by Unknown
She lived her life, for the most part, alone. There was her mother, of course, who sometimes came, bringing turmoil into her peaceful world. Once the girl had wanted to understand her. But now, grown older, more independent, the girl considered her little more than a force like the wind, one that came and went but never stayed. Her visits, after all, were never very pleasant. Sometimes she brought something rough and wet to wipe the girl’s face, and dumped water on her head until her hair ran down her back like streams of rain. And then she’d take her clothes and leave her with new ones that were still and chill and smelled of strong soap. Sometimes her mother brought food, but when the girl smeared crumbs and honey between her fingers, reveling in the sticky mess, her mother slapped her hands away and came at her with the rough, wet cloth again. The girl was just as happy to be left by herself.
But sometimes, as she stood at the window, breeze tickling her face, a strange feeling filled her, overpowering her so that she laid her head on the window sill. Water ran from her eyes. The wind, though gentle, understood her no more than her mother. And though she didn’t have a word to name it, the girl understood what it was to be alone.
~o0o~
Far below the girl’s window, on a narrow dirt street, a Troubadour passed by. The Troubadour, whose name was Nolia, saw the girl in the window. But, presuming her to be any other wild-haired urchin, she took no notice. Nolia had dealt enough with children in her time.
So instead, she walked past the inn, humming an ancient tune. She hummed partly because music came more naturally than breath and partly because it filled the silence of her solitary travels. She liked the silence, of course—reveled in it, in fact—but after two dozen years of apprentices parading after her in a turmoil of noise and music, the silence was strange. And so she filled it with song.
As she came to the town square, she moved her hand to her pocket, tracing the smooth outline of her instrument, the olke. The olke lay, for the moment, in its resting form of a small flute. She was aware that most of the villagers had noticed her, recognizing her by the floppy, wide-brimmed hat that all Troubadours wore. And when a Troubadour made music, people always stopped to listen. She paused in the middle of the town square and casually cast her hat to the ground. In nearly the same motion, she drew out the olke and pressed it to her lips. At the chorus of the song—which was, in Nolia’s opinion, the best part of any song—she began to play.
The villagers drew near, a few fishing coins from their pockets to throw into her hat. It was a tradition as old as song itself; to turn away from a Troubadour’s song was bad luck and to listen without leaving a coin or two may as well be a curse. In return, Troubadours always stayed in the village for at least a week, playing simple spells. Spells of healing, spells of fortune.
Nolia was a veteran of this way of life. So she played a simple tune on the olke, one as old as human memory, as universal as laughter. She kept the olke in its simplest flute form, playing a sprightly rendition of the well-known song. The crowd muttered in anticipation, wondering what shape the olke would transform into, what surprises might be in store. Some were beginning to sing along when Nolia suddenly stopped playing and instead resumed humming.
She shoved the olke back into her pocket, laughing to herself as the crowd muttered in disappointment. They knew, however, that this was only a sampling of what Nolia could do. The real show, as always, would be in the evening when farmers had come in from their fields and shopkeepers could leave their stores.
As the audience turned away, Nolia swung her hat back atop her head and, in the relative quiet that surrounded her, she kept humming to herself.
~o0o~
The girl, deaf to the world and blind, somehow understood the music. It came upon her suddenly as she leaned upon the window sill, striking her so forcefully that she felt something in her head must have burst. She stumbled backward, hands pressed to her temples, the pressure of the music mounting inside her ears. The thrill of it coursed through her veins so that she trembled with each note, so that her heart beat in time with the music’s pulse. When she breathed, the music seemed to breathe with her. It became part of her, and yet wasn’t.
Frightened, curious, the girl groped about her. Her fingers reached toward the sound, trying to feel the warmth that raced through her head, trying to understand it through familiar senses. She wanted to grasp the music, let it pour through her fingers. She wanted to press it to her face and inhale its scent. But this thing, this mystery, could not be caught. It was everywhere and nowhere all at once.
