I carried Poem within my hands
So soft and warm and trusting
I dropped it through a sewer grate
And now it’s wet and rusting
I carried Poem within my hands
And felt its small heart beating
A cold wind blew and though I tried
Death would allow no cheating
A Poem cannot be carried long
Its life is in the sharing
Of love and life and lyric song
And everybody caring
So if you ever carry Poem
Know that it must surely die
If you don’t make your heart its home
And write it down to let it fly.
(5)
The door opened, and the soft red light of the hearth fire glowed invitingly.
“Come in, Mitre Harkin, before the scent of the Hunters fades, and the animals grow overbold.”
I stepped inside, and the being that greeted me was somewhere between fae and monster.
It was female in form, tall, angular, a smooth, with platinum hair fanning across its shoulders like a silvered cowl, and I took a step back.
“Do I frighten you in my true guise?”
Before I could answer, it began to change: the shape grew more feminine, the flesh took on color, tone and shade, and the silver hair turned the same shade of red as the fire, as did the eyes.
It never turned its gaze from me, and I could feel the magic tingling under my skin.
“Is this more pleasing?”
Not able to trust my voice, I nodded.
“Relax, Mitre Harkin; you’re among friends here.”
“And how did you know my name.”
The Summoner smiled. “A little bird told me.”
She pointed to a cage with an open door, where the pearlescent white bird sat, now more interested in its seeds than in my face.
“Well then,” I said, “I’m going to guess that if you know my name, you know why I’m here.”
“I do, and it’s important we don’t delay.”
She led me to a small table with a small lantern, and lit it.
“Sit, Mitre.”
I sat, and she took the seat across from me, and began to change again, into an exact replica of Xantara.
“This is the girl you seek across worlds?”
“Yes.” Questions were burning on my tongue, but time was of the essence, and I had to tell myself that despite my curiosity, I didn’t really want to know.
“Very well.” The Summoner didn’t change back to her true form, and sensed my discomfort.
“If this is who I am summoning, this is how I must remain,” she explained. “There are rules governing these things too, Harkin. We are not allowed to do as we please.”
I cleared my throat. “Good to know.”
She smiled without amusement. “Give me your hands, and call to mind what you know of her.”
I obeyed, and she closed her eyes for a long moment before she spoke again.
“Ah, you are fond of her, but not in love.”
“She trusts me; I would not violate it, and she is of another time, and young.”
“You are a man of fortitude, for she is a surpassing beauty.”
“My message…?”
She smiled again, with amusement.
“Indulge an old crone, Mitre Harkin; I don’t get many visitors these days.”
I said nothing so that she could get on with it.
Another long moment, then more words.
“The demon gravely frightened you.”
I swallowed, then replied, “Yes.”
“It wants to use you as bait, to kill the Protector.”
I said through gritted teeth: “Yes, that is the message I want to tell her; she is returning tomorrow, and I don’t know what time. I have to warn her.”
“Very well.”
Since my ride out of the temple gates, it seems my senses were heightened: colors were more vibrant, the air had scents riding its currents, and it seemed as though I could see distances as if they were near.
The sounds of birdsong were never sweeter, and the tangy musk of the horse I rode was sharp in my nostrils, but not unpleasant.
During the walk through Dark Wood, the night seemed to want to blend me into it, and I wasn’t afraid, even though I was with the Hunters. It might also have been Vilus conveying her own fearlessness through her small hand into me, but that didn’t feel entirely true.
Now, I was aware of a sweet, slightly cherry scent from the hearth, the even breathing of the Summoner, the crackling, hissing dance of the red flames and the small branches, and the redolent scent of patient age and fleeting time laced with pine and spices the Summoner used in her art.
My own breathing evened out, and the rigors of the day seemed to peel themselves from my spirit.
I wasn’t aware that I’d closed my own eyes until she spoke again, in Xantara’s voice.
“Mitre Harkin?”
My eyes opened, and I gasped: the Summoner’s eyes were milky white, with nothing else inside them. A jolt of fear that Xantara was struck blind flitted through my mind.
“Xantara…”
“I can’t see you, Mitre, but I can hear you. What have you done?”
It was Xantara’s voice.
“I…I got a Summoner to call upon you; something’s happened, and you need to know.”
“Oh…What is it?”
“I got a visit from a demon; it first sent a messenger, that only manifested part of itself; it snatched away my covers, and then there was laughter, loud and deep, beneath the floor when I set out to warn you.
“They’re going to use me to get you, Xantara. You mustn’t come back today. They’ll strike at you through me.”
