Doo-Wop Necromancer

(Whisper, skitter, shiver, hush)
(Shadows fall, darkness brush)

The iron gate swings shut behind me
and the noise falls away
No more voices talking over voices
no more things I'm supposed to say
The living never finish anything
always rushing, always wrong
But the ones who rest beneath my feet
completed every song

In the garden of the gone
in the garden of the gone
Where every story has an ending
I can finally feel at home
In the garden of the gone

(Whisper, skitter, shiver, hush)
(Shadows fall, darkness brush)

I've memorized the names by now
I know them like old friends
A warrior queen from the Second Age
I know how her story ends
A child marked with a single rune
who only saw one spring
Their lives are sad but they're whole
and there's peace in that, you know?

In the garden of the gone
in the garden of the gone
Where nothing's left unfinished
and the quiet sings its song
In the garden of the gone

(Whisper, skitter, whisper, hush)
(So quiet, so still)
(Skitter, shiver, skitter, hush…)
(So still)

The living want so much from me
they pull me every way
Everybody needs, everybody asks
and nobody wants to stay
But down beneath the moss and stone
the bones don't need a thing
And if I'm very still I swear
I hear them start to sing

(Stay a while, stay a while)
(Whisper, whisper, hush, hush, hush)
(Rest a while, rest a while)
(Listen close)

The midnight mist is settling
and the earth is cold and sweet
I lie back against a granite stone
and the dark feels like a sheet
The living world is beautiful
but it's never really done
And I am so, so tired
of being an unfinished song

In the garden of the gone
in the garden of the gone
Where every story has an ending
and the dead have set me free
In the garden of the gone
where the only voice is me

(Whisper, skitter, shiver, hush)
(Shadows fall, darkness brush)

They came down from the mountain pass
with fire in their jaws
The bell rang out, the children screamed
and nobody could stop their claws
The swordsmen fell, the archers broke
the healers hit their knees
And I was just the quiet one
the one nobody sees

But I could feel the bones underground (bone, bone, bone)
the old graves, row on row
And something in my hands woke up
that I hadn't even known
I reached down and I pulled it out
not a sword, not a shield
Just a handful of the sharpest thing
the graveyard had to yield

(Nibble, nibble, bite, bite)
(Chew, chew, chew)
(Chatter, chatter, click, click, click)
(Chomp-a-womp-a-doo-wop)
(A chomp-champ-chew)

Fighting teeth with teeth
(Molars fly, incisors soar)
Fighting teeth with teeth
When the demons came with fire
I fought back with something from underneath
(Teeth with teeth with teeth)

(Chatter, chatter, chomp-chomp-chomp)

They shattered in the torchlight
little splinters made of bone (bone, bone, bone)
They flew like needles through the dark
and every one found home
The demons screamed — I'd never heard
a demon scream before
They turned and ran back up the pass
and I fell to the floor

Fighting teeth with teeth
(Molars fly, incisors soar)
Fighting teeth with teeth
When the demons came with fire
I fought back with something from underneath
(Teeth with teeth with teeth)

(Gnash, gnash, snap)
(What did you do? What did you do?)
(Nibble, nibble, bite, bite)
(Chatter, chatter, click, click, click)
(Chew, chew, chew)
(Chomp-a-womp-a-doo-wop)
(A chomp-champ-chew)

The morning came, the town came out
they're cheering in the square
The captain's asking who stood fast
and everyone was there
But no one saw me in the dark
no one saw me kneel
And I washed my hands before the dawn
so the dirt wouldn't be real

(Chatter, chatter, chomp-chomp-chomp)

They're singing songs about the night
the night the demons fled
They'll make a legend out of it
but they'll leave out what I did
And that's alright, that's alright
some things are best left beneath
Nobody has to know I won
by fighting teeth with teeth

(Fighting teeth with teeth)
(Nibble, nibble, bite, bite)
(Nobody knows)
(Fighting teeth with teeth)
(Gnash, gnash, snap)
(Nobody knows… nobody knows…)

