The Music of Rdnzarim, 2
Chapter 2
A thorn branch was clinging to Conrad’s coat, poking his arm underneath. He bunched up the end of his other sleeve to grab it and pulled. Finally, the green prickers released, and the branch whipped back into place.
“Hurry up!” he heard George shout
from ahead. George had gone right through the pricker stand and ignored the
clinging branches. It was because he was bigger, though, not because he was
tougher.
Panting, Conrad forced his way
through the rest of the tangle and came out near the top of the hill. An
ancient oak tree crowned its open summit. It was tall and twisted. Only a few
brown leaves clung to the upper branches.
Their parents had made him go with
George to collect tinder from the woods. Neither of them was happy about it.
Conrad had wanted Father to teach him log-splitting, and George had wanted to
be left alone.
For the last two days, George had
been in a foul mood, since Mother told him that he couldn’t ride into town to
meet Mariwelle Hornmeath, some shop girl. News had come that Davvy was sick, he
and the other farmers around Falswald. That was why they hadn’t let George go
to town. It was to keep him safe, but that just made him madder.
Lately, the grownups were always
trying to talk alone. Then old Horwin had come from town with bad news. Horwin
came to tell them that Davvy had died, and now his wife was sick with it too.
That was when they’d sent Conrad out.
“Get the little sticks over there,”
George told him.
A fierce windstorm had brought the
first snow a few days before. The snow had melted, but when the wind passed
through, it pulled down good kindling from the old oak.
Conrad picked up pine brushes too.
They were quick for starting fires, though Father said that if he used too
many, it would blacken the chimney.
George wasn’t really working on
collecting wood. He was just leaning crossly on the tall, gnarled oak.
“I’m going down the hill to look,”
he decided out loud. “You stay here and get your basket full, and I’ll come
back when it’s time to go,” George told Conrad, and he strode down into the
thickets again.
Conrad wanted to argue. There was
plenty of wood on the hill, and he didn’t like being left alone. It wasn’t dark
yet, but it was getting dusky, and it might be dark by the time they were home.
But his brother was already gone, and he wouldn’t tell Georgie that anyway.
So, he worked on filling his basket
with dry twigs. Nothing too wet from the snow, if he could help it,
though everything was a little damp. His clogs and the bottoms of his trousers
were spattered with mud.
When he was done, there was still some light
left. He was about to plop down and sit on a bundle of tree roots, raised out
of the mud, when he heard something odd.
From the north, he thought, judging by where the
sun had dipped. That was where George had gone, and he wondered if his brother
was trying to spook him.
It sounded a bit like singing, and
maybe like a lyre. Sometimes travelling showmen came through Falswald, and he’d
heard harps and lyres there. Pipes too. He knew he couldn’t hear the music
quite right, but he liked the rhythm of the fast songs. It made his feet bounce.
He didn’t like this music, though,
if that’s what it was. He couldn’t say why. Each time the tune rose, it seemed
to end again, either too late or too early.
And there were voices, more than
one, like a whole chorus, not quite singing together. Conrad decided. It was
certainly Georgie trying to scare him. There was no reason for a whole troupe
of people to be singing in the woods.
He set down his basket by the tree.
Either way, he would go find out. He wouldn’t let George have his fun. And if
it was something else, well…Maybe George wouldn’t treat him like such a little
brother if he went to see. That was something a man would do.
So, he crept down the hill, this
time being careful to go quietly and not catch himself on the briars. George
had beaten a path as he went, and that made it easier.
Soon, Conrad could hear the singing
more clearly. And there was a lyre too, or something like it. He didn’t enjoy
it at all. He had a sense that the music was trying to find him. Like when
you’re hiding from your friends in a game, and you can just tell that someone
is close to catching you.
It was coming from off to the right
of George’s path, maybe all the way down the hill. So, Conrad picked up a stout
branch and used it to beat the brush out of his way.
At last, he reached the hill’s foot,
and he crouched behind a boulder, pressing himself to its lichen-patched
surface. The ground was more open at the bottom, a wide meadow of browning
grass. It was all but dusk by then, and the clearing had a purple warmth to it.
The air was getting brisk, though.
Conrad pulled his coat tighter. He was pretty sure the music was coming from right
around the big rock.
He was more frightened than he had
realized. More frightened, in fact, than he had known he could be. He wanted to
stop breathing just so he’d be quieter, and his legs felt weak and tingly. The
music seemed to fill the glade with a weird rhythm that made its grasses pulse
in the wind. He was shaking so badly, he could hardly hold his tall branch.
But he decided he would count to
three and run around the rock, and whoever he saw on the other side, he’d give
them such a wallop with his stick, they would be sorrier than sorry for scaring
him. All the better if it was George, he thought. That would teach him.
