Passages

by Passages (epub)

  “Thanks!” said Tessy. “There are seven of us this year, and we’re doing ‘Firby at the Fair.’ It has seven verses, so we’re all playing, and we each sing one of the verses.”

  “That be a fine idea,” said Bruny. “You have the fun of playing together, and each has their bit to shine in, too.”

  “Exactly,” said Tessy with a nod. She paused, then added, “I’m sorry we didn’t ask you to play with us this year, but you were so focused on your harp piece, it seemed you’d made your plans, so we left you to it.”

  “Oh, yay, it be exactly that way. I done be practicing this song forever it seems. It be a good performance piece. I just have to keep working at it.”

  The girl sitting next to Bruny nudged her with an elbow and held out a platter of roasted, sliced meat, pig from the scent, and Bruny turned her attention to serving herself. Trays and bowls flowed down the long tables, and by the time everyone had served themselves and settled in to eating, the conversation had turned to who someone named Zaden was snogging with this week, and Bruny let herself forget about her yet-unmastered harp song for a while.

  * * *

  * * *

  That evening, just as the late sun was setting, Seladine put aside her book and said, “If I help you with that for an hour, will you go to bed right after? If you lose any more sleep you’re going to fall unconscious right in the middle of your performance trial.”

  Bruny stopped right where she was and huffed out a sigh. “Yay, and I’d be that grateful.”

  “Excellent,” said Seladine. “Give me a play through, then. Show me where you are.”

  Bruny turned back to the first page of her music, sat up straight and began again. The first bit went well enough, but when she got to the tricky bit at the end of the verse, she jangled it again and stopped with a groan. “It tangles my fingers every time! If I do play at quarter time, I can get through it, two out of three times, may’p. But if I do play it properly, my fingers do turn into clumsy sausages.”

  Seladine nodded, waited a moment, then said, “Well, keep going. Let’s see how the rest of it sounds.”

  “That’s all I do have,” said Bruny, ducking her head. She felt embarrassment burning her face, and the panic began to bubble up in her belly once more.

  There was another moment of silence, then Seladine said, “That’s all you have? You haven’t worked on anything past there?”

  “I did doodle with it a time or two, but I done be working on the first bit. If I be not able to get past that, what do the rest matter?”

  “Oh, Bruny! You know better than that! You practice the whole song! I should have—” Seladine stopped and squinched her eyes closed for a full breath, then another. “All right, then. Start over. Quarter time. And whether you flub it or not, keep playing, all the way to the end.”

  “But—”

  “Start! You have four days, Bruny! It won’t help you to learn the tricky bit and then flub the rest of it! Go!”

  Bruny shut up and played, quarter time. It sounded like a tinkly dirge, and she slowed down even more—just a little—toward the end of the verse, but she made it through with her fingers untangled. She gave herself a silent cheer, just a tiny one, and kept going. There were three verses and a bridge, plus the chorus. Next to the tricky bit at the end of each verse, the rest was . . . not easy, but not straining-difficult, either. She was sure she could get it easy enough if she could just master that one part.

  She had the vocals down perfectly; singing wasn’t a problem, and she was happy enough not to have to fret over it.

  Going along at quarter time, she plodded and plunked her way through the song, with only a couple of flubs, which annoyed her all the more after having got through the tricky bit.

  “All right,” said Seladine. “Good. Now, once more, quarter speed again. Keep going no matter what. You tend to pause when you make a mistake—don’t do that. Keep playing, pretend you were perfect. It wasn’t your playing that made a mistake, it was the audience’s ears.”

  “What? None will be believing that!”

  “It’s not about them, it’s about you.” Seladine cocked her head at Bruny and gave her a sly grin. “If you believe you’re perfect, it shows in your playing, in your face, in your posture, everywhere.”

  “That be not fooling the Bards, I do wager.”

  Seladine laughed and shook her head. “No. That is, it won’t fool them into thinking you were perfect if you made a mistake. But they do judge you on your whole performance, and confidence and stage presence are part of that.”

  “But—”

  “Even if it won’t fool your instructors, it’s a good skill to practice. By the time you’re playing for patrons, you will be perfect most of the time, so far as they can tell, and projecting confidence will make perfect sound even better. Work on it now and you’ll have it later.”

  “I do suppose . . .” Bruny still wasn’t sure if there was a point to it, but she did see how not stopping and wincing whenever she made a mistake would help—better not to tie a bow around the neck of a flub.

  She played it again, flubbed the tricky bit at the end of the verse twice, but kept going both times, and made two new mistakes—but not the same ones she’d made the first time—in other places.

  Seladine, who by then was looking back and forth between Bruny and a history text, said, “Good. Again.”

  Bruny played through the song four more times before they pinched the candles and went to bed.

  * * *

  * * *

  Late the next evening, Seladine let her play the song at half speed. She flubbed the end of the verse the first time, but got it the other two times, and made three other mistakes.

  “Again.”

  She played it again.

