Knowing he has been gravely wounded, the Duke collapses on the ground. Fearing he is dying, his thoughts turn to his kingdom, family and loved ones. He looks around him. As far as he can see, no living thing stands. Banners on spears. Broken swords and crippled horses screaming in the morning mist and mud.
Opening his eyes, the Duke sees a hooded figure on horseback gliding across the ground as if skating on the mist.
"Come back
Come back to me
This turning back the years
Is like swallowing the sea"
"Who will hear me
As I sing?
Who holds my heart
On this frayed string?"
"Sit down, friend
I'll tell you what I've heard:
Laughing is a habit
I've unlearned."
"For power, place and destiny
Now lost and broken free from me
And what is ghosted and washed clean
Now seems like warm reality."
"Men of honor, men of faith
Lay broken like communion plates
The battle done, the song is over
And in the sky a vision hovers"
"Listen
Listen to me
You shall not die today
Take your shield and follow me."
"Don't look back
You know it's all been done
On the crest of a wave
I am the breaker that washes you away."
"All I've ever stood for
Now lost and thrown away
All of my creations
Wasted on the way
wasted on the way."
"Don't hold on
Cast your shadow on the sun
Now is the time to be brave
This is your time to go"
(The Rider stretches out his arm, drawing the Duke's eyes across the muddy battlefield)
"All that you created
crushed into the dust
was it worth your brilliance
your life - a stake too high
your life - a stake too high."
The Rider draws the Duke up with him and sits him on his horse. With a vicious kick, he sets the animal racing furiously into the thick forest and foothills that ring the battlefield.
As they speed through the tall, dark pines they find themselves bearing down a narrow dirt road. The sheer size of the trees forms a canyon of leaves and wood. The Duke braces against the chill as the sun is blocked from his sight.
Although the Rider does not turn to face the Duke, nonetheless he hears him clearly as he speaks in a deep, hollow voice.
"Those broken bodies left on the battlefield were once living souls, who were loved and are mourned. Those that die pass into the silence, but the living are left with anger and rage and loss, and struggle to find their way as best they can."
You come here breathless,
Life hangs heavy from your face
The waning embers
Of a shallow, hollow race
Don't make a move,
Don't make a sound,
Dig a hole and whisper
All your secrets into the ground
Waul! Waul!
Throw your heart against the Waul!
Waul! Waul!
Death makes failures of us all!
Some lead lives
Fluid like a stream
Never knowing what is steel
Never knowing what is dream
Some lives seem
Smooth and planed and bright
Perfect and inescable
As early morning light
The sickness grows
Spidering through me
Like shotgun shells
On a Christmas tree
Waul! Waul!
Throw your heart against the Waul!
Waul! Waul!
Death makes failures of us all!
The mountains of trees spread apart, giving way to low sloping hills of sun and sand. Without a pause, the horse lopes gracefully onto the shifting sand, leaving the wooden canyon behind.
The Duke draws himself deep into his armor breastplate as he once again hears the sounds of violence and chaos.
Passing over the crest of a sand dune, he sees minarets and golden domes gleaming in the sun. He recognizes the beards and dress of Mohammedans – quite like those that the princes of his land had fought in his youth.
He cannot recognize the heavy metal machines that spit fire and smoke as they methodically reduce the city to crushed stone.
"Every tick follows every tock
Every sparrow, every falling rock
Every shepherd, every hungry flock
Every anger, every broken lock"
"Every inch before every mile
Every grace before every smile
Every sacrifice, every hungry child
Every seed, every field grown wild"
"A savaged dream become blind rage
The dreams of freedom broken in a cage
A song of summer overplayed
A one-act play on a burning stage"
"Roll on, the sand,
But theres no hiding place,
All alone
Completely on your own
Stay with me darling,
I'm coming home"
The desert slopes down and the Rider and the Duke ride out onto a grassy promontory facing a slow-foaming ocean.
After the ordeal of the heat and the grit of the desert, the cool, wet winds and the vast expanses of ocean, disorients the Duke. The Rider steadies him and directs his attention to something heavy and shimmering in the distance, just above the horizon.
The Duke is amazed and asks, "What is this miraculous device? Is it the work of God or some scheming demon?"
"It is the work of Men," the Rider answers, "Men have mastered the skies and broken the bonds of the earth. Yet, like you, they know fear and they know death."
With a wave of his hand, the Rider brings the faraway plane into close relief, so that both see a shorthaired woman is in the cockpit. She is blank-faced and still. The machine has begun a slow descent into the hard, white-capped waves.
Only half aware that she is about to die, Amelia Earhardt remembers her youth and childhood.
"My head is spinning:
This is not where I want to be.
It seems to me that drowning
Is like swallowing the sea"
"When I was my Daddy's daughter,
I led my very dreams to slaughter,
I clipped my hopes with kiss-and-tell,
And traded lust for a wishing-well"
"Then I was my Daddy's belle,
I wore love like a cancer cell,
And every time he tore my dress,
I was the Queen of Budapest"
"I cannot stop these histrionics,
From ringing flat, in dull harmonics,
Oh, Daddy, no more candlesticks
- I am drowning in these oil slicks"
"All I feel and I see
Oh Daddy, take these chains from me!
All I am now all I'll ever be:
Forever one with the deep blue sea"
"St. Mary's purple
Cast upon a pale wall
I look for Truth"
In a white, flowered skull"
"Only shadows know why
- I never chose to to fall
My soul, a sleeping snake
That hisses as I stall"
"Mother, may I call you?
Mother, may I fly?
Will you hold me, Mother?
Hold me when I die?"
© 2005-2007. All music and lyrics written by Daniel J.S. Lewis and Frank Altpeter. All rights reserved.