So, on three, Conrad uttered a shout
and dashed around the boulder, his stick raised in two sweaty hands.
It wasn’t close at all, actually,
just loud. Conrad’s shout turned into a scream, and he wanted to stop it and be
as silent as the dead. Part of him wanted to drop in the grass and hope it
hadn’t seen him. But he couldn’t even stop screaming. It came out like sick,
when he’d eaten bad cheese.
He didn’t have to tell his body to
run. It just did. At some point, he had dropped the stick.
Conrad wasn’t sure what he’d seen.
He didn’t even know if his parents could say. It was a bit like a bear,
a quieter part of his mind suggested, as he ran.
It did have four legs. They were
squat and splayed, though. And it had raw skin, like a thing with mange. He had
sworn there were feet, feet like his own, down at the ends of the bowed legs.
And arms. He didn’t know how many. No
eyes. Just a mound of skin waddling along through the meadow.
He remembered the mouths most. They
were full and soft, like someone had cut the fancy lips off the women from a
bard troupe and stuck them on. They were all singing. It was a little like
gulls, Conrad thought.
He ran directly into a tree, which
stopped his screaming and his thinking. There was some blood on his forehead,
Conrad found, wiping at his face. It hurt, and that cleared his head a little,
just enough that his terror eased from a boil to a simmer. His heart was still
hammering, halfway up his throat.
After a minute, Conrad picked
himself up from the mud and brittle leaves. The sound was getting farther away.
He had to find George.
George would know what to do. He
picked his way, slow and quiet as he could be, back toward his brother’s trail.
Suddenly, he stopped.
There was some music again. Maybe
it was like what he’d heard before. This was just humming, though. One voice. Now,
he told himself, he was letting his imagination run away with him. There was
nothing scary about someone humming.
He pushed through another tight
thicket to find his brother sitting on a rock, staring off northward. His eyes
were sort of watery, and Conrad couldn’t tell what he was looking at. He was
humming though, with muffled words coming from behind his closed lips.
“Rrrrd,” George was chanting
with his mouth shut. “Rr – dnnnnn.”
Conrad couldn’t tell if it was the
same tune that the thing with the women’s mouths had been singing, but it felt
the same. Like the music was trying to find someone.
“Georgie!” he shouted, then backed
off a few feet. His voice had seemed much too loud.
George blinked and looked at him.
“What’re you doing here?” he asked Conrad irritably, though he glanced
around, seeming shaken.
“There was something down there,
singing!” Conrad yelled. What had happened came out in a jumble, as he babbled
at his brother. He thought he should have explained it better, but somehow he
couldn’t think of it all in the right order.
His big brother chuckled and
ruffled his hair. “I’ll be. Dad really scared you, didn’t he?” George said.
“But I heard it!” argued Conrad, and
he threw his arms out in frustration. He was so mad that he almost wanted to
cry, and he squinched up his face to stop it. “I saw it! It wasn’t people. It
was…It was…” he stammered until he realized, he couldn’t think of what to say.
George smirked knowingly. “I heard
it too, kid. Just the wind,” he said, though Conrad noticed him looking
northward through the trees. It was getting dark. If he didn’t know better, he
would have said that George was nervous.
“You were humming!” objected
Conrad.
“I’m allowed to hum,” George
grumbled. “It’s getting late. Go get your sticks.”
Conrad saw that George’s basket was
still empty. He balled up his fists at the unfairness of it and stomped up the
hill, too angry to be afraid anymore. Maybe it had been the wind. Maybe he’d
just seen a bear and gotten scared.
Conrad hated that. His brother
would always treat him like a baby if he kept on like this. Still annoyed, he
scrambled over a bulge of roots, looking back.
George was following him, filling
his basket as he went. The older boy was getting winded by the time they
reached the top, coughing as he hurried after Conrad. They were halfway back
down the other side, when something crashed through the darkening woods.
Suddenly, Conrad was yanked back by
the shoulder, and he hit the packed dirt.
When he glanced up, George was
standing between him and where the noise had been. He looked tense as a rabbit,
holding a big rock to throw.
More noise from the right, and George spun. He hurled the stone
that way and snatched up another.
Maybe I didn’t imagine it, Conrad thought. Terror pulled his
sight into a narrow tunnel. He picked up a rock too, standing. George looked
back at him. Conrad noticed that his brother was sweating like he’d run up the
hill three times, and his eyes were wide.
A fawn burst into a small clearing
ahead of them, followed by its mother. After that, there was no more noise.
“Moon’s hell!” George cursed. He
dropped the stone and kicked it, then sighed.
