Toll the Hounds

Seen swimming sun-warmed rivers in summer’s light,



From untroubled brows and eyes clear and driven



Gazing out from tower windows when falls the night



From hands cupped round pipe bowls alabaster carved



When veiled invitations coy as blossoms under shade



Invite a virgin’s dance a rose-dappled love so starved



Where seen a coarse matron not yet ready to fade



And the tall bones of legs ‘neath rounded vessels perched



Swaying lusty as a tropical storm above white coral sands



Where in all these gathered recollections I have searched



To fashion this love anew from soil worked well by my hands



And into the bower garland-woven petals fluttering down



Hovers the newfound woman’s familiar unknown face



For on this earth no solitude is welcomed when found



And she who is gone must be in turn be replaced



And by the look in her eye I am a composite man



Assembled alike from stone, twig and stirred sediments



Lovers lost and all those who might have been



We neither should rail nor stoke searing resentments



For all the rivers this world over do flow in but one



Direction



– Love Of The Broken , Breneth



Chapter Seven



‘I can see your reasons, my love. But won’t you get thirsty?’



– Inscription found beneath capstone of household well, Lakefront District, Darujhistan



As fast as his small feet could carry him, the small boy rushed through Two-Ox Gate and out on to the raised cobble road that, if he elected to simply hurry on, and on, would take him to the very edge of the World, where he could stand on the shore staring out upon a trackless ocean, so vast it swallowed the sun every night. Alas, he wasn’t going that far. Out to the hills just past the shanty town to collect dung, a bag full, as much as he could carry balanced on his head.



It is said by wise and sentimental poets that a child’s eyes see farther than an adult’s, and who would-with even less than a moment’s thought-claim otherwise? Beyond the ridge awaits a vista crowded with possibilities, each one deemed more improbable than the last by teeth-grinding codgers eager to assert a litany of personal failures should anyone care to hear, but no one does and if that isn’t proof the world’s gone to ruin then what is? But improbabilities is a word few children know, and even if they did, why, they would dismiss the notion with a single hand fluttering overhead as they danced to the horizon. Because it will not do to creep timorously into the future, no, one should leap, sail singing through the air, and who can say where one’s feet will finally set down on this solid, unknown land?



The boy hurried on, tracked by the dull eyes of the lepers in front of their hovels, squatting forlorn and forgotten each in a nest of flies when flies with singular poignancy expound the proof of cold-legged indifference. And the scrawny half-wild dogs crept out to follow him for a time, gauging with animal hunger if this one might be weakened, a thing to be taken down. But the boy collected rocks and when a dog drew too close he let fly. Ducked tails and startled yelps and now t he dogs vanished like ghosts beneath stilted shacks and down narrow, twisting lanes off the main road.



Overhead, the sun regarded all with its unblinking omnipotence, and went on stealing moisture from every surface to feed its unquenchable thirst. And there were long-legged birds prancing on the sewage flats just past Brownrun Bay, beaks darting down to snatch up fleas and whatnot, while lizard-ducks nested on float-ing shit islands further out, calling to one another their hissing announcement of each bell in perfect cadence with the city’s water clocks and tho.se sonorous chimes drifting out over the lake, although why lizard-ducks were obsessed with such artificial segmentation of time was a question as yet unanswered even alter centuries of scholarly pursuit-not that the foul-smelling creatures gave a whit for the careers they had spawned, more concerned as they were with enticing up from the soupy water eels that would swallow their eggs, only to find the shells impervious to all forms of digestion, whilst the scaled monstrosities within pre-pared to peck their way free and then feed on eel insides unto gluttony.



What significance, then, such details of the natural world, when the boy sim-ply walked on, his long hair bleached by the sun and stirred like a mane by the freshening breeze? Why, none other than the value of indifference, beneath which a child may pass unnoticed, may pass by free as a fluffed seed on the warm cur-rents of summer air. With only a faint memory of his dream the night before (and yes, the one before that, too, and so on) of that face so vicious and the eyes so caustic as to burn him with their dark intentions, the face that might pursue him through each day with the very opposite of indifference, and see how deadly that forgetfulness might be for the child who hurried on, now on a dirt track winding its way up into the modest hills where baleful goats gathered beneath the occa-sional tree.