“Oh, Mitre! That you’ve used such unwholesome means to warn me…”
“It’s nothing, my child. I had to do this.”
The Summoner looked away from me, as if someone else was in the room.
“What? Oh, it’s nothing Antarus, I was just practicing a spell over distance.”
“Antarus? Xantara, who are –“
“Oh, I’m sorry Mitre Harkin. I didn’t tell you? I found another Protector!”
She reddened. “Or rather, he found me. He’s one of the male sect who escaped the slaughter of the last war. His name is Antarus; he’s been with me awhile, and,” she reddened again…”we’re betrothed.”
I knew it wasn’t physically possible for my heart to sink, but it felt that way.
I admit that I was careless, that I panicked, and I blurted out the truth as I knew it.
“He’s going to kill you, Xantara.”
“Antarus?”
“Yes, he’s in league with the demons. You must leave, now.”
“I don’t understand…”
“I’ll explain everything. Meet me in the Dark Wood, at the Summoner’s. I’ve friends to guide you.”
“Mitre Harkin, I do trust you, but…”
“Then trust me now, dear one. Flee for your life.”
The Summoner began to change again, the shoulders broadened, the hair grew light and curly, and the eyes went from white to blue.
“Ah, Mitre Harkin. Foolish of you to speak to her so, when you knew I was here.”
“Antarus! Don’t you dare harm her!”
“Or what, Mitre? You’ll perform a ritual for a god of stone to hit me with a rock?”
He started laughing.
“No, you lowborn dog, I will do it myself.”
He stopped laughing.
“Xantara is ours, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I’ve blocked her senses, so she doesn’t know about our conversation; I’ll even let her come back to you, just to prove that we can take her from you, whenever and…however…we want.”
His tone changed from threatening to casual, as if we were talking over a cup of wine.
“You’ve been a friend to her, Harkin. She blathers on about you all the time, and how wise and kind and good you are, so I pretended to be those things too, and now,” the Summoner’s arm went out in the air, as if around someone’s shoulders, “she belongs to me”
“Why would you turn against your own kind to aid in the destruction of man?”
“Why do you think, Mitre?” The Summoner’s arm settled back on the table, her hands clenched not quite into fists, but close enough.
“They promised you something. You idiot child, they’ve lied to you. They do nothing but lie; they are incapable of doing anything else!”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Harkin. Don’t you see?
“They’ve already done it.”
“What?”
“I’m immortal.”
“Then you sold your soul for a trifle. If you come for Xantara, I will fight you, Antarus, with everything I know.”
The Summoner sat back, and smiled the way Antarus would; smarmy and cocky, confidence corrupting into arrogance.
“Good, then, Mitre Harkin. It shouldn’t take long.”
The Summoner began to change back to Xantara.
“Mitre Harkin? Are you still there?”
I was sick of heart, and gut, and mind, but I couldn’t let her stay there.
“Yes, Xantara, I’m still here.”
“What was it you wanted to tell me?”
“Nothing, my dear. I’ve taken enough of the Summoner’s time. I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
“I look forward to seeing you again, Mitre Harkin. I enjoy our time together.”
“As do I, dear one. See you soon.”
The Summoner smiled as Xantara, and the smile faded as she began to change back into her original form, all milky substance, a spirit coated in liquid flesh.
Her expression, much as it could be, was stern.
“Your fondness for her made you reckless, Mitre.”
“I know.”
“The war will come sooner than later, then.”
“I suppose. What will you do?”
“What I’ve always done in troubled times; rely on the Dark Wood to keep intruders at bay.
“That will be ten gold pieces, please.”
I dug it out, but had to ask. “Why does something like you need gold?”
She took the pieces, and held them in her hands, gazing at them with a small smile on her lipless mouth, then looked up at me with those milky eyes.
“It’s pretty.”
Black smoke began to roil in inky tendrils up the chimney.
She inclined her head toward the door.
“Mitre Harkin, I wish you well.”
2:
On my walk around the grounds, I met the sexton, who only nodded in that grim way he always had, as if a perpetual crown of thorns in a black cloud burdened his brow.
I smiled, for all the good it did, and continued on.
Satisfied that no one else remained, I retired for the night, and drifting off to sleep by the light of a single candle, I dreamed I saw Xantara’s head taken, not by a demon, but by another Protector, unknown to me, a lad of strength and beauty, who’d captured her heart, only to murder her.
I felt myself tossing, but was unable to wake, when a vision from my youth emerged, as if from underwater, as if I was scrying, as an unclean oracle, or a foaming, raving prophet…
It was late, but the old librarian, the one with the tortoise-shaped head, who seemed as if, also like a tortoise, he would live forever, had taken a liking to me, confessing that I looked like the son he’d fathered on a young girl shortly before coming to the temple.
