I awoke, took a drink, and went to check the snare I had set. I was surprised to find a rabbit already struggling against the cord. I took out my small knife and remembered how Laclith had shown me to dress a rabbit. Then I thought of the blood and how it would feel on my hands. I felt sick and vomited. I cut loose the rabbit and walked back to the pool.
I took another drink of water and sat on the stone. I felt a little light-headed and wondered if it was from hunger.
After a moment my head cleared and I chided myself for my foolishness. I found some shelf fungus growing on a dead tree and ate it after washing it in the pool. It was gritty and tasted like dirt. I ate all I could find.
I set a new snare, one that would kill. Then, smelling rain in the air, I returned to the greystone to make a shelter for my lute.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Fingers and Strings
IN THE BEGINNING I was almost like an automaton, thoughtlessly performing the actions that would keep me alive.
I ate the second rabbit I caught, and the third. I found a patch of wild strawberries. I dug for roots. By the end of the fourth day, I had everything I needed to survive: a stone-lined fire pit, a shelter for my lute. I had even assembled a small stockpile of foodstuffs that I could fall back on in case of emergency.
I also had one thing I did not need: time. After I had taken care of immediate needs, I found I had nothing to do. I think this is when a small part of my mind started to slowly reawaken itself.
Make no mistake, I was not myself. At least I was not the same person I had been a span of days before. Everything I did I attended to with my whole mind, leaving no part of me free for remembering.
I grew thinner and more ragged. I slept in rain or sun, on soft grass, moist earth, or sharp stones with an intensity of indifference that only grief can promote. The only notice I took of my surroundings was when it rained, because then I could not bring out my lute to play, and that pained me.
Of course I played. It was my only solace.
By the end of the first month, my fingers had calluses hard as stones and I could play for hours upon hours. I played and played again all of the songs I knew from memory. Then I played the half-remembered songs as well, filling in the forgotten parts as best I could.
Eventually I could play from when I woke until the time I slept. I stopped playing the songs I knew and started inventing new ones. I had made up songs before; I had even helped my father compose a verse or two. But now I gave it my whole attention. Some of those songs have stayed with me to this day.
Soon after that I began playing…how can I describe it?
I began to play something other than songs. When the sun warms the grass and the breeze cools you, it feels a certain way. I would play until I got the feeling right. I would play until it sounded like Warm Grass and Cool Breeze.
I was only playing for myself, but I was a harsh audience. I remember spending nearly three whole days trying to capture Wind Turning a Leaf.
By the end of the second month, I could play things nearly as easily as I saw and felt them: Sun Setting Behind the Clouds, Bird Taking a Drink, Dew in the Bracken.
Somewhere in the third month I stopped looking outside and started looking inside for things to play. I learned to play Riding in the Wagon with Ben, Singing with Father by the Fire, Watching Shandi Dance, Grinding Leaves When it Is Nice Outside, Mother Smiling….
Needless to say, playing these things hurt, but it was a hurt like tender fingers on lute strings. I bled a bit and hoped that I would callous soon.
Toward the end of summer, one of the strings broke, broke beyond repair. I spent the better part of the day in a mute stupor, unsure of what to do. My mind was still numb and mostly asleep. I focused with a dim shadow of my usual cleverness on my problem. After realizing that I could neither make a string nor acquire a new one, I sat back down and began to learn to play with only six strings.
In a span I was nearly as good with six strings as I had been with seven. Three span later I was trying to play Waiting While it Rains when a second string broke.
This time I didn’t hesitate, I stripped off the useless string and started to learn again.
It was midway through Reaping when the third string broke. After trying for nearly half a day, I realized that three broken strings were too many. So I packed a small dull knife, half a ball of string, and Ben’s book into a tattered canvas sack. Then I shouldered my father’s lute and began to walk.
I tried humming Snow Falling with the Late Autumn Leaves; Calloused Fingers and a Lute With Four Strings, but it wasn’t the same as playing it.
