Sword and Song

by Kate Story

  She appears to be selling musical instruments.

  Her table displays wooden flutes, small drums, metal bowls like those singing prayer bowls, a trumpet-looking thing. And there are stringed instruments. Several are fretless, rather like those Chinese instruments with one string and a bow—what are they called? Rowan can’t remember. And something like a large lute. And something else that makes his heart warm inside his chest.

  It looks quite a lot like a guitar.

  “Can we go over there?”

  “Sigrid’s booth? Are you a musician, lad?”

  “Sort of.” His stilts waver and dance toward the booth.

  “First we have to attend the Blot.”

  The Blot: the remembrance for this year’s dead. The brothers have brought sacks of food and drink for this purpose. Throwing a last longing look at the instrument booth, Rowan follows the brothers as they work their way through the crowd toward the far side of the square where stands the dark wall of the great domed abandoned building.

  Here, the mood is very different. It reminds Rowan of the memorial altar set up on a spot where a girl from his high school died falling from the roof, having climbed up there for a puff and a dare: a place where people went to weep, and wish they’d done things better or differently. Wished to have time back—someone dies and people wonder, what happened to all that time they were to have with them? Flowers and little candles and messages on paper.

  Only this is huge. The light from the candles turns the night golden. So many candles, so many people.

  Among the flowers sit small offerings of food and drink. People here are quiet, masks removed. Some weep. This is the Blot.

  Rowan watches as the brothers find a spot and spread out the things they have brought with them: several small candles; glasses into which they pour what smells like beer; dried meat, some pieces of fruit, bread. He hasn’t, he realizes, asked them who they’ve lost this year, or how. They speak to other mourners, voices low, embrace.

  From the looks of things here, everyone in Kalmar has lost people.

  “Many, many people have died this past year,” Yonah murmurs, as if he has spoken his questions aloud. “Yishay and I lost our father, and many friends have been executed by the Council. Our little sister.”

  Rowan is appalled. “I’m sorry,” he stammers. He had no idea.

  “And then there are the ones that one suspects are gone, but one just doesn’t know: the people who have been incarcerated. Those are the worst. We can’t recognize them here. We can’t let them go. They linger, between the worlds, and without a Blot their spirits cannot find rest.” He grasps Rowan’s hand, his grip strong. “We remember all we can here. We make the offerings. We celebrate Great Night, and we are alive.”

  They all spend a long time there, Rowan forced to shuffle back and forth on his stilts so he doesn’t fall over, the brothers speaking to people, or sitting with their heads bowed. Rowan wonders if they are praying. He hasn’t heard of much religiosity since he got here. They are simply remembering, he thinks, remembering the people they’ve lost this year. Father and sister. Friends. He can’t really imagine what it must be like.

  If all he’s heard is true, it’s been like this every year, for years and years. For everyone in the city, maybe all of Antilia. Too many people have been dying, and of those, too many are unknown or uncertain deaths.

  Many people come up to the brothers to talk. They are leaders, Rowan thinks. They are the kind of people that others look to. Rowan studies the faces, and thinks he recognizes some of the people from the meeting, although firelight and disguises make it hard to be sure. Something is brewing in the hearts of the people of this city. He is afraid of what they think he might be able to do. What had that man Bob said? You will scare them enough that you stay free.

  How the hell will he do that?

  Finally Yishay and Yonah are done with the Blot.

  “Beer.”

  The brothers push through crowds toward a series of booths selling food and drink, Rowan tottering in tow. They put down coins for three large tankards of ale. It’s sour and strong. When Rowan sees that they are draining their cups in one go, he does it, too. His twiggy beard pricks his chin and gets in the way. “Wow.”

  “Another.”

  Those, too, go down in one, long, grim draught. Rowan feels the alcohol hit him, making his head spin and his limbs feel a bit loose.

  “Another.”

  “Um, I’m okay.”

  “Oh-kay? What is this?”

  “All right. I’m all right.”

  “Of course you’re all right. We have eyes.” Another tankard is thrust into his hand.

