long.

Then Jacob’s gentle fingers found her dress
and slowly raised the latticed lip of lace,
and tenderly his lover did caress,
her pleasure’s sweet and secret paths did trace.

And she, in turn, her lover’s touch returned.
Her knowing hand his passion’s flames did fan.
And in that furnace both their bodies burned.
And frantic now their ragged breathing ran.

And Hannah, hungry, drew her lover down.
And softly now against her Jacob pressed.
He entered her and in her love did drown,
and set their shadows dancing with the rest.

Those shadow forms were harboring a spy,
who from the lovers could not turn away;
could not restrain a low and plaintive sigh
as to their dance’s rhythm she did sway.

And at its highest pitch their passion broke,
and over them its ecstasy did flood.
Its rippling joy their soaring souls did soak,
its ebbing pleasure pulsing through their blood.

And Fortune, flushed, turned quickly now and went,
her lust ablaze and begging to be spent.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

46.

And westward on the morn the remnant sped,
their hope alive and fellowship aflame.
By Zeraquel the Fallen they were led,
and in his wake the remnant gladly came.

But ruthless Time pressed sorely on them now.
The devil’s hounds beset their flanks and rear.
No pause for rest would Zeraquel allow
lest they be caught, or brooding fall to fear.

His followers were fleet, but many fell,
inflating death-by-death the journey’s cost.
They fled before the snapping jaws of Hell,
and in their flight full half of them were lost.

And many more would certainly have died,
but Zeraquel the devil did confound.
That fell pursuit in tangled knots he tied,
so tightly were his route’s contortions wound.

But death pursued them still from grove to grove,
and days grew shorter now within the glade,
as onward to the mountain range they drove,
towards an ancient tomb and hallowed blade.

For ages had that tomb its secret kept.
For ages in its womb that blade had slept.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



FALL

1.

The Summer, now debauched and overgrown
and flaccid with the fat of his long feast,
was by his lusty pleasures overthrown.
His eyes rolled back. His season’s orgy ceased.

And to the earth the Fall came softly down,
for she was Summer’s sister and his heir.
And silent was her taking of his crown,
her fanfare but a fresh’ning of the air.

And from her throne the Queen surveyed her land,
and set about the culling of her crop.
So gentle was her touch and slow her hand,
her subjects never sued for her to stop.

There was no trace of mercy in her eye.
Nay, cruelty swelled in gusts upon her breath.
A loveless grace suffused the deep blue sky,
impartially presiding over death.

The Fall was come and life was on the wane,
for death, blind death, would mark her bloody reign.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2.

At last the remnant reached the mountains’ feet,
the path now breathless hard and sliding steep.
The sun in silence suffered its defeat.
The widowed moon above a peak did peep.

Upon a cleft her silver light was thrown:
a flaw within the range’s towering van.
So narrow was the fissure in the stone,
it would admit at most a single man.

It was as if she spoke in shining so.
And Svengolin paid heed to every word,
and told his kin that all of them should know
the glimmerings of wisdom he had heard.

And thus he sealed their fate. And all agreed
that this was where they’d make their stand and fight.
And they were glad the moon had sown the seed,
for they revered the counsel of her light.

And Svengolin caught up with Zeraquel
and bade him stop to listen to him now.
And of the moon’s direction he did tell,
and to her wisdom Zeraquel did bow.

And Jacob and Hannah were at his side,
and Memnon was beside them there as well.
The four would go. The moon would be their guide.
The rest would stay and meet the march of Hell.

And now they gathered round and said farewell.
Their voices were as whisp’rings on the breeze.
Among them all a sorrowing did swell,
and sounded in the rustling of the trees.

And from his finger Haldin took a ring
and put it into Hannah’s trailing hand.
He set his stone upon a white dove’s wing
that it should ride the flood and reach dry land.

And struggling now to keep his grief at bay,
to stifle the crescendo in his heart,
he kissed that hand and quickly turned away.
He could not bear to watch the dove depart.

He gave to her his music with that ring,
except for one sweet song, the last he’d sing.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

3.

The four of them were swallowed by the night.
The wood became a barren slope of shale.
The moon was waxing high and weaving light
that wound among the stones to mark their trail.

And all four hearts were troubled as they went.
For Hannah, it was one she’d left below.
She felt his gift, and guessed at what it meant.
The truth of it was more than she could know.

For Jacob it was still the hero’s mask,
a mask he feared he was not fit to wear;
the overwhelming danger of the task,
a task he could not ask his love to share.

As well to know the elves would die for them,
would die for him, the chosen one they thought,
if only for a while their foes to stem.
A sacrifice that faith in him had wrought!

A sacrifice that troubled Zeraquel,
for those were precious souls they’d left behind.
But he could see the sense in it as well.
They’d die to save the savior of their kind.

But Memnon’s was the most unquiet soul.
He’d left his kin to die, and some so young!
Again when death was nigh away he stole.
He felt his treachery, and how it stung!

They gained the slope at last, and at the top
they found the narrow pass the moonlight graced.
And at its mouth Old Memnon made them stop,
and each of his companions he embraced.

To Zeraquel he said: “Forgive my ire.
My jealousy outstripped my poor defense
when I was lost to love and that desire
which robs a soul of its most noble sense.”

“If you forgive me too,” replied his friend.
“A devil would I be to spout a verse
of lies contrived to Memnon’s conscience mend,
when it was lust of mine that was his curse!”

They joined their hands and shared one last embrace.
And then before the girl Old Memnon knelt,
and with his calloused fingers traced her face
and as a father blessed the child he felt.

And last to Jacob Memnon turned his eyes,
his spirit sounding softly in his voice:
“Remember, death may be your only prize,
and that unto the end you have a choice.”

So tightly did he squeeze young Jacob then,
he nearly broke his ribs and back as well.
He might have killed the hope of elves and men,
and there and then have won the war for Hell!

But Jacob bore the bite of Memnon’s might,
emerging much the fitter for his love.
Then Memnon turned and vanished in the night,
and left them standing motionless above.

And from their eyes their sorrow’s silver fell,
and silently of love and loss did tell.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

4.

Grim was the mood among the elven band
preparing in the fringes of the wood.
Their doom was clear, and each did understand
he’d have but one last chance to strike for good.

To purchase time, a pair of runners flew
to tempt their foes to follow them away
from that great cliff some god had cleft in two,
at least until the breaking of the day.

For those remaining, arrows were their care;
to gather all at hand and fashion more.
The hours of labor kept them from despair
and turned their thoughts away from death to war.

When Memnon reached his kin their spirits soared,
but prudently their cries of joy were snuffed.
And thus before the fight a point was scored.
His sword still sheathed, the devil’s pride was cuffed.

The Prince and Svengolin and Memnon met
beneath an oak to make their plans for war.
And when they had considered every threat,
they set their trap about the mountains’ door.

At dawn the elven sacrifice was caught.
Those runners had a wealth of arrows bought.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

5.

The devil’s men at last had caught their scent
and now advanced to finish off their prey.
Towards the mountains’ looming teeth they went,
towards the broken cliffs that barred the way.

The sun, arisen, scythed the deep blue sky,
its crystalline dominion vast and clear.
There shone a reckless anger in its eye
and every cloud had fled its gaze in fear.

The remnant elves knelt quietly in wait
and wrestled hard to close their minds to thought.
The still of this surreal pause was bait
that many last regrets and wishes caught.

They felt their coming, for the granite shook
before they heard the first foul howling cry.
And every archer then an arrow took
and nocked its tail and raised it to his eye.

Within the forest’s outskirts they appeared.
The army’s head thrust forward for the shale.
The vanguard struck. Invincibly it cheered
and swift upon all fours the slope did scale.

It was a slope those fell men never gained.
They tumbled lifeless to the forest’s edge.
Impossibly the cloudless sky had rained,
and had refused to yield that precious ledge.

A fresh attack was made upon the hill,
but faltered on the dead and shifting stone.
Again as burning oil did arrows spill,
and from the slope that second wave was thrown.

The elven archers still and silent stood.
The devil’s army waited, sitting slack,
unseen within the shadows of the wood.
It did not rush to launch its next attack.

And when it came it was a rush of sound,
a low-pitched pounding harmony of Hell.
And all the elven souls it did confound
as they were bound by its sadistic spell.

Its thunder struck the mountains’ bolted door.
It wrenched at every loose and jutting rock,
and at the hidden elven archers tore,
to shake them from their crannies with its shock.

Old Memnon shuddered in his boulder’s shade,
and rattled in his weath’ring of the storm.
The tortured sound his senses did invade,
and every truth and purpose did deform.

He lost his balance then, and lost his sight.
And through a whirling void did Memnon fall,
where blinding panic was the only light,
the rest consumed by that voracious squall.

And when they’d loosened every bolt and screw,
the devil’s henchmen charged ahead as one.
And from the forest now the fell men flew
to meet the golden arrows of the sun.

And Memnon gasped and found the air again,
and struggled to his battle-poise reclaim.
And he beheld the cresting wave of men,
a slick of oil the sun had set aflame.

And swiftly now were elven arrows sent
towards the center of the howling horde.
And like the mountains’ wall the men were rent,
yet still towards the cliff their fury roared.

The elven archers could not turn them back,
and soon the fell men’s flanks the wall did win.
And for the cleft they leveled their attack,
towards its mouth they scurried, closing in.

And now the Prince leapt down before the cleft,
with Svengolin and Memnon at his side.
And any of their kinsmen who were left,
beholding them did burn anew with pride.

As death was beckoning the waning elves,
the sun waxed high and claimed another noon.
For battle now they rearranged themselves
within the pass where stones were freshly strewn.

The devil’s men could not contain their thirst.
Impatiently they closed in for the kill
and jostled one another to be first
to feed and carry out their dread lord’s will.

But now the narrow cleft was tightly crammed
with stones and elves between its boulders tall.
And thus the fell men’s gushing thirst was dammed;
a trickle made of that black waterfall.

And they were forced to move in single file
and battle with the boulders in their way.
And Haldin stood his ground atop the pile,
and with his sword he kept the horde at bay.

The blades of Memnon and of Svengolin
were bloody too and busy at his side.
But still the teeming wolf-men trickled in
with hilts in hand and red eyes blazing wide.

And endlessly it seemed that steady flow
came dripping past its dead without a care.
And weary did the elven warriors grow,
and slowly they retreated in despair.

And with the high ground lost, and dying nigh,
the elven minstrel cast away his blade
and took his harp and let its spirit sigh,
and in that pass the elves’ last music made.

Those melodies and lyrics cut them loose
from any grief or fretting fear of death.
They charged ahead to don the devil’s noose,
but would not yield their souls with blood and breath.