My plan was to find a road and follow it to a town. I had no idea how far I was from either, in which direction they might lie, or what their names might be. I knew I was somewhere in the southern Commonwealth, but the precise location was buried, tangled up with other memories that I was not eager to unearth.
The weather helped me make up my mind. Cool autumn was turning to winter’s chill. I knew the weather was warmer to the south. So, lacking any better plan, I set the sun on my left shoulder and tried to cover as much distance as I could.
The next span was an ordeal. The little food I’d brought with me was soon gone, and I had to stop and forage when I was hungry. Some days I couldn’t find water, and when I did I had nothing I could use to carry it. The small wagon track joined a bigger road, which joined a larger road yet. My feet chafed and blistered against the insides of my shoes. Some nights were bitter cold.
There were inns, but aside from the occasional drink I stole from horse troughs, I gave them a wide berth. There were a few small towns as well, but I needed someplace larger. Farmers have no need for lute strings.
At first, whenever I heard a wagon or a horse approaching I found myself limping off to hide by the side of the road. I had not spoken with another human since the night my family was killed. I was more akin to a wild animal than a boy of twelve. But eventually the road became too large and well traveled, and I found myself spending more time hiding than walking. I finally braved the traffic and was relieved when I was largely ignored.
I had been walking for less than an hour one morning when I heard a wagon coming up behind me. The road was wide enough for two wagons to run abreast, but I moved to the grass at the edge of the road anyway.
“Hey, boy!” a rough male voice behind me yelled. I didn’t turn around. “Hullo, boy!”
I moved farther off the road into the grass without looking behind me. I kept my eyes on the ground beneath my feet.
The wagon pulled slowly alongside me. The voice bellowed twice as loud as before, “Boy. Boy!”
I looked up and saw a weathered old man squinting against the sun. He could have been anywhere from forty to seventy years old. There was a thick-shouldered, plain-faced young man sitting next to him on the wagon. I guessed they were father and son.
“Are ye deaf, boy?” The old man pronounced it deef.
I shook my head.
“Ye dumb then?”
I shook my head again. “No.” It felt strange talking to someone. My voice sounded odd, rough and rusty from disuse.
He squinted at me. “You goin’ into the city?”
I nodded, not wanting to talk again.
“Get in then.” He nodded toward the back of the wagon. “Sam won’t mind pulling a little whippet like yuself.” He patted the rump of his mule.
It was easier to agree than run away. And the blisters on my feet were stinging from the sweat in my shoes. I moved to the back of the open cart and climbed on, pulling my lute after me. The back of the open wagon was about three-quarters full of large burlap bags. A few round, knobby squash had spilled from an open sack and were rolling aimlessly around on the floor.
The old man shook the reins. “Hup!” and the mule grudgingly picked up its pace. I picked up the few loose squash and tucked them into the bag that had fallen open. The old farmer gave me a smile over his shoulder. “Thanks, boy. I’m Seth, and this here is Ja
ke. You might want to be sittin’ down, a bad bump could tip ye over the side.” I sat on one of the bags, tense for no good reason, not knowing what to expect.
The old farmer handed the reins to his son and brought a large brown loaf of bread out of a sack that sat between the two of them. He casually tore off a large chunk, spread a thick dab of butter onto it, and handed it back to me.
This casual kindness made my chest ache. It had been half a year since I had eaten bread. It was soft and warm and the butter was sweet. I saved a piece for later, tucking it into my canvas sack.
After a quiet quarter of an hour, the old man turned halfway around. “Do you play that thing, boy?” He gestured to the lute case.
I clutched it closer to my body. “It’s broken.”
“Ah,” he said, disappointed. I thought he was going to ask me to get off, but instead he smiled and nodded to the man beside him. “We’ll just have to be entertainin’ you instead.”