She scarcely understood that this was a sense she’d never had before, a sense that brought her closer to the world, to people. She didn’t know that outside a Troubadour played a song of journeys and kings and ancient magic. She knew only that it lit in her veins like fire and sunlight, that it warmed and caressed her and held her captive in its embrace.
The girl longed to know more, to chase after this phantom sensation, but she feared that if she chased it, it would flee. And so she sank down there in the middle of the floor, head cocked to one side. Of course, she didn’t know it, but at that moment she was doing something she’d never done before.
She was listening.
With a song still on her lips and a spring in her step, Nolia entered the inn. At once, however, she noticed something peculiar: she stood now in a room crowded by a dozen tables and four times as many chairs but, surprisingly, not a single living soul. Nolia waited, watching dust drift across the room in the streaks of dusky sunlight. The place was, for an inn, eerily still.
“Hello?” Nolia called.
Upstairs, a door slammed. Feet pattered across the wooden floor.
“Coming! So sorry!” a voice called. A woman bounded down the stairs to Nolia’s left. She was, perhaps, in her middle years and held herself with the air of one who is perpetually, and unsuccessfully, attempting five tasks at once. “I am so sorry. I didn’t hear you enter.”
“No trouble,” Nolia said.
The woman came round from the stairs and gasped, quite dramatically, as she beheld Nolia’s hat. “Oh, my! Madam Troubadour!” She curtseyed so deeply and so many times that, for a moment, Nolia feared surely she would fall to her knees and praise her as a god.
“I am indeed,” Nolia said and tried to mask this awkward moment with a smile. “And if I may, I’d like to ask for permission to play in your inn this evening.” In a wide, sweeping motion, she removed her hat. Now, it was her turn to curtsey.
“Why, I would be honored! Most honored! And I’ll give you a room this evening free in return for so great a service!”
Nolia laughed and, with a hand, waved the notion away. “I’ll take the room, but I’ll be glad to pay for it. And for now, I’ll take a table near the window and some tea, if you please.”
“Certainly!” The innkeeper turned away and, in her haste, almost tripped on the tangle of her own feet.
Nolia watched her disappear into another room and wondered, though she knew it to be no business of her own, why the town’s only inn was so utterly deserted.
With a shrug and a sigh, she chose a seat near the window so she could watch villagers pass by. All manner of people were out and about today: young wives and old men, merchants and craftsmen. She took particular interest in two children that darted by, smiles stretched across their ruddy faces. For a moment, but a moment only, she missed the sound of children’s laughter.
The innkeeper returned shortly, precariously grasping a kettle in one hand and a cup and saucer in the other. “There you are,” she said, setting them on the table. And, with a glimpse at Nolia’s hat, added, “What brings you this way?”
Nolia poured herself some tea, leaning her face over the wafts of steam. “Oh, just traveling for traveling’s sake. I just released my last apprentice. Would you believe I’ve trained eleven of those urchins? It seemed time to move, now, where I want, to find a bit of peace and solitude.”
“Eleven apprentices!” the innkeeper said and her eyes lit
with wonder. “You don’t look nearly old enough.”
“I thank you.” Nolia laughed and ran a hand through her downy gray hair. “Do you have children?”
“One,” the innkeeper said. She looked at the floor, eyes fixed on her feet. “A daughter.”
“Imagine that times eleven. I’m surprised I don’t look half in the grave.”
The woman laughed, but all light and wonder had drained from her face. “Oh, one is plenty for me.”
Nolia, habitually nosy, almost asked why. For her, of course, one could never have been enough. Her apprentices had driven her wild with questions, with mishap adventures, but in the end, for reasons beyond words, it had been worth it. Nolia wanted to tell the woman this, to tell her the wonders of a child’s mind, but at that moment the door to the inn opened. The woman excused herself and darted away.