The harpsong rose above the battle’s din,
and Haldin heard his fathers calling now.
And in his haste to greet his fallen kin
the Prince regained the fallen boulder’s brow.

And Haldin’s flashing blade and gleaming helm
were as a beacon and his brothers rushed
to bleed for this last bastion of his realm.
And bleed they did, and how the boulders blushed!

And through the forest swept the elves’ last lay,
awaking memories and ancient dreams,
and claiming fealty of roots and clay,
of all who lived among its boughs and streams.

The forest gave its answer to their claim,
and now it set its latent fury free.
Behind the unicorn its army came
stampeding up the slope of shifting scree.

And swift upon the devil’s men they fell,
the ranks of mountain lion and wolf and bear.
And many souls were sent straight back to Hell
to suffer as their master deemed most fair.

Within the narrow pass the fell men turned
and hurried back to fortify their rear.
And at their heels the elven remnant burned.
The devil’s men were ravaged now by fear.

And still the harp played on. Its ballad soared
as wolf-men fell to elven blade and fang.
As gray wolves growled and bears and lions roared,
above the clamor still the minstrel sang.

The unicorn was at the battle’s heart.
Its pearly hooves dealt death with every blow,
and by its horn fell men were torn apart,
and from its silver mane their blood did flow.

Old Memnon was suffused with surging hope;
ebullient now the spring which had been dry.
He stood above the battle on the slope,
and over all the chaos cast his eye.

And Memnon spotted Haldin’s sprawling frame
face-down upon a bed of blood-red scree.
He fought his way to him and cried his name,
and took the Prince’s head upon his knee.

And heedless of the fury all around
he gently wiped the blood streaks from his face,
and lay his body out upon the ground,
his fallen Prince, the last of all his race.

The elven song was drawing to a close.
And now its soul was silenced with a cry
that struck the minstrel mute, his harpstrings froze,
and split the crystal casing of the sky.

It was a dragon’s cry, and terror spread
as wildfire through the animals and men,
who turned and fled and trampled down their dead
to reach the sanctuary of cave or den.

They ran before the dragon’s wrath in vain,
for now the beast was rearing overhead.
And where the sapphire sky was rent in twain
it dove, and was among them as they fled.

The elves stood firm. They did not take to flight.
The greater was its pleasure in its kill.
And none was spared the fury of its might.
It scorched the battlefield till all was still.

And thus the beast cut short that battle’s verse,
and with its own put out the elven flame.
The fell men fared no better if not worse.
Their brief campaign had garnered naught but shame.

The dragon did not tarry on the field.
It took to air and mountainward it wheeled.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

6.

The devil’s men had not achieved their goal.
They’d failed their lord, and he would make them pay.
Yet through the glade still greater demons stole
and patiently closed in upon their prey.

The devil’s faith in men was not so firm
that he’d entrusted this to them alone.
He’d sent two other slaves to guard his worm,
and each had stalked its quarry on its own.

He’d faith in them, and in his worm as well,
whose venom he had brewed himself in Hell.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

7.

They had not paused through all the toils of night,
and steadily the pass had grown more steep.
They had not paused to mark the dawn’s first light,
their strength out-marched and sense besieged by sleep.

And Zeraquel the Fallen broke their trail,
with Hannah coming slowly in his wake,
and Jacob as the expedition’s tail
that lashed itself to climb and stay awake.

The mountain range loomed all around them now,
its lips retracted, snarling at the sky,
And grudgingly their trespass did allow.
It watched them with a wide and wary eye.

The sun was high and shadow tucked away
when up the pass the swirling echoes rolled
to whisper of an army kept at bay
by elven wit and barbs of burning gold.

The echoes ebbed and silence tricked them all
until a vast and monstrous wave of sound
swept up behind the climbers mountain-tall
and broke on them and struck them to the ground.

It smothered them beneath its weight of spite,
and scorning flesh at sweeter meat did tear.
It scored their souls, and lost to pain and fright
their bodies writhed as fresh-caught eels in air.

Then mercifully it ceased and bruised they rose,
and drunkenly resumed their grueling climb,
while at the mountains’ door the elven bows
let loose their blazing shafts one final time.

Their thoughts were with the elves a league below,
as shards of battle noise came floating near,
and morsels of the minstrel’s song did flow
above the three to find the mountains’ ear.

It seemed the mountains stooped as if to hear.
The music soothed and spurred the climbers on.
They neared the summit now, the way was clear,
and as the waxing sun their spirits shone.

For each of them had felt the battle turn,
with rebel voices rising all around.
But now the ring that Hannah wore did burn,
did scorch the slender finger it had crowned.

And Zeraquel and Jacob heard her shout
and quickly then they scrambled to her side.
They watched the elfstone’s inner flame go out,
and at its disappearance Hannah cried.

The stone allowed a glimpse through Memnon’s eye,
and they could see the face upon his knee.
And now they heard a very different cry.
The devil’s whip was cracked and stung the three.

They turned and ran in ravenous ascent.
Forgotten were their aches and lack of sleep.
They recognized the cry and what it meant:
that far below the dragon dove to reap.

And Zeraquel went racing up the track,
where boulders blocked the way went blasting through.
With howls of terror tearing at his back,
he made the peak. And from the pass they flew.

The mountains’ outer battlements were scaled.
Great teeth and shallow valleys lay ahead.
Behind their tireless guide the lovers trailed,
as swift along a naked ridge they sped.

The dragon’s wrath took hold of that high land.
It echoed loud from every granite face
and boasted of the broken elven stand,
its routing of the remnant of that race.

Beyond the ridge a sheltered glade they found,
a haven overlaid with fronds of fir
that filtered out the horrors of that sound;
the peak of each staccato shriek did slur.

And there they hid, and watched the waning day
until they saw the heavens streaked with rust.
And then upon the scented loam they lay,
and in the darkness placed their aching trust.

And still they sensed its hunger circling high;
its testing tongue; the seeking of its eye.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

8.

Their terror calls to me and guides my flight,
the sweet and silver lining of delay.
I tease my victims, eking out their plight
that terror should feed first upon my prey.

And with their courage bitten through and torn
I’ll come to them with offerings of pain.
And only when they’ve felt my talons’ scorn
will I allow their suffering to wane.

I murder in the manner of my kind,
for fear and pain attend my every kill.
Before the end I rule my victim’s mind.
Before I take his soul, I take his will.

I’ve labored long and have perfected death
that robs my prey of so much more than breath.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

9.

Three times the beast had hurtled overhead,
had missed their scent, and then had moved away.
And they’d reclined upon their fragrant bed;
to stalking sleep at last had fallen prey.

And it was long past midnight when he woke.
At once alert, he scanned the silver haze.
Behind him now a woman whisp’ring spoke.
He turned to her and met her melting gaze.

She beckoned him to follow where she led,
and bound him to her as a moth to flame.
As fire into the night her beauty bled,
and tenderly its wildest ghouls did tame.

They stopped beside a stream. He faced her there
and bathed within the stargleam of her eyes,
the shimm’ring gold and silver of her hair,
and that desire which she did not disguise.

She raised her arms inviting his embrace,
and Jacob swayed a moment on the brink.
For all the witching beauty of her face
and thirst it roused, he did not stoop to drink.

She was surprised, yet pleasure did she fake,
contriving now to mask her lust with glee.
Deciding on a different tack to take,
seductively she slipped behind a tree,

and moments later sallied forth reborn,
and stood before him naked in her birth,
and challenged Jacob once again to scorn
that beauty which was unsurpassed on earth.

Her beauty was indeed beyond compare.
The vision overwhelmed his mortal gaze;
his blue eyes fixed in one unblinking stare
to feast upon the glare of such a blaze.

She came to him and raised a hand again
and graced his cheek with a caress so sweet,
it would have made the hearts of many men
combust within their own quick passion’s heat.

But though her beauty’s blaze could boast no match,
no peer to best the promise of its prize,
the tinder of his passion would not catch,
despite the sparks she cast into his eyes.

He saw her there, her fingers’ touch could feel,
but he was floating feather-light and numb.
Though Jacob knew he dreamt, she seemed so real.
He wished to speak to her, but he was dumb.

And unrequited, how her lusting grew!
His lack of interest stoked her passion’s fire.
A lioness, still closer now she drew.
She kissed his lips, impressing her desire.

He made no answer to that busy kiss.
Her tongue’s temptations he would not admit.
His lips were locked as if foresworn to bliss,
however hard and pleadingly she bit.

At length the breathless beauty staggered back,
her wide eyes wet and face a furied flush.
She raced ahead to launch her next attack,
her raging lust compelling her to rush.

Again she laughed without a trace of mirth.
And now she spun, her body sleek and slim,
and danced upon the moon-bedappled earth,
and conjured every charm to waken him.

And wake he did to agony and doubt,
and drunk desire and shame and falt’ring speech.
He closed his eyes to shut her beauty out,
but through his straining lids her hook did reach.

And when she’d reeled him in, she lay him down
and wrapped him in the eddies of her touch;
his embers of resistance strove to drown,
her drowsy victim writhing in her clutch.

But as the pitch of his arousal rose,
the more the brand of his betrayal burned.
And though his mind was locked in lusting’s throes,
his soul recoiled and his submission spurned.

And Jacob battled with the raging tide,
and broke at last the bonds of her embrace.
And then she rose and with her butchered pride
she slipped into the night with her disgrace.

And then the darkness seemed to brim with spite;
to scorn the moon and spurn her silver light.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

10.

The wind had blown directly from the west,
and through the gates had galloped with its gold;
had nuzzled to its master’s frigid breast
and tidings of the elven doom had sold.

And it had bathed in pleasure thus provoked
and had through countless sweet retellings purred.
And when its cunning had been fully stoked,
the fiend had flown and back again had spurred.

And now it nosed among the mountain peaks
that pierced the wide blue belly of the sky.
Its temper locked between its bulging cheeks,
it stalked the range, a swift and silent spy.

It sought the boy and girl and ancient one,
and would not rest until its hunt was done.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

11.

He led them swiftly on from grove to grove
between the peaks towards the tallest one.
Against their fear and mountain flint they strove,
and somehow still they summoned strength to run.

At length the patchwork shield of trees wore out,
with naught beyond but stone and tumbling streams,
and one great granite steeple, sheer and stout,
which beckoned to them all in waking dreams.

Beyond the line of trees a bald spruce rose;
a throne among the gods had dared to seek.
Long dead, it struck a most defiant pose,
arrested in its raid upon the peak.

Its trunk was rent, its crown upon the ground;
a witch’s finger pointing straight ahead,
where danger lurked but glory could be found;
where none but gods were ever meant to tread.

