The quotes and the title come from T.S. Eliot's awesome poem 'The Wasteland'.

A Handful of Dust

It goes like this: sand and blood and then the song.

He’s dreamed it year on year since he was fifteen, when he let a sorceress lay her hands on him so he could breath for her and bleed for her, but never remembers any of it. He wakes satiated, stretching under the covers and enjoying the languid heat in his muscles, unaware that in his dream, he has slogged through the shriven desert, has gagged on the scent of decay while he follows the song.

Even if he did recall that alien place, he wouldn’t know where it was or why he returned in annual pilgrimage. Nor would he understand it was a gift of sorts, if one with a cyanide tang.

I will show you the shape of your future, she said, and maybe you can make it less dreadful.

And though she has shown him in dreams, philanthropist that she is, they are a mere taster for what must come; for the reality – perhaps her winsome spell can save him as he once saved her.

So he dreams: blood and sand and song in a land long dead, given to him as a gift in the hope that such horrors will never come to those still living.

~*~

Cougar Redfern was lost in sleep, as he so often was when dawn began to wriggle through his window. And he didn't appreciate the niggling sound that was distracting him from fantasies of a clean, seductive smile and legs that went on for miles and miles-

"Beep beep!"

He could feel himself waking and he scrabbled for slumber, back to foggy fantasies and her...

"Beepbeepbeepbeepbeep-"

No – it was sliding away from him and the annoying sound was resolving into something teeth-grindingly familiar...he could feel the duvet around him, feel the pillow on his cheek – there was no way it was morning, so why was his alarm going off at this time?

"Beepbeepbeepcomeonyoulazygitbeepbeep-"

It wasn't his alarm clock – no, it was something far worse.

"Beepbeepbeepbeep," chirped Jepar Jubatus in annoying fashion, somewhere near his left ear.

In one fluid movement, Cougar whipped the pillow from under his head and swung it hard.

It connected; the loud thud and accompanying yowl were music to his ears. Cougar opened his eyes onto a bleary but satisfying scene of devastation.

"Do you know what time it is?" he growled.

Jepar was sprawled on the floor, looking decidedly mussed. Fastidious as a cat, the first thing he did was to fix his hair; the second was to scowl ferociously. "Time you got a personality transplant."

Cougar shrugged. "I was asleep – you know the rules. Wake me before noon at your own peril. And what the hell was with the beeping?"

The shapeshifter drew himself up, green eyes squinting at his nose as if checking it was still attached. He prodded his face cautiously. "I was being an alarm clock," he announced through the lattice of his hands.

Cougar stared at him. He looked as if he meant it. Clearly this was what getting up early did: it made you a nutcase. "...Why?"

"Last time I woke you up, you threw your alarm clock at me-"

"Waste of a good alarm clock," he pointed out.

Jepar's look said more than a dozen sharp words. Used to it, Cougar only feigned an enormous yawn.

"I figured this way there was less chance of you breaking my nose. Obviously I was wrong - how the hell did you get that kind of force from goose feathers? - but it seemed like a good idea at the time."

"Okay, so remind me again why you're creeping into my room at...at...what time is it?"

"Five o'clock," supplied Jepar.

Cougar shuddered.

“Hey, you wanted me to take you windsurfing. I thought we'd start early – and maybe this time there won’t be anyone about for you to pick a fight with.”

He gingerly stuck one foot out of the covers. Spring might be yielding beneath the determined thrust of summer, but at five a.m. it was still too damn cold. “Huh. It wasn’t my fault. His girlfriend *was* eyeing me up. And can you blame her?” He flashed the famous Redfern smile, guaranteed to melt hearts.

Jepar was unmoved. “I can blame you for making me sprint back to town. In a wetsuit, Cougar. It chafed.”

“Is that why you spent last week walking like John Wayne?”

Jepar gave him an unimpressed look. “Why else?”

“We thought you were being a cowboy.”

“Why would I do that?” demanded the boy who thought that being an alarm clock was the height of rationality. “No, I just had the world’s largest friction burns on my thighs because you had to start trouble.”

“I didn’t ask you to rescue me.”

“Yes you did!” the shapeshifter said indignantly.

Okay. Maybe howling ‘are you just going to let them kick the crap out of me?’ had been a hint. But he hadn’t expected the werewolf to call over five of his friends, and he certainly hadn’t expected one of them to bring a baseball bat.

“Well, I promise not to flirt with any werewolves this time round, okay? Now get out and let me get dressed.”

