Category: Sacrifice

The Vale of Love

She took him to a quiet place

so beautiful to see.

A place of fragrant flowers,

cool green grass

and fruitful tree.

“Now pledge your love to me,” she said

“And I will pledge to you.”

“I cannot pledge,” he answered

“for my love would prove untrue.”

“What jest is this?” she asked in rage,

her brow now stern and cross.

“I love another, fool. Now go! Begone and take the loss.”

The dagger point just broke his skin.

“The only loss is life, for when we loved

you pledged your heart and promised me to wife.”

“I care not if you love me now.

I will not be a fool, so you will be my husband

til your dotage when you drool.”

He fought her for his lady love,

fought long and hard and rough.

They both were bruised and bloody,

and the scarred skin would get tough.

But in the end, she held his heart

cupped in her broken hands,

and walked and walked and walked with it

to far and distant lands.

And somewhere in the Vail of Love

a heartless man does lie.

For legend says the Vail of Hearts

is where loves go to die.

Sea Belles

They ring the sea bells in the harbor

for the sailors there.

Now come the dancing village girls

with flowers in their hair.

They look so lovely in the sun,

in gowns of green and blue,

to match the mighty ocean’s blush,

and fetch a husband too.

The people clap and cry and cheer

as toward the waves they go,

A sacrifice of maidens come

to join the men below.

The echoes of the knells ring out

across the dancing waves.

The sailors wait impatiently

beside their silted graves.

The singing of the maidens now goes silent

in the surf,

The curse is spared again for those who stand

on muddy turf.

The only note that’s ringing now,

a lonely seagull’s call.

That binds the briny couples to the stones

beneath the squall.

They ring the seabells in the harbor

for the sailors there.

Now come the drifting village maids

with seaweed in their hair.

When Do You Need Me?

 

When do you need me?

“When I’m doing well.

Standing victorious,

riding the swell.”

 

When do you need me?

“When I’m feeling low,

walking with sadness,

with no place to go.”

 

When do you need me?

“In thunderous rain,

in heat waves and blizzards,

in heartache and pain.”

 

When do you need me?

“When others don’t care.

They stop and they laugh

and they point and they stare.

 

“When do you need me?”

When loneliness calls,

and deafening silence

fills dim, darkened halls.

 

“When do you need me?”

In mornings so bright,

I just can’t stop smiling

and everything’s right.

 

“When do you need me?”

Right here and right now.

I need you to love me

the best you know how.

 

When do you need me?

Each day and each night,

for you are my weakness

with all of my might.

Song of the Damned

And in this

lonely, dusty ruin

I count the coins

comprising

the price

of my perdition.

 

I have strangled

my conscience,

and opened

my accounts.

 

An easy life

in uneasy trade

for a diseased soul

that screams

and cries

in the silence.

 

I watch it

fall away.

I will be

troubled no more

as it sleeps.

 

And see

the teardrops

spray from my lips

as I whistle

and smile,

eternally

dying.

The Mark

The Mark

Chapter 1:  Foundling:

A gibbous moon pressed down on the sky like the thumb pad of a jaundiced god. A ragtag band of villagers chased a boy into a forest clearing, surrounding him, but not rushing to seize him.

He felt every inch the trapped animal, save he had no claws or teeth. There was only a single knife which he clutched more as a talisman than a weapon. Crackling torches forced him to put up a hand to block the glare, and the mark on his cheek became visible again.

Murmurs of curses, prayers, and amazement buzzed and hummed in his ears. The light in the mark was fading but he could still feel its heat.

An elder couple stepped forward as a walking keg of a man thrust his torch closer to the boy’s face, making him drop the knife as he stepped back and put up his other hand. From what he briefly saw of them, the woman seemed to hold some concern for him, lightly pressing her husband’s wrist down to lower the torch; she wouldn’t stop him from doing much else, but for that at least, the boy was grateful.

Walking Keg had bristly brown and gray whiskers, the moonlight a nimbus in them as he leaned forward and glowered, his free hand poised in the air, uncertain of its purpose. He seemed to want to touch the mark, but didn’t.

The fear in his eyes belied the gruffness in his voice. “How came you by this mark, boy?” The uncertain hand now pointed a meaty finger at the mark.

The boy swallowed, and when he spoke his voice was small in his own ears. “I killed my little sister.”

*************

Thunder had ever frightened him, and this storm had proven no different. In the small cottage at the top of the hill, where he lived with his parents and younger sister, they were more vulnerable than most to lightning strikes.

Seeking his parents for comfort as he always did, the tableau he walked in on shook him to his core with horror.

      His little sister was out in the rain, naked, arms outstretched to the sky, eyes closed and a beatific smile on her face. She seemed to be speaking, or praying; he wasn’t sure, but she had a knife in her hand with blood and rainwater dripping from it, washing the blade clean.       Stomach lurching, heart pounding, he ran toward his parents’ bedroom but stopped when he saw the small, bloody footprints that lead from the open door.

      “Nylii, what have you done?” He ran from the house toward his sister, and when he came to she was dead beneath him, his hands on her throat, his cheek sliced open from the knife, and the clouds clearing to reveal the dim light of a sickle moon. Her eyes were open, and save for the fact she wasn’t breathing, she looked like she was about to tell him a secret.

