Malefica - a Starless Cover

Malefica.. Daughter of smoke.. Ashes remember.. They came with lantern mouths And crooked holy tongues Nailed my name to winter Like a sickness yet unsung Every gaze a sharpened branch Every prayer a rusted blade Mothers hid their little children When my shadow crossed the rain I healed their fevers in the famine Held their dead until dawn Yet the fear inside their marrow Needed somewhere to belong Black thread tied around my wrists Mud beneath my knees Stone by stone they built a god Out of all my grief “Witch...” They howled beneath the chapel spire “Witch...” As they raised the holy fire Smoke climbed upward like a choir Skin to ember Bone to ash And above the roar of judgment One voice broke the swarm My beloved ran into the flames To drag me from the storm They struck him down before he reached me Iron teeth and splintered wood I heard his ribs crack like branches As the torches spat their soot His blood ran black beneath the gallows Mixed with rain and ash and pine I screamed his name until my throat split Still they fed me to the fire Burn her... Burn her... Burn her... Something opened in the furnace Something ancient without form Not a demon Not a goddess Only agony reborn I rose from cinders without mercy Veins of wildfire in my skin Every scream became a weapon Every wound invited sin I burned the hands that built the scaffold Burned the judge inside his robes Burned the fathers, burned the bell towers Turned their sanctuaries to coals “Did you hear me when I begged?” “Did you hear him call my name?” “Now the whole damn world shall choke—” Ashes answer ashes. When the fire finally faded Nothing moved but falling snow Charred remains and ruined timber Buried underneath the smoke No more hatred left to feed on No more faces left to blame Only silence sitting with me In the ruins of his name I clawed the earth beside the forest Sank my hands into the dirt Tried to wash the blood from memory But grief survives what death destroys What am I now But smoke with a heartbeat? What am I now But ruin wearing skin? I could not find the girl they murdered Could not find the beast I’d been Only something cold and hollow Kneeling where the world went dim Then above the dying forest One small light appeared Then another Then a thousand Burning through the atmosphere Every star a living witness Every silence newly kind Heaven opening like silver Across the wound inside my mind I felt a hand upon my shoulder Warm as moonlight after war And there behind me stood the Keeper At the edge of shadow’s door “Nothing loved is ever taken Nothing true is lost to flame Even when you cannot see me I will walk beside your pain I am there inside the silence I am there inside the night Every star you see above you Is a lantern in this fight When your soul becomes a graveyard When your hands forget their grace Look for me within the heavens I have never left your place.” And the stars kept growing brighter Where the blackened sky had torn I wept there on the forest floor Half-destroyed and half-reborn Ashes drifted through the branches Soft as winter Soft as rain And for the first time since the fire I spoke my love’s lost name Ashes remember. Smoke remembers. Love remembers. Malefica remains.