(Squish-squash, shape and press)
(Squish-squash, shape and press)

I scooped a handful from the riverbank
where the water meets the road
I didn't have a plan for it
I just liked the way it rolled
Between my fingers, cool and soft
like it wanted to be shaped
And I was tired of walking alone
so I gave it eyes, I gave it a face

It's only clay, it's only clay
there's nothing wrong with clay
Everybody plays with clay
I just play a different way

(Squish-squash, shape and press)
(Squish-squash, rise)

I gave it arms to carry things
I gave it legs to stand
I didn't really think it through
I just kept on with my hands
And when I set it on the ground
and whispered what I knew
It shuddered once and found its feet
the way that new things do

It's only clay, it's only clay
there's nothing wrong with clay
Everybody plays with clay
I just play a different way

(Squish-squash, shape and press)
(Thudding, thudding, shape and press)

It doesn't talk, it doesn't sleep
it doesn't need to eat
But when I stop it stops beside me
and it waits for me
And when the spiders came from the hollow
fangs as long as swords
It stepped in front of me and took the hit
like I was something worth fighting for

(Squish-squash, shape and press)
(It held, it held)

It's only clay, it's only clay
I tell myself each night
It doesn't have a heart in there
it doesn't feel the fight
But when I patch the cracks each morning
smooth the places where it broke
It stands back up and looks at me
and neither of us spoke

It's only clay, it's only clay
there's nothing wrong with clay
But it walks beside me in the dark
and the dark don't feel the same
It's only clay

(Squish-squash, shape and press)
(Only clay, only clay)
(Squish-squash, shape and press)
(But it stays… it stays…)

(Rattle-attle, rattle-attle)
(Bone by bone by bone)

(Rattle-attle, rattle-attle)
(Bone by bone by bone)

We were walking through the village
on an ordinary night
The merchant and the miller's son
were arguing by lantern light
And then the moon broke through the clouds
and the miller's son went still
His back bent wrong, his jaw split wide
and the screaming filled the hill

I didn't have a sword
I didn't have a shield
I didn't have a single thing
between that beast and me
But underneath the churchyard stones
I felt them waiting there
And I reached out with everything
I had and grabbed the air

I called to the bones and they answered me
(Rattle-attle, rattle-attle)
They came up through the ground and wrapped around
Bone by bone they covered me
I called to the bones and they answered
Oh, they answered me
(Bone by bone by bone)

A ribcage locked across my chest
a skull plate on my shoulder
Femurs laced along my arms
and I felt myself grow bolder
The werewolf hit me like a wall
but I was wrapped in someone's bones
And they held me, oh they held me
like the dead protect their own

I called to the bones and they answered me
(Rattle-attle, rattle-attle)
They locked across my heart and held me steady
Held me close and ready
I called to the bones and they answered
Oh, they answered me
(Rattle-attle, rattle-attle)
(Held me, held me, bone by bone)

The beast ran off before the dawn
the miller's son came back
He was barefoot, bloody, shaking
with no memory of the attack
I was standing in the churchyard
wearing somebody's remains
And for the first time in my life
I wasn't the one afraid

(Bone by bone by bone)

I should have been horrified
I should have torn them off and wept
But they fit me like they knew me
like a promise someone kept
I set them back into the earth
I laid them down with care
And whispered thank you to the dark
to whoever left them there

I called to the bones and they answered me
(Rattle-attle, rattle-attle)
They fit me like they knew me, like they loved me
Like the dead were standing guard
Oh, I called to the bones and they answered me
They answered me, oh woa-oa-oah

(Rattle-attle, rattle-attle)
(They answered, they answered)
(Bone by bone by bone)
(They answered me…)

(Sway-ah, sway-ah, sway)
(Sway-ah, sway-ah, sway)

I'm standing at a grave tonight
the grave of someone cursed
Who spent his final days on all fours
snarling, at his worst
They put him down before the spring
they didn't have a choice
But I remember how he stood
I remember his voice

And I'm thinking about his bones down there
twisted by the change
What if I could straighten them
what if I could rearrange
his twisted bones
straighten them
and make him whole
Not the curse that bent him wrong
but the shape he had before
What if I could give him back
the way he used to walk the floor

Am I any different from the thing that moved him wrong?
Or am I giving back the walk he had before it came along?

