The Saga of Sweetangel – Part 9
Hello there!
I don’t have ‘proper internet’ for the next few days, so I’m afraid there’ll be no Daily Beard.
Sorry! Should be back on Tuesday!
Until then, another, larger chunk of Sweetangel!
Mama Grave began chanting hymns,
Treaties to gods foreign to Saltpetre,
While her home filled with sweet smelling smoke.
“I will tell you how he survives,”
“For I know this man better than you do,”
“Mr. Poulter’s heart already broke.”
“He been living without his heart,”
“For so long that he don’t even miss it,”
“Though his body will realise soon.”
“What happened to him?” asked Turtle,
“My girl, Sweetangel done cruelty to him,”
“Took his wife by the light of bad moon.”
“I know that he lost someone dear,”
Longthorn admitted, “But he never said,”
“That he’d ever before been married.”
“Long time before now,” said Mama,
“Adam Poulter had beautiful woman,”
“But heavyful sadness she carried.”
Mama Grave told Poulter’s sad tale, 8
While she laid herbs and small stones in his chest,
And began stitching the bullet wound.
“His wife had an ill of the mind,”
“One day she just up and walked out the house,”
“And she got lost in Saltpetre’s womb.”
“No sign of her was ever found,”
“Maybe misled, maybe fled, maybe dead,”
“Sweetangel takes good people away.”
“But that’s just a myth,” said Longthorn,
“I know now that it’s just a lie we tell,”
“Easy to hear in the light of day.”
Longthorn felt himself grow angry,
“It’s not right that we blame a phantasm!”
“It’s the hearts of men that are rotten.”
“Poulter’s wife, poor Frog, and the rest,”
“They vanished by the nature of cities,”
“No spectre, just people forgotten!”
“Sweetangel is quite real,” she said,
“Though your words cut a trueness from the fog,”
“It is not a thing of flesh and bone.”
“People get lost, get hurt, get dead,”
“And the rest want to say it’s not their fault,”
“That there was naught that they could have done.”
“So they invented a demon,”
“To tell themselves that people just vanish,”
“And that lie is the worst sin of all.”
Mama Grave finished her stitching,
“Sweetangel is as real as you or me,”
“And the lies that help us to stand tall.”
[sociable]
