On a chariot built on MRF,
Wearing jeans tapered;
She came along on the misty road,
To become the three day neighbour.

Seventy two hours,
Companionship formed on nerves.
The mountain boy saw
Perfection incarnate in the girl.

Giddiness was newfound freedom,
From the everyday, the mundane.
City girl, she with hair amber,
Object of desire she became.

A brave question burning holes;
Embers on his mind's hand.
He asked late, but in time,
"Where do our feelings stand?"

Rattled, she took a pilgrimage.
To the basketball court.
******* her eyes shut,
The biggest frog stuck in her throat.

Fifty seven minutes invested,
Pondering on this question.
Changing lives in the future,
Was then not thought, not mentioned.

"Yes", slow, measured response,
A jig for joy, delighting the teens,
Naivete thrives and blooms,
Where experience hasn't been.

Arms around her waist,
She let him feel like the one.
Their heads over heels,
Quickly, both made a run.

Breathing consciously,
The pair arrived at a Church.
Colonial structure, abandoned it beckoned,
An unbroken pew, his search.

He led her in, held her at
An arm's length.
Distance never crossed before,
His face came forward, an achievement.

And brushed softly
Against her mouth, his lips in trance.
He was sure when fire was found,
The Early Man danced the same dance.

Simple moment, evanescent,
It had to end of course.
Neither pulled back from the other,
Someone had opened the doors.

****** out of his revery,
Brought back to working cognition,
Realisation of the first kiss,
Dawned, it was beyond imagination.

Fourteen and in love,
Armed with a strong belief.
Life would never separate,
Him from the love he'd received.

Child, you were wrong
Says he, Seven years now dead.
Remembering the day she left,
A thousand tears were shed.

Impossible
Were his wishes gallore.
To find her, reach her, to hear
Her voice once more.

Years spent in isolation,
Anger and Hate never his friends.
How does one feel animosity,
When the heart wants amends?

Amber angel, if you ever see
The mountain boy, do reach out.
Never a need to make up for time lost,
But return the love he had found.

Ivy of lies,
Wrapping, shifting;
Hoists him by the throat.
Woodwitch, in glee,
Cackles in delight;
Dangling by the neck, he floats.

Transgression of the poppy field,
An unseen divide.
A step into his forest, was taken,
The Baron's precious garden, his pride.

Hounds, carrion birds,
Three days since released.
Tamed to pursue his game,
Escape to the prey would not be a relief.

Gradient of the path,
Can only lead to the mire.
Mammoth or Moth regardless,
Eaten by the murky pyre.

Hand in hand,
They, the Baron's past time;
Ran three days from the manor
Blind, in stillborn moonlight.

Scraping, stumbling, falling.
Roots drink their blood.
Prey and prisoners of the night,
In the forest of the evergreen flood.

Groping through the dark,
Evidence of fear in torn faces.
Vines their shackles,
Their stench leaving traces.

The baying of the Shamans,
Ullulating in alien tongues,
Became songs singing
Of lives in the forest undone.

The Forest, never once
Did it disappoint its master.
Earthly bane, poison sap,
Nurtured by her, the mother gardener.

She emerged from the swamp,
Naked, a lipless face.
Devoid of two limbs
Bearing the Cyclop's curse with grace.

Hopping faster than sense permitted,
One legged she bustled.
Towards the six hundred sixty seventh and sixty eighth.
She, a mass of bone and muscle.

As her Master would have it,
All life must be extinguished.
The Child, with rope she suspended.
High at the treetops the form diminished.

Before the Man could look,
The Child's head was no more.
An inverted fountain of blood erupted,
And drizzled upon his nose.


Frenzied he ran, tears stillborn,
Drove himself straight into an iron stake.
Dead eyes looked even as the Baron's champion said;
"A Hunter always knows his Master's estate."

I

The Baron owned,
All that was upon the moor.
He summoned the nobles,
To his Manor for a tour.

Some came in twos,
While others arrived in ones.
But all came forth,
To attend the Baron's ballroom dance.