(Sway-ah, sway-ah, sway)
(Stand up, stand up, stand tall)

Not on strings, not on strings
that's not what this is for
I'm not pulling him like a puppet
I'm opening a door
Not on strings, not on strings
I won't move him cruel
The curse already did that once
I won't be another's tool

(Sway-ah, sway-ah, sway)

I whisper to the earth and ask
I don't command, I call
The bones shift in the dirt below
and slowly start to crawl
A femur finds a kneecap
and a spine begins to stack
And when he stands it's straight and true
not hunched, not bent, not back

Not on strings, not on strings
that's not what this is for
I'm not pulling him like a puppet
I'm opening a door
Not on strings, not on strings
look at how he stands
He's walking like a man again
even without hands

(Sway-ah, sway-ah, sway)
(Walking, walking, standing tall)

The living called him monster
at the end they called him beast
But bones don't hold a curse in them
the bones at least have peace
And maybe what I'm doing
is a kind of setting free
He walks beside my golem now
a new companion for me

Am I any different from the thing that moved him wrong?
I think I am… I know I'm not… I hear his old bones' song

(Sway-ah, sway-ah, sway)
Not on strings
(Sway-ah, sway-ah, sway)
Not on strings
(Stand up, stand tall)
(He walks again… he walks again…)

(Nok-teh-rah, nok-teh-rah)
(Kru-shah, veh-nah)
(Nok-teh-rah, nok-teh-rah)
(Kru-shah, veh-nah)

The packs are running closer now
I hear them every night
The shepherds lost another flock
the watchtower lost its light
Somebody's got to walk the woods
somebody's got to go
And nobody asked me to do it
but nobody else would know

Curse of weakness, curse of pain
make them crumble, make them pay
for the damage they have done
I only say the words that someone has to say

(Nok-teh-rah, nok-teh-rah)
(Make them crumble, make them pay)
(Kru-shah)

I find them by the river bend
I find them in the pines
Their eyes like embers in the brush
a dozen burning signs
I don't need a sword, I don't need a shield
I just need to speak
And something in the words I carry
cuts them at the knees

Curse of weakness, curse of pain
make them crumble, make them pay
for the damage they have done
I only say the words that someone has to say

(Nok-teh-rah, nok-teh-rah)
(Weakness, weakness, fall away)
(Veh-nah)

My golem walks behind me
a risen skeleton at my side
I'm not the frightened one who knelt
too afraid to do anything but hide
The words come easy now, they come
like breathing, like a song
I whisper and the wolves go down
I've been doing this so long

(Nok-teh-rah, nok-teh-rah)
(Kru-shah, veh-nah)

Curse of weakness, curse of pain
make them crumble, make them pay
for the damage they have done
I only say the words that someone has to say
and I'll say them every night
and I'll say them in the rain
Curse of weakness, curse of pain

(Nok-teh-rah, nok-teh-rah)
(Every night, every night)
(Kru-shah, veh-nah)
(Curse of pain… curse of pain…)

(Flicker, flicker, flash and glow)
(Flicker, flicker, flash and glow)

I found her name beside the chapel wall
a mage who served the king
The etching said she held the eastern line
with nothing but a ring
Forty years she's been beneath the stones
forty years below
But when I raised her bones and shaped her hands
her fingertips began to glow

The memory is in the bones
(Flicker, flicker, flash and glow)
The memory is in the bones
Forty years of quiet in the ground
but the memory is in the bones

(Flicker, flicker, flash and glow)

I thought I'd have to teach them
I thought I'd have to lead
But a mage's bones are not like other bones
they carry what they need
The frost came first, then fire, then a light
I didn't recognize
She cast it at the treeline and the dark
pulled back like it was surprised

