A Candle in Her Hands

She was seven with a gap-toothed name and a candle in her hands A little mystic mispronounced in the last days of the lands The dark fleets moved like carrion birds through waves that leapt like stags And kings sent wolves across the sea with hunger in their flags Before a blade was lifted before the towers fell Before the world had realized it had been found by hell Before the world was ending before the prayers began Before they called her holy she had killed the girl she’d been Before the prayers were answered before the sky was torn She gave the world tomorrow and left the girl unborn Warrind laughed through blood and dust Kenneck watched her flame Dennecker cursed the thief he saved and called him back by name Silverdawn said little but her silence held a blade And Severin smiled at every wound the poisoned berries made They thought they hunted monsters where the broken trade roads curled But every corpse was pointing toward the fortress underworld Before the world was ending before the prayers began Before they called her holy she had killed the girl she’d been Before the prayers were answered before the sky was torn She gave the world tomorrow and left the girl unborn He broke the lock on time itself and laughed to watch it spread The heavens opened inward and beating hearts envied the dead The stones rose up like water The towers bent like reeds The sea climbed through the windows The sky fell to its knees She heard Warrind calling Silverdawn She heard Kenneck scream her name Severin laughing, Dennecker praying But they never saw her again She held the teeth of the rift apart with blood behind her eyes Held back a thousand hungry stars and watched the sea floors rise She could hold the demons She could strike the madman down But not with breath still in her lungs Not with a mortal crown So she made her bones remember what no body should contain Every quark a burning altar Every nerve a chain of flame And lightning wrote her answer through the mouths of things that screamed She saved the world from ending and ended everything she’d been Before the world was ending before the prayers began Before they called her holy she had killed the girl she’d been Before the songs were written before the children learned She sealed the wound with all she was and still the lightning burned Do not call her merciful Do not call her damned She was nineteen at the ending with the world inside her hands And when the rift grew silent and the last red morning came No one heard the little mystic forget her human name