~*~

The walk down was idle and peaceful. Cougar had to admit there was a certain charm to Ryars Valley in the morning; the pale light glided the treetops and even the roads seemed more like long shimmering rivers than mere tarmac. The cool air soon stole the last vestiges of slumber from his eyes, and with Jepar positively bouncing along next to him, it was impossible to stay grouchy.

A comfortable silence fell between them. They’d done this walk a dozen times before, and liked to save the conversation for the inevitable fast food afterwards. Besides, Jepar had long ago learned to keep the fact he was disgustingly zippy in the mornings to himself.

Cougar let his thoughts wander, idling over his sometime girlfriend. Zara Carmillen was nearly as combustible as he was, and it was a rare week when they didn’t break up to a screaming match, only to fix up their next date the day after.

She was human and infuriating and the first real girlfriend he’d had. Though if he’d stayed on the enclave, his parents would have made a suitable match for him by now – he was fifteen, after all, and in their eyes would soon have been old enough to bring hordes of little Redferns into the world.

He was very, very glad they did things differently in the human world.

Lost in such happy reveries, he hardly noticed the first traces of mist, blending the landscape into a watercolour painting, creeping about his ankles like a python. Nor did he realise that the morning chorus of the birds had given way to a leaden silence.

In fact, he didn’t notice a damn thing until Jepar tripped spectacularly, cursing.

“What happened to the fabled shapeshifter grace, twinkletoes?” he demanded, hauling up his friend.

Jepar rubbed his grazed knee. “It got lost in all this mist. And don’t call me twinkletoes, fangface.”

Cougar blinked and for the first time, realised that they were in the middle of a thick miasma. Their surroundings were reduced to strange shapes emerging from the grey haze while the air had become heavy and listless. “Where did this come from?”

“It’s probably been blown off the lake,” Jepar said matter-of-factly. “Happens all the time. It’s not usually this bad though. We’d better not lose sight of each other – Pack territory’s coming up, and I’d hate to wander into that by mistake.”

Cougar agreed completely. His last run-in with the local werewolves had been but one of many. And given that he’d routed them so convincingly – all right, except for that bit where he and Jepar ran away – he’d rather not hand them an easy victory.

More cautious now, they walked on. The damp began to seep into his skin, persistent and icy. He could see nothing but the patch of road beneath his feet and the close grey curtains of mist, hemming him into this sparse and discomfiting world. Even the sound of their footfalls seemed muted, and he found himself twitching each time a shape loomed forth; spikes and knives became trees, and the humped shapes of waiting wolves were only old rocks.

And then...something new. It took a while to register on his senses, so subtle was it, but between one step and the next, he noticed it: the acrid, ashy smell of smoke.

“Someone’s having a barbecue,” he announced.

Jepar sniffed the air, a very dubious expression on his face. “Today? A bonfire, maybe, but who’s going to have a barbecue at this time in the morning?”

“Other crazy early risers? I can smell meat cooking. Steaks.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

They carried on, treading cautiously in the now decidedly chilly air. The burning smell became even more pungent, causing an answering rumble from his stomach.

“This is weird,” Jepar muttered. His hair was laced with droplets of dew, and his skin had a pale sheen to it. He looked half-translucent, a creature not quite of this reality, and Cougar wondered if he appeared the same. “We should have arrived by now.”

“Well, we’re on the path. Sure it’s not because we’re going slower than usual?”

“No, that’s not it.” He could hear the bemusement in the shapeshifter’s voice, and Cougar felt the twinge of nerves. “I come here every day. I know this road. And-”

His voice dwindled and died.

And Cougar understood why; the mists were parting, thinning to reveal reds and ambers, senseless mess at first; to reveal...what was that? That...

Heat hit them like a hammer, and he almost choked, so shocked was he by the change. The air rippled with it, and he had to wait for his eyes to adjust before he could make sense of the mishmash.

And then a word rose into his mind that described precisely what he saw, apt and awful.

Carnage.

There was no other word to describe the ruined landscape, the towers of swirling smoke and the gauzy red clouds that were broken blisters on the sky; a sky that was itself on fire, burning in deep hues of orange and gold thrown out by the swollen, sickening sun. He tried to breathe shallowly, because the sensation of the baking air in his lungs was as disturbing as this world.

“Where are we?” Jepar whispered.

They turned to look at one another, and Cougar saw his own horror reflected back in Jepar’s eyes. He could only shake his head in answer. This wasn’t Ryars Valley; this was nowhere he knew.

