Haunt of Thieves: part seven

 

 

 

Haunt of Thieves

Part Seven

 

“Fling to the devil what you will

Your brass is a thief’s for the taking

But deal as your faith demands

Do you suppose they offer peace―

Go, gather in the coals they’ve thrown

And make trade with them coin for coin”

Now so close, and baldly seen

The craft by which the snare is tightened

Dredged from the angled ditch and strewn

Over the slope before the rise

Gafeidda landing on loose stone

Would stagger through the tapered hollow

Where sheer rock flanks the Old-Spirited One…wife

In the Shepherd’s tale, to Aantahah below

To cross at speed is hopeless then, yet here Gafeidda

Means to run

 

But his eyes close

The voice of her comes ringing like a chain

Not the old woman’s

Not the even-handed goddess

Who loves the ones that pay her homage

The children who recall their parentage

Lay tokens at her feet

This song comes spinning like the marble of glass

Winking at evil, worn at the collarbone

“I will go with you”

 

She was not life―he lives, and knows the disquiet

Of her being near

And dying fear

Whisperings entangled in the weave of memory

She had been all that promised life

He finds at last the choice has not been made

Her song rests and he seems to wake

Above his head the music swells

Its final note becomes a clank of metal and a sliding swash

All else is dark now, but the rush

Ignites a flaring fire

Struck from behind

Gafeidda tumbles free

He has passed the trial

He leaps and runs, in no-man’s land

He runs but will not breathe

 

 

 

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Haunt of Thieves

The Wayfarer

The Lab-Grown Brain Makes Short Fiction

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2015, Stephanie Foster)