Instead Nolia sighed, staring down into her cup of tea, watching the vapors drift upward. She tried to enjoy the solitude, to revel in the silence. But when she sipped at her tea the taste on her tongue was somehow bitter.
~o0o~
The girl lay in the middle of the floor, stretched out into the shape of a crooked star, waiting for the music’s return. It had disappeared as quickly as it had began, leaving her cold, her solitary heartbeat pounding relentlessly against her chest.
But after many empty minutes, nothing came. The girl pressed her hands to her ears, covering and uncovering them alternately, hoping to entice the music to return. She held her breath—lungs burning, chest aching with the strain—hoping the music would fill her stillness. And when that failed, she stood and stumbled to the window, reached far out into the open air. Only wind slipped past her fingers.
Try as she might, the girl could not summon the music.
An unbearable hum came now to her ears where the music had once been. It was as if the world had lost a dimension, as if it had gone flat. In those long, still moments, the girl learned yet another unfamiliar concept. Knowing now what music was, knowing how sound rushed through her veins and sent sparks through her blood, she understood the void that surrounded her. This terrible stillness, this emptiness had a name: it was silence.
And in those moments of quiet, the world lost its wonder. Nothing mattered, not the feel of the woodgrain on the floor nor the smell of pastries rising up from the kitchen. She didn’t even care when the walls began to tremble as the lower level became full of people; she didn’t care for the smell of the fields and shops the people brought with them. She leaned her head against the window sill and water came to her eyes as it had before, but now she knew why, now she knew that this was sadness that leaked from her eyes and dripped from her chin.
The world, for the girl, was broken.
~o0o~
Nolia sat on a stool in the dining hall of the inn, her hat on the floor before her. The room was crowded now with people—with farmers and merchants, shopkeepers and housewives—all come to hear her songs. They filled the chairs and sat on the tabletops and spilled out the front door, crowding around the open windows. All wanted to hear the Troubadour’s magic, if only a few muffled, scattered notes. And so they crowded in, pressing closer to her as the frazzled innkeeper pushed her way about the room, taking orders.
Nolia took the olke from her pocket, smiling as a cheer rose up from the crowd. This was the first time in many years she would play without an apprentice accompanying her. She remembered, quite vividly, her last apprentice, and how for two years every time he played in public, he always forgot the notes. It was odd, for once, to have the show to herself. And yet, it was also a wonder. How long had it been since Nolia played alone?
She lifted the olke, in flute form, to her lips and began to play. The crowd fell still, holding their breaths to listen. Nolia chose first to play a song as old as dust or sky, a song that everyone knew and some sang along to. It was the song of a hero’s journey. The olke began as a flute and as Nolia played, she worked and shaped it to fit the song. As the tempo picked up and livened, telling of the hero’s triumph, she stretched and pulled the olke into a drum and she pounded out rhythm. When it told of his defeat, she pressed flat the drum and pulled it until it became a harp. Now the song became mournful and the olke became an ocarina, now a guitar, now a lute, now a small bell with a tinkling, silver sound. She worked and stretched and played and transformed the olke, telling this tale of wonder and music and finally, at the end, the olke again became a humble flute.
The crowd cheered, a few individuals pressing forward to throw coins into her hat. Their voices, their cries of joy, that was the real music to Nolia. She had lived selflessly for so many years, allowing her apprentices to bask in their young glory and take that praise for themselves. But now, she soaked up cheers and applause for the benefit of her own ego. It felt good to be selfish for once in her life. To live for herself.
Nolia nodded her thanks to the crowd and molded the olke into a harp again. This was her one Song, the one that she had written to gain the status of Master Troubadour. At first it had been the simple story of her own life, a rhythm of interwoven chords that represented her childhood, her training, her achievements as a Troubadour. But as she grew older, she added to this Song and it became a sort of theme and variation. There were eleven variations on the original theme, one for each of her apprentices. She had named each of the sections in her own mind, molding the song to the child’s personality: Kye the Mischievous, Sarai with Eyes of Fire, Mindi the Ever-Pretending Innocent. One section was simple and mellow like her first apprentice, another flighty and energetic as her last. And as she played, wandering through eleven individual variations, she was filled with nostalgia. She remembered faces, habits, gestures. Her children.
