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Wedding day

Open the box, Jorg

I watched it A copper box, thorn patterned, no lock or latch

Open the box, Jorg

A copper box Not big enough to hold a head A child’s fist would fit

A goblet, the box, a knife

I watched the box and the dull reflections from the fire in the hearth The warmth did not reach me I let it burn down The sun fell, and shadows stole the rooht filled the hall and still I didn’t move, as if I were carved froled along rain beneath ertips

The ed floor The oblet, wine untouched, and low Clouds sed the sky and in the darkness rain fell, soft with old memories In the small hours, abandoned by fire, e cold against my wrist

The child still lay in the corner, li’s horses and all the king’s hosts than people, but this boy, this child of four, haunts me

Open the box

The answer lay in the box I knew that much The boy wanted me to open it More than half of me wanted it open too, wanted to let those erous It had a pull on it, like the cliff’s edge, stronger by therelease

“No” I turnedto sno

I carried the box out of a desert that could burn you without needing the sun Four years I’ve kept it I’ve no recollection of first laying hands upon it, no ie of its owner, few facts save only that it holds a hell which nearly broke my mind

Cah the sleet So many they revealed the shape of the land beneath them, the rise and fall of mountains The Prince of Arrow’s men took up three valleys One alone wouldn’t contain his arhts and archers, foot-soldiers, pikeines for siege, ladders, rope, and pitch for burning And out there, in a blue pavilion, Katherine Ap Scorron, with her four hundred, lost in the throng

At least she hated me I’d rather die at the hands of so to them

Within a day they would surround us, sealing the last of the valleys and mountain paths to the east Then ould see Four years I had held the Haunt since I took it froo easy No This would go hard

The child stood to ht in hih eyelids He watched me with eyes that looked like mine