The Ghosts of Heaven Read Online Free PDF

green,
    and even though she saw where they went,
    they are invisible now.
    Even the two others who stood at her tree,
    she can no longer see,
    but she knows they are there from the smell.

 
    XXI
    This is the moment.
    This is the moment when she fails.
    As the people come back.
    She stares down from the tree
    and all she can see is the sand by the fire,
    and her stick tip touching the sun-dry earth,
    so easy to make a mark.
    And as the people come back,
    the others slide from the green,
    and throw their spears with barely a sound,
    the last of the people begin to die.
    She doesn’t help them.
    She would only help them die.
    There’s horror mounting
    in her throat
    and her belly,
    and as she realizes that the two are gone from under her tree,
    she slips to the ground,
    ready to run.
    She takes a last look through the leaves
    to the fire pit,
    where blood is welling in the sand—
    blood from the body of the woman.
    The woman is still, just one among all
    who die that day.
    But as she looks through the leaves
    at the killing and the dead,
    this woman puts a picture in her head,
    of what it was to be young,
    before the bleeding,
    before the drawing,
    before the talking,
    what it was to be young
    and to be held
    in the arms of the woman from whose belly she came.
    She watches her bleed in the sand.
    They are all dead, or dying soon.
    No one is left, not the young or the weak,
    so she turns, and runs,
    away through the trees
    and green leaves,
    and blades of grass
    where tiny snails spin spirals around themselves,
    as if they know a secret.

 
    XXII
    The last of the people runs.
    Blindly, she runs and is at the water,
    and sees boats arriving from the far lake shore.
    Her hopes are dashed before they can even rise,
    because the boats are not hers.
    More of the others
    come back from the killing on the plains.
    So she turns and runs through the trees,
    still running blind,
    and then she hears a shout,
    and despite her sense
    she looks back.
    Two of them have seen her:
    the two from her tree.
    One points; they sprint.
    She bolts,
    but her legs won’t move as she wants them to;
    feeling the fear from seeing the faces of the two.
    Faces painted with tight black lines,
    round eyes, down cheeks:
    magic made on the skin,
    and she knows it must be killing magic.
    That is the magic that makes them powerful,
    and strong,
    and fast and feared.
    In that moment, too,
    she saw
    the way their fingers stop short.
    Knuckle-cut fingers, and yet still they hold their spears
    with strong hands.
    More killing magic: the mark of the hands.
    She hears them closing in,
    and though her legs are strong,
    she’s growing tired.
    Yet there is no choice
    other than to run and to live,
    or stop and die.
    Then.
    There!
    As she runs, she sees the shelf down which she came.
    Up there, on the high forest shelf, clinging to the cliff,
    is the buzzing body of the lion.
    And somewhere in the grass beside it;
    her bow. Maybe an arrow, or more than one,
    and an idea;
    a picture in her mind
    of her killing these two,
    comes to her with such sudden power than she runs faster than ever before.
    She turns and starts to make the climb,
    but they have seen her turn,
    and follow.
    She will need to put some time between them,
    time in which to find the bow,
    time in which to fit an arrow,
    to roll onto her back and let it fly.
    She pictures it all in her mind,
    as she runs, and then she does nothing but run.
    There is nothing in her head now.
    She is the runner,
    and though the two can see her ahead,
    she puts space between them,
    space and time
    that she will use to kill them.
    Then.
    For some reason.
    She stops.
    She is by the entrance to the black-hand cave.
    She stares into the blackness,
    looks back once more,
    and then
    she steps inside.

 
    XXIII
    Just inside,
    by the mouth of the maw,
    there lie her fire sticks on the cold clay floor.
    She takes them in hand,
    and the dropped torch,
    and pushes inside, pursued.
    They falter as she reaches the