Everywhere he looked in this ravaged place, fires swayed and flickered, and he was almost dazzled by them. His gaze followed their rapacious dance; devouring a massive gnarled tree, one of the few still standing, sizzling on patches of grass, licking along the ground to catch-

Oh hell, no.

And as he saw the bodies that littered the ground, barely recognisable through charred features and the masks of blood, he knew exactly where that tantalising scent came from.

His stomach roiled and he took a deep breath to try and calm himself...

Mistake. He vomited onto the ground, his misery only diluted by the fact that Jepar was doing the same.

Wiping his mouth, Cougar straightened up, trying not to see the bodies. It was impossible, for innocuous shapes would suddenly reveal themselves; that black log was someone’s leg, that spiny grass a woman’s heat-cracked hair. He was awash with fear and his head had begun to spin, although whether from the impassive heat or the sheer brutality of the scene before him, he did not know.

“Let’s get out of here,” he hissed, turning-

He stopped. There was nothing behind him but more of the grisly view. Their way back was gone; powerlessness filled him, matched by anger.

“Oh, this is not good,” he heard Jepar say, breathy with panic.

“You think?” he muttered. “We’re stuck in the middle of a warzone, god knows where or why, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t exactly carry a pair of ruby red slippers about.”

“Don’t you know where we are?” Jepar’s voice had a flat, eerie quality. And his eyes...they were more guarded than Cougar had ever seen.

“No. But you obviously do.”

Jepar gestured to the landscape, and Cougar couldn’t help but notice his hand was trembling. “You said it yourself. It’s a warzone. Cougar, we’re in the Burning Times.”

He laughed, but it felt hollow. “No, we’re not. The Burning Times were thousands of years ago.”

“So? We’ve both seen spells like this before.”

And then it clicked. “Chloe. Chloe Radford.” He frowned. “But...but she said she’d show us something that might save us. What’s going to do that here?”

Jepar shrugged. “I don’t know. She only said that she’d show me my future someday – she said...” He paused then the last words came out in mumble, as if he was ashamed. “She said maybe I could make it less dreadful than it already was.”

“Huh. She told me I was a danger to myself, but that maybe I could learn to be a danger to people who deserved it. Hell, she even said she might teach me where to start. Evil old bitch! We save her life, and this is the thanks we get?” He fumed; it all fitted. This was exactly the kind of repayment that suited both Chloe’s twisted humour and her sense of obligation. “At least we know nothing’s going to hurt us.”

“Maybe.”

“Well,” he said, gesturing to the humped bodies. “They don’t look like they’ll be getting up any time soon.”

“Who says it’s them we’re supposed to see?”

~*~

And so they waited, not knowing what else to do; for two long hours, they waited in the dust and the heat, sticky with sweat. Cougar had grown tired of Jepar’s company after the third game of ‘I Spy’, and was clinging onto to his temper for dear life. One more suggestion of noughts and crosses in the ashes was likely to end with him being cross and a very large nought around Jepar’s eye.

And then it appeared on the horizon.

At first it was merely a bright dot, and before he recalled where – or when – they were, he thought it might be a strand of sunlight escaping the clouds to strike something metallic.

“What is that?” murmured Jepar, raising a hand to shield his eyes. “It’s...it’s burning.”

It was. He was struck by the grim thought that it was a person set alight, trying to outrun a horrible death, but that was insane. No one could burn for so long and still run like that, strides eating up the ground, looming ever-larger and headed straight for them.

“I think that’s what we’re here to see,” he muttered.

It arrowed at them, and either side of it spewed vast clouds of dust, spreading like wings.

At last it was close enough for them to see that though it held a vague human form, only a plethora of licking flames clustered to mimic arms, legs, a head. Expressionless, featureless, it moved with a purpose that made him sure it was running to and not from: he pitied whatever the burning beast sought.

Cougar expected it to stop then, and he readied himself for whatever might happen...

And it swept by in a gush of heat and dust, leaving Cougar coughing, grit itching in his eyes and mouth. They were left gawping in its wake – or Cougar was.

His hunting instincts roused, Jepar was already sprinting after it, hair almost red with the dirt of its passage, pausing only to cry “Come on!” over his shoulder.

There didn’t seem to be much else to do, and Cougar followed, wishing he’d spent less time watching TV and more time doing the kind of healthy things that meant Jepar was loping away like a trained athlete while he, wheezing, tried to get his leaden limbs to approximate that fluid gait.

