Cricket's Song

by Michael A. Hooten

  Cricket’s

  Song

  By

  Michael A. Hooten

  Copyright © 2014 Michael A. Hooten

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1500913693

  ISBN-13: 9781500913694

  For my wife, Kristin, who provides both the music and the magic in my life

  Book 1:

  The Cricket Learns to Sing

  Chapter 1: Harper

  Nobody quite remembered when he acquired the nickname of “Cricket”, but how was easy enough: he was a small, slight boy with straight black hair, a hyperactive bent and a high pitched voice. And as far as the boy was concerned, that was his only name.

  As the only orphan in the dun, Cricket moved from family to family, belonging to everyone and no one at the same time. The adults treated him with affection and occasional exasperation as he asked question upon question about everything that entered his mind. On a farm, however, very few people had time to answer them.

  The only person who did answer his questions, no matter how annoying, was Harper. The old man came to the dun every year, arriving around Samhain with nothing but a harp and small journey pack, wearing a cloak so worn that the colors could not be counted accurately. He spent the winter teaching the children in the mornings and playing in the hall at night. And every spring, he disappeared back into the wide world.

  When Cricket was still very young, Harper frightened him: the old man had a deep voice that wailed like a war pipe or whispered like snow, long nails and fingers callused from his harp strings, and a long gray beard that fell to his chest. Cricket’s curiosity eventually overcame his fear, however, and the boy was barely six when he approached him shyly one afternoon when no one else was around.

  “Why don’t you have a real name?” he asked.

  Harper looked at the child with twinkling blue eyes. “I have a real name, but I prefer to keep it to myself. Why don’t you have a real name?”

  Cricket was taken aback; nobody had ever asked him a question before. He thought about it for a moment before replying, “I have one, but I don’t know if anyone remembers it. I know I don’t. I’ve been Cricket ever since I can remember.”

  “And a Cricket you’ve become,” said the old man, “but I remember your other name. Does Daffyd sound familiar?”

  The boy scrunched up his face in concentration. “Did my mother call me that?”

  “Do you know much about your mother?”

  “No, but I thought maybe she had named me before... before whatever happened, happened.”

  Very gently, the old man said, “She died on the day you were born.”

  Cricket heaved a sobbing sigh. “I wondered. What about my father?”

  “He died about the same time.”

  “So I’m truly alone?”

  The old man gathered the child in his arms and rocked him. “You’re not alone, Cricket. You have the whole dun for your family.”

  “It’s not the same,” Cricket sobbed. “I want a mother and father of my own.”

  “I know,” Harper said. “I understand.”

  Cricket sat silently, thinking hard. “My parents loved me, didn’t they?” he asked finally.

  “More than anything.”

  Cricket cried for a while then, the soft sobs of a child who hurts without quite understanding why. Harper rocked the boy, singing a lullaby from another, more distant childhood until he quieted. The old man thought he had fallen asleep, but the boy stirred and said, “I love them, too.”

  Harper smiled in his beard, and kept up his rocking until the boy was truly asleep.

  After that, Harper would spend an hour or two in the afternoons to answer the boy’s inquisitiveness. Cricket listened with a look of concentration, asking more questions to clarify what he didn’t understand, or jumping suddenly to another subject. He absorbed the stories Harper told every night in the hall, and he would repeat them at night until he fell asleep. The heroes, wizards, and bards of distant ages became his best friends, and he spent a lot of time alone. Although he didn’t know it, Harper kept an eye on him, making sure that he interacted with the other children enough not to be an outcast, but also protecting his right to run off and daydream in the hayloft or the granary.

  And every year, just after the Beltain feast marking the beginning of the planting season, Harper would disappear into the distant cantrefs of Glencairck, always promising to return with the north wind.

  For a young boy, summer is infinite, with tadpoles to catch in the ponds, berries to pick in the woods, and endless games of tag and hide-and-seek. The other children reveled in the outdoor freedom, but Cricket kept an eye on the weather, hoping to feel the wind turn cold. He felt that the world, for all its warmth and color, lacked something special until the runner from the sacred Samhain fire in Taris came to light the winter fires and the familiar harp strains sounded outside the gate.

  The year that Cricket turned ten, he made sure that he spent plenty of time near the gate as Samhain neared, wanting to be the one to greet the old man first. Every time he thought he heard music, he would drop whatever he was doing and run as fast as he could to see if it might be Harper. For a month the wind fooled him, but two days after Samhain, the unmistakable sound of a harp came clearly into the yard where Cricket was turning the remains of the cook’s herb garden back into the soil. Holding his breath in anticipation, he raced to the gate.

  Harper stood outside, playing a little dance tune. “Cricket,” he said with a laugh. “I should have expected you to be the first to hear my song. May I enter?”

  “Of course,” Cricket replied. “Why do you even ask any more?”

  “Because it’s a bad thing for a harper to enter uninvited,” the old man explained as Cricket led him across the yard. “It makes for broken strings and untuned notes, and that’s all that will happen if you’re lucky.”

  “So you always ask to come in?”