They paused beside that harbinger of death,
that warning to the living from the dead.
They checked the sky was clear and caught their breath.
And Jacob felt a sudden pang of dread.

And when the others moved, he would not go.
He held to Hannah tightly so she stayed.
And Jacob’s fear so fiercely did flow,
the last of all his fighting fibers frayed.

He would not let his lover be its prize.
He turned away, the hallowed peak did shun.
And Hannah saw the terror in his eyes,
and fastened to his hand she could but run.

And Zeraquel remained and watched their flight.
His emerald eyes soon lost them in the trees,
and brimming then with pity for their plight,
they closed against the nudging of the breeze.

Within the grove their legs at last gave way,
and falling down the two became entwined.
A tangled mess of limbs the lovers lay,
unconscious for a moment, deaf and blind.

She wakened first, and so it was her gaze
that Jacob met emerging from his swoon.
And he was nourished by that tender blaze
as dreaming souls are suckled by the moon.

“Fate’s cheating me,” he whispered, “of my bride.
Love changed our fortunes once. Let it again!
Let’s run away, that death should be denied
and left to rob the loves of other men.”

“We cannot flee,” came Hannah’s soft reply,
“from something that can never be outrun.
Our fate is bound to follow where we fly.
The beast won’t rest until its war is won.

But by your hand the beast shall taste defeat,
for Zeraquel has dreamt your victory.
I do not think, my love, that you can cheat
my fortune or your own great destiny.

Your place is here. My place is at your side.
And love has made it so!” she reasoned now.
“And all the rest I’ll let our doom decide.”
And tenderly she kissed her lover’s brow.

And then he knew he could not turn her back,
nor shield her from the fire of Fate’s attack.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

12.

To Zeraquel the lovers soon returned.
He marked the changes wrought by their retreat.
In Jacob now a new acceptance burned,
and fear had fully faded in defeat.

They set off up the mountain’s open face.
And from its perch the West Wind watched them fly.
Towards the towering summit they did race,
without a trace of dragon in the sky.

At first they were assisted in their run,
for by a gentle breeze the three were blown.
Ahead a serpent twinkled in the sun;
or else a torrent twisting through the stone.

The breeze grew ever stronger as they went.
They reached the stream and there they had to halt,
for by that glinting scythe the slope was rent.
To reach the peak they had to cross its fault.

When Zeraquel had found a narrow place
to ford the stream as safely as they might,
towards the sky he turned his weathered face
to search its depths again for dragon-blight.

And there was not a blemish in the sky.
The gaping heavens could no secret hide.
The West Wind watched them closely from on high.
The breeze, which had been brisk, abruptly died.

He paused a moment there and softly sighed.
His sandals were bejeweled with torrent spray.
The strangled rapids were but three bounds wide,
and two beleaguered islands paved the way.

And Zeraquel leapt forth above the fray
and nimbly to the other side he skipped.
Then Jacob sprang, a mountain stag at play,
and safe across the savage waters slipped.

Now Hannah ran and from the bank did soar,
the rapids reaching out for her below.
And from its lofty perch the West Wind tore,
and right above the brook it dealt its blow.

And Hannah, falling, gave a startled cry
that silenced when the serpent snatched its prey.
Beneath her dress its icy tongue did pry,
and at her breasts it flicked in frenzied play.

It drew her down and scraped her on its bed,
with boulder-blows subdued her thrashing limbs.
Constrained within its frigid coils she sped
towards the worst of its most violent whims.

The wind announced its triumph with a howl,
and whistled through the mountains in delight
until their deepest caves began to growl
and guide the dragon down towards its fight.

And Zeraquel and Jacob saw her fall,
and desperately pursued her twisting flight
against a wind that had become a wall,
an avalanche of air with bone and bite.

And to their horror then they heard a shriek
that trumped the bully-barks of wind and cave.
And looking back they saw above the peak
the dragon looming, cresting as a wave.

And now the beast bore down upon its foes.
They saw it coming, streaking down the slope.
So strongly did the wind their flight oppose,
the stream itself was now their only hope.

So Jacob leapt, with Zeraquel behind,
and suddenly was hurtling down to Hell.
They tumbled where that serpent chose to wind,
and bought whatever doom it chose to sell.

They swam against its wrath with all their might,
to reach her and outstrip the dragon’s pace.
The serpent though kept Hannah out of sight,
so loath was it to let them win this race.

And Hannah was enslaved to its desire.
She rose and fell with every violent thrust.
And of its toy it would not quickly tire,
so wide and deep the wellspring of its lust.

The dragon let its talons touch the brook,
and warningly the serpent’s back did graze,
and soon its swiftest current overtook,
but not the crazy logic of its maze.

In many spots the rapids’ flow was sheer;
in others, horizontal through the stone.
Their inclination rarely straight and clear,
they tumbled with a purpose all their own.

The dragon grew impatient with the stream
and lashed its hectic waters with its flame.
But though it turned the serpent’s flesh to steam,
the flowing of its blood it could not tame.

And faster and faster the flotsam flew,
beholden to the serpent’s raging will.
And faster and faster it drew them through
its fury to the foaming of its kill.

And Hannah fell, abandoned to its force,
and heard a mighty rumbling up ahead.
And though she could not see its murd’rous source,
the image that it conjured, conjured dread.

And when its rage had peaked and thundered loud,
the serpent thrust its last and crumbling fell
as jism raining, coiling through a cloud,
and flung its ravaged victim down to Hell.

And thus she toppled from the mountainside,
an offering, a sacrificial maid,
that Hell’s dark lord should take her for a bride,
and in return should put away his blade.

And Jacob raced towards the mighty squall.
Ahead of him the rapids rushed the sky.
He found an angel’s hand before the fall
and then he closed his eyes, prepared to die.

The dragon sped around that final turn
and saw its quarry flying from the rim.
And brightly did its goaded fury burn,
accelerating forth beyond the brim.

And Zeraquel was as a hawk in flight.
Headlong and with an arrow’s speed he dove,
his hand to Jacob’s fastened talon-tight.
For sight of Hannah through the spray he strove.

And in the foam he glimpsed her, white on white,
and angled now that he should strike his mark.
The dragon’s flame their very heels did bite.
Their spirits’ flesh was bullwhipped by its bark.

As lightning through the mist the dragon fell,
yet could not close the distance to its prey,
as if some potent time-encrusted spell
had been intoned to hold its wrath at bay.

Its quarry pierced the churning of the foam.
And Hannah disappeared beneath a wave.
The dragon struck, went blasting through that dome;
the ceiling of the underworld did stave.

Its prey had darted back towards the ’fall
to hide behind the curtain of its might.
The dragon did the pounding waters maul,
yet found in them no pound of flesh to bite.

For all its wrath, the waters would not yield
a single morsel for the dragon’s feast.
Upon a sleek and narrow seat concealed,
the three were sheltered from the raging beast;

with Zeraquel between the other two
bedraggled, bruised and gasping stowaways.
In front of them the falls’ white legions flew
and dashed themselves to rainbow hues and haze.

But someone else was crouching on that ledge,
quite out of sight and close to Hannah’s back.
And now she sent her sliding off the edge
to join the legions in their loud attack.

And Zeraquel was quickly off the mark
and diving after her and reaching down.
And in the end, he stole her from the dark.
But not before the beast had pierced her gown.

And Jacob pulled her from the writhing deep
and noticed she was wincing now with pain.
And from a shallow scratch her blood did seep;
a scratch from which her very soul would drain.

And Zeraquel in fury looked around
and probed the murk and shadows with his gaze.
But Fortune would not let herself be found.
She would not take the blame for Hannah’s graze.

The dragon felt the loss of what she’d bought;
that drop of venom accident’ly caught.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

13.

The West Wind scoured the foothills for a sign.
In fitful gusts it sifted through the trees.
Its mounting disappointment made it whine,
and pangs of desperation made it wheeze.

It shook each branch and sniffed at every stone,
it smothered every valley with its breath,
yet found no smold’ring flesh nor blackened bone,
and in the air could taste no trace of death.

But when the moon was high it found the beast.
And then its pangs and disappointment ceased.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

14.

Upon the ledge they’d hunkered out of sight.
At dusk they’d moved and had no dragon met;
had washed ashore and by the moon’s first light
had found the woods and camped there cold and wet.

And he had held his lover till she slept;
her shiv’ring body with his own had warmed.
And over him a fitful sleep had crept,
and by its dreams his senses had been stormed.

In vain against those nightmares he had fought
with aching arms and legs that would not bend,
so muddled in his movement and his thought,
and certain that the fight would never end.

Yet end it did, and Jacob wakened now
and found his love beside him still asleep.
He put his hand upon her burning brow
and felt the flames within her buck and leap.

Her face was taut, her dress still dripping wet;
each slender hand, a tense and trembling fist.
About his lover now did Jacob fret,
her soul escaping, rising as a mist.

He looked around but could not see their friend.
He wondered why he’d left them there alone.
He needed him to help his lover mend.
He knew he could not do it on his own.

And so without the aid of Zeraquel,
he drew his lover close and held her tight
and battled hard her suffering to quell,
with love his only weapon for the fight.

And Hannah wakened now in his embrace.
And there were demons dancing in her eyes.
She howled at him in fear and scratched his face
as if to scrape away some foul disguise.

But Jacob’s love for her would not withdraw.
He held her till her fit had run its course.
And when again she knew the face she saw,
above her pain her voice rose faint and hoarse:

“I feel its talons tearing at my breast.
And death and all its demons plague my mind.
And I am dragged towards that final rest
so utterly alone and cold and blind.

Yet now I see your face, and such a prize
brings comfort at the very edge of night.
And I would hold the love within your eyes
and pass into the darkness by its light.”

And now her eyes were closed as if she slept,
her jaw clenched tight against the tide of pain.
And Jacob’s heart was sundered, and he wept.
And though his sorrow flowed, it would not drain.

He was condemned to watch his lover die,
bereft of hope and sitting helpless by.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

15.

By now the scattered maple trees had bled
and every animal could see its breath.
Those lands were pinched and parched and flecked with red,
by gentle hands laid out and dressed for death.

But Hope came stumbling through them, frail and thin;
a stricken waif, too stubborn though to die;
of broken limb, and cracked and blackened skin;
and blind, yet bright the light within its eye.

For is it not that timeless traveler’s way,
the world’s most bitter paths alone to tread
when those in need are drowning in dismay
and in the certainty that it is dead?

And so came Hope unseen at this late hour,
diminished in its strength but not its power.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

16.

Of a restless motion she was possessed,
a sapling racked by an inconstant gale.
For all he soothed, for all that he caressed,
in easing any pain did Jacob fail.