  “Again.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Three days later, when it was her turn to sit on a stool in front of the panel of instructors and play her trial, she’d played the song at full speed, with the vocals, fourteen times. The last two in a row had gone clean from beginning to end, and Bruny was nursing a tiny bubble of hope down in her gut.

  She heard Seladine in her head saying, “Good, play it again,” and began.

  She made it all the way through without any mistakes.

  * * *

  * * *

  Two days later, every student in Bardic was milling about the dining hall, waiting for Bard Cambrie, who was organizing the Midyear Recitals, to come in with the playlist. Bruny knew a lot of the Trainees to recognize, a few to say hello to, but she wasn’t close with all that many.

  She saw Seladine huddled with a cluster of girls her own age, chatting and laughing and casting glances over their shoulder toward the main doors every few moments. Bruny knew their names but that was all, and she didn’t feel comfortable intruding on them.

  The pipe group entered in a herd, talking and shoving and poking each other. Tessy spotted Bruny across the room and waved, then beckoned. Bruny smiled and slipped through the mob to say hello.

  “Bruny!” called Tessy as soon as she was within a few strides. “Any word?”

  “Nay,” said Bruny. “I done be here a good quarter hour agone, and there be nothing.”

  “A couple of years ago they were over an hour late with the list,” said Kindal, young man a year older than Bruny, who played the oboe. He shrugged when everyone in earshot groaned. “It’ll come when it comes.”

  “Whenever it comes, we’ll make it,” said Delvan. “We did fine, and they always favor ensembles.”

  “It’s no guarantee, though,” said Tessy. “They refuse groups now and again.”

  “But hardly ever,” said Delvan. “A group has to make a right muck of it to get sent down.”

  “Truly?” asked Bruny. “Why?”

  “There are only so many spots in the program,” explained Delv
an. “Soloists really have to earn their place. There’s no guarantee of a performance spot—not like the seasonal festivals, where everyone gets to perform at least once—but they do want to give as many Trainees as possible a spot. Solos are much more competitive because they’re . . . they’re taking five times as much cake, as it were. They have to deserve it.”

  “Oh,” said Bruny. It made sense, of course it did. She just hadn’t thought on it that way before.

  And if everyone was hoping to be a famous soloist someday, then it was practice for how competitive that would be. There were only so many great houses, after all.

  “Well, ye did be that wonderful,” said Bruny. “Ye did play that fine, and the song did make me laugh! I’m sure ye will be getting a spot, nay matter.”

  She got seven smiles and a babble of thanks. Tessy said, “You were very good too. You’re so much better on your harp, I could hardly believe it.”

  “I done be practicing,” said Bruny. “Seladine did help me. She did make me go slow and slow and slow and slow until I did be about to scream! But it did work, and I did play the whole thing with no flubbing.”

  “It was kind of her to spend time coaching when she had her own piece to work on,” said Delvin.

  “Oh, yay, it did be,” said Bruny with a nod. “She be the kindest person I ever did be meeting, truly.”

  Just then, Bard Cambrie came sweeping in through the doors, holding a parchment scroll. The noise fizzed up with excitement, then died down to nothing while Cambrie strode across the hall, her Bardic Scarlet cape billowing behind her. She didn’t usually wear it around the Collegium, and Bruny thought she was deliberately putting on a grand show.

  Deliberate or not, it worked. She was the focus of every gaze in the room as she unrolled the scroll and held it up against the wide plank where announcements were posted. Her left hand must already have held tacks, because she unhooked a tiny hammer from her belt with the right and tapped the tacks into the corners of the scroll, tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, then turned and gave a regal nod to the gathered students before striding off just as grandly as she’d arrived.

  As soon as she was out of harm’s way, the Trainees surged in a mass toward the scroll.

  It took some time before Bruny got a look. She scanned down the two columns on the playlist.

  Her name wasn’t on it.

  * * *

  * * *

  Bruny sat in a corner of the garden and watched the shadows creep across the neatly scythed lawn, one grass blade at a time.

  All that work, for nothing.

  She’d been fooling herself anyway, just a prideful little girl, thinking she could take a solo spot on a program after barely a year of study on one of the hardest instruments.

  What had she been thinking?

  All her life, back in the Tolm, she’d been the best singer in the valley. It was just so, like having gray eyes or brown hair.

  But here, she wasn’t the best at music anymore. She wasn’t even the best singer. Others had finer voices, with more training. Others had the Bardic Gift. She wasn’t special, was just an ordinary girl from a valley nobody’d heard of, who thought she could be the best again if she just got the trick of it.

  Even working as hard as she could wasn’t enough. She was below and behind everyone else, and however hard she ran to catch up, they were running too, and they’d always be ahead of her.

  She wondered whether she should just go back home. She was nearly seventeen, old enough to marry. She knew sheep, and hard work. Surely she could find a man who’d consider her for a wife?

  The sun had just vanished behind the garden wall when she heard, “There she is!” and two sets of feet crunching along the graveled path. She looked up to see Tessy and Delvan approaching.

  “Ho, Bruny!” called Delvan. “You’re hard to track!”

  “I do be sorry,” said Bruny. “I just did want to be quiet for a bit.”