It became quickly clear that the burning beast was no stranger to marathons, and after ten minutes and lung-straining effort, Cougar managed to draw level with Jepar, a few metres behind the creature.

“Is – this – a – bright – idea?” he puffed.

“It’s the only living thing we’ve seen,” Jepar answered, sounding perfectly at ease. “Don’t you want to know what it’s after?”

I want to sit down. “I – guess.”

More minutes passed and discomfort became pain, his feet thudding on uneven ground, his legs hot and aching.

He was a Redfern, a superb example of supernatural prowess. He was in his prime! He couldn’t be struggling for breath, he certainly wasn’t being left behind by a weedy shapeshifter and the world’s largest cigarette lighter, he-

He had a stitch. Cougar slowed to a stagger, panting.

Enough, he decided. No more drinking from pretty girls whose only exercise was lifting their mascara. From now on it was top flight athletes and Nike execs.

And then he heard it, piercing the air and his heart to pin him to the spot, forgetting everything else to listen.

The song was wordless and haunting and exquisitely beautiful, drifting over the air with a kestrel’s freewheeling grace, and it was coming from the direction they were running in.

“Cougar!” came Jepar’s voice, distant. “Stop lazing about – he’s stopped! And there’s someone else here!”

Compelled now, caught by that astounding sound, he began to move again towards its source. The burning beast was changing, the flames becoming darker and more tightly controlled, mutating. Around him, the dust swirled and churned, slowly settling to the earth once more.

And then it was a man stood on the lip of the hill, back to them, and whatever he saw below put that cold animosity into his voice.

“Are you going to hide forever?”

Cougar joined Jepar behind the man, and for a moment was bemused by his words. There was no one in the small valley below, only a narrow waterfall on the opposite side that leapt into the river that coiled around the basin and vanished into the ground at its centre. It had been manmade, that much was obvious, and everything around the valley followed that same slow spiral.

And then the waterfall parted like a curtain, and the song stopped - and a woman stepped through it, onto one of the many stones that were dotted in the river.

She had the saddest smile that Cougar had ever seen, her full mouth the only strength in a face that had little else to recommend it. A thing of pale colours, her hair gleamed like sunshine glancing from a spiderweb, and she had the terrible slightness of starvation in her protruding ribs and hollow cheeks. Everything about her was immeasurably weary: her slumped shoulders, her slack hands, even her half-lowered lashes.

“What would be the point?” she answered, and the richness of her voice was total antithesis to her drab appearance. “I thought you’d catch me eventually.”

The man pointed – steam rose from the earth and a path melted itself into the steep hillside, complete with steps. “Did you think I’d let you reach the oceans? No, nightingale, I won’t have you running away from what you’ve done to us.”

“No way,” whispered Jepar.

“What?”

“That...I think that’s Fireblade.”

He stared at the man, at his handsome, cruel face, and then saw the inhuman glare of his orange eyes. “I reckon you might be right, JJ. Then who’s she?”

“Don’t know. Maybe that’s what we’re here for.”

They inched down the path that Fireblade had made until they flanked him at the waterfall where the woman stood in the midst of the river.

“What I’ve done...” A spasm made her face ghastly with grief. “I had to,” she said, her voice cracking. “But I don’t expect you to understand that.”

“I understand that you betrayed our people to save a handful of humans.” Fireblade spat on the ground and it hissed as if his saliva were acid. “Did you know that your whole family is dead? Ulryat killed herself rather than face the shame of what you did. Avy was torn apart by a mob in the East...”

Fireblade spoke on, relating names which meant nothing to either of them but which clearly meant everything to the woman, who flinched with each new one until tears were dripping down her face into the river. Her anguish only served to fuel Fireblade’s anger.

“And as for Davos...” It was pure pleasure, that grin. “He lived a good deal longer than the others. I made sure of that. By the time I was done with him, he was cursing your name. He begged to serve me, you know, to be my little blind, legless slave, dragging himself in the dust behind me. Your own brother, Ryar - he pleaded for the honour.”

She turned her face aside as if he had struck her. “I don’t doubt it,” she whispered. “I asked him for more strength than he had, I always knew that. Yet still I asked. And I would ask something of you too.”

Fireblade gave a roaring, savage laugh. “You have no right to ask anything of me.”

“No right,” she agreed. “But I ask all the same. Give him mercy, Fireblade. Don’t punish him for what I did.”