He started to sing “Tinker Tanner,” a drinking song that is older than God. After a second his son joined in, and their rough voices made a simple harmony that set something inside me aching as I remembered other wagons, different songs, a half-forgotten home.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Bloody Hands Into Stinging Fists
IT WAS AROUND NOON when the wagon turned onto a new road, this one wide as a river and paved with cobbles. At first there were only a handful of travelers and a wagon or two, but to me it seemed like a great crowd after such a long time alone.
We went deeper into the city, and low buildings gave way to taller shops and inns. Trees and gardens were replaced by alleys and cart vendors. The great river of a road grew clogged and choked with the flotsam of a hundred carts and pedestrians, dozens of wains and wagons and the occasional mounted man.
There was the sound of horses’ hooves and people shouting, the smell of beer and sweat and garbage and tar. I wondered which city this was, and if I’d been here before, before—
I gritted my teeth and forced myself to think of other things.
“Almost there,” Seth raised his voice above the din. Eventually the road opened out into a market. Wagons rolled on the cobbles with a sound like distant thunder. Voices bargained and fought. Somewhere in the distance a child was crying shrill and high. We rode aimlessly for a while until he found an empty corner in front of a bookshop.
Seth stopped the wagon and I hopped out as they were stretching away the kinks from the road. Then, with a sort of silent agreement, I helped them unload the lumpy sacks from the back of the wagon and pile them to one side.
A half an hour later we were resting among the piled sacks. Seth looked at me, shading his eyes with a hand. “What are ye doin’ in town today, boy?”
“I need lute strings,” I said. Only then did I realize I didn’t know where my father’s lute was. I looked around wildly. It wasn’t in the wagon where I’d left it, or leaning against the wall, or on the piles of squash. My stomach clenched until I spotted it underneath some loose burlap sacking. I walked over to it and picked it up with shaking hands.
The older farmer grinned at me and held out a pair of the knobby squash we’d been unloading. “How would your mother like it if you brought home a couple of the finest orange butter squash this side of the Eld?”
“No, I can’t,” I stammered, pushing away a memory of raw fingers digging in the mud and the smell of burning hair. “I m—mean, you’ve already…” I trailed off, clutching my lute closer to my chest and moving a couple of steps away.
He looked at me more closely, as if seeing me for the first time. Suddenly self-conscious, I imagined how I must look: ragged and half-starved. I hugged the lute and backed farther away. The farmer’s hands fell to his side and his smile faded. “Ah, lad,” he said softly.
He set the squash down, then turned back to me and spoke with a gentle seriousness. “Me and Jake will be here selling until round about sundown. If you find what you’re looking for by then, you’d be welcome back on the farm with us. The missus and me could sure use an extra hand some days. You’d be more than welcome. Wouldn’t he Jake?”
Jake was looking at me too, pity written across his honest face. “Sure enough, Pa. She said so right afore we left.”
The old farmer continued to look at me with serious eyes. “This is Seaward Square.” He said, pointing at his feet. “We’ll be here till dark, maybe a little after. You come back if’n you want a ride.” His eyes turned worried. “You hear me? You can come back with us.”
I continued to back away, step by step, not sure why I was doing it. Only knowing that if I went with him I would have to explain, would have to remember. Anything was better than opening that door….
“No. No, thank you,” I stammered. “You’ve helped so much. I’ll be fine.” I was jostled from behind by a man in a leather apron. Startled, I turned and ran.
I heard one of them call out behind me, but the crowd drowned them out. I ran, my heart heavy in my chest.
Tarbean is big enough that you cannot walk from one end to the other in a single day. Not even if you avoid getting lost or accosted in the tangled web of twisting streets and dead end alleys.
It was too big, actually. It was vast, immense. Seas of people, forests of buildings, roads wide as rivers. It smelled like urine and sweat and coal smoke and tar. If I had been in my right mind, I never would have gone there.