Given his age, on which I could only speculate, I had no idea how he’d know what an infant would look like in his young adulthood, but I didn’t press, and he didn’t elaborate, and it was of no great matter to me.
I had to study, and he made a pot of his special coffee, which was now thrumming in my veins, and sleep would not be forthcoming tonight.
Finding the compendium I needed, I opened it, perusing casually before I got to my subject; it seemed to contain the history of everything, written twice.
I was about to locate my subject, and turned the page, when an illuminated illustration caught my attention.
It was a picture of a young dark-haired girl, praying at night as she stood in her novice whites, in the middle of a stream, the moonlight bathing her from above, and the water from below.
Above her, in the star-strewn sky, she was circled by fierce, hideous demons, with gore filled grins, and straining jaws filled with rows of teeth made for rending flesh and snapping bone.
Their weapons were as sharp and gruesome as their assorted teeth and claws, dulled with ages of reaping hapless souls.
Grim as their visages and weaponry was, they seemed unable to break the barrier of prayer she’d erected about herself, and as I peered closer, admiring the depth of the detail and time the illustrator had taken, I saw that in their expressions there was something of a hallowed fear, and a dread anticipation…They were ensnared, about to die, and they knew it.
Fascinated, I proceeded to read the text:
These are the Protectors, weaponless watchmen standing guard between the realms of flesh and spirit, the divine and unclean, and the living and the dead.
The origins of their power are lost to time, but in their orisons, they are as lethal as any demon, the latter of which, oddly, gather to hear the prayers that ultimately destroy them.
No one has ever recorded the prayers for posterity, but the language is said to have a sibilant quality that renders it almost as whispered, and therefore as indecipherable as it is incomprehensible.
This compendium has no records of their gods or demons, their names, or when they became Protectors. Once our mutual fates were intertwined, as we relied on their protection, and they relied on us for sustenance; as such we were gradually beginning to understand each other.
They are seemingly by nature reclusive, shy, furtive to the point of sneakiness if their motives were evil.
In what few encounters we’ve engaged, they are affable, but loathe to get close.
There is an unseen barrier, brilliant in its concealment, that we may not cross despite our best efforts, either by strength of sinew, or power of arrow.
In time, as men do when they are unable to solve mysteries, we decided the difficulty of pursuing any kind of relationship with them any further, possibly decimating the storehouses of our youth in future generations, was not worth the risk.
With the passing of years, since we could not get close, we became suspicious, and such allies as they had among us began to dwindle, and in the winter of their fiftieth year among us, we used our trade with them to gain access behind the shield, driving them out to seek and make their way some other place.
Our clerics, who’d witnessed their powers first hand in matters ceremonial, and it is rumored, in cases of demon attack and possession, advocated that we needed them, and would find ourselves at a disadvantage in their absence.
We did not listen, and when the demons tried again, they found our collective belly exposed.
If you are reading this, know that even now they are here, and my hand grows erratic as I hear the sound of their laughter mingling with the screams of the slaughtered.
And so I end, imploring that if it is at all possible, find them.
Find them soon.
Amid the din of screams and weapons smacking flesh, grunts of effort and groans of misery, pleas for mercy and cruel laughter denying it, my eyes flew open and I screamed.
My scream reverberated in my bedchamber, and something ripped my covers from me, and I scrambled backward to sit up.
At the foot of my bed, a deathly pale hand with short, sharp nails, pulled the covers to the floor, and low laughter, wrought through with ill intent, ascended through the floor.
She left me here alone with them again.
I asked her not to; I always ask, but she always forgets.
I try not to look at them, but the room is only four walls, and I’ve read all the books in the case now, some more than twice.
I do the, read the books, to keep from looking at them.
They seem whole, serene, even, their painted poker faces never moving.
Dust motes drift in the persimmon light of a dying sun, and there’s an air of expectation, though no one’s here but me.
And them.
Their eyes glitter as they track me aimlessly moving about the dark and stuffy ‘guest quarters,’ for such is my dwelling called.
The days of glory, when it housed royalty, heads of state, politicians, and valued courtesans (two sides of a coin, that), had long past.
It was now little more than a storage room containing forgotten tributes and trinkets of those times, but the dolls took up the most space.
They belonged to Doll Kensington, a woman child with a moue for a mouth and the morals of a…
No…no, I will not brand her a whore; she was voracious in her appetite, and highly skilled at sating them; she enjoyed sex unapologetically, and when expedient, or necessary, charged highly for those skills.
