Chapter Twenty

We were now in the heart of the City, and the light of the Clock was burning brightly. Fleeing into every shadow, we found that there was a great stir, and we heard hushed voices were heard in the Square. There was much pattering of feet. Horse hooves clattered. The Marher were about. Our flight became quicker and footfalls lighter; yet we knew that we must path through the Square. It was the swiftest way. And time could not be spared, as the Marher were watching for us.

A dark city
Where a stream of dreams
Have come passing through
To give you the dream of the gulls
And the heartbeat of the waves

No song is murmured here
Nor dream stayed and lingered
There is a wind which carries them away
Like the wings of a raven

Your thoughts are not spoken
And silence leaves you wondering
Wondering of a boat and an oar
All of timber and strings

I was too young to remember this city before the wars started. The ones who do remember say it was the greatest city in the world: high education, low crime, good economy. Part of the city—‘The Forgotten Sector’—had already been abandoned during the earlier Technology Boom, when new strides in development made the entire place obsolete. Only the poor, the fugitives, those with nowhere else to go, still lived there.

I watched the moon. I watched it wax and wane
I watched it take on different shapes.
I watched it thin, I watched it grow,
and somehow it felt good to know
Every night is not the same.
The weather and the seasons change.

They measure the tides that go in and out
they know how to predict the clouds.
There are scientific names for phases,
a term for each way the moon looks and changes.

They name the waters, they name the stars
they view the world from inside their cars.

**Two poems, unrelated except for they both have something to do with North, and both were written while I listened to a song called North. 1 is inspired by a character from a novel I'm working on, and 2 is just part of an idea that may one day become a novel, who knows.**

Harrington Mansion, Cumbria, England
April 14, 7:45 PM

"You look distracted, Leo." Mrs. Trent said sweetly. "What's on your mind?"
Leo turned to the prying embassador with a carefree smile.
"I'm waiting to meet a contact to instigate a plan that should stop the end of the world."

Well, at least that's what he would have said, had he no sense of self-control in strenuating circumstances, which, fortunately, he had.

‘Shadows crisscross, streets do too
Like delicate web interwoven
Around these young and searching two
The pattern it does show them.

And like a forest’s trees the stone
Rises up and skyward
Through the night the day has glowed
With the rising sun’s orange fire

From where the bell’s last echo fades
Time clicks and ticks and runs away
And there the little beggar’s gone
The sweet and lovely morning: Dawn’