In the fullness of time, I became lost. I took a turn too early or too late, then tried to compensate by cutting through an alley like a narrow chasm between two tall buildings. It wound like a gully carved by a river that had left to find a cleaner bed. Garbage drifted up the walls and filled the cracks between buildings and the alcove doorways. After I had taken several turns I caught the rancid smell of something dead.
I turned a corner and staggered against a wall as pain stars blinded me. I felt rough hands grab hold of my arms.
I opened my eyes to see an older boy. He was twice my size with dark hair and savage eyes. The dirt that smudged his face gave him the appearance of having a beard, making his young face strangely cruel.
Two other boys jerked me away from the wall. I yelped as one of them twisted my arm. The older boy smiled at the sound and ran a hand through his hair. “What are you doin’ here, Nalt? You lost?” His grin broadened.
I tried to pull away but one of the boys twisted my wrist and I gasped, “No.”
“I think he’s lost, Pike,” the boy on my right said. The one on my left elbowed me sharply in the side of the head and the alley tilted crazily around me.
Pike laughed.
“I’m looking for the Woodworks,” I muttered, slightly stunned.
Pike’s expression turned murderous. His hands grabbed my shoulders. “Did I ask you a question?” he shouted. “Did I say you could talk?” He slammed his forehead into my face and I felt a sharp crack followed by an explosion of pain.
“Hey, Pike.” The voice seemed to come from an impossible direction. A foot nudged my lute case, tipping it over. “Hey Pike, look at this.”
Pike looked down at the hollow thump as the lute case fell flat against the ground. “What did you steal, Nalt?”
“I didn’t steal it.”
One of the boys holding my arms laughed. “Yeah, your uncle gave it to you so you could sell it to buy medicine for your sick grandma.” He laughed again while I tried to blink the tears out of my eyes.
I heard three clicks as the latches were undone. Then came the distinctive harmonic thrum as the lute was taken out of its case.
“Your grandma is gonna be mighty sorry you lost this, Nalt,” Pike’s voice was quiet.
“Tehlu crush us!” the boy on my right exploded. “Pike, ya know how much one of them’s worth? Gold, Pike!”
“Don’t say Tehlu’s name like that,” said the boy on my left.
“What?”
“‘Do not call on Tehlu save in the greatest need, for Tehlu judges every thought and deed,’” he recited.
“Tehlu and his great glowing penis can piss all over me if that thing isn’t worth twenty talents. That means we can get at least six from Diken. Do you know what you can do with that much money?”
“You won’t get the chance to do anything with it if you don’t quit saying things like that. Tehlu watches over us, but he is vengeful.” The second boy’s voice was reverent and afraid.
“You’ve been sleeping in the church again haven’t you? You get religion like I get fleas.”
“I’ll tie your arms in a knot.”
“Your ma’s a penny whore.”
“Don’t talk about my mom, Lin.”
“Iron pennies.”
By this time I had managed to blink my eyes free from the tears and I could see Pike squatting in the alley. He seemed fascinated by my lute. My beautiful lute. He had a dreamy look in his eyes as he held it, turning it over and over in his dirty hands. A slow horror was dawning on me through the haze of fear and pain.
As the two voices grew louder behind me, I began to feel a hot anger inside. I tensed. I couldn’t fight them, but I knew if I got hold of my lute and made it into a crowd I could lose them and be safe again.
“…but she kept humping away anyway. But now she only got a halfpenny a throw. That’s why your head is so soft. You’re lucky you don’t have a dent. So don’t feel bad, that’s why you get religious so easy.” The first boy finished triumphantly.
I felt only a tenseness on my right side. I tensed too, ready to spring.
“But thanks for the warning. I hear Tehlu likes to hide behind big clumps of horseshit and th—”
Suddenly both of my arms were free as one boy tackled the other into the wall. I sprinted the three steps to Pike, grabbed the lute by the neck, and pulled.
But Pike was quicker than I’d expected, or stronger. The lute didn’t come away in my hand. I was jerked to a halt and Pike was pulled to his feet.