The memory is in the bones
(Flicker, flicker, flash and glow)
The memory is in the bones
You can bury skill beneath the dirt
but the memory is in the bones

(Flicker, flicker, flash and glow)
(Remember, remember)

So I walked the graveyard reading names
the way I used to do
But now I'm looking for a different thing
I'm looking for the ones who knew
A healer from the plague years
a battlemage who lost his war
An enchantress from the Second Age
who nobody remembers anymore

I raised them one by one by one
I shaped their hands and stepped aside
And every single one of them
lit up with what had never died

The memory is in the bones
(Flicker, flicker, flash and glow)
The memory is in the bones
You can take a life but not the gift
'cause the memory is in the bones

(Flicker, flicker, flash and glow)
(One by one by one)

My graveyard full of finished stories
has a little more to say
The songs I thought were over
had a verse they didn't play
And I'm not stealing anything
I'm not commanding anyone
I'm just giving back a stage
to hands that weren't done

The memory is in the bones
(Flicker, flicker, flash and glow)
The memory is in the bones
(Flicker, flicker, flash and glow)
You can bury power in the ground
but the memory is in the bones
(Remember, remember)
(It's in the bones… the bones…)

(Rah-tah-tah, rah-tah-tah, march-march-march)
(Rah-tah-tah, rah-tah-tah, march-march-march)

The webs are on the village walls
the silk is at the gate
I've been watching, I've been counting
and there's too many now to wait
One golem and a handful of bones
won't hold against a swarm
So I walked into my garden
and I called up every name I've known

Rise and fight, rise and fall
rise and fight again
Death isn't a loss on this battlefield
it's a chance to start again
(Rah-tah-tah, rah-tah-tah, march-march-march)

The warrior queen stands seven feet
her sword arm remembers the grip
The battlemage is already casting
frost forming at his fingertips
The healer from the plague years
is stitching bones back into place
And the enchantress from the Second Age
has light pouring out of her skeletal face

Rise and fight, rise and fall
rise and fight again
Nothing stays down on my battlefield
rise and fight again
(Rah-tah-tah, rah-tah-tah, march-march-march)

A spider takes the queen apart
I put her back in seconds flat
The battlemage goes down in silk
I snap my fingers and he's back
This is what I was made for
this is where the noise goes quiet
Every bone on every square of dirt
and I'm conducting it like a choir

(Rah-tah-tah, rah-tah-tah, march-march-march)
(All of it, all of it)

Rise and fight, rise and fall
rise and fight again
You can break them but you're wasting time
I'll raise them all again

(Rah-tah-tah, rah-tah-tah, march-march-march)

I've never felt this clear before
I've never been this still inside
A hundred bones moving at my word
and every one in stride
The living panic in a fight
they scream, they shake, they freeze
But I am calm, I am so calm
like a wind between the trees

Rise and fight, rise and fall
rise and fight again
(Rah-tah-tah, rah-tah-tah, march-march-march)
Rise and fight, rise and fall
rise and fight again
Nothing dies forever on my watch
rise and fight again

(Rah-tah-tah, rah-tah-tah)
(Rise, rise, rise)
(Rah-tah-tah, rah-tah-tah)
(Again… again… again…)

(Hah-hah-hah, breathe-it-in)
(Hah-hah-hah, breathe-it-in)

Something broke the line, something big
with legs like sharpened trees
It scattered all my skeletons
and drove me to my knees
My army faltered when I fell
I felt them start to slip
And something in me reached out blind
and grabbed it as I tripped

And I pulled

(Hah-hah-hah, breathe-it-in)

Your life is mine now
your health is mine
Your blood is mine
and if you fall I'll take your bones
Your life is mine now

(Hah-hah-hah, breathe-it-in)

It poured through me like river water
cold and fast and bright
I was on my knees and then I wasn't
I was back inside the fight
The spider crumpled where it stood
legs folding one by one
And I was full, I was so full
like swallowing the sun

Your life is mine now
your health is mine
Your blood is mine
and if you fall I'll take your bones
Your life is mine now

