Every star a knot. Every river a braid. And something out there wants the whole of it bare. It was never a god. It was never a plan. It was the cold that learned to want. It was the ending that grew hands. It put on a shape and it named itself, and it taught the dark to hunt. My mother met it at the frame with a blade she made from her own light. She cut it once. She made it bleed. Then she spent every year she had left buying us tonight. Give it back! (Give it back!) Every year it took from her! Give it back! (Give it back!) Every night she went without! You were never a will - you were never a name - you were only the dark with a mouth! You don't get a face. Give it back. Bells in the tower. Cedar in the smoke. Every hand that can hold a line is holding one. I have her light. I have her blade. I have her whole unfinished war, and I am not laying it down. It says the weave was always going to fray. And it's right. It's right. Let it fray. Let the rivers run out. Let the old stars go. But it does not get to eat the frame. It does not get to stay. Give it back! (Give it back!) Every year it took from her! Give it back! (Give it back!) Every night she went without! You were never a will - you were never a name - you were only the dark with a mouth! You don't get a face. Give it back. Then my love went down in the mud in front of me. And I felt it offered in my hands - all of it, all at once, the way she did it, the way she did it. One breath, and I'd be with her. And Father forgive me, I wanted it. Then he took a breath. And so did I. Then it came up my arms like a tide. The wraps went to ash. The light took the rest. And they opened at my back - white fire, wider than the ridge, and every face in that valley turned up. I was not a girl with a knife anymore. And the blade came whole for the first time - not a keepsake. Not a memory. A reckoning. Raise it! Raise it! Raise it! Give it back! (Give it back!) Every year it took from her! Give it back! (Give it back!) Every name it swallowed in the dark! You were never a will - you were never a name - and you don't get to wear the end of the world! I came down on it like a dawn with wings! Down to the law! Give it back! (crowd) Give it back! Give it back! Give it back! And when the light went out of me I was standing in the ash with my hands shaking. Just a girl again. And the sky was clean. The world still frays. It's meant to. Rivers still run out. Old stars still go. Nothing was ever supposed to last - that's the only reason any of it's alive. But up at the frame there are two of them again. One to weave and one to knot. And the singing started up the way it did before the wound. They don't come home. They are home. I keep the watch.