  “And I always ask Aillel for permission to play.”

  Cricket mulled this over for a while. “It sounds complicated,” he said as they reached the chieftain’s door.

  “Oh, that’s the easy part,” Harper chuckled. “Now off with you while I conduct my business.”

  “I’ll see you later?” Cricket asked, fearful that Harper might disappear as suddenly as he arrived.

  “Count on it, boy.”

  That night, as the old man tuned his harp in the corner of the hall for the first song of the season, Cricket watched him. There were all sorts of things he did that Cricket didn’t understand: first he plucked a string, and after a moment’s contemplation, he took a golden key from beneath his tunic and made a few adjustments to the posts at the top of the harp, then he plucked the note and adjusted again. While he was doing this, he greeted everyone who greeted him. Chieftain Aillel, wearing his bronze torc, came in and sat at the head of the table, and when everyone was seated, Harper stood and bowed first to the chieftain, and then to the room at large before beginning. First he gave a history of Leinath, chanting the words while the harp provided a dramatic background. Then he sang a tale about the great hero CuChulainn, and one about the wizard Math. After draining his cup, he began to play jigs and reels that had the people clapping even if they didn’t dance. After a couple of hours, he drew the songs to a close and bowed to Aillel again. Everyone sighed and began to head for bed.

  Cricket waited until everyone left the hall before going up to the old man. “There are a lot of rules to being a harper, aren’t there?” he asked shyly.

  “It depends. I follow the old rules, which very few people remember.”

  “You mean like Taliesin and Amergin?”

  “Similar.”

  “Oh,” the boy said with disappointment.

&
nbsp; Harper looked at him thoughtfully. “What’s to be upset about, Cricket? Come on, speak your heart.”

  “Well, I was wondering, if maybe, there were some way, that you could, well, but we don’t live in those times anymore, so I guess...” His voice trailed away, and he studied his feet with great sadness.

  Harper lifted his chin with a callused finger. “You want to learn how to be like me, little one?”

  Cricket just nodded, his eyes bright with tears.

  The old man gently asked, “Why?”

  The boy looked around the hall. “For all this,” he answered.

  “All of what?” Harper pressed. “The table and chairs? The food and the fire?”

  “No for the...” Cricket struggled with the words to explain what he felt, what he could still see shining in the air. “For the joy.”

  “There’s a lot to learn,” Harper warned him. “How do I know that you will listen to what I say and do what I tell you?”

  “It calls to me,” the boy blurted. He flushed and looked at the ground, thinking that his explanation sounded stupid.

  Harper just nodded. “I will have to ask Aillel,” he said, “And if he says no, that will be the end of the matter. Agreed?”

  Cricket looked back up, smiling hugely as he nodded. “Can you ask him now?”

  Harper laughed. “Patience is something you should learn now, little one. No, I’ll ask in the morning.”

  “But that’s so far away.”

  “Only for someone your age.”

  The next morning, after breakfast, Harper paid a visit to the chieftain of the dun. “I would like permission to teach Cricket properly.”

  Aillel cocked a thick gray eyebrow. “Why aren’t you teaching him properly now?”

  Harper shrugged off the barb. “I’m not talking about ciphering and figures. He wants to learn music and stories, and I want to teach it to him.”

  Aillel sat back from his papers and steepled his fingers. “Do you think this is wise, my friend?”

  “If we do not take steps now, he’ll soon take them on his own.”

  Aillel considered this. “He’s what, ten years old?”

  “Almost eleven.”

  “Have you told him about his parents yet?”

  “Just that they died on the day he was born.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Without asking you first? How could I?”

  Aillel fixed him with a sharp eye. “You’ve been known to do what you want before, and everyone else be damned.”

  Harper voice was just as grave. “Not on this, Aillel. Never on this.”

  The chieftain turned and looked out the window to the yard below, where the children chased each other with snowballs. Cricket was easy to spot; all arms and legs at this age, clumsy with growth. “What is he?” he asked quietly.

  “He is something special, and that’s all I know at this point.”

  “But what? And have we done properly by keeping him in this obscure dun, where the rest of Glencairck seems as distant as Faerie?”

  “Where else would he have gone? You saw the signs. Who would you have trusted?”

  Aillel watched as one of the girls, larger but younger, dodged Cricket’s lunge. “He seems too small and clumsy to amount to much.”

  Harper shrugged even though Aillel couldn’t see it. “It means little. Greater men have come out of worse childhoods.”

  Aillel turned his chair back around and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darker room. “Perhaps he is meant to be a bard.”

  “You’re thinking of the birds, aren’t you?”

  “Of course. They always sang louder when she was around. And do you remember the doves that hovered about her that one day?”

  “How could I forget? But I also remember the ravens, one perched on each shoulder.”

  “You were the only one that saw them.”

  “You know that I can sometimes see beyond the pale.”

  “Don’t remind me.” Aillel steepled his fingers again, and closed his eyes. Harper waited patiently, knowing from long association that his old friend did his best thinking that way. “All right,” Aillel said, opening his eyes. “Do what you think is best, but I want you to give him a gift from me.” He opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a wooden box, long, thin, and covered with carvings of birds.

