“Black tongues of smoke are rising from your eyes!”

  “I feel nothing, though my sight is dim.”

  “Your father’s dead! Look down to where he lies!”

  “I cannot look at what I’ve done to him;

  I waded far too deep and cannot swim.”

  Young Merrasir set down the fox’s head

  They paid respects, they waited, prayed, and fled

  Bright shafts of sun cut through pervading chill

  As variegated ferns flew under paw

  What little warmth they gave, a drying rill

  Was cut now and again by shadow’s draw

  Was cut by crows more bitter in their caw

  Crisp umber leaves streamed from the trees and rushed

  To join the fallen others, swiftly crushed

  One step was one step just too far, and then

  One turn, the plume of smoke was far too tall

  A mirror in the eyes, a turn again

  To run, to run far farther off from all

  Rokhem the only village border-wall

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  Tall unkempt grass where spirits rose in rain

  Now harshly lit, unmoving on the plain

  “Your eyes, oh Khazemil, are bright once more—

  Look near, a copse to hide us as we sit.

  Wade back, draw near to safety on the shore!

  My thoughts are on the real and counterfeit,

  My early days, and how the lights are lit.”

  The collie pressed the fox to rest a while

  And wondered at his thin, despondent smile

  “My whiskers sense the heat from even here,

  Oppressive, vanishing before my fur;

  Obsidian, not flame, remaining near.

  A boon? A life for life, or death demur?

  Beside the temple, elders to inter

  My father; satisfaction for the mask!

  Now Merrasir, speak on; I cannot ask.”

  The dog recoiled and wavered when he knew

  Those words like hooks drew up long-buried thought

  “My family left me to come to you,

  While war between the temple wards was fought

  ‘Seek grain and safety!’ as the dog-mask wrought

  An end; you well remember I returned

  An end! The very stones were overturned!”

  The grove grew close and stifling; they stood

  “I wondered at those buzzing globes of light

  Your houses, bright, inviting, glinting, good;

  The wires run a ways and out of sight

  Run underground and there they reunite.”

  “Then Merrasir, the ancient one has drawn

  A sacrifice, he lives, and I his pawn!”