      Revulsion and horror made him scramble up and make it to the edge of the wet, dank woods as he heaved up the contents of their last dinner. Gasping for air, burning with thirst and wanting to scream, he wiped the stringy, rank spit away with a handful of leaves. His cheek was on fire, and there was blood on his chest and shoulder. He touched the wound to see how bad it was, and it flared, searing under his touch.

      He opened his mouth, but the ensuing pain had him back on the ground unable to scream. He felt something go wrong with his blood.

      She’d cursed him, marked him. For what, the gods only knew.

     “Nylii, what have you done? What have you done?” He realized he was shouting. Panicking, leaving the bodies for scavengers, he ran and never looked back.

                                                 ************

     More murmurs, louder this time as what he said was conveyed to those who couldn’t hear. He’d played whisper-down- the-line with his friends; he’d be a legend or a monster by the time it got to them.

      The couple stepped back.

     “She was afflicted?” the woman asked.

    He wasn’t sure what ‘afflicted’ meant, but he nodded: “She killed our parents at Reaving Moon. A blood sacrifice.”

      Cries and gestures against evil rippled outward through the mob.

     “What should we do?” the woman asked her husband.

      “Kill him, is what we should do…”

      The boy was tired, thirsty, hungry, and his adrenaline from running had spiked and dipped several times. Now he was just scared and angry.

       “I’ve done no harm to you! You came after me!”

        The husband glared and stepped closer. “Yer damn scar was shinin’! We din’t know what the hell ye were!”

       The woman spoke again. “We’ve children in th’ village, boy. Not much older n’ yew. Y’understand?”

      The boy fell to his knees. “I beg you, for one night, let me sleep. I’ll sleep here, outside of your town, and I won’t come in. I promise. Please just go. I’ll be gone in the morning.”  

      After some hesitation, the wife took the husband aside, away from him and the crowd. He stayed on his knees; the weight of the rabble’s stare was almost palpable as they openly regarded him with an unhealthy mix of fear and fascination. The couple’s conversation, judging from gestures and faces, was brief but heated.

 Read more at the link below on Niume. 

Source: The Mark

Song of Sacrifice 2

You hold the knife

as one holds

a fallen fledgling,

Your eyes command my approach,

and as I shuffle,

the shackles sing a

discordant, jangling dirge

 

I weep,

but whether for my soul

or for your cruelty,

I cannot say.

 

I held you.

Kissed you.

Loved you.

Sang you to sleep in my arms.

 

Your smile transfixed me,

and the hidden coils of your flesh

felt warm in my hands.

 

Your lying mouth

wrought cries from the core of me.

And like fresh clay

you molded me into a sacrifice,

 

Sharpened your knife

on your heart of stone.

 

Pray make it quick, love.

I will wait for you

in the

frozen abyss…

Maker

They say nights are quiet, silent even, but that really isn’t so.

It makes noises of its own.

Even the seemingly silent glide of the hunting owl whistles keen as wings slice wind, and prey screams before talons crack it open, spilling red life like the contents of a leaky whiskey barrel.

A late autumn cricket chirped in vain, born too late for mating. It too, will freeze and die in the cooling mornings, no progeny for spring.

I stared at the wheeling moon and stars, thinking I would stay here.

Believing I could.

I’ll leave tomorrow.

The chilled wind seized and shattered my breath’s vapor as it floated through the air.

My worn cloak had thinned into little more than a long rag full of holes where the cold poked at my legs like children’s fingers.

I took a look around the cemetery; everyone I knew was here.

Did they know that I was among them?

Could they hear my heart, see my breath, and hear the lonely cricket’s solo above the blowing, rustling leaves clattering against the tilted, faded headstones?

Did their wandering ghosts find it as beautiful as I did?

I shuddered in anticipation of the change to come when I heard the voice behind me, as if the very air itself had spoken:

“Are you ready?”

The anticipation turned to fright, the fright to something I couldn’t name.

The stink of him was overwhelming; his beauty, unparalleled by anything I could name.

No doubt he knew what I thought already; he let me fall into the power of his silent, evil presence, quiet and feral, an old snake full of intelligent insanity.

I used the headstone I’d sat against to pull myself up, not trusting my legs, then brushed off what autumn detritus didn’t fall on its own, as if appearance mattered now.    I wanted to run screaming, to call him vile things, to spit in his bloody face after I beheaded him.

As he watched me struggle with myself, I sensed his patience start to crumble before the slow rise of his anger.

“Are you sure?”

His low, deep voice pierced my ears, a nail coated in honey, lethal and sweet, challenging me to defy him, laced with desire to punish me if I did.

In the silence of my trembling, looking into the jade and gold of his gleaming eyes, the tatters of my will fell to the cold, hard ground along with my bedraggled cloak.

It slipped from my shoulders, the cares of this world trapped in its filthy folds.

“Yes.”

He held out his hand

I went to him.

 

No Glory Here

There is no glory here for me

The victory flame is quenched

No more the striving, driving fight,

in perspiration drenched

No more the laurel crown

that wreathes the winner’s fevered brow

The tender flesh of virgin maids

press not against me now

No more the cheering of the crowds

resounding in my head

No smiles or chants or accolades

No rivals full of dread

In this arena here I stand

though weary, sad and worn

But not til death’s hand pulps my heart

this sword from hand be torn

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