  “I mean, I don’t want another beer just now, thanks.”

  The brothers drain their beer, and Yishay swipes Rowan’s away and drinks that, too. “No wasting. Another!”

  They are, Rowan sees then, quite close to the booth with the brightness, the instruments, the girl. Yonah had called her Sigrid.

  “Um, is it all right if I just go over there?”

  “I’m drinking beer, you budding troubadour,” Yonah squints.

  “Over where?” asks Yishay.

  “There.” Rowan points.

  “Oh, no. You stay with us.”

  “But you’ll still be able to see me. It’s just there.”

  The brothers give each other a look.

  “Never knew he had such an interest in music, did you?”

  “No, this is news.”

  “Sigrid’s instruments, too.”

  “He wouldn’t be the first boy to take an interest in Sigrid’s instruments.”

  “No, it’s just that . . .” Rowan’s cheeks go hot.

  “Old Man Toothless sells instruments. Why don’t you go to his booth?”

  “Old Man Toothless?”

  “His breath would knock over a dragon. Look, lad, just over there.”

  Rowan follows Yishay’s pointing finger to a man who looks like a ghoul, standing behind a rickety table displaying flutes.

  “I’m sort of interested in stringed instruments.”

  “Oh, that’s different, then. Stringed instruments. Indeed.”

  Rowan resists an impulse to say please like a child.

  “All right then,” Yishay relents. “Go look at your instruments.”

  The brothers snigger.

  “But keep your wits about you, and don’t draw attention, you hear?”

  “You bet.” Rowan wavers away, stilts difficult on cobblestones, his hands curling as if they already have the guitar-thing inside them. Behind him he hears the brothers shouting, “Cheers!” and the clank of two more flagons.

  Yes, it looks like a guitar.

  It has six strings, anyway, and there are frets. The body looks to be hollow, elongated. Rowan stilts toward it like a man entranced. He touches it.

  The girl doesn’t look at him; she’s busy polishing a flute. “You can try it out if you like, Bushy.”

  So he picks up the instrument and tests the strings. The bottom four are tuned like a mandolin, more or less, with the top two tuned to the corresponding fifths. That’s interesting; they must use something like a Western scale here—except for those Chinese-looking instruments—could it be that they use Western and pentatonic scales, both? Rowan plays with the tuning pegs, carefully testing; the strings are nylon . . . no, of course they’re not. He’s never touched anything like this. Probably gut. The wood is inlaid with darker and lighter woods, and some mother of pearl . . . What would it take to make something like this in a world with no electricity, no big machines? What is something like this worth? He plucks and retunes; it’s okay, the strings seem all right with the changing tension. He puts it into a guitar tuning.

  Rowan misses, so much, the solitude of music. Alone in his room, he lets the guitar tell him what to play. He hardly ever plays for anyone else. Ophelia, that one time, but that was special.

  He doesn’t want to draw attention, but surely one chord . . . Music is the one th
ing that helps him make sense of things. And here, nothing makes sense. Rowan strikes a chord; yes, the tuning is holding.

  The girl looks up then, and he senses her go still. Rowan meets her eyes, brushing some rags away from his forehead. Her face is pale—has she recognized him? For a moment it’s as if the carnival, the Rush, the entire Great Night has gone still, leaving him and the girl and the guitar in an oasis of silence.

  “It’s all right.” Rowan puts the instrument down. “I’ll . . . Don’t be scared.”

  She lifts her chin at that. “Not much scares me.” They stand there, eyeing one another, Rowan towering and shifting on his stilts. “Why, you’re just a lad.”

  “You’re hardly an old woman,” he points out.

  “I’m twenty last month, boy.” She’s about to say more when her eyes shift to look behind Rowan.

  He shakes his rags over his face, praying there isn’t anyone with hostile intention behind him. But when he looks, nobody’s paying any attention to him. The girl puts her hands on her hips. Slowly, she begins to smile.

  “Go ahead,” she whispers. “You’ve taken it all out of tune. So play it.”

  Rowan hesitates. Surely if he plays very quietly, just one song, it’ll be okay.

