Bonfires by Lferion  

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Burning books has never stopped ideas

Burning dissidents has never stopped dissent

Burning pestilence has never stopped the plague

It only spreads

Smoke goes where it will, borne on the wind

Gets in eyes and ears, in mouths and minds

And issues forth again, all the more incendiary

Never less

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In the rain-wet darkness, Maglor considered the roughly scratched words around the base of the statue of a stern-visaged figure in formal Judgement robes, presiding over a bonfire of so-called vanities. Proscribed books, forbidden relationships, wicked substances, tools, behaviors, ideas. The figure resembled Namo, but only in the shadow of form, not in substance.

The words were much more important. There was defiance, creativity, even hope in those verses, the beats in the lines. This darkness too would pass, (no telling how long it would take, how much travail would be involved). A tune for the words, though. That would help (had helped before, would be effective again) to carry the defiance, the resolve, the hope as a voice on the wind, getting everywhere, subtle and insidious, smoke signals, everywhere, nowhere, infectious, ubiquitous, intangible, impossible truth, hope, life.

He set to work. It would be in the Song by morning.

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Aurë Entuluva — day would come, if he had to rouse Tilion from his bed himself, and Arien with him, sing the near-space into incandescence. Call on Earendil and Venus both to light a way. Light strong enough to cast shadows, to throw the problem -- the edges, the silhouette, the emergent shape, not the whole by any means -- into relief. Into something that could be clearly, inescapably seen.

That statue was a symptom as much as a statement, the acid-etched defying verse a still-fighting immune system. Though why he was thinking in medical metaphors was a question. Healing, though; healing and light made sense. Not an elegy, this, though the intermittent rain was warm as tears.

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Oh songs that tell of heroes, bright on black

Of prowess sing, the lofty deeds of figures

Terrible and tall, fell eyed, fighting on

Against the foe where battlefields run red

And gods themselves do hold the weary ground

Where stars come down to set the land alight

Such music sets the fading fëa alight

Rekindles hope, cleaves Shadow from the black

Of unstarred space, of rent, unhallowed ground

Where dust draws doom in characters and figures

Found in the nightmare fuel of white stained red,

And flesh renews with strength to carry on

From heights and depths of time the notes ring on

The words resound, lamps darkened spring alight

The clarion now calls neath banner red

A foe to match Ancalagon the Black

Wings to winnow winds, make deadly figures

Mar the world again; as in mortar ground

The blade, the song, the will, We hold this ground

Iron, dust or construct still spinning on

Defiance and defense in hidden figures

Working in plain view, fired coals alight

We heat the beaten mettle ashen black

Forge to renewed purpose, burning red

Are we gnomes or monsters, our hands too red

For other purpose than be finely ground

Encased in clay, fused, fired, brittle black

Aimed and cursed by others, to fall upon

No target of our choosing, all alight?

No such song sing: choose other figures

The song that shapes the world would learn these figures

Would know both blood and sunrise, gleaming red

Rise up on wings of fire, then alight

To comfort and defend those on the ground

The battle-tossed, the scorned and turned-upon

Make of dark a solace, set stars on black.

Cold clay painted black, complicated figures

In story carry on stern and stark on red

This the new-old ground, Song sets the world alight

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Collect the songs together

Scatter them apart

Notations on the wall

Remind us all of art

That very dart

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Maglor remembered. Remembered how the points of light - gold, white, red, blue, green, every color, from every kind of lamp, candle, glowstone, torch and lantern - heaved and roiled, flickered and dimmed before brightening again, ran together, stirred, smeared: cloud-pictures on the long dark shore of Araman. He remembered the railing under his fingers as he realized order, shape, geometry was emerging from inchoate, abstract instances. Companies and groups stitched with messengers, edged with scouts and hunters. The beginnings of the wagon-units that would let them cross the Ice laid out like the schema of a tapestry, warp, weft, shuttle, beater.

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Weapon-words we gather

Shining in the song

Conquer we would Darkness

Let light return with dawn

We carry on

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Someone had found plans and operating instructions for a simple broadsheet printing press. With the folio, hidden in the shadow behind the shelf-stack was a small and very battered press, and a box which, wonder of wonders, contained a set of type. The fiercely dedicated group that had coalesced around Maglor set about repairing the thing, learning everything they could about using it, what it needed to work properly. There had been no need at all to tell them how important communication, dissemination of information was. They knew what would happen if they were found with the thing, and it only made them more determined. Edain were like that. They always had been.

For them, the crime was not in teaching, speaking, reading, learning things outside the narrow bounds of permitted ideas, authorized material, it was in enforcing ignorance and error, misinformation and fear. They had a weapon with which to fight back, and they were going to use it.

They sang as they worked, bits and snatches of forbidden pieces interspersed with 'proper' songs with altered words, interpretations that changed the meaning entirely, and like a round, a canon, a thread stitching everything together, the song that started this particular resistance and revolt. The words around the statue, the tune he had written for them.