She was ablaze, her fever’s pitch so steep,
and vanished was the pause between each breath.
And still her blood incessantly did seep,
as broken-winged she spiraled round her death.

With clippings laden Zeraquel returned,
with moss and roots and leaves of dragon’s bane.
And using stones these pickings now he churned
and wrought a paste to counter Hannah’s pain.

Upon her swollen belly now he spread
the paste he’d purchased from the forest’s nurse.
And with a violent jerking of her head
she cried and woke, her pain now tenfold worse.

But Hannah found at last her lover’s eyes,
and dimly seemed their meaning to recall.
The recollection cured her of her cries,
and to that mem’ry now her soul did call:

“Our love hangs naked from the dragon’s jaws,
and so it dies, and dies so new and young.
Its lifeblood clotted on the dragon’s claws,
it dies, and dies with but its first verse sung.”

He countered her: “Our love will never die,
and nor shall we, for in our love we live!
The dragon’s deepest wish we shall deny!
The prize it covets most we shall not give!

For though our flesh indeed the beast may take,
your soul and mine the dragon shall not steal.
And love, the delicacy most at stake,
shall be a morsel missing from its meal.”

Her eyes were closed before his verse was done,
yet now his love seemed calmer than before.
And every breath more easily was won,
for Jacob’s words or else the other’s lore.

And on his back the other placed his hand,
his touch conveying so much more than speech.
And Jacob now began to understand,
as deep into his soul that hand did reach.

And Zeraquel explained the venom’s art:
the binding of its victim to its will,
the slow corruption of its victim’s heart,
the calling of its victim to the kill.

And Jacob set his belt and laces free
and joined them up and tied them round her wrist,
and tied the other end around a tree
to hinder her from keeping any tryst.

And Zeraquel leant back against a pine
and hid his face within his drooping hood.
And never was a shadow so benign;
had folds of night suggested so much good.

And Jacob saw that in his lover’s face
the moonlight’s alchemy had conjured pearls
where beads of sweat her suffering did trace;
had conjured silver streaks among her curls.

And bending down he kissed his lover’s brow,
then moved to rest his lips beside her ear.
And in his heart his love was steady now,
commanding for the moment grief and fear.

“Of you and me,” he whispered, “they shall say,
‘They lived upon the earth a thousand years.’
For in that age’s span of night and day
a love as bright as ours but once appears.”

He kissed her lips and settled by her side,
and watched his love with eyes awash yet wide.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

17.

Your belly’s tender baby-flesh is torn.
So you are stung. Your soul is marked as mine.
And you shall come to me before the morn,
and naked stand within this ring of pine.

Your fate is fixed. It cannot be reversed.
Your heart is mine and all your love is cursed.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

18.

Now Jacob strained against the weight of night
to watch his dying lover while she slept,
and hard against his own fatigue did fight
as through his mind its craven magic crept.

At length he made a bargain with his foe:
that for an instant he should close his eyes,
but in the very next his foe should go
and fresh-faced consciousness should be his prize.

And so he closed his eyes and was betrayed.
That sorcerer had never meant to leave.
It held him down till all his strength did fade
then of his thoughts strange tales began to weave.

Alas, it was the same with Zeraquel.
And thus his vanished watch was not relieved.
The dragon’s venom coursed and cast its spell
and hacked till Hannah’s heartstrings all were cleaved.

The dragon bays, for blood it begs the moon.
Its burning breath is lapping at my neck.
And it shall have my blood and have it soon.
My very soul the dragon’s tongue shall fleck.

And now she woke and silently did rise,
quite heedless of her wound and of her pain.
A greater power was silencing her cries,
and to its purpose did her purpose train.

She met her one restraint. She felt its bite,
and bared her teeth and broke it with her own.
She walked away into the waiting night.
The parting from her love did not bemoan.

The dragon’s voice is summoning me now,
its venom tight about me as a noose.
And I must go to it and naked bow
and beg for its worst blade to cut me loose.

She did not blink. Her face was ghostly still.
No mood disturbed that alabaster mask.
A puppet moving to her captor’s will,
exact obedience her final task.

She took its path. She harkened to its call.
And to a clearing’s edge at last she came.
Unbuttoning her dress she let it fall
and went to meet that welcome tongue of flame.

And in the clearing Hannah met its shape,
and those infernal eyes the beast possessed,
and suffered now a slow and soundless rape
as it devoured the soul it had undressed.

And at the end it ruled against its flame,
and let its mouth her spent soul’s essence claim.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

19.

When Zeraquel awoke it still was night.
He saw the severed leash at Jacob’s side.
He woke him with a hand pressed firm and tight
against his mouth to mute him if he cried.

And both of them were racked with guilt and grief.
And standing now they listened for a sign:
the dissonance of one small twig or leaf
within the symphony of oak and pine.

But hearing none the pair went running blind,
a panic fuelling Jacob’s furied flight.
In opposite directions they did wind,
and through the dark they cast their straining sight.

And Zeraquel made quickly for the ’fall
in case its noise should some foul crime disguise:
the music of the dragon’s murd’rous maul;
the soaring notes of Hannah’s pleading cries.

Her love had never run so fast before.
He did not feel the branches cut his face;
Of breath and strength possessed a boundless store,
yet none of it could let him win this race.

He bolted down the length of night’s long tail,
but of his lover Jacob found no trace.
And when the night’s resolve began to fail,
he spurred his own and quickened up his pace.

And in the gap between the night and day,
that no man’s land where love is wont to die,
to barbs of drab distraction fallen prey,
the bloodied summer dress did Jacob spy.

And on the instant Jacob ceased to fly,
compelling Time to lurch and give a pause.
He picked it up, caressed it with his eye,
and found it undisturbed by dragon claws.

He stumbled forward through the thinning wood
and broke into a clearing, mute and still,
and read the silence there and understood
that this was where the beast had made its kill.

He would have taken vengeance there and then,
have slaughtered twenty dragons for her sake,
but it had gone, had slithered to its den,
that he should face his grief alone and quake.

And he retreated to the ravaged plains,
the wasteland of his heart where love had bloomed,
and felt beneath his feet the dried bloodstains,
the embers of a love that had been doomed.

And there was such a searing pain in thought,
the compass of his spirit went awry.
With death and all its certainties he fought,
yet death grew surer still and would not die.

At length he was distracted from his fight,
and to the clearing’s conscience was released.
And at his feet he saw a twinkling light
that bridged the waning moon and blushing east.

That gentle light from grief did Jacob wrest,
and for an instant did his compass sway,
so mighty was the secret it possessed;
a light to make death’s shadow melt away.

He stooped and reached for it and took the ring,
the elven ring his love had lately worn.
Its very touch did some small comfort bring;
her death’s protest; the relic of her scorn.

He held the ring and pressed it to his heart,
and sank again, despite the relic’s art.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

20.

When Zeraquel had searched the riverside,
he scoured the meadows, brittled now and browned.
Among the mountains’ many roots he pried,
yet not the slightest trace of Hannah found.

At length he paused. The sun was sailing high.
He hung his head for shame at Hannah’s fate.
And indecision flickered in his eye:
to break the search and push ahead, or wait.

He cupped his hands about his mouth and cried,
and filled the open sky with Jacob’s name.
And in his voice the mountain gods replied,
in mocking echoes heavy-set with shame.

And so the mountain gods repelled his cry,
and let it ebb and unrequited die.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

21.

Beyond the clearing crooked Fortune stood
hunched over and as silent as a thief.
And through the latticework of limbs of wood
she watched the slow combustion of his grief,

and felt her own cacophony of pain,
the cruelest pain she’d known in all her years;
the worse for envy’s contrapuntal strain,
for even now she coveted his tears.

But when she heard the mountains call his name
and felt their plainsong’s pity for his plight,
her jealousy at last was cowed by shame
and with its foul twin treachery took flight.

They left her unrequited love behind,
and left their mistress fair again, and kind.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

22.

“So fair, indeed, so fair. Yet still so cruel.”
He muttered to himself upon the slope,
for all his wisdom now a mumbling fool,
his every movement fuelled by baseless hope.

So Zeraquel ascended to the sky,
towards the highest summit and most steep,
wherein the hallowed sword in state did lie
full swathed in runes and rich enchantments’ sleep.

He clambered to a ridge and now ahead
found Fortune seated on a boulder’s crown.
“Have you so soon forgotten,” Fortune said,
“what curses may be fashioned of my frown?”

He recognized the guilt in Fortune’s gaze.
She left her seat and to him now she came.
“And who, pray tell me, patterned all my ways,
and whittled flaws to every instinct maim?”

He nodded then. “My kin and I,” he said.
“And who revealed to me love’s darkest face?”
“My kin and I.” And now he bowed his head.
“And who most molded me to his embrace?”

And as she whispered this she raised her hand,
and turned his weathered face to meet her own.
“I did,” he said, “and well I understand
how love by jealousy is overthrown.”

And with these words he made to move away,
to gain the hallowed peak and sleeping blade.
But Fortune took his arm and made him stay.
“You cannot leave him helpless in the glade!”

And Zeraquel replied: “It must be so.
There’s nothing I can do to ease his plight.
I cannot force his loving from its woe,
nor force his fate by forcing him to fight.”

“Go down to him and hide him for a while,
or else the beast will find him there!” she cried.
And Zeraquel was quick to hide a smile,
and drew the silence out before he sighed.

“You know full well there’s nothing I can do.
There’s naught that in my mind I haven’t tried.
You’ve played your part, now he must play his too,
and playing it his destiny decide.”

And Zeraquel resumed his steep ascent,
and left Fair Fortune flushed the more with guilt.
Against the boulder’s calloused back she leant,
and silently did shake and weeping wilt.

And now the hope that fuelled him had a base,
which made him mumble less and spurred his pace.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

23.

He tarried in the clearing on his knees,
the daylight dripping slowly on his grief.
And Jacob’s thought was as a restless breeze
that wrestled with his mem’ry’s every leaf.

He saw his lover in the rev’rend’s room.
He saw his lover looking out to sea.
He saw his lover in the mountain’s womb,
and saw her writhing, shackled to a tree.

So many images becoming one,
for now he could not tease these dreams apart.
So many of his lover’s face, yet none
to press her lips to his and soothe his heart.

And though these flick’ring dreams no solace gave,
he clung to them in drowning’s last despair,
as if they’d lead him to his lover’s grave
and grant his wish to lie beside her there.

He did not wake to heed the mountains’ call,
the sounding of his name throughout the land,
nor did he waken to the whispered fall
of guilty Fortune’s footsteps close at hand.

His grief bore deeper through the trailing day;
more loudly did its lamentation sing.
Its wailing would have washed his soul away.
It drowned the gentler music of the ring.

