The Music of Rdnzarim, 1
Chapter 1
Harvest was done. Though a day of
cooking had warmed their cottage, the air had a bite, and leaves were falling.
You could hear them rattle on the side of the house, when the wind took off and
whistled between the shutters. The night would be black outside, already.
“Long wait. Poor Davvy sat out in the
cold with a nasty cough,” Father said. He punctuated the comment by swallowing
his hunk of bread. He picked his teeth with a bone. “There was a whole group
from near Falswald, bringing their corn to grind. Didn’t warn Miller Harbough,
just showed up.”
He clapped his hands together for
emphasis. Muttering something under his breath, he poured more ale from a
pitcher. Conrad guessed that he was muttering some of the words his mother
didn’t like Conrad to hear. There had been discussions about that.
“Is that right?” His mother’s voice
rose from the next room.
“Yeah. You know, Davvy’s a solid
man. Doesn’t get spooked too easy, doesn’t tell tales.”
“You’ve said that,” Mother
answered, but she came to lean in the doorway, listening. The lanternlight from
the other room made an aura around her.
Conrad’s father, Orson, was a lean
man. He had a pointy chin and a pointy beard on it, and long fingers like rake
tines. His hair was combed back and flecked with grey.
Conrad’s mother was round and soft,
and she gave him the warmest hugs if he got hurt. Once, Conrad had fallen on
purpose and scraped his knee, just for attention. That was when he had been
little, of course. He was almost nine, now, and wouldn’t do that sort of thing.
“Davvy said the other night, he was
bringing back a ewe that had gotten free. He had his hound with him, sniffing
for it.” Orson had leaned forward across the table, looking between his wife
and Conrad, making sure they were paying attention. Davvy might not like to
tell tales, but Father certainly did. Sometimes Conrad wasn’t sure how much was
true. He hoped his father made up a lot, because the stories could be scary. For
a little one like their sister, Erin, he amended. She was asleep already,
in a bundle of furs near the hearth.
His brother came in too. George was
five years older than Conrad, almost grown up. He was lanky, like Father, but
he had their mother’s stout, square nose. George said Father’s stories were
boring, and he only listened so he could frighten Conrad later. Not that it
worked.
“So, Davvy’s hound was sniffing
along the ewe’s trail, and he knew they were getting close. You could see wool
tufts caught in thorns, and prints in the mud. And it was dark out, but the
moon lit things up. Not a black night like tonight,” said Orson, pointing with
his fork to the shut window. He cleared his throat. “Well, the hound was
sniffing, and Davvy was tromping on the dry leaves, when all of a sudden he
hears something like he hasn’t heard before.”
“A woman laughing,” Bryn suggested
dryly. That was their mother’s name, Bryn. George snorted, and Father scowled,
though not angry in truth.
A pair of rumors went around
Falswald, one that Davvy’s wife was as humorless as stone, the other that Davvy
couldn’t tell a joke to save his life. Conrad supposed it could be both.
“It was singing,” his father said.
“But not like any human song you’ve heard. ‘Like a pipe organ made of
voices,’ is what Davvy told me. Then, he said, he got all muddled and
couldn’t rightly remember why he was there, until all of a sudden his hound
starts barking. The moon was slipping out from behind some clouds, and Davvy
looks up and sees something on the hill. Coming down at him. Something big,
right?”
Conrad was trying to think of what
sounded like a pipe organ made of voices. A flock of seagulls, maybe?
He’d heard gulls when his father took him to Oztikduern once. There was a
fisherman rocking his little dingy, waving an oar around, while the birds
swooped down, stealing his catch bite by bite. It had looked like they were
taking turns. The fisherman couldn’t do a thing to stop it.
As Conrad thought about it, he
didn’t feel quite so grown up, because even seagulls didn’t sound like a
pipe organ made out of mouths, and he couldn’t think of what did.
He’d always had trouble singing
with the other children at chapel. All the tones the organ made sounded about the
same to him. One day, the priest had suggested that he might just like to
listen.
It had made his face turn red.
Between remembering that and hearing Father’s story, he half wanted to go
bundle in furs like his sister. But he squared his shoulders, the way he’d seen
George do when men from the village came by, or when a girl talked to him.
“So, what was it?” George asked,
sounding bored. Their father held up his hands, as if asking for quiet so he
could share a great secret.
“Davvy couldn’t say,” Orson almost
whispered. “See, when it came out in the moon, and his dog was hollering like
wild, he thought it was a bear, as big as a house. Like Arawl himself was walking
the hills. But the thing had harps it was carrying.” He paused for effect.
“The bear had harps in its mouth?” their
mother asked skeptically. “Like as not, Davvy was at his ale that night.”
“Hmph,” snorted Father. “No, that’s
what I said to him first. I told him, ‘Davvy, what you saw was the barrel
coming back up out your eyes,’ but he swore up and down that he hadn’t
touched a dram. And the harps weren’t in its mouth. There were hands, Davvy
said, holding the harps. All in a shadow against the moon, and he couldn’t see
its face proper at all.”
“Smoke of the softleaf then, if not
a dram. Stop now, you’re frightening Conrad,” their mother told him.
“I’m not scared!” argued Conrad,
trying to make his voice go low. It only came out squeakier, and he felt his
face get hot. Georgie smirked.
“All right, Bryn, all right,” Father
rumbled. He reached across the table to ruffle Conrad’s hair. George jogged by
and did the same on his way out the door. Conrad patted his hair back down as
if to restore his dignity. Ultimately, this failed when his mother gave him a
hug and did just the same. Somehow, though, when she mussed his hair, it wasn’t
half as bad. It made him feel sort of warm.
His mother had filled two mugs from
the ale barrel by the door, and she thumped one down in front of herself, the
other by Father. She gave him a kiss and mussed his hair too.
“Did that…really happen?” Conrad
asked. He hoped not, but not because it had scared him. He was worried for
Davvy, he decided.
“Well,” Orson said, warming himself
up to start again, but his wife folded her arms. “Well, it was probably the ale
that got to him,” said Father.
Conrad knew that drink could make grownups funny. Once, he’d had a bad dream, and he came out to find his parents by the fire. Mother was laughing so hard that she had started to cry, and his father was scooting around on the floor. “Just trying to look like a dustpan,” Orson had explained.
Conrad hadn’t understood that at all, and when he awoke in the morning, he wondered if it had been part of his dream. But the ash that settled near the hearth was all a mess, like it had gotten swept with something that wasn’t a broom.
Tonight, though, the grownups didn't seem funny. A strained silence settled between them, the kind that Conrad knew would only be broken after he was sent to bed. Later, when he lay in his bunk, he put an ear to the wall to hear his parents better. His father was speaking.
"...more I think on it, well," Father paused. "Davvy seemed rattled is all. Real rattled."
Conrad realized, with surprise, that his father sounded like he wanted to be comforted. There was a pleading to it, almost, like when Conrad had smashed his toy cart beyond repair. He knew it couldn't be fixed, but he had begged his parents up and down to fix it anyway.
Conrad's mother said something he couldn't make out.
"You know it too Bryn," Orson was insisting. "But you know it too. Davvy's a steady man, and he was spooked worse than I've seen a man spooked."
Conrad decided that he didn't want to hear more, so he leaned away from the wall and buried his ears in the folds of the wool blanket. It had made him curious, the story his father told, when he told it by the light of the hearth, and they all had a belly full of warm stew. But hearing it in the darkness, uttered in the hushed tones that grownups use when a highwayman's killed someone, or a well's gone bad...He wished he could forget the whole thing.
