‘ She made you choose
which child to save .
And you chose .
One to save ,
the others to surrender .
It is not an easy choice
But you make it every day
That is not an easy truth
But the truth is every day
One of us among those
You walk away from
Dies
And there are more truths
In this world
Than I can count
But each time you walk away
The memory remains
And no matter how far or fast
You run
The memory remains .’
Mappo spun, fled the square.
Echoes pursued him. Carrying her voice. ‘ In Icarias, memory remains. In Icarias waits the tomb of all that is forgotten. Where memory remains. Where he would have found his truth. Do you choose to save him now, Ogre? Do you choose to bring him to his city? When he opens his own tomb, what will he find?
What do any of us find?
Will you dare map your life, Ogre, by each dead child left in your wake? You see, I dreamed a dream I cannot tell Rutt, because I love him. I dreamed of a tomb, Ogre, filled with every dead child .
It seems, then, that we are all builders of monuments .
Shrieking, Mappo ran. And ran, leaving a trail of bloody footprints, and on all sides, his reflection. Forever trapped.
Because the memory remains .
‘Will you ever tire, Setch, of gloom and doom?’
Sechul Lath glanced across at Errastas. ‘I will, the moment you tire of all that blood on your hands.’
Errastas snarled. ‘And is it your task to ever remind me of it?’
‘To be honest, I don’t know. I suppose I could carve out my own eyes, and then bless my newfound blindness—’
‘Do you now mock my wound?’
‘No, forgive me. I was thinking of the poet who one day decided he’d seen too much.’
Behind them, Kilmandaros asked, ‘And did his self-mutilation change the world?’
‘Irrevocably, Mother.’
‘How so?’ she asked.
‘Eyes can be hard as armour. They can be hardened to see yet feel nothing, if the will is strong enough. You’ve seen such eyes, Mother – you as well, Errastas. They lie flat in the sockets, like stone walls. They are capable of witnessing any and every atrocity. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out. Now, that poet, he removed those stones. Tore away the veil, permanently. So what was inside, well, it all poured out.’
‘But, being blinded, nothing that was outside could find a way in.’
‘Indeed, Mother, but by then it was too late. It had to be, if you think about it.’
‘So it poured out,’ grumbled Errastas. ‘Then what?’
‘I’d hazard it changed the world.’
‘Not for the better,’ Kilmandaros muttered.
‘I have no burning need, Errastas,’ said Sechul Lath, ‘to cure the ills of the world. This one or any other.’
‘Yet you observe critically—’
‘If all honest observation ends up sounding critical, is it the honesty you then reject, or the act of observation?’
‘Why not both?’
‘Indeed, why not both? Abyss knows, it’s easier that way.’
‘Why do you bother, then?’
‘Errastas, I am left with two choices. I could weep for a reason, or weep for no reason. In the latter we find madness.’
‘And is the former any different?’ Kilmandaros asked.
‘Yes. A part of me chooses to believe that if I weep long enough, I’ll weep myself out. And then, in the ashes – in the aftermath – will be born something else.’
‘Like what?’ Errastas demanded.
Sechul Lath shrugged. ‘Hope.’
‘See this hole in my face, Knuckles? I too weep, but my tears are blood.’
‘My friend, at last you have become the true god of all the living worlds. When you finally stand at the very pinnacle of all creation, we shall raise statues marking your holy wounding, symbol of life’s ceaseless suffering.’
‘This I will accept, so long as the blood leaking down my face isn’t my own.’
Kilmandaros grunted. ‘No doubt your worshippers will be happy to bleed for you, Errastas, until the Abyss swallows us all.’
‘And I shall possess a thirst to match their generosity.’
‘When we—’
But Kilmandaros’s hand suddenly gripped Sechul’s shoulder and spun him round. ‘Friends,’ she said in a rumble, ‘it is time.’
They faced the way they had come.