But when the sun bore down upon the west
and set to its besieging of night’s tower,
he held the ring more tightly to his breast,
unconsciously petitioning its power.

The night’s black jacket closed about him tight,
and velvet clouds unfurled across the sky.
The moon was snuffed. The earth was robbed of light.
The devil loomed with naught to see him by.

The wind picked up and pulled at Jacob’s hair,
and cuffed the clotted dress at Jacob’s side,
and in the darkness slyly set its snare.
Its every gust did some foul purpose guide.

And now the night was shattered by a cry.
The beast had caught his scent upon the air.
It beat its leathern wings and rent the sky
and raced to reap a soul so sweet and fair.

And over him the dragon’s war-cry broke,
and buried deep in grief he felt its sting.
And in the reeling silence he awoke,
and heard at last the chaunting of the ring.

That music found his grief as some bare blade
and cut self-pity down in Hannah’s name;
so sweet the sound and one so unafraid
of night and of the dragon’s mighty flame.

In Hannah’s name that requiem was sung.
Around his soul its harmonies did weave.
They wound until his love’s last tear was wrung.
The sentence of his loss they did reprieve.

Upon a finger now he slipped the band.
He felt his senses straining at the night,
and heard quick footsteps falling close at hand,
and heard the beat of leathern wings in flight.

And from the shadows now she thrust her palm
and snatched the dress and swept it past his face,
and stood a moment motionless and calm,
before she leapt and through the glade did race.

And as a lion Jacob leapt as well,
and to the fading dress he gave pursuit.
Upon the clearing now the dragon fell,
but found it freshly plucked of all its fruit.

And on the fly Fair Fortune spun her ruse.
She held the dress aloft as hare to hound,
and hoped its scent the dragon would confuse
and would its lust for Jacob’s soul confound.

And after her the dragon wildly sped,
yet could not match the cunning of her pace.
The more the scent of Hannah’s bloodstains bled,
the more it hunted her in Jacob’s place.

Though Jacob fought he lost the frantic race,
and lost the bobbing trace of that red sail.
The night’s black maw devoured its blood and lace,
and left him running blind upon the trail.

Quite blind, and yet within his heart he knew
that in the night’s pursuit he’d been reborn.
And now he understood what he must do.
And death and every danger he did scorn.

His life was nothing next to what he’d lost:
a love he would avenge at any cost.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

24.

As Zeraquel approached the mountaintop
he had a premonition of his end.
The power of this stark warning made him stop,
and to the dusk a greater gloom did lend.

He arched his straining senses to the peak,
the shadow-land beneath him did survey.
But all the mountain range stood still and meek
and mute as it received the sun’s last ray.

And then he scaled the summit’s granite wall.
’Twas slow and perilous, so smooth and sheer;
all toes and fingers, spider-like his crawl.
At last his gaze the summit’s brow did clear.

And now against the gloaming western sky
he saw in bold relief the ancient tomb.
The looming silhouette disturbed his eye
and sharpened his awakened sense of doom.

For it was taller than his memory,
though many years had passed since he’d been here.
The roof had some irregularity
that worried him and amplified his fear.

He clambered up and then he crouched quite still.
He watched the tomb not twenty yards away.
And nothing stirred save night to doom distill,
but this false peace his fear did not allay.

And just before the darkness held full sway,
towards the silhouette he slowly stepped,
towards the tomb wherein a warrior lay
and his enchanted secret safely kept.

The ancient wall contained but one small gap.
He reached it and he stooped to pass inside.
And thus he walked into the devil’s trap:
the giant’s pincer waiting, open wide.

The pincer closed, and round his chest it snapped.
It would have cut a mortal man in half.
And by the sudden blow his strength was sapped,
but still he freed the hand that held his staff.

And he was ready for the second blow,
the other pincer striking from the right.
And overhead he saw a shadow grow:
the scorpion’s tail advancing with the night.

And now it struck, and as a whip it flew,
and at the blur of it he blindly swung.
The giant’s needle ran his staff right through
and stuck within the willow it had stung.

And Zeraquel refused to give it back,
however fiercely the monster fought
and with its empty pincer did attack
and pummel what its sister claw had caught.

It beat its foe against the summit’s stone
and scraped him on the boulders of the wall,
and battled now to break his every bone
that round his soul he should in ruins fall.

And Zeraquel was buckling to its maul.
But when he heard the dragon’s distant cry
his spirit leapt as to a clarion call,
unleashing fire and letting fury fly.

And muffled by the velvet void of night
the duel between the two of them played on.
They were acquainted with each other’s might,
for they had dueled before in days long gone;

when youth’s sweet innocence had been betrayed,
and monsters out of angels had been made.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

25.

Since nightfall Jacob hadn’t ceased to run,
his purpose hadn’t waned, had not grown weak.
At dawn the work of that long night was done,
and Jacob crawled at last on to the peak.

And getting up he stumbled into Hell,
or so it seemed to him when first he saw
the fate that had awaited Zeraquel
and trapped his flesh within its monstrous claw.

And Jacob feared that Zeraquel was dead,
so still and bloody, pinioned to the ground.
He darted for the bouldered wall ahead
and quickly now the narrow entrance found.

And through he went, and came into a room
that glowed with what it gleaned of dawn’s first light.
And there before him stood the ancient tomb,
its mighty secret safely out of sight.

The centuries had spun a heavy shroud.
And now he bent and blew the years away.
And peering through the glitter-gleaming cloud,
he saw where the enchanted secret lay.

Laid out upon a hero cast in stone,
a simple scabbard all its power concealed.
Yet Jacob felt that power and felt his own
and knew they were as one for him to wield.

“I am not worthy, but the sun is up
and we must go to war!” So Jacob spoke.
And now his hand the beveled hilt did cup,
and at his touch the sleeping sword awoke.

And Jacob bore it out into the light
and drew the hallowed blade and held it high.
And in his hand its majesty shone bright:
a second sun reborn to rule the sky.

And now he ran to rescue Zeraquel.
He dove to miss the empty pincer’s sweep.
He raised his blade and chose his target well
and through the giant’s shell he thrust it deep.

The monster registered its raw surprise
with an almighty shudd’ring of its meat.
It did not cry, nor shift its soulless eyes.
Lopsidedly it stuttered a retreat.

And Zeraquel, still clamped within its claw,
was dragged in jerks across the peak’s bald pate.
And quickly Jacob did his blade withdraw,
and struck again before it was too late.

The riven monster toppled from the peak,
but left behind its claw and kin as well;
no more its lord’s malevolence to wreak,
or summer in the sultry climes of Hell.

Now Jacob went to Zeraquel and knelt
and grasped the claw and did its bars retract.
And as for any signs of life he felt,
he marveled that his chest was still intact.

And when at length he opened up his eyes,
their light his debt of gratitude repaid.
And Jacob took his arm and helped him rise,
and then he sheathed the splendor of his blade.

There were so many questions in his heart.
But now they heard the dragon’s piercing cry.
And from the hallowed peak they did depart
as death came hurtling downward through the sky.

The dawn was done. The day lay open wide.
And woken doom was bound at Jacob’s side.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

26.

The time was not yet come to stand and fight.
They fled, but speed for now was trumped by care.
Great cliffs and winding gullies slowed their flight
and often left them naked to its stare.

It came for them, the devil’s fiery blade.
Its fury scorched the canvas of the sky.
The dragon rode the West Wind in its raid,
a devil’s hatred blazing in its eye.

The dragon lunged, for lightning speed it strove.
Above the hallowed mountain now it came.
It dipped its snout and vertically it dove,
and struck the peak engulfing it in flame.

And down along the mountain’s spine it flew
towards its quarry’s fraught and halting flight.
And faster now the wind beneath it blew,
and whistled loud and bellowed with delight.

The dragon’s quarry fled as best they could,
but still they floundered, hopelessly exposed,
still far above the valley and the wood.
The jaws of Fate, it seemed, had nearly closed.

Yet from the wood there came a streak of light.
And now they saw a charging pearly steed.
The mountain could not match the stallion’s might.
No brook or boulder’s bluff could break its speed.

And loathing flared within the devil’s beast.
It howled with rage to see that pearly horn.
It knew that it was come to steal its feast,
for well it knew what moved the unicorn.

The West Wind’s fury could not be contained.
It swept ahead to break the stallion’s stride.
But though against its pearly flanks it strained,
its bluster could but brush its gleaming hide.

The stallion was the first to claim its prey.
They grasped its mane and leapt onto its back,
then turned towards the wood and rode away,
the dragon pressing close with its attack.

And over shale and scree its quarry rode.
And at the stallion’s tail the dragon lashed,
yet could not catch nor claim its scented load,
as on towards the forest’s fringe it dashed.

And Jacob thrilled to meet the wood’s embrace,
to weave among its evergreens again.
And swifter now the stallion seemed to race,
for well it knew the windings of the glen.

And some great power awakened to their plight.
And every leaf and bough relayed the word.
And whispers rippled faster than their flight,
and reached the forest’s heart, and there were heard.

The devil’s slave would not give up the chase.
It held their scent and every fleeting sight.
And though for now it could not match their pace,
it still could glean the bearings of their flight.

To noon the stallion bore them, and beyond.
And undiminished was the stallion’s speed,
its magic wrought by some celestial wand
and summoned at this hour of greatest need.

And nearer to the forest’s heart it drew,
where dreams and misty secrets did abound;
where ancient boughs as giant guardians grew
and with their knuckles cobbled all the ground.

And Jacob gazed in wonder at the scene,
the solemn grace of trees he could not name,
great wardens clad in cloaks of brown and green,
set there to challenge whomsoever came.

Now soft upon a cloud of moss they flew,
with sentries looming round them by the score.
They galloped on between the ranks and through,
and deep into the forest’s heart did bore.

And Jacob saw great lips and nostrils too,
a blur beside him as he galloped by,
and mangled mouths which silent warnings blew,
and many a distorted, leering eye.

But soon the boughs became so densely set,
they forced the unicorn to halt its run.
They hemmed its withers in and made it fret
and whinny for its freedom to be won.

The forest’s first-born boughs had barred the way.
They stood as judges pondering a case.
And slowly did their ivied branches sway,
revealing here and there a creviced face.

The dragon, which had fallen far behind,
was gaining now upon its quarry’s scent.
No matter that its talons hunted blind,
with souls so sweet directing their descent.

And Jacob turned to look at Zeraquel
and found him glazed, engaged in silent speech.
And Jacob felt the brooding silence swell,
and for the hallowed hilt his hand did reach.

“You were warriors once in the earth’s first war;
gave shelter to the elves when that night fell.
We come to you as those who came before.
Like them we flee the scorching wrath of Hell.”