(Hah-hah-hah, breathe-it-in)
(Take it, take it, take it all)

My army snapped back into place
I felt them lock and hold
The battlemage relit his hands
the queen's grip found her sword
And I walked forward through the silk
draining everything I touched
Every spider that came close to me
had less and less and less

(Hah-hah-hah, breathe-it-in)
(Less and less and less)

Your life is mine now
your health is mine
Your blood is mine
and if you fall I'll take your bones
I'll take your life and use it
I'll take your death and choose it
Your life is mine now

(Hah-hah-hah, breathe-it-in)

I used to be the quiet one
I used to wash the dirt away
I used to lie down in the graveyard
just to feel okay
But that was then and this is now
and something's changed inside the song
Your life is mine now
and mine keeps going on

Your life is mine now
(Hah-hah-hah, breathe-it-in)
Your health is mine
(Hah-hah-hah, breathe-it-in)
Your blood is mine
and if you fall I'll take your bones
Your life is mine now
(Mine now… mine now… mine…)

(Sah-rah-oh, sah-rah-oh, rise up)
(Sah-rah-oh, sah-rah-oh, rise up)

The battlefield is full of pieces
ribs that lost their spines
Femurs cracked in half, skulls caved in
fragments left behind
My skeletons are shattered now
too broken to re-raise
But I'm kneeling in the wreckage
and I'm seeing something else, a shape

A wing needs a thousand tiny bones
a spine needs a hundred more
A skull the size of a horse's chest
and jaws that drag the floor
I've never built a thing this big
I've never even dreamed
But my hands are moving on their own
like they know what I mean

Look what I made from what was broken
(Sah-rah-oh, sah-rah-oh, rise up)
Bone dragon rising from the battlefield
Every shattered bone a piece of something new
Look what I made from what was broken
(Sah-rah-oh, sah-rah-oh)

A ribcage becomes a wing joint
a femur becomes a claw
A hundred vertebrae become a tail
that sweeps across the floor
I'm fitting them together
like a cathedral made of hands
Every bone exactly where it needs to be
the way a choir stands

Look what I made from what was broken
(Sah-rah-oh, sah-rah-oh, rise up)
Bone dragon rising from the crumbled dust
Nothing wasted, nothing lost, nothing thrown away
Look what I made from what was broken

(Sah-rah-oh, sah-rah-oh)
(Higher, higher)

And when the last bone locks in place
I feel it breathe — not air
Something deeper, something old
a wind from somewhere spare
It lifts its head, it spreads its wings
a hundred broken lives made whole
And it is the most beautiful thing
that no one else will know

(Sah-rah-oh, sah-rah-oh, rise up)
(Beautiful, beautiful)

Bone dragon rising, oh woah
Bone dragon rising, woah-oh-oh
Oh woah, bone dragon on the rise
Bone dragon
(bone dragon)

The paladin is staring
from across the burning field
He sees a monster made of death
a weapon, not a shield
He doesn't see the architecture
doesn't hear the song
Doesn't know that every bone
is exactly where it belongs

Look what I made from what was broken
(Sah-rah-oh, sah-rah-oh, rise up)
Bone ddragon rising into the sky
You will never see it the way I do
but look what I made from what was broken

(Sah-rah-oh, sah-rah-oh)
(Rise up, rise up, rise up)

It was never meant to fly
but look at it fly
Look at it fly

(Sah-rah-oh, sah-rah-oh, rise up)
(Look at it fly… look at it fly…)

(Skitter-scatter, silk and fang)
(Skitter-scatter, silk and fang)

She came up from the hollow
with a thousand legs behind her
Eyes like black moons in the trees
and silk to blind her prey and bind them to her
The village doesn't know her name
the village never looked this deep
But I've been walking in the dark too long
to pretend that she's asleep

Fight the spider queen
(Skitter-scatter, silk and fang)
Fight the spider queen
She's been building in the dark below
fight the spider queen

(Skitter-scatter, silk and fang)