  “Play something from hell,” the girl whispers, all in one breath. She seems excited and frightened all at once.

  Rowan’s hand, as if of its own accord, is already picking the instrument up again. Something from hell? He doesn’t even know what their music’s like here; they might hate the music he plays. It’s hard to hold the thing while having to keep swaying back and forth on the stilts; he looks a question at the girl and sits on the edge of the table when she nods. That’s better.

  His fingers run over the strings. And then his hand begins to strum. Yeah, the guitar will tell him what to play, the way it always does.

  When it’s Radiohead, he wants to laugh. The saddest song from The Bends. His friend Joe says that’s the one girls always like. He lets it go around twice, thinking of Thom Yorke, channeling the sadness and delicacy and emotion of that voice. He closes his eyes, and Rowan sings. He sings of fake plastic earth, of a broken man and rubber plans and the end of love. Don’t speed up, wait for it. He feels his foot thrashing where the percussion is supposed to come in. He sings his heart out.

  When he stops, the rush of Great Night has faded into background noise. Around the booth, he could hear a pin drop.

  And Rowan hears applause.

  He opens his eyes. The girl, standing behind her stall, alternates between clapping and wiping tears from her cheeks. A whole crowd has gathered, and they are applauding, too. Someone says, “Another!” and then a voice joins in, then more. “Another! Another!”

  Where are the brothers? Surely this is exactly what they told him not to do. . . .

  “Go on,” says Sigrid. Her eyes are shining. “Please?”

  “What is this instrument?” asks Rowan.

  “A gamba.”

  That sounds familiar; a medieval instrument of some kind?

  “Another!” the crowd insists.

  What harm can it do? He’s covered in bits of bushes and rags; it’s not like anyone will know who he is. He plays “Help” by The Beatles. Because he really does feel older today, and he really does need to get his feet back on the ground.

  But people join in on the chorus, in perfect harmony: Please, please . . .

  It’s crazy. He falters, stops. “You know that one?” People nod eagerly. How could Antilians know The Beatles?

  It’s inexplicable.

  “Keep going!” shouts a woman, and again they all join in, swelling on the final notes: Me-ee-ee, oooooh!

  Rowan strums the last chord, picking up the instrument and letting the chord ring and shake, getting a general laugh.

  “Another new one!”

  New one? “Fake Plastic Trees” is hardly new.

  But Sigrid picks up one of the one-stringed instruments and asks Rowan if he minds her playing with him. “This one.”

  She draws the bow over the . . . erhu—that’s what it’s called—playing progressions that sound Chinese. She begins to sing, her voice high and clear.

  Since you, love, went away

  I have not returned to tend my fading garden

  For thinking of you I am like the moon at the full

  That nightly wanes and loses its bright splendour . . .

  Others are singing, but she stops. “You are not playing.”

  “I don’t know that one.”

  “But it is from your world!”

  He stares. “My world is very big,” he whispers so only she can hear. “And that one sounds old, and . . . not from my country. I am sorry.”

  She turns to put the erhu down. “Play another new one, then.” Her Fang the Fiend mask has worked its way around her neck, glaring at him from the back of her head like she is Janus, two-faced, Devil and beauty.

  Something old by Björk, then, for his mother’s homeland.

  He plays “Unravel.” They go friggin’ crazy for that slow unravelling song about sad love’s unravelling heart, and the Devil collecting it. Rowan feels his throat swelling. Our love, in a ball of yarn. He thinks of Ophelia, her dimpled cheek, her lowered eyelids. Indeed, when he sees her again, they will have to make new love.

  He feels it with all his heart. Ophelia can come here. Ophelia is bound to this place the same way he is. Maybe, somehow, she is here. Now.

  And that’s when the Whetung brothers reappear.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” mutters Yishay in Rowan’s ear. He has taken the instrument from Rowan’s hand, glares at Sigrid. “You,” he says to her, “should know better!”

  Yonah takes Rowan by the arm and starts dragging him away from the table. “It’s your fault,” he says to Yishay. “Just one more beer, you said. What trouble can the lad get into, you said. Well, now you see.”