“‘Warriors,’ you call us! ‘In the earth’s first war!’
We were the garden where the armies sparred.
It was our roots those blades and talons tore.
You shall not pass! The way ahead is barred.”

“You sheltered us, and death was your return.
Yet with your aid we beat the devil back.
Now once again his slave is come to burn,
to set sweet spirits smold’ring, leath’ry black.”

“Yes, it has come. And it shall go again.
But first you bring its fury to our door!
The way has long been closed to elves and men.
We see no armies here. We see no war.”

“You cover up you eyes to make them blind!
You know the truth, yet from the truth you hide!
Now mark this boy, and pity all his kind
whose fate is yours this instant to decide!

Yes, mark the boy and mark what he shall wield!
And mark the spirit blazing in his eyes!
That spirit is the army you must shield.
The enemy approaches. Hear its cries!”

And Jacob drew his blade and thrust it high
and sent a shimm’ring through the forest’s heart.
The judges paused and then they seemed to sigh
before they drew their mighty limbs apart.

And through the branches now the dragon tore,
its blazing muzzle lunging for their scent.
The stallion leapt to hear the hunter’s roar
and windswept through the open door it went.

That door was shut and locked behind its tail,
and thus the judges kept the beast at bay.
They set their boughs about it as a jail,
for they had ruled in favor of its prey.

And from that jail the dragon’s wrath did fly.
Again the West Wind’s bucking flanks it found.
Upon the forest’s heart it cast its eye,
and cast as well for quarry-scent and sound.

But from the forest’s heart it gleaned no clue,
so safe among its secrets were they stowed.
And rendered deaf and blind, its fury grew
until it brimmed and boiling overflowed.

And down upon the wood its wrath did fall.
And at its touch the forest’s heart did choke.
It set among the boughs a fiery squall
that turned their meat and memories to smoke.

Their ivied limbs were crisp and autumn-dry,
and hungrily the dragon’s fury fed.
Now faster than the wind the flames did fly
and set the forest’s lifeblood flowing red.

The wood was tortured thus and urged to yield,
yet it would not surrender to that flame.
And for the Son of Light it was a shield,
however many boughs the blaze did claim.

And so the dragon’s vitriol did vent
and through the forest’s oldest heartstrings tear.
The stench of death was now the only scent,
contagion running rampant through the air.

The sounds of death as well: the roar and wheeze
of steaming sap blown out of beetle-holes,
the crack of spines, the dying gasps of trees,
the hissing of their dissipating souls.

And Jacob heard the chant of Zeraquel.
He did not know the tongue yet he could taste
the sense of every stanza of his spell:
a plea in hope’s sweet poetry for haste.

And faster then the stallion bore its load
through smoke and through the talon-grip of fire,
and did not falter once upon that road,
and of its burden never seemed to tire.

At length the steed outran the dragon’s spite,
and left behind the chaos of its wrath.
And now the wood was swathed again in night,
they found themselves upon a moonlit path.

That silver ribbon led them to a home,
a heap of fallen trees, a beaver’s dam
that Fate had tricked in trading lake for loam
and set within the clearing as a sham.

And Jacob entered as the other’s guest,
to sup with him awhile, and then to rest.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

27.

And something else had found that moonlit trail,
had cast a shadow on its silver thread;
had watched them pass and followed on their tail,
and thus towards the dam had set its tread.

And by that dam the shadow was not fooled,
for in the ways of angels it was schooled.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

28.

He sat with him and shared the simple meal,
with countless thoughts competing for a say.
And in the quiet there his mind did reel,
until at last a single thought held sway:

a memory of his companion’s might.
And Jacob watched the other, filled with awe
that he’d survived that monstrous pincer’s bite;
a wonderment the other clearly saw.

“A bruise but nothing broken, thanks to you.”
And Zeraquel was smiling with his eyes.
He poured them both his elderberry brew,
and punctuated sips with sated sighs.

“Then you must be the strongest man on earth!”
“The weakest too!” shot Zeraquel’s reply.
“So weak, my strength is but of little worth,
and fails before the dragon’s furied cry.

A different strength shall be the dragon’s bane:
the strength of men. And none of that have I!
Before the beast my powers of killing wane.
By human hands alone may dragons die.”

And Jacob watched him as he sipped again,
and tried to read the mysteries of his eye.
“But if, as you just said, you’re not of men,
Then who… or what…” And here his words ran dry.

“‘Archangel’ is a title given me.”
And at these words his list’ner turned away.
And Zeraquel was left to scratch his knee.
And neither of them knew what next to say.

A heavy silence fell. Their features froze.
And Jacob fought his foolishness to hide,
and tried to quench the question that arose
and begged until it could not be denied.

And so it surfaced in a blushing burst.
“My wings?” cried Zeraquel, and how he smiled!
“With such distorted truths your kind is cursed,
its hist’ries laced with fancies false and wild!

I’m not a bird!” And now he bared his arms
and beat the air, and Jacob laughed out loud,
succumbing to the other’s flightless charms.
And vanquished was the silence and its shroud.

And they returned to eating with delight,
and for a moment let foreboding go.
And friendship flowed and soothed the fearful night,
and Time ran wide and deep and sweetly slow.

Outside the angel’s den the stallion stirred,
ears pricked and nostrils flared, its eyes concerned.
A single footstep had the stallion heard.
It wheeled about, a worried circle turned.

A single footstep falling in the night,
yet one to foster elemental fright.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

29.

And Hope stood still and stiff against a bough,
and black despite the dappled silver light,
too weak to move and fading quickly now,
its spirit parched and starving in the night.

Yet Hope it was, and living still at least,
and brimming still with hatred for the beast.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

30.

They heard the stallion neighing now with fear,
and quickly they were out and at its side.
And through the dappled shadows they did peer
for sight of what the darkness strove to hide.

But all was silent there, and dark and still.
And Zeraquel caressed the stallion’s neck
and spoke to it and soothed with such a skill
that nothing more that night its peace would wreck.

They left the steed and went inside again.
And when their meal was done and put away
they moved into a corner of the den
which housed a chest wherein old weapons lay.

And Zeraquel unlocked the wood-wormed chest
and took from it a spear and helm and shield.
Of all his store, he judged these three the best
for such a Son to bear and wear and wield.

He brought these treasures closer to the light,
and handed them to Jacob one by one.
“This helm shall keep you focused through the fight.
And through the dragon’s wrath this point shall run.”

And this shall stand between you and your end.
The dragon’s flame shall set ablaze its might.
The chosen one alone it shall defend,
its potency reserved for that one’s plight.”

And Jacob took the shield and he beheld
a pair of eyes beneath the brassy sheen.
And at its touch his strength and courage swelled
and crushed what little doubt he’d felt between.

“Yes, trust in this and in the hallowed blade.
But Jacob, trust yourself above these things.
For of a greater magic are you made,
a magic that would weave an angel’s wings.

The morrow’s scent will be of battle musk,
and as a life will seem the morrow’s length.
The waning sun will tarry at the dusk
and with the waxing moon will mark your strength.

And then perhaps they’ll witness a defeat;
the letting of the devil’s servant’s blood.
And then the grateful earth shall kiss your feet,
and over it forgotten joy shall flood.

But hush, my prattling’s robbing you of rest,
and when you need it more than any man!
Before this night is buried in the west,
lie down awhile and get what sleep you can.”

And Zeraquel kept watch while Jacob slept,
while silently the craving morrow crept.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

31.

She’d found him leaning back against a tree.
She’d put the flask she carried to his lips
and watched the liquid moonlight trickle free
before he’d come to life and taken sips.

And she had wept for joy and sweet relief
before she’d seen his scarred and blackened state.
And then her tears had fallen from her grief,
and from an understanding of his fate.

And now she watched him slowly limp away,
to seek with sightless eyes the battle’s fray.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

32.

And Jacob rose and dressed at dawn’s first light,
clear-headed from those precious hours of rest.
And Zeraquel, who’d watched him though the night,
was sleeping now, his chin upon his chest.

He did not wake him up to say goodbye,
but left the angel’s den without a sound.
He found the pearly stallion standing by,
and through its silver mane his fingers wound.

He mounted it and slowly moved away,
but at the clearing’s edge his steed did rear.
It boxed the air and gave a piercing neigh
and would not go another yard for fear.

And from the forest now a demon swept
to stand in front of them and block the way;
the devil’s secret that the night had kept
and left to wreak its havoc on the day.

A hood of swirling shadows hid his face,
but could not quench his black eyes’ crimson light.
The demon raised his adamantine mace
and brought its malice down with all his might.

But in that moment Zeraquel appeared,
and with a staff he checked the demon’s blow.
And for an instant thus the way was cleared,
and now the stallion leapt as bolt from bow.

The demon would have turned to give them chase,
but Zeraquel was locked upon his foe
and in his movements married to his mace,
determined not to let the demon go.

The night’s assassin thus was held at bay
upon the brink of dawn on this last day.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

33.

Now swiftly through the forest Fortune flew,
a flaccid flask of leather in her hand.
And at her back the West Wind gusting blew
to clear the smoke that blanketed the land.

It barely noticed Fortune’s bobbing head,
so busy was the bully with its task.
It did not wonder whither Fortune led,
nor why she held that empty leather flask.

And faster and faster she spun her flight.
And faster too the wind came on behind,
and brought to blowing all its brutal might,
And by its raging lust was rendered blind.

Now Fortune stopped and held the flask up high.
The West Wind hurtled onward as before
and had no time to turn, so could but fly
straight through the leather dungeon’s open door.

And how that wrinkled leather flask did swell!
The tyrant’s breath and bellows it did snare.
And when the flask was full, she corked it well
and threw the great balloon into the air.

She did not stay to hear its muffled cry
or watch its fading passage through the sky.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

34.

The stallion galloped onward through the glade,
and all the forest bowed before the one
possessed of such a steed and such a blade,
and bearing all the blessings of the sun.

And we have held a hero in our hand,
have cupped his naked soul and weighed its worth,
and we shall sing his praise throughout the land,
and news of him shall spread throughout the earth.

And golden was the helmet that he wore.
And golden was the glinting of his spear.
And so it was that Jacob rode to war
without the slightest trace of doubt or fear.

The drums of war shall beat, its trumpets blast,
and he shall fight and be the darkling’s bane.
A Son of Light is come again at last
and by his might we deem the night shall wane.

At sight of him that bracing autumn morn
the last of all the forest’s leaves were shed;
the remnant of the raiment it had worn
since Spring had come and virgin green had bled.

Against a pearly flank his scabbard lay.
It rattled there, its secret safe abed;
No glimmer of its glory did betray,
its leather wan and worn, and blunt as lead.

