its amazing how many excerpts from my novella-poem,
"Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons", seem to be
appropriate for All's Hallow. i suppose this is because
it's always Hallowe'en in my heart.
this one takes place in the early morning, following the queen's
late night recipe session with her arcane tome. the "spying" rat
referred to was introduced earlier in the story, when he was sent
on a spying mission to the Curmudgeon's cottage.
**************
the anxious harpy had risen with the dawn,
to slake her rancour and stay her aching need;
attempting to quell her equivocal qualms
with decisive action and distracting speed.
donning a hooded cloak she headed for the stairs,
past the nodding king in his aerie lair;
his ashen face etched with the trace of a tear,
his crown askew on his alabaster chair.
the hidden chamber seemed just as she'd left it,
awash in its litter of glittering junk;
the wainscoting stained with the travelling blood,
the book sequestered in a trifle-filled trunk.
the mirror was dozing in patches of purple;
swathing his gaze in a cryptic veneer.
the cauldron was insistently simmering,
seething bursting bubbles and free-floating fear.
the roughhousing rats were asleep in a heap
except for the spy who was watching the queen,
his red eyes glowing under half-opened lids
peeping from the rim of a tarnished tureen.
she slipped a slim vial from her vestment
slurping its turbid liquid in a single swig,
and set in at once to swagger and writhe
like an angry puppet in a scandalous jig.
her face was engrossed in a raging mask,
her skin stretched entirely out of proportion;
a staggering sack of wriggling wrinkles,
a sagging feat of torturous contortion.
then she clutched at her throat with dramatic flair
retching in a rasping agonizing gag,
and stumbled to a standstill before the mirror
decked out as the craggy, haggard old hag.
she inclined her head, batting her bleary eyes.
"well, deary, who's the scariest in the land?"
he winced. "your likeness, your highness, takes the cake.
in all fairness it ought to be contraband."
she let loose a cackle and slapped his frame
flipping his shiny surface the wrong way around
and briskly hobbled to the smoking cauldron
amidst scuttling rats, revolving the ground.
raising her arms in solemn demeanor
she appeared to peer at a spot past the ceiling,
and produced an enchanting thrumming hum,
the drone of pious bees, their rapture congealing.
"i wake the winnowing wights in windblown wastes,
dissolving fallen dead with withering waves.
i summon the sirens of Sicily,
singing stranded sailors to sodden sea-swept graves.
i flush the frothy crystals melting fell fjords
ye frost fairies foster in thine ice-bound caves.
i arouse the selkies and stream-dwelling sprites,
dousing the earth with thy spouting, splashing staves.
i conjure fog from its filmy elements.
i evoke the mantle of billowing blue.
i convene the cover of inky darkness,
and wrest subtle mist from early morning dew.
i tinge my features with banishing brushes
to shelter my pigments in nondescript hue.
i steep in pervasive evasiveness,
and suffuse my semblance with a clandestine brew.
i assemble the ousted ancestors
to hearken to my wishes and answer my plea.
in the name of thee who are wholly unholy,
so it shall happen, and so mote it be."
the mirror spun around and softly muttered
"i said it before in this same dreary den;
she brought back to life that tired, belaboured horse,
and beat it to death all over again."
the snooping rat snickered in his bewhiskered dish,
and the mirror blushed with a coral glaze.
then the crone dipped an apple in the cauldron,
and clasping her basket stepped into the haze.
**************
(thus ends the excerpt) - Evan Hawthorn, 27th of October, 2014
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