  Rowan looks back at Sigrid, shaking rags from his eyes. “Thank you.”

  “Thank me? The Chosen at my stall! It will do the business a world of good.”

  “And jeopardize everything!” Yonah snaps.

  “Jeopardize everything?” asks Rowan.

  “Listen.”

  The brothers, Rowan, and Sigrid stand still. Echoing through the crowd, from near and far, like waves, like an incongruous echo, Radiohead and Björk, both songs now, in a rivalrous duet.

  “We have to get you out of sight.”

  Rowan lets himself be dragged. “I didn’t . . . don’t understand.”

  “I’m sorry!” Sigrid calls. Rowan looks behind at her. Tears sparkle on her cheeks. “I wanted so much to hear new songs.”

  “New songs, yes. Well, now you’ve got them. And we’d better hope and hope there are no ill-wishers here,” Yonah tells her.

  And then a swirl of drunken, belligerent revellers dressed as Councillors engulf Rowan and the men, and Sigrid is lost from sight. It’s like being in the middle of some terrible college toga party. Rowan almost loses his footing; only Yonah’s strong grip on him keeps him from going down. Other people weave between the drunkards, chasing a man with a long beard, shrieking, trying to grab on to him. He falls, they swarm his body.

  “Keep moving! We have to get you home.”

  A person with backward feet and a red mask pops up into Rowan’s face. “Boo! Boo!” He beats a small drum with a stick. “Boo!” He grabs Rowan around the shoulders and spins him around in a precarious stilt-dance duet.

  “Yonah!” Rowan cries, but the brother is lost to his sight.

  The booing man spins away. Rowan looks across a sea of revellers for Yonah, Yishay, any landmark, trying to get his bearings. The swarm of fake Councillors surround him again in a kind of conga line, kicking their feet to the sides and shouting in a rhythmic beat, like a rowing team. “Heave! Ho! Off to the farm they go, hey-heave, hey-heave! Ho!” over and over. The line snakes around him, spinning him where he stands. He looks down from his height on their heads. A wom
an’s toga has slipped so her breasts swing free; a man kicks so high Rowan sees the family jewels. The line is almost past him. A man on the very end kicks hard as he passes Rowan. “Heave! HO!”

  He kicks Rowan’s stilts, and Rowan goes down.

  He manages not to fall on anybody, and knocks the wind out of himself.

  Lying on his back, it’s almost peaceful. The chanting and shouting, music and revelry go on above him, and above that, there are stars. So many stars. The constellations are totally unfamiliar . . . no, that’s not it. They’re the same as at home, only here there are no electric cities. Rowan can see all the stars around the Big Dipper, Cygnus, the other familiar friends. The Milky Way, the backbone of night.

  So many stars. It’s terrifying.

  Then a person’s face interposes, blocking the stars. It’s the man from the end of the conga line, the man who kicked him.

  “Apologies, Chosen one.”

  It’s the head of the Council. The man who calls himself the Render.

  Rowan sits up like he’s been electrically shocked, tries to scramble backward across the cobblestones.

  “Whoa!” The man smiles and grips one of Rowan’s stilts. He is surprisingly strong. “Really. We do need to have a chat.”

  “What do you want?” Rowan prays that neither of the Whetung brothers reappear now to try to help him; this will land them in jail for sure.

  “The same thing you want, I am sure. Peace.”

  “Peace?”

  “I know you have fallen in with the insurgents.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rowan lies desperately.

  “Oh, come now. Please, Rowan.”

  How does he know my name?

  “I know you want to see your friend Ari again.”

  Hope and terror surge into Rowan like a wave. “Do you have him?”

  The man nods. “He’s safe. Come see me tomorrow. And bring that sword. I was very impressed when you pulled it from the rock, proving to be what you claimed. Ari and I have had many very interesting conversations since then, but he’s anxious to see you. These are great times, Rowan, great times. Legends walk!” His eyes shine, his tongue darts out and licks his lips.