Hexwood filk: Mordion may be the victor but he's still incredibly damaged.

All of my regular Harry Potter stories are on hold at the moment, as I have spent most of the year attempting to move house because our landlady wants to sell the one I'm currently living in, resulting in a long and ridiculous saga involving a collapsing ceiling and a house with so many holes in the interior walls that it looked as if it had been savaged by giant beavers. As I was packing books I was reminded of my passion for Diana Wynne Jones's 1993 novel Hexwood. I looked it up and discovered that there were remarkably few Hexwood fanfics out there, so even though I don't have much time or effort to spend on writing new stories at present, I decided to upload a set of four Hexwood filks which I wrote about twenty years ago. This one is decidedly ose, on the traditional fannish scale of ose, morose and more morose.

For those of you who are reading this because I'm on your favorites list as a writer, rather than because you are fen of Hexwood, if you haven't read it you really should – even though it's so complicated that the first couple of readings will make you feel as if your eyeballs have been pulled out on stalks and then plaited. For those who just want to understand the filk without having read the book, I've included a summary of the background to the story at the bottom of the accompanying filk called Killing Joke, q.v..

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

/¯¯\_/\_/¯¯\
/۷۷۷(Θ ˆ Θ)۷۷۷\
(º º)
V V
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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?

/¯¯\_/\_/¯¯\
/۷۷۷(Θ ˆ Θ)۷۷۷\
(º º)
V V
ΔΔ
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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.