A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

hovers
the brimming bucket, ever poised between
dark depths and choral sunlight – she is beauty
and this too is a criminal exhortation, and
nothing worthwhile is to be found in your
regard that does little more than stretch
this frayed rope – so shame!
Dismissal delivers vicious wounds and she
walks away or walks to with inner cringing.
Dare not speak of fairness, dare not indulge
cruel judgement when here I sit watching
and all the calculations between blinks
invite the multitude to heavy scorn and see
that dwindling sail passing for ever beyond you
as is her privilege there on the sea of flowers
all sweet fragrance swirling in her wake –
it will never ever reach you – and this is
balance, this is measure, this is the observance
of strangers who hide their tears
when turning away.
    Young Men Against a Wall
Nekath of One Eye Cat
    No purer artist exists or has ever existed than a
child freed to imagine. This scattering of sticks
in the dust, that any adult might kick through
without a moment's thought, is in truth the bones of a
vast world, clothed, fleshed, a fortress, a forest, a great
wall against which terrible hordes surge and are thrown
back by a handful of grim heroes. A nest for dragons, and
these shiny smooth pebbles are their eggs, each one home
to a furious, glorious future. No creation was ever raised as
fulfilled, as brimming, as joyously triumphant, and all the
machinations and manipulations of adults are the ghostly
recollections of childhood and its wonders, the awkward
mating to cogent function, reasonable purpose; and each
façade has a tale to recount, a legend to behold in stylized
propriety. Statues in alcoves fix sombre expressions,
indifferent to every passer-by. Regimentation rules these
creaking, stiff minds so settled in habit and fear.
    To drive children into labour is to slaughter artists, to
scour deathly all wonder, the flickering dart of imagination
eager as finches flitting from branch to branch – all crushed
to serve grown-up needs and heartless expectations. The
adult who demands such a thing is dead inside, devoid of
nostalgia's bright dancing colours, so smooth, so delicious,
so replete with longing both sweet and bitter – dead inside,
yes, and dead outside, too. Corpses in motion, cold with
the resentment the undead bear towards all things still
alive, all things still warm, still breathing.
    Pity these ones? Nay, never, never so long as they drive
on hordes of children into grisly labour, then sup languid of
air upon the myriad rewards.
    Dare this round self descend into hard judgement? This
round self does dare! A world built of a handful of sticks
can start tears in the eyes, as the artist on hands and knees
sings a score of wordless songs, speaks in a hundred voices,
and moves unseen figures across the vast panorama of the
mind's canvas (pausing but once to wipe nose on sleeve).
He does so dare this! And would hasten the demise of such
cruel abuse.
    Even a serpent has grandiose designs, yet must slither in
minute increments, struggling for distances a giant or god
would scorn. Tongue flicking for the scent, this way and
that. Salvation is the succulent fruit at hunt's end, the sun-warmed
bird's egg, the soft cuddly rat trapped in the jaws.
    So searches the serpent, friend to the righteous. So
slides the eel through the world's stirred muck, whiskers
a-probing. Soon, one hopes, soon!
    Young Harllo was not thinking of justice, nor of righteous
freedom, nor was he idly fashioning glittering worlds from
the glistening veins of raw iron, or the flecks of gold in the
midst of cold, sharp quartzite. He had no time to kneel in
some overgrown city garden building tiny forts and reed
bridges over run-off tracks left by yesterday's downpour.
No, for Harllo childhood was over. Aged six.
    At this moment, then, he was lying on a shelf of hard,
black stone, devoured by darkness. He could barely hear
the workers far above, although rocks bounced their way
down the crevasse every now and then, echoing with harsh
barks from the floor far below.
    The last time here he had dangled from a rope, and there
had been no careless rain of stones – any one of which
could crush his skull. And on his descent back then, his
outstretched arms had encountered no walls, leading him
to believe the crevasse was vast, opening out perhaps into
a cavern. This time, of course, there was no rope – Harllo
should not even be here and would probably be switched
once he was found out.
    Bainisk had sent