I was a fool to think I could save her
She was a fool for laughing at my foolishness.
Even now, I wonder if her spirit is the one within these dolls; I can fell the heat of the hellfire in their eyes, the longing for revenge.
They are, after all, no different from their namesake: her eyes glittered, but had no life, her limbs were pliant, but without strength, her face was garishly painted, and her red, red lips were cold.
But I never touched her.
*********************
I was alone in the bar.
Life and music, women and smoke, vice and danger all danced around me with the familiarity of tired old couples no longer in love, clinging to a tattered remnant of a happy, fading memory, even as they trampled it underfoot.
In the bottom of my glass, I saw myself.
It wasn’t appealing, so I ordered another to drown the face, but it only floated to the top again, and looked at me with sad, defeated eyes.
“It’s on me,” a voice next to me said, and a pale hand with painted nails slid money across the bar, and an old hand, bristling with white hairs and missing a finger, slid it off and took it to parts unknown.
I didn’t look up, or say ‘thank you,’ or do anything.
The pale hand went from the bar to my thigh.
“I can make it better.”
“Only for awhile.”
“It’ll have to be enough, love.”
I tossed back the whiskey, felt it burn my blood, and followed her out into the abyss.
Stare we no longer
at
the setting sun
The evening starlight
knells
the day is done
And you and I
are here
Love’s victory won
Inner cage Outer rage
Kill the people Turn the page
Bleeding in an alleyway
Watching darkness hunt the day
We’re the only monsters here
Gods of violence, blood and fear
Rule blue heaven overhead
Die not with me when I’m dead
I am dead to faith and hope
Love is but a hanging rope
I’ll not dangle; Best beware
I will roast your heart so fair
Toss you like a broken knife
Dare you still to be my wife
Break inside the inner cage
Sail the sea of outward rage
Take me safely back to land
with your roughened, gentle hand
When your love has calmed the beast
Claim his heart your wedding feast
Ever fast and ever true
In the inner cage
with
you
© Alfred W. Smith Jr. 2015
And yes, I still believe in love
I still believe it’s there
It’s trembling out there somewhere in
the frosty winter air
Or trapped inside a mountain cave
from which it can’t escape
because it fell while running out
and gave its knee a scrape
Or floating on the raging sea
and looking for a light
to guide it safely home to shore
before it’s out of sight
Perhaps it’s on a city street
outside at a café
You didn’t hear it call your name
and hurried on your way
Perhap it’s somewhere crying for
it cannot find a heart
that seems to want to keep it and
not tell it to depart
So when we say we ‘look for love’
that happens to be true
I still believe it’s out there and
it’s looking for us too.
Within the world
we wandered
and walked without
a care
Within our hearts
we reached
and opened them
so they were bare
Within ourselves
we wondered
at what the other
sought
Of that bare heart
within us
we offered without
thought
And so within our love
without the world
we left behind
Without a backward glance
we closed the door and
drew the blind
And deep within each other
we put our trust and fears
and then discovered real love
is not without its tears
And so without you
now I live within my memories
The tears within my eyes will stay
I’ll live without love, please.
My heart, pierced
My breathing, shallow
My blood, pouring
hardening, cooling
on the
trampled grass
The gates of
an iron underworld
yawned wide for me,
a cremating maw of
mocking damnation
You came from
unseen shadows,
dressed in black
with flowers
wreathed and woven,
white against
the sable strands
of your glory
And when the fiery demon came,
flaming axe in hand
to claim his unholy inheritance
You sang
a note so sweet,
he flinched
at its beauty
Of care so far reaching,
it stopped him
in his tracks
Of friendship so lasting,
his fire died
Of desire so strong,
it burned him
Of two souls so
tightly bound,
he dropped his weapon
Of bodies so entwined,
he fell
to his knees
Of love so unending.
he
vanished
Sacrificing your song
to the fire,
I am restored,
but your voice,
now lost,
is but the
hollow soughing
of hot winds
across the silted surfaces
of cooling suns
of long-forgotten
gods
© Alfred W. Smith Jr. 2015
And so what shall we say
here at the end of day,
Here at the cold of fiery dusk
Before extending our feet
and hands
toward the hearty
crackling hearth?
The fire that blazes there
used to be
between
us
but has cooled
like the surface of
the moon,
and seems to have
fallen
down a crater
of its own making.
And so what shall we say?
‘Goodbye’ seems too trite.
‘Farewell’ is too polite.
And ‘so long’ has become
‘too long.’
Perhaps we shouldn’t say
anything.
And kiss.
© Alfred W. Smith Jr. 2015
Beyond Panic 