Maglor sang to the block of wood in his lap as he carefully carved what would be the header image and title of the first broadsheet they planned to print. Virtue and voice to the wood, to the image, to the words that would accompany it. The ballad that was already assembling itself in his head. They had a toe-hold, and a core of highly motivated people, carefully dispersed, they had him, who had done this before, and soon they would have a voice.

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Oh Virtue went barefaced and bold

About the town with purpose stern

Each transgressor young or old

Was marked for judgement: brand or burn

Mercy, masked, did quiet tread

Behind the rule-man, mead in hand

Removing marks that flowered red

Saving some from cruel remand

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<p>The printing press was silent, the room quiet -- the reinforced sub-basement below the library stacks -- lit only by the single small glowstone Maglor had made on a whim one sunny afternoon, when it seemed things were not so dire. There were fifteen or so of the regular group, and three who, well, they were certainly part of the group now. No one was leaving this shelter until the firestorm -- metaphorical, literal, existential, whatever it proved to be -- had died down. </p>

<p>They had known they were fighting a war, but it had been small before, words, grafitti, visual bursts of sense in nonsense, found things assembled into meaning, appearing and disappearing, broadsides, posters, flyers. Resistance in small numbers, arrests in ones and twos. </p>

<p>(Executions, a handful over the span of time they had been fighting back; but that wasn't different from before. What was different was the secrecy, the not knowing. The pyres and the hangings had always been public. Maglor was disturbingly reminded of Angband's tactics: were the taken dead? Enthralled? Turned? No safe way to know.)</p>

<p>They'd been warned something was coming. That they'd need a shelter: sturdy, sufficiently large, as well supplied as they could make it. Now, they waited. Maglor was trying to think of something they could do without making a lot of noise or drawing more than a trickle of power when one of the taller students stood up, barely missing the low beam. "We should do a round or two of "Pick, Pass, or Play' only no passing, and the first round everyone should do *something*. "Something cheerful, maybe; make people laugh." </p>

<p>Another student did laugh, "What, like sketch comedy? Because not many of us are standing up in here," she looked pointedly at the low ceiling and lower beams. Nearly everyone chuckled. She went on with more word-play, then handed the metaphorical stage to the person next to her. Silently, they scooted the glowstone closer, and began to make cat's cradle figures of increasing complexity.</p>

<p>What an excellent idea, Maglor thought, and wondered why it hadn't occurred to him. He must be getting old. But not so old he could not make use of the energy and fragments of Song to spin better wards. Fool the searchers (there were always searchers) into chasing figments, convince them the building was empty, not worth searching. He began to hum, more thought then sound, weaving in the wordplay, the threadwork, elements from every offering.</p>

<p>One of the new people was sitting next to him, doing something with a thick book, pencil, and paper. When the turn reached them, she closed the book on her crossed legs and took a deep breath, "The last class I was in, before they shut everything down and declared public education anathema, was art history. We had just reached the first third of the 20th Century, and all the different ways people were doing art, poetry, dance, everything. So, this is a dadaist poem I just made. Hopefully it says something.</p>

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<p>--A Tirade About Our World--</p>

<p>Must last, opens ouch<br />

Giant for gleeful one<br />

Hits hard on earth.</p>

<p>Sleeping slowly one brother<br />

Canal she sang, wise<br />

Ritual was greased greyly.</p>

<p>Shape cover the nerve<br />

Hollow cheeks watching you</p>

<p>Light putrid the waste<br />

Whispers no glorious journey,<br />

Shady room, charm etc.</p>

<p>Trunk wrong busy across<br />

We please your boy!<br />

Realize they swell too</p>

<p>Over the finger twine<br />

Before sweet wind dies</p>

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Maglor had lived for a very long time, a time traveler who took the long way through, then to now. Now to further nows. Nested nows and thens like nested dreams, thin layers of bright colors building up, heraldic pigments, like and unlike the kind of heraldry in unfathomably distant Valinor, drowned Beleriand, Ennor preserved in tales. Fingolfinian blue, Arafinwean green, Feanorian red, faded to rose, mingled Treelight, sun-gold, silver moon. Color was as much Song as music.

So little color now, so little song, so little hope. But little was not none. Life endured, love endured, and would prevail.

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Rise, rise, writers and readers

History and hope you hold in your hands

Will the world end thus?

Stand, stand, scholars and speakers

Terror and truth trumpet on tongues

Will the world end here?

Hard, hard, hammer at horror

Lively and loud does laughter uplift

Will the world end now?

Sing, sing, sculptors and strivers

Artistry ever engages the eye

Will and word will win

In secret, in splendor

In silence, in shouting

In striving, in stillness

In sacrifice, surviving

We shall not cease speaking

We shall not cease seeking

We shall not cease singing

Nor let darkness take all

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