Ushered in, by servants,
Away from the cold's kiss.
Inside, hot as a beast's maw,
Chill from spines to warmth did transit.

Tapestries hung,
Calling for their pathos.
Heavy as sleepless eyelids,
Depicting war, victories and chaos.

Arched ceiling and stairways,
A gargoyle here and a golem there.
Musty yet polished, the light shone,
On the statues' head with no hair.

The Baron led the way,
Boasting of the *Opus Francigenum.
The guests savoured in delight,
Every word and each tenor.

The Manor De Baptiste,
Sprawling from outside.
The greatest wonder ever seen,
By nobles of the countryside.

Wine was brought forth,
Flowing not unlike the Dordogne.
Filling heads, emptying sense,
Semblance of a drunk in morn.

After traversing
A considerable number of steps,
They arrived at the doors to the fabled
Ballroom of expensive tastes.

One by one,
The guests were herded inside.
Some milled about, some danced,
No small doing of wine, some only tried.

As the night passed,
The fervour did not.
Candle lit faces swaying,
To the sounds of mellow songs.

Portraits of fathers gone and
Fathers before them bore witness,
To the sultry evening of joy.
The nobility unfamiliar with distress.

He looked on, the Baron.
Occasionally sipping his own wine.
Never tasting the stock provided
To the "nobles", the swine.

Hundreds now within,
Impervious to worldly events.
Were soon to discover,
Cries of laughter would turn to laments.


II

The monstrous clock struck thrice,
On its ivory gong.
The ebon pendulum suspended,
With the abating of the song.

His voice shushed all,
The Baron, he spoke thus;
"Nobles, gather around, if you would,
Listen to my tale, you must."

The guests by now, fever
Rising and swelling in their chests,
Came ahead to receive,
What they assumed to be some jolly jests.

" You will all die shortly."
In absence of a suitable response,
And to please their gracious host,
The guests showered him with applause.

Reader, be aware,
The wine was not just.
It was more and it was less,
Brewed from an evil lust.

Bane of the valley, the Baron,
In his forest he had his final ****.
Six hundred and sixty six,
Children, mothers and fathers, their bodies still.

A penchant for death,
An emissary for the Dark.
The Baron's necessities
With the years grew stark.

For each life his Forest claimed,
The flesh was brought to the Manor.
Servants collected the cursed blood,
Bodies hung like carrion banners.

"On the eve preceding this,
I arranged for wine exquisite.
From my own personal vineyard,
Partaking in the vintage, a requisite!"

The unknowing, innocent
Lambs in his den.
Still aloof of the liquid in their throats,
Wishing the glorious taste would not end.

And as sudden as a viper,
One noble retched blood.
Fetid emission reached noses,
And thus began the flood.

Within minutes, the expulsion spread
Much like the cursed blood in their veins.
The nobles had partook in unholy crime,
Life of innocents they had drained.

"More!"
A united voice cried out.
The blood had reached its peak,
The murmurs had turned to shouts.

The wild ecstasy filled the room,
A frenzy palpable in the vicinity.
Each guest staring at the Baron,
As the clock entered the Hours of Trinity

"Die"
He whispered like a lover's caress.
And so they did,
Under enchanted duress.

The guests, imbibed with evil
Of the Forest, snapped at each other.
No onlooker in a riot of death,
That night, like beasts they were butchered.

Eyes were gouged, nails and teeth,
Faces torn apart.
A crimson smile extended to some,
From neck to the heart.

Ladies so graceful,
Now murderous under the influence.
Descending upon their counterparts,
Tearing, ripping body and limbs.

Upright feet were the sole ones,
Not drowning in the sea of maroon.
Other extremities of the body,
Like driftwood under the ocean moon.

Not soon, excruciatingly, they fell,
Till one pillar of red stood.
Under the candlelight, black
Devoid of an eye, fingers, lips and a foot.

She staggered to the Baron,
Gripped his legs in divine embrace.
"Up ma cherie", a command,
To Death personified in grace.


"You shall mind my keep forevermore"
A champion born of bloodlust.
Assigned to nurture the Forest, his child.
A newfound mother, in her the Baron's trust.