  “Yes, well.” Delvan stopped and looked at Tessy, who stepped up and sat next to Bruny on the cooling stone bench.

  “We discussed it, everyone, and we all agreed. That is, if you’d like to play with us at the Recital, we’d like to have you.”

  “That—? What?”

  “Since you don’t have a place,” said Tessy, her voice low and earnest, “you can play with us. I know you don’t care for the pipes much, but you play them quite well in class, and you could join our group, if you wanted to.”

  Bruny’s thoughts were twisting all about in her head, and she did her best to chase them down. “I’d be that grateful if—but I do care for the pipes! That is, I do think the playing of the pipes is great fun. They be just, I can’t sing while I do play them, so I do need to work on the harp. But could I be joining you? Will they be letting me? Since I did not play with you at the trial?”

  “There’s more leeway with groups,” said Delvan. “We’ll have to get permission, but it shouldn’t be too difficult.”

  “That—it’d be that fine to play with you! Do be thanking all the others! I’ll be thanking them myself, when we do get together for practice!” Bruny’s head felt light and swoopy, like it was flying into the sky on feathery wings. It wasn’t a solo place, but not getting to perform in the recital at all had been that horrible, and playing with the pipe group had been that fun the year before.

  “There’s just one thing,” said Tessy, her face still earnest. “The song we chose, it only has seven verses. That’s why we chose it, because it fit us. If you join us, you’ll just be playing. There won’t be a verse for you to sing. I’m really sorry, but it’s too late to choose something else and start practicing all over.”

  “Nay, nay, it do be fine!” Bruny was a bit disappointed, but not enough to send her all the way back into the glums.

  “Excellent.” Tessy gave her a smile, then stood and held out her hand to pull Bruny up. “Come on, we’ll get you a copy of the music, and we can start practicing.”

  Bruny let Tessy tug her to her feet, then followed them back to the Collegium, her feet nearly dancing.

  * * *

  * * *

  Seladine was waiting when she finally made it back to their room that night.

  “Bruny! Are you all right? I saw you didn’t make the program—I’m so sorry!”

  Bruny found herself pulled into a tight hug, and she squeezed Seladine around the waist in return.

  “It do be fine, truly,” she said. “Tessy’s pipe group—the folk I did play with last year?—asked me to play with them this year too, and I said I will be doing that. I will be playing my pipes with them, so the practicing will not be so hard.”

  “Oh!” Seladine straightened up, her hands on Bruny’s shoulders, and studied her face. “Well, that’s good. It’s lovely that you’ll be performing after all. That was very kind of them. And you can try for a solo again next year. With twelve months to practice, surely you’ll make it then!”

  “I do be supposing,” said Bruny, although to herself she wasn’t sure she’d be ready by then. It was a year away, though, and not something she needed to think about.

  * * *

  * * *

  Bruny practiced the Recital song with the pipe group for a few days before they all trooped over to Bard Cambrie’s office to get permission for her to play with them. Cambrie asked to hear her play the song, as they’d been sure she would. Bruny did fine, and Cambrie added her to the program with a firm nod.

  Bruny spent the next two weeks immersed in the pipe group, playing and bickering and filing off rough edges. The music they made together was so much richer than any one instrument alone, it buoyed her up until she felt as though she were floating along a wide, gentle river on a raft of song.

  She had more time for her other studies, too, and once, four days before the Recital, she got a nod from Bard Breeanne in theory class. It wasn’t a smile, much less a wo
rd of praise, but it was something.

  When the day came, Bruny dressed in her best uniform, took up her pipes and met the rest of the group in the courtyard before heading out to the big lawn near Companion’s Field where the Recital would be held, the day being fine.

  Anyone from any of the Collegia or the Court who wanted to come and listen was welcome. Although the Midyear Recital wasn’t as much of an event as the seasonal festivals, it still drew a huge crowd—more people than lived in all the Tolm Valley.

  Bruny reminded herself of how much fun she’d had at the same event last year and how much she enjoyed playing the song. Not being able to sing was a shame, but she loved to play, and that was enough. When they took their places on the stage, Bruny watched Delvan count the time, then began.

  The song was about a sheep named Firby whose family took him to the fall fair. He escaped and dashed off to enjoy the fair on his own; he managed to dance, taste the cakes, race, throw hoops, get a kiss from a girl, judge the ale competition, and get back to his pen in time to win the badge for best sheep. It was great rollicking fun, and the whole audience was laughing by the second verse.

  Delvan gave Bruny a nod, and she nodded back, then let out her Gift.

  Her joy in the music and feeling of fun in the song wafted out to the other pipers and then through the listeners.

  This was what she wanted to do, she realized. Playing music with other musicians—something she’d never done before arriving in Haven—was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. She loved singing, true, but making music with others, sharing the pleasure of it, creating music together that no one of them could ever have created alone, that was what she wanted to do, needed to do.

  Seladine was determined to be a lauded Bard in a great house, and Bruny was sure she’d achieve that. But Bruny wanted to be part of an ensemble, part of something larger than herself.