Dust of Dreams

with my fists,
and they hear naught but whispers. Savage words will thud against dead flesh. But the slow drip of blood, ah, then they are content as cats at a stream.
    Badalle hurried along, and it seemed the snake parted, as if her passage was ripping it in two. She saw skeletal faces, shining eyes, limbs wrapped in skin dry as leather. She saw thigh bones from ribbers picked up on the trail—held like weapons—but what good would they do against the Quitters?
    I have words and nothing else. And, in these words, I have no faith. They cannot topple walls. They cannot crush mountains down to dust.
The faces swam past her. She knew them all, and they were nothing but blurs, each one smeared inside tears.
    But what else is there? What else can I use against them? They are Quitters. They claim power in their voice.
The islands in her mind were drowning.
    I too seek power in my words.
    Have I learned from them? This is how it seems. Is this how it is?
    Stragglers. The sickened, the weakened, and then she was past them all, standing alone on the glass plain. The sun made the world white, bitter with purity. This was the perfection so cherished by the Quitters.
But it was not the Quitters who cut down our world. They only came in answer to the death of our gods—our faith—when the rains stopped, when the last green withered and died. They came in answer to our prayers. Save us! Save us from ourselves!
    Emerging from the heat shimmer, four figures, fast closing. Like wind-rocked puppets, every limb snapped back until broken, wheeling loose, and death surrounded them in whirlwinds. Monstrous, clambering out of her memories. Swirls of power—she saw mouths open—
    ‘
YIELD!
’
    The command rushed through Badalle, hammered children to the ground behind her. Voices crying out, helpless with dread. She felt it rage against her will, weakening her knees. She felt a snap, as if a tether had broken, and all at once she lifted free—she saw the ribby snake, the sinuous length stretched out as if in yearning. But, segment by segment, it writhed in pain.
    As that command thundered from bone to bone, Badalle found her voice.
Power in the word, but I can answer it.

‘—to the assault of wonder

Humility takes you in hand—’

    She spun back down to lock herself behind her own eyes. She saw energies whirl away, ignite in flashes.
    ‘
HALT!
’
    Cracking like a fist. Lips split, blood threading down. Badalle spat, pushed forward. One step, only one.

‘—in softest silence
Enfold the creeping doubt—’

    She saw her words strike them. Stagger them. Almost close enough, at last, to see their ravaged faces, the disbelief, the bafflement and growing distress. The
indignation.
And yes, that she understood. Games of meaning in evasion. Deceit of intent in sleight of hand.
    Badalle took another step.

‘Yield all these destinations
Unbidden jostle to your bones
Halt in the shadow thrown
Beneath the yoke of dismay—’

    She felt fire in her limbs, saw blinding incandescence erupt from her hands. Truth was such a rare weapon, and all the more deadly for it.

‘Do not give me your words!
They are dead with the squalor
Of your empty virtues
YIELD to your own lies!
HALT in the breathless moment
Your lungs scream
And silence answers
Your heart drums
Brittle surfaces
BLEED!’

    They staggered back as if blinded. Blue fluids spurted from ruptured joints, gushed down from gaping mouths. Agony twisted their angled faces. One fell, thrashing, kicking on the ground. Another, a woman closer to Badalle than the others, dropped down on to her knees, and their impact with the crystalline ground was marked by two bursts of bluish blood—the Quitter shrieked. The remaining two, a man and a woman, reeling as if buffeted by invisible fists, had begun retreating—stumbling, half-running.
    The fires within Badalle flared, and then died.
    The Quitters deserved worse—but she did not have it in her to deliver such hard punishment. They had given her but two words. Not enough.
Two words. Obedience to the privilege of dying. Accept your fate. But . . . we will not. We refuse. We have been refusing things for a long time, now. We are believers in refusal.
    They will not come close now. Not for a long time. Maybe, for these ones, never again. I have hurt them. I took their words and made them my own. I made the power turn in their hands and cut them. It will have to do.
    She turned round. The ribby snake had begun moving again, strangely