And for a time, she forgot the crowd, absorbed in those memories, the variations of her lifetime. But, as she was nearing the end of the Song, she was pulled sharply back to reality. She heard a wild banging from upstairs and desperate, manic cries. But Troubadours, once they begin a Song, will not stop. And it was known well enough that to interrupt a Troubadour was one of the great taboos.
So Nolia played on, even though her notes echoed strangely in the hush that had fallen over the crowd.
~o0o~
The girl stumbled to her feet, hands flailing, searching in desperation for the untouchable. She moved twice about the room, feeling only familiar things—the bedsheets, the cold glass of the window, the smooth wood of the walls. And where was the music? Why could she feel it filling her head with warmth, but not touch it with her fingers? How could she move about the room and not come closer?
It was agonizing.
So she screamed, feeling the vibration in her throat, though she did not hear or know what she was doing. She knew only that, like the tears she cried, it was emotion pouring out of her.
Finally, she found the door, and here the music burned warmest. She banged and stomped and screamed until finally, something flew open and there was space where a wall had been—the door had opened. The girl stepped forward, the floor unfamiliar to her sensitive feet. The music was much closer here.
She ran, recklessly, and felt herself falling down ridges of wood—stairs—only just catching herself. And here the music was louder and her head burned with it and she was screaming, still now knowing it, her fingers groping at nothing.
And then hands grabbed her and pulled her away.
The girl howled louder but felt her cries fall flat as she was pressed against a body, someone who smelled faintly of flowers. It was her mother. And suddenly the girl was dragged away, though she writhed and struggled, and the burn of the music in her head began to fade.
Soon enough she was back in her room. Here, her mother patted her face and the girl recoiled when she tried to hold her. She retreated to a corner and began again to cry. But not just angry tears, great sobs that shook her small body. She had been so close to discovering the music, only to be ripped away. The unfairness of it made her insides ache, as if someone had ripped out some vital organ, lea
ving behind a gaping, throbbing wound.
She lay down on the floor, curling in on herself in a tight knot, head buried in the crook of her arm. She wished then that, somehow, she could simply disappear.
~o0o~
Nolia sat at the table in her room at the inn, counting the coins from her hat. They clinked and clattered as she poured them out, winking in the light of a nearby candle. She arranged them neatly into stacks, then arranged the stacks into neat rows, the rows into perfect squares. It was quite a pile, more than she’d made when she had apprentices—after all, many times those donations were in mere sympathy of a yet unlearned youth. Nolia felt a dull sense of pride in herself; it seemed she hadn’t lost her touch after all, not even after all these years of allowing her apprentices their glory. She smiled, turning a coin over in her palm.
But not even the weight of the coin could keep her mind from wandering.
She thought of the girl who had stormed down the stairs, howling like something otherworldly, and it made sense now why the inn was so utterly deserted, what with a child that screamed like that. Nolia had spoken to the innkeeper—who bowed and sobbed and apologized profusely—and had learned that she, the innkeeper, was the mother. She had also learned that the girl was blind. And deaf.
Nolia should have been surprised. How could it be possible that a deaf child could react to an olke’s melody? For it was obvious to Nolia that this was exactly the case. The child was sound-touched: she could hear the whispering of the magic beyond the music. To some, perhaps, this would seem impossible. But to Nolia—who’d seen so much of the world that not much surprised her—it made an odd sort of sense. Though the music and magic of a Troubadour were connected, the magic was more like a sixth sense; it played off the sense of hearing but was more than just what ears could discern. Perhaps the girl had no sense of normal hearing, but she had this sixth sense, a kind of inner ear.