Upon his arm, his left, he wore the shield,
and buried deep within its sheen the gaze
that hungered with a fury for the field
on which it would at last be set ablaze.

And as the stallion neared the battle plain,
a mist came slowly rising from the trail,
as silver as the stallion’s silken mane,
and wrapped the steed and rider in a veil.

They galloped on within the mist’s embrace.
And faster beat the drum of Jacob’s heart.
And faster was the stallion’s windswept pace,
as if the mist did mighty wings impart.

And Jacob now could smell the dragon’s scent,
and taste as well the acid swill of smoke.
The acrid cloud still greater cover leant,
but clawed at Jacob’s lungs that he should choke.

Yet such discomfort only fuelled his strength.
He did not cough nor utter any sound.
He spurred his stallion’s stride to greater length.
Its pearly hooves now barely touched the ground.

And then the stallion suddenly did halt,
and Jacob and his fortunes ceased to fly.
And they were sealed within a timeless vault,
suspended in a cloud within the sky.

And floating there, enswathed in milk-white fleece,
upon the silence did their senses feast.
And battle-primed by that exquisite peace,
they waited for the coming of the beast.

And even now the dragon’s wrath did loom
above the mist that masked that field of doom.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

35.

He twisted from the notched and rune-rimmed mace,
and tumbled to avoid its lethal bite.
And still he kept the demon from the chase
and bound him to an elemental fight.

And battling they were as the night and day,
with each the other spirit’s missing half;
as black and white, admitting not of gray;
a mace of steel against a wooden staff.

And though he could not see the other’s face,
he knew his name, had known it all his life.
For they were of the same accursed race,
the few who’d come and first had fathered strife.

“No Armoros, the way is barred!” he cried.
“You shall not have the freedom of the glade!
The chosen rides and shall not be denied
in meting out the justice of his blade.”

And when his kin responded to his cry,
his voice was of the sound of hissing steam:
“The way is only barred until you die.
And when was Justice more than but a dream?”

And for his brother’s death he strove the more
in this, the latest battle of their war.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

36.

It knew that some great doom was due this day.
It knew the truth the coiling mist concealed.
And now the dragon dove to claim its prey
and pierced the smoke that cloaked the battlefield.

And Jacob and his stallion stood as one
and heard the dragon’s fury through the veil,
as perilously close its rage was spun
of talons, teeth and tip-envenomed tail.

And motionless and tautly battle-strung,
they waited for the welcome veil to rise.
But tightly round the two the vapors clung,
quite disinclined so soon to show their prize.

And how the dragon screeched as round it flew!
Its piercing cry the silence did devour,
yet hungered more, the more its fury grew,
The more its hidden quarry snubbed its power.

How sweet and strong the scent of Jacob’s soul!
It drove the dragon wild, its fury stoked.
But unrequited fury took its toll,
and slowly on its noxious fumes it choked.

And when its roar had dwindled to a hum,
it ceased its spinning, panting, blind and crazed.
And then the vapors deemed the moment come,
and slowly they were teased apart and raised.

And from his stallion Jacob nearly fell,
so swiftly did it leap to the attack.
He sped towards the champion of Hell,
towards the slow unveiling of its back.

And silently he swept across the field.
And swift upon his mighty foe he came.
And as he neared its bulk he raised his shield
and leveled out his spear and took his aim.

For through the thinning vapors now he saw
a chink through which the light might find the dark.
He found within the dragon’s mail a flaw:
a missing scale. And this would be his mark.

But when the remnant vapors slipped away
and laid the dragon bare before his eyes,
he felt the sudden stirrings of dismay,
belittled and benighted by its size.

And feeling so, he could not pierce its hide.
His weapon struck and harmlessly did glance.
The dragon’s armor turned its point aside,
and thus denied its foe the spoils of chance.

The weapon missed the dragon’s missing link.
Its impact made the mighty stallion rear
and set its rider swaying on the brink,
and shook his soul and robbed him of his spear.

And as the spear went spinning to the ground,
the dragon marked the moment with a cry.
And swiftly now the dragon spun around
and fixed the reeling rider with its eye.

An emerald eye, and one commanding fear.
Yet Jacob trembled not before its gaze.
No knight had ever lived who’d come this near,
no knight indeed in all the dragon’s days.

And now its pupils, wide with shock, did close;
about the speck of man constricted tight.
And they interrogated Jacob’s pose,
and gleaned what clues they could to gauge his might.

The length of time the dragon gave to thought,
as then it did its challenger inspect,
was more than any man had ever bought.
And thus it measured out its loath respect.

Though Jacob felt as if his heart might fail,
he held the dragon’s gaze and would not yield.
And thus he did not see the lashing tail,
nor see the venom’d barb that struck his shield

and tossed it with its bearer in the air,
and stained its sheen as black as ebony,
but not its eyes. It did not stain the stare
that dared its foe to set its fury free.

When Jacob hit the ground he made to rise,
but fell again, still reeling from the blow.
The dragon cried and, narrowing its eyes,
it bared its fangs and lunged towards its foe,

and would have flayed the folly of the knight
had not his silver steed, the unicorn,
have leapt just then possessed of moon-wrought might
and pierced the dragon’s belly with its horn.

The dragon howled, retreating to the sky,
and from its belly plucked the buried thorn.
And holding to a throat and pearly thigh,
its talons tore apart the unicorn.

And as its steaming meat bestrewed the ground,
its rider rose again and drew his blade.
And naked to its light new strength he found.
And now a solemn pact with death he made.

And when the butcher’s work was through it fell
and hovered just above the weapon’s tip.
And Jacob traced a potent warding spell,
as through the air his circling blade did slip.

The dragon sensed its power and chose to test.
A talon thrust. The sword at once replied.
It thrust again, together with the rest,
and cleanly through the first the sword did glide.

This severance did such a rage provoke!
A rage the dragon’s wounded pride did fan.
The dragon’s nostrils flared and issued smoke,
and then its fire shot forth, and Jacob ran.

The dragon’s fury though outstripped his flight,
and found the shield he held above his head.
And with its fire it felled the Son of Light,
and turned his blackened shield to molten red.

And now, as from a soul at last fulfilled,
there issued from the molten shield a cry.
And from its bubbling ore its secret spilled,
and spread its crimson wings and found the sky.

And with its fury’s freedom freshly bought
it fell upon its foe with brutal force.
And high above the field the dragons fought.
And all the forest watched the battle’s course.

This duel had at the dawn of Time been set,
with good and evil sucking still the breast.
They’d shared a caul, yet never had they met,
their natures as opposed as east and west.

The ages had preserved them for this fight,
and now was come the long-appointed hour.
And in their battling battled wrong and right,
the two of them unparalleled in power.

Their smoke and writhing bodies blocked the sun
and brought to all below an early night.
And thus it seemed at first that Death had won
by vanquishing the source of living’s light.

But soon their flames as shooting stars did run
and set the depths of darkness blazing bright.
The barrage proved the battle far from done,
the dragons to be balanced in their might.

And Jacob lay forgotten far below,
quite blind to all the horrors of the night,
the taper of his spirit burning low
within a frame the flames had roasted white.

And Jacob’s sword lay sleeping at his side,
bedecked in flecks of blood the flames had dried.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

37.

So tightly was he locked upon his foe,
he failed to note, at first, the change in light,
the absence of the Sun God’s golden glow,
the sudden gloaming heralding the night.

But when he did, his strength was magnified,
for there was hope in what he thought it meant.
His foe was quite convinced it signified
the spirit of the Son of Light was spent.

So both of them were spurred and charged anew,
and faster now the staff and mace were swung.
And from the bloody loam the angels flew,
and high above the wood their war-cries rung.

And they became a blur of battle zest,
a blazing beacon wrought of killing light.
And neither brother could his brother best
although he battled now with all his might,

until the demon’s mace came thund’ring down
and broke the other’s wooden staff in twain.
And then it seemed the day would surely drown
and cede to darkness doomed to never wane.

But then they heard the echoes of a fight,
and in the noise two voices they discerned:
a pair of dragons dueling in the night.
And from his brother then the demon turned,

and hurried to his master’s servant’s aid
to smite the beast that dared to face its wrath.
But Zeraquel shot forth above the glade,
and hurtled past his foe and blocked his path.

And with his shortened stave he met a blow
and matched the mace’s fury pound for pound.
And then he threw his arms around his foe,
and bound the brothers sped towards the ground.

And many boughs were broken as they fell,
but not their hatred, old and hard as Hell.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

38.

The dragons’ was the brighter blaze by far,
and now their flames had full engulfed their fight;
in that unnatural night the only star
to cast upon the worried world some light.

The dragons in the firmament did duel.
They battled fang to fang and tail to tail
to win the right eternally to rule;
their tonnage tossed as feathers in a gale.

But one of them the more of killing knew,
had honed its skills through years in murder spent.
Its crimson foe more virginally flew,
with centuries of passion tightly pent.

And so, although it had been wounded twice,
the devil’s slave could more than hold its own.
Its talons through the crimson scales did slice
and flexing delve beneath for flesh and bone.

The day, or else the night, wore swiftly on
and bore the warring of the dragon kin.
With every hour their star less brightly shone.
Their fury drained its fire and fuel within,

but weakened not the dragons’ piercing cries
that carried through the wood and further still,
and found the fallen man and bade him rise,
and needled at his soul and scraped his will.

Yet Jacob did not heed the sounds of war.
A different music wakened him at length.
A fanfare from the elven ring he wore
cut short his swoon and gave him back his strength.

It made him first reclaim his hallowed blade
and then reclaim the cool and vacant shield.
So sweet the song that carried to the glade!
He could but listen, lying on the field.

And looking for the moon, the star he found
and in it glimpsed the chaos of a fight.
And seeing it, he heard the screeching sound
and knew it as the source of such a night.

And as he watched, the starlight swiftly waned.
And lower in the sky an orb appeared.
Against the pall of smoke its brilliance strained.
And then the star of dragons disappeared.

Yet still they battled on, bereft of fire.
And both were crimson now with blood and flesh.
But they were not bereft of any ire.
The dragons in their fury still were fresh.

And Jacob felt the dragons’ battle bend,
and sensed the dreadful looming of defeat.
His heart was pounding now towards the end,
and he was at the mercy of its beat.

He rose and held his shield and weapon tight
and kept his steady gaze upon the sky,
and saw the final moments of the fight,
and heard the crimson dragon’s desperate cry.

And whether from a lapse that ran too long
as Fortune gazed upon the risen knight,
or Fate’s determined favoring of wrong,
the devil’s slave now dealt a lethal bite.

