The Crippled God

lying. The words are empty. Powerless. But I have seen words of real power, Rutt, and each one is a weapon. A weapon . That is why adults spend a lifetime blunting them.’ She shrugged. ‘No one likes getting cut.’
    When the boy spoke again, it was as if he stood in Mappo’s place. ‘What did you dream, Badalle?’
    ‘In the end we take our language with us. In the end, we leave them all behind.’ She turned to the boy beside her and frowned. ‘Throw them away. I don’t like them.’
    The boy shook his head.
    ‘What did you dream, Badalle?’
    The girl’s gaze returned, centring on Mappo’s face. ‘I saw a tiger. I saw an ogre. I saw men and women. Then a witch came and took their children away. And not one of them tried to stop her.’
    ‘It wasn’t like that,’ Mappo whispered. But it was.
    ‘Then one rode after them – he wasn’t much older than you, Rutt. I think. He was hard to see. A ghost got in the way. He was young enough to still listen to his conscience.’
    ‘ It wasn’t like that! ’
    ‘Is that all?’ asked the boy named Rutt.
    ‘No,’ she replied, ‘but he’s heard enough.’
    Mappo cried out, staggered back, away. He shot a look back and saw her eyes tracking him. And in his skull, she said, ‘ Ogre, I can’t save you, and you can’t save him. Not from himself. He is your Held, but every child wakes up. In this world, every child wakes up – and it is what all of you fear the most. Look at Rutt. He has Held in his arms. And you, you go to find your Held, to fill your arms once more. Look at Rutt. He is terrified of Held waking up. He’s just like you. Now hear my poem. It is for you .
‘ 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