Heat welled up from the man that made Cougar take a step back, and it echoed in his words. “I have no mercy for traitors. He is miles behind, crawling through the dirt to find me, and he will follow on his belly for the rest of his days. I thought about leaving you to the same fate, but I have no taste to see you crawl for me.” The spite that lashed in his voice was painful to hear. “I had to put up with it for years, after all, and it bored me then.”

“It bored me too,” she said quietly.

Fireblade froze. Cougar marvelled at the woman’s audacity, the only flash of courage she had shown so far.

“You dare-” he began.

“I have dared so much else,” she said, bitterness livid in her face. “Why not the truth as well? You used me, Fireblade, and you didn’t even have the grace to hide it. At first I thought I loved you, so I clung to the vows you spoke to me, and then I feared you, so I heeded the bruises you gave me. I came to this war unwilling, because I knew what refusal would mean – and then I saw the deaths we caused, I saw the people we left maimed in the name of progress.”

“And instead you have destroyed us to let witches survive,” he hissed, and Cougar knew who this woman must be, quaking there amidst the drops of water. “Is that what you call progress?”

“Is progress children screaming in the darkness?” Ryar ap Sangager demanded, passion making her fierce. “Is it blood on the grass? Is that our brave new world, built on the bones of the innocent?”

“Sometimes,” he said, dismissing the destruction with a flip of his hand. “They are vermin, no more than the flies and the rats, whatever you might think. They have no place in our world.”

“Then it is no world I wish to be part of,” she fired back.

“We are of one accord on that,” he snapped. “Or are you going to wait in the water forever where I can’t touch you?”

All the zeal faded from her face, leaving her slumped and sad once more. “I thought about it,” she said, soft, pensive. “But what would I be waiting for? The only ones who mattered are dead or destroyed or so changed that I could never love them again. I cannot change the things I have done...the monsters I made...and if I live, what else might I do, calling it necessary? How many others will I hurt?”

Fireblade’s face was a stiff mask, but his mouth twitched with some sentiment Cougar couldn’t identify. He felt young and foolish here, watching people in the throes of emotion he could not grasp.

And then Ryar glanced up, and her face was shrewd and pitying. “I hurt you, didn’t I?” she said, wonder in her voice. “I feel it.” And she touched two fingers to her chest, above her heart. “It burns in you, doesn’t it? Right here. Why?”

And all the strain burst from Fireblade like an arrow loosed from a bow. “You thought you loved me? You thought? When I saw you there in Sangager’s court, when you sang that day...didn’t you love me?”

She moved from stone to stone, little light steps, and Cougar wanted to shout to her to stay put, but he knew it would be no use. Instead she stepped onto dry land, and looked up into his face.

Cougar expected to see defiance or rage, or anything but the cowed fear that made her shrink back. Yet still she spoke, even knowing what must happen.

“I never loved you,” she said. “My only regret is that I didn’t realise sooner.”

Fireblade made a strange, low noise and only years later would Cougar think that it reminded him of an animal in pain too deep and mortal to cry out.

Suddenly his hands were around her throat, and Cougar was jumping forward, beaten by Jepar whose hands swept through those two ancient lovers, ancient enemies, now on the ground with her hair in the dirt and her eyes wide, him bent over her, his knuckles white and keening in some incomprehensible mix of sorrow and wrath-

And they were back on the road, blinking in the fresh morning sunlight.

Cougar let out a shaky breath. “What...” he swallowed, unable to erase that last despairing image form his mind. “What was the point of that? Why the hell did that raddled old bitch show us that?”

Jepar had his arms wrapped about himself. “I don’t know. There must be something we’re supposed to learn.”

“It might not have been real,” he said, hoping.

And then Jepar ran his hands through his hair – and dust came out, bringing with it the faint ephemeral scent of charcoal. Both of them watched it, drifting between them.

“It was real,” whispered Jepar. “You know it was.”

He did know, and it gnawed at him. But Cougar only said, “Let’s go home. I don’t feel like windsurfing.”

Whatever the lesson was, he didn’t understand it.

~*~

Jepar dreams again that night: sand and blood and then the song. And this time, there is a fourth element as significant as the others if not as pervasive, revealed to him in the mist and dew of the morning.

Sand and blood and the song and the water, all-embracing, a barrier as unsurpassable to Fireblade as her denial of love was unbearable, all that remains in a world of ashes and dust.

He doesn’t understand either, but in time he will.

Chloe has made sure of that.