  Harper took it and thumbed open the catch. Inside, on a cushion of emerald velvet, lay a dark wooden flute, ringed in age dulled silver. He looked up and asked, “Are you sure? It’s a valuable gift for such a small boy.”

  “Not just that, but also his true name, and the circumstances surrounding it.” Aillel sat back, wondering at the minstrel’s silence. “You don’t agree, I take it.”

  “I’m not sure,” Harper answered. “It seems sudden.”

  Aillel sighed. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with, or how much time we have.”

  “He’s just a boy.”

  “But we’re not,” Aillel reminded him. “We were old when all this started. Do you know that every Beltain, when you leave, I don’t know if you’re coming back or not?”

  “I’ll outlive you, you old goat.”

  “No doubt. But you might get stuck somewhere, and then what do I do? I’ll need him learning a skill soon, and not just farming. You yourself have pointed out that his mind is much too inquisitive for that.”

  “So you will let me teach him music.”

  “It’s a good excuse. It gives me a reason to keep him out of the fields.”

  “I’ll get him started, but I think you should have him do some good, solid physical labor as soon as he is big enough.”

  “For what reason?”

  “To get him used to that weed of a body.” Harper ran a finger down the length of the instrument before closing the case with a click. “Very well,” he said. “I just hope that we know what we’re doing.”

  Very seriously, Aillel asked, “Have we ever?”

  Chapter 2: Lessons

  H

  arper took Cricket to his spot in the hayloft, refusing to say a word until he was comfortable.

  “Please,” Cricket begged. “Just tell me if you even asked him or not.”

  “I asked him.”

  Cricket hopped around in his excitement. “You have to tell me, Master Harper, please, what did he say?”

  “Oh, I’m a master now, am I?” The old man grimaced at the boy’s antics. “Sit down and be still, or silence is all you’ll receive.”

  Cricket promptly sat, but still fidgeted. “Better,” Harper conceded. “Now, there are a few things that Aillel said, the first of which is that I may teach you music and storytelling.”

  Cricket jumped up and did a little jig, but sat down quickly at Harper’s severe expression. “I’m sorry, master,” he said contritely.

  Harper shook his head. “You must learn some control, boy,” he said. “Now, there are a couple of other things before we can start. First, you need an instrument.”

  Cricket took the wooden case hesitantly, unsure of how react. He opened it and looked at the flute for a few minutes. “It’s beautiful,” he said, “but it’s not a harp.”

  Harper prayed for patience. “No, it’s not a harp, and I’ll not let you touch a harp until I think you’re ready. And you have much to learn first.” Casually, he added, “That was your mother’s flute.”

  “Really?” Cricket asked. “Did she play? What was she like? Was my father a musician, too?”

  Harper held up his hands. “One question at a time, and one only. Now, which is it?”

  “Did you know my parents?”

  “Yes. Rather well, actually.”

  “Really?”

  “In fact, I was there the day you were born.”

  “Will you tell me about it, please? Nobody ever wants to talk about them.”

  Harper looked around the empty barn. “Can you listen without talking, and not repeat what I tell you?” The boy nodded. “If I find out you told, I’ll never tel
l you another story again. This is very important, not just for the music, but for your life.”

  The boy nodded solemnly, eyes wide and jaw slack.

  “Very well then,” the old man said, settling deeper into the hay. “Listen well, for the story is short but good for you to know.

  “Your mother was a scullery maid here, working for Mistress Agnes every day in the kitchen, and your father was the smith.”

  “Not Master Golias?”

  “No, this was before Golias came here. Now, no more interruptions.

  “There was nothing too terribly remarkable about their courtship, and after a year of stepping out, they were properly married. Your mother turned up pregnant a few months later, and again, this was nothing unusual. But she liked talking to this old man late in the evenings, and she shared a special secret with me: the night she conceived, the birds outside her window broke into song, even though it was the middle of the night.

  “As she progressed, more things happened. It was so interesting that I stayed the whole year that year. Doves came and hovered about her on two different occasions, and a doe and her fawn once came to your parent’s door. Your mother would sit in the forge, playing her flute while your father sang to the metal, and she said you kicked in time with the song. It was the most magical time that I had seen in ages, and I reveled in it while it lasted.

  “But as her delivery day neared, I began to worry. Great good often attracts great evil. I warned your father, who began guarding your mother’s bed, sword in hand.

  “The night you were born, there was a terrible storm. Your father stood by the window while the midwife tended your mother. I stood outside with Aillel and several other men. Everyone was uneasy, and we feared what might happen.

  “We heard you emerge, screaming healthily, but then we heard your mother scream, and your father yell. We tried to break in the door, but it was held by a fierce wind, and when we finally got it open, your father and the midwife lay dead, with the severed leg of some scaled beast laying between them; even as we watched, it turned into a man’s arm, and then faded away. You were on the ground, wailing for all you were worth, covered with your mother’s blood, and we thought your mother had died giving birth.