And straight to earth the crimson dragon flew.
The victor followed closely where it fell
and lunged its last and bit its neck right through,
and signaled thus the victory for Hell,

and cried the news aloud to all the earth,
its talons goring at the severed head.
And in its howling was a murd’rous mirth.
And as it howled from countless wounds it bled.

A bias in the heaving of its chest;
a leg foreshortened, shriveled and forlorn;
a pair of talons jutting from its breast;
the mainsail of a wing in tatters torn.

The battle-weary sky began to clear.
The west’ring sun suffused the haze with gold.
Majestically did Nature reappear,
and by her beauty blood and battle scold.

But there was beauty too in Jacob’s blade
as it was borne across the bloody plain.
At sight of it the dragon grew afraid.
Its wailings of supremacy did wane.

And rearing to the fullness of its height,
it fixed him with the emerald of its gaze.
It watched the knight approaching, ghostly white,
and wondered at his weapon’s golden blaze.

The knight at first had stumbled. Now he ran.
And in his mind he heard the dragon speak.
And searing was its voice: “Who are you, man?
You shall not live to garner what you seek.”

And Jacob answered not but held his line,
and heard again the voice within his mind:
“The essence of your soul shall soon be mine,
but first my tongue shall revel in its rind.

And doubtless it will please me to compare
the taste of yours with one I lately plucked,
when I had laid her naked body bare
and slowly on her tender soul had sucked.”

He heard the words but would not let them sting.
The mention of his lover spurred his will.
And mindful of the music of the ring,
he sped towards his quarry and his kill.

And when he reached its range the tail was flung.
He saw it though and he was quick to roll,
and as it passed above him Jacob swung
and severed it and all its venom stole.

And at the dragon then did Jacob fly,
at one who towered above him, thrice as tall.
And with the wounded sun set soon to die,
upon the Son of Light the beast did fall.

The dragon sent its smoke, bereft of flame;
of centuries of fire, the spewing dregs.
And through the stinging rain its talons came
and lunged at Jacob’s arms and at his legs.

And through his mind the dragon delving went,
to find the treasure buried in that ground.
It sought his spirit, guided by its scent,
but rage was all its delving malice found.

And Jacob’s sword gave amply in return.
Though blind, he swung with brutal strength and speed.
And thus the dragon’s might did Jacob spurn.
And on the dragon’s rage, his own did feed.

And fury now was all that Jacob knew,
a fury spawned of more than dragon-seed.
And in the heat of war that fury grew
and filled his every fiber with its need.

And Jacob fought a multitude of foes,
the sum of all the villains of his days.
And now above the plain a goddess rose,
a giant moon that red with blood did blaze.

“Who are you?” rasped the dragon’s voice again.
“Who bound you to another people’s fate?
Who used your love to lure me back to men,
whom I had not seen fit to flay of late?”

Again he gave the dragon no reply,
but swung his blade still harder at his foe,
determined that the murderer should die,
determined now to strike the killing blow.

But Jacob was a man, however brave,
and limited in might as much as age,
and weaker than the devil’s wounded slave,
and now the dragon toppled Jacob’s rage.

But as he fell, before he hit the ground,
the bellow of a challenge pierced the air,
and forced the devil’s slave to wheel around
and meet a blackened figure’s sightless stare.

And Jacob thus was saved from certain death
and given time to clear his muddled head.
And when he’d found his feet and caught his breath,
he recognized a friend he’d thought was dead.

For though the face was burnt, its sockets bare,
he knew that it was Memnon standing there.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

39.

He’d passed through fire and hither he had come.
He’d risen from the embers of his kin,
his body black and charred, its leather numb,
but not the soul that suffered so within.

And Memnon’s eyes had melted in the fire,
and so he’d stumbled blindly through the gloom,
with nothing but his spirit’s one desire
to lead him to his long-appointed doom.

His spirit’s one desire, and something more
he’d heard above the dragons’ furied cries.
The elven ring had summoned him to war,
had led him to the field and to his prize.

And he had called his challenge to the beast.
His words had pierced the raging battle’s fray.
“What ails you, worm? Are you afraid to feast?
Afraid to claim the carcass of your prey?”

And he himself had feared he’d come too late,
but then he’d heard the shifting of its weight
and known that it had nibbled at his bait
and made him now the object of its hate.

“I have no need of sight! I smell your fear,
the fetor of your guilt and rank disgrace!
What would your master say, if he should hear
that you had spared a member of my race?”

He heard it edge towards him. “Courage, worm!
To swallow such as me you must be brave.
I swear that I shall struggle not, nor squirm,
nor utter aught to fright so frail a slave!

What holds you back? What stays your matchless might?
Devour me worm! Or else confess you’ve turned!
Admit you’ve left the darkness for the light,
and I shall quit this field of battle, spurned.”

And now he heard the baited dragon hiss,
and heard the steady beating of its tread.
And he was pleased, for he had come for this;
to give the pain he’d lose when he was dead.

But now his doom was threatened with a cry,
a stark command, as Jacob shouted “No!”
“You’ll have your turn, my friend,” was his reply,
“but mine is come and gladly shall I go!”

And Jacob’s cries of protest louder grew,
yet still the dragon moved towards the bait.
And Memnon readied now for what he’d do.
He gripped the dagger’s hilt that hung in wait.

And Jacob ran towards the dragon’s back
and reached it as the dragon dipped its snout
and bared its fangs and lunged in its attack
and Memnon drew his hidden dagger out.

And as he was imprisoned in its maw,
Old Memnon drove his dagger through its tongue
and pinned it to the lining of its jaw.
And thus by Memnon’s hook the beast was stung.

By Jacob too, who’d found again that spot,
the missing link within the dragon’s hide.
And through that gap his hungry blade had shot.
And reeling from the blows, the dragon cried.

And Jacob now withdrew the hallowed blade
and from the dragon’s back he fell away,
and ran around its flank to Memnon’s aid,
and found the dragon swallowing its prey.

And then it was the Son of Light who howled.
And vengeance hungered keenly in his cry,
and love as well for what the beast had fouled.
And Jacob’s fury filled the open sky.

And now the sun, for all its blazing might,
by meekest dusk was driven from the day.
The moon was left alone to rule the night,
the legions of the dark to hold at bay.

And by her light the knight and dragon fought.
And she was witness to their waning breath;
was witness to the gaping wounds they wrought;
was witness to their dueling dance of death.

A death the beast was forced to contemplate,
for it could feel the ebbing of its might,
the unrelenting hemorrhage of hate,
and knew the time was come to end this fight.

So now it thrust the remnant of its spite,
and though he raised his blade and made to slice,
its talons caught their prey and clasped him tight,
and trapped him and his weapon in their vice,

and brought them up towards the waiting jaws.
And he was crushed and strangled in that noose.
Yet still his purpose pulsed without a pause,
and somehow Jacob wrenched his weapon loose.

And with a final blazing of his eyes,
he used what breath remained to shape a cry,
and fixed his gaze upon the battle’s prize
and swung his weapon forth and let it fly.

And as it spun the glimmer of its flight,
the Son of Light and all the world were one,
were wedded in their nakedness and plight.
Their eyes upon the sword, they watched it run.

But Jacob closed his eyes before it struck.
His blood had ceased to flow. He’d breathed his last.
He did not live to see that stroke of luck,
to hear the angels sing or trumpets blast.

His wheeling blade the dragon’s gullet found,
and through it made an executing sweep.
The dragon swayed, then buckled to the ground.
A final twitch bestirred the lifeless heap.

A final twitch from what had plagued the earth,
a twitch as from an infant in her sleep,
its innocence belying all its worth,
as if it meant to move the world to weep.

There was no fanfare then, nor vict’ry cry;
just Time, unmoved as ever, drifting by.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

40.

Yet there were those attuned to its defeat.
The warring angels harkened to its end.
And now the demon beat a swift retreat,
with nothing left but failure to defend.

And Zeraquel was glad to see him fade,
and thankful that the beast at last was slain.
And now he hurried onward through the glade
to find the boy who’d been the dragon’s bane.

At length he came upon the battlefield
bestrewn with pools reflecting silver light.
So bright the glancing rays, they part concealed
the dragon slain and stolen from the night.

He waded through the shallow pools, still warm,
to gaze upon the mound of mangled beast.
Around the corpse the moonbeams seemed to swarm,
and on its gaping flesh they seemed to feast.

He found its eye, still open at the close,
grown dull in death, without the flame inside,
reflecting what the moonlight’s mercy chose
to signal to the world its bane had died.

He lingered not, nor did he stoop to gloat,
but turned away to look for Jacob there,
and found a dragon with a different coat,
whose tattered corpse the moonlight seemed to spare.

He plumbed the pools and combed the field in vain,
until at some small hour he caught the sound
of running water’s soft and sweet refrain.
He ran to it and followed where it wound.

Its trickling nimbly teased the trees apart,
so tenderly their bulk did overwhelm.
And winding to the water’s weaving art,
he passed into the glade’s most secret realm.

And in that sacred grove he came to him,
beside the singing shallows of the stream.
Among the leaves upon the sloping brim
did Jacob lie, eternally to dream.

And now he knelt and took the hero’s hand
and sorrowed as he had in ancient times;
and noticed that he wore the elven band,
and heard its music shape his sorrow’s rhymes.

His sword and shield were laid upon his chest.
His wounds were clean. His blood was washed away.
And by the lapping brook he was caressed,
and by the mourning moon’s most tender ray.

Her silver found the fallen hero’s face,
and by its touch her last respects were paid.
The light that did his countenance embrace
through countless dawns to come would never fade.

And from the east just then a gentle breath
came sifting through the leaves to love reclaim.
She found him there, untethered by his death,
and bore him to the pastures whence she came.

And who in dreaming’s pastures can but thrive,
where love and hope forever are alive?

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



EPILOGUE

It was not long ago this came to pass
and yet, in Memnon’s words, how much has changed!
Reflected in the ages’ looking-glass
ourselves we see, and find we are estranged.

Fresh gods and wars our efforts occupy
and purpose feed to our consuming need,
to fuel our great decline before we die
of pettiness and unrequited greed.

But light within our shadow there remains:
our twin and sister, watching with dismay
as all the earth grows weary with our stains,
and children seem to lose the will to play.

If we could dream the dreaming of our young
and once again could see with newborn eyes,
could babble in that long-forgotten tongue,
to find our twin would be our dreaming’s prize.

And she would brush our recklessness aside.
She would not damn us for the way we live,
nor mock our mighty foolishness and pride.
The sum of all our sins she would forgive.

And if we were to ask our sister why,
perhaps our sister, smiling, would reply:

“Oh there were those the world has left behind,
whose lives and love give hope for all mankind.”