My army holds the tree line
my mages light the way
My golem takes the first wave down
with fists of blood and clay
But she's bigger than I imagined
she's older than the stones
And when she screams the forest shakes
and I feel it in my bones

Fight the spider queen
(Skitter-scatter, silk and fang)
Fight the spider queen
Everything I've learned has led me here
fight the spider queen

(Skitter-scatter, silk and fang)
(Louder, louder)

She thinks she is the only queen
upon this battlefield tonight
But I have a queen of my own
who held a kingdom with her right
Seven feet of ancient bone
a sword arm that remembers war
I send her forward through the silk
and that's what warrior queens are for

Queen against queen
(Skitter-scatter, silk and fang)
Queen against queen
One of silk and venom, one of bone
queen against queen

(Skitter-scatter, silk and fang)
(Strike her, strike her)

My dragon circles overhead
my skeletons advance
The mages cast from every side
the spider queen won't get a chance
She's thrashing, screaming, pouring silk
but every thread gets cut away
And my warrior queen is standing tall
the way she stood in her own day

Fight the spider queen
(Skitter-scatter, silk and fang)
Fight the spider queen
Bone and clay and blood and teeth
and every name I've ever known
Fight the spider queen

(Skitter-scatter, silk and fang)

She falls the way a tower falls
slow and then all at once
Her legs fold underneath her
and the forest holds its breath
And my queen is standing over her
with someone else's borrowed sword
And I am standing in the silence
of the thing I was always moving toward

(Skitter-scatter, silk and fang)
(She falls, she falls)
I fought the spider queen
Nothing left now but broken legs
And blood so green
I fought the spider queen
And my skeleton army took her down

(Hmmm-mmm, hmmm-mmm, hush now)
(Hmmm-mmm, hmmm-mmm, hush now)

The silk is burning in the trees
the spider queen is still
My army's standing in the smoke
along the ruined hill
But the battle's done, the battle's won
and the living will never know
That it was the dead who saved them all
and now it's time to let them go

I'll put you back the way I found you
(Hmmm-mmm, hmmm-mmm, hush now)
Tucked back to sleep beneath the dirt
You had one more song in you
and oh, the way it sounds now
Tucked back to sleep beneath the dirt

(Hmmm-mmm, hmmm-mmm, hush now)

My warrior queen, I take her sword
and fold her arms across her chest
I set her down beneath her stone
the queen who never got to rest
But she held the line one final time
three centuries after her last
I smooth the dirt and say her name
the way I've always said it, soft

I'll put you back the way I found you
(Hmmm-mmm, hmmm-mmm, hush now)
Tucked back to sleep beneath the dirt
You had one more song in you
and I was proud to hear it
Tucked back to sleep beneath the dirt

(Hmmm-mmm, hmmm-mmm, hush now)
(Rest now, rest now)

The battlemage, the healer girl
the enchantress with no name
I carry every one of them
back to the plots from where they came
I fit the bones back in the earth
I match them to their stones
And the graveyard fills up like a choir
settling after the song is done

(Hmmm-mmm, hmmm-mmm, hush now)
(One by one by one)

The dragon takes the longest
bone by bone I take it apart
A wing becomes a ribcage
and a claw becomes a heart
Every piece back where it started
every fragment finds its bed
The most beautiful thing I ever made
returning to the dead

I'll put you back the way I found you
(Hmmm-mmm, hmmm-mmm, hush now)
Tucked back to sleep beneath the dirt
You had one more song in you
one more verse nobody knew
Tucked back to sleep beneath the dirt

(Hmmm-mmm, hmmm-mmm, hush now)

The gate swings shut behind me
and the world goes soft and still
Just the lantern and the moonlight
and the barrows on the hill
I lie back against a granite stone
and the dark feels like a sheet
And the garden of the gone is full
and the garden is complete

(Hmmm-mmm, hmmm-mmm, hush now)
In the garden of the gone
(Hmmm-mmm, hmmm-mmm, hush now)
Where every story has an ending
and they let me sing along
In the garden of the gone
(Hush now… hush now… hush…)