Hexwood: Scarlet

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Disclaimer: this is a not-for-profit tribute to the work of the late Diana Wynne Jones

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Hexwood filk: Mordion may be the victor but he's still incredibly damaged – one of a set of four filk-songs I wrote in the mid 1990s to accompany the book Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones. This one is decidedly ose, on the traditional fannish scale of ose, morose and more morose. For those who have come here because you are following me as a writer, rather than because you have read Hexwood (although if you haven't, you really should), a summary of the background to the story can be found here.

Scarlet
Tune: traditional, Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy, more or less

My masters broke my heart and soul,
They broke my mind and will;
They dressed me up in scarlet
And they sent me out to kill.
They took away my songs from me
And the tales I used to tell,
And in their place put sickness
To shackle me in hell.

Scarlet on my hands forever,
Scarlet stains my soul;
And where are the songs I would have made,
And the jokes and the tales I would have told,
And the me my masters stole?

They sowed my mind with sickness
To herd me at their will,
To make me crawl and grovel
And serve them as their tool:
To walk with all men's hatred,
Half puppet and half-mad,
And bear the blame of murder
Which my masters should have had.

Scarlet on my hands forever,
Scarlet stains my soul;
And where are the songs I would have made,
And the jokes and the tales I would have told,
And the me my masters stole?

I bear the sin of murder
To serve my masters' gain.
My memories are nightmares
Of shame and loss and pain.
From sun to sun they sent me –
The starry cloth unfurled –
To stalk, a scarlet shadow,
Through the nightmares of the worlds.

Scarlet on my hands forever,
Scarlet stains my soul;
And where are the songs I would have made,
And the jokes and the tales I would have told,
And the me my masters stole?

The ancient power called me
Across the sky of stars
To serve it as a slayer,
But it broke my prison's bars.
It taught me how to rule my pain,
I swore I'd done with death;
But to save the worlds beneath their Hand
I stopped my masters' breath.

Scarlet on my hands forever,
Scarlet stains my soul;
And where are the songs I would have made,
And the jokes and the tales I would have told,
And the me my masters stole?

So now I am the master
And come in power to reign,
But I cannot bring the dead alive
To cleanse me of my stain.
Oh who will wash my hands of blood
And who give back to me
The songs and the tales and the jests I've lost
And the man I was meant to be?

Scarlet on my hands forever,
Scarlet stains my soul;
And where are the songs I would have made,
And the jokes and the tales I would have told,
And the me my masters stole?

The short answer is that Vierran will, eventually – but it's going to take her a very long time, maybe fifteen or twenty years, with the level of trauma that Mordion has.