Music and Misadventure

by Charlotte E. English

  Everyone looked at Tom, who held up his hands. ‘I will have nothing to do with this.’

  ‘Why not?’ I said.

  Silence fell, and my father looked consternated. ‘Well — you heard. They threw me out. I’m forbidden from ever setting foot in Yllanfalen again.’

  ‘Why? For being human?’ I said.

  ‘That, and I think they believe I was the one who corrupted the lyre.’

  ‘You weren’t, were you?’ said Jay, with a narrow look.

  ‘No. I swear it. Only a madman could imagine the Yllanfalen would accept a human for a ruler.’

  ‘And only a madwoman would want to be queen of a faerie kingdom, for real,’ I snapped.

  ‘You’re serious,’ said Mother.

  ‘Utterly.’

  She grumbled something inaudible. ‘Then you can explain to Milady about the lyre.’

  ‘Gladly.’

  One parent down, one to go. ‘Dad?’ I said.

  He visibly flinched.

  ‘We are going to need you.’

  ‘You cannot make this into my problem if I do not choose to permit it,’ he said, snapping straight back into his icy-cold routine.

  ‘It is already your problem,’ I said. ‘It’s been your problem for thirty years.’

  ‘Don’t you want to be able to forget about the lyre?’ said Jay. ‘Forever? Help us, and it won’t be your problem ever again.’

  Father tossed aside his book. ‘There are days when I wish I just hadn’t woken up at all.’

  ‘Could turn out to be the best day ever,’ I said with a bright smile. ‘You’ve already found a daughter.’

  Father did not look as though this had been as transformative an experience for him as I might like. He stood up, and did a spectacular double-take in my mother’s general direction. ‘What,’ he said in a terrible voice, ‘happened to your hand?’

  Mother gave her wolf-grin. ‘Why don’t I tell you about it on the way.’

  So, back we went. To Cumbria; to Sheep Island; to the extinct gnome village, and to the caverns beneath (now with fewer lindworms!).

  Mum made Dad carry the lyre.

  He wasn’t happy about it.

  The lyre, though, clearly was. It sang all by itself, without cease, adjusting its airy melodies to the circumstances as it saw fit.

  And so it was, that our reluctantly heroic quartet set off in search of adventure with our own theme music to accompany us.

  I keep thinking there’ll come a day when life will get a little simpler — or at least less absurd? Dream on.

  ‘What happened with you and your mother?’ said Jay at one point, somewhere en route.

  ‘Nothing?’ I said. ‘Which is sort of the problem.’

  ‘But she talks as though you two were close, when you were a child.’

  ‘If we were, I don’t remember anything about it. She sent me to boarding school at the age of six.’

  ‘That’s… young.’

  ‘Rather.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  I could only shrug. ‘Jay, you’re the product of a solid marriage where both parties wanted to become parents. Or so I assume. I’m the product of a drunken one-night stand between two deeply irresponsible people. Why my mother didn’t just abort me I will never understand.’

  ‘Maybe she decided she liked the idea of parenthood after all.’

  ‘Then changed her mind after a few years? All too possible.’

  ‘Aren’t you glad she went through with it, even so? I know I am.’

  He’d earned a smile with that one, so I bestowed my best one. ‘Thanks. Yes, I suppose I am.’

  ‘Though I wish you’d had a better childhood.’

  ‘Apparently it’s not entirely vital after all. I turned out fine.’

  Jay was silent after that. Whether that was because he’d said everything he wanted to say on the subject, or whether he privately disagreed with my assessment of my character in adulthood, I decided not to ask.

  I did turn out fine… right?

  These were the thoughts that occupied my mind as we wandered back into the King’s Halls, our party augmented by one king. I should’ve been paying more attention, though, for we were little more than halfway across the cellars when mother abruptly stopped and said: ‘Lindworm.’

  ‘What?’ I gulped. ‘I can’t—’

  ‘It’s fine.’ My father took up the moonsilver lyre, played exactly three perfect notes, and while the crashing sounds of a lindworm on the approach rent the air, he stood with perfect composure and waited.

  It came on in a rush, jaws agape, and looked ready to devour my father in one gulp.

  Dad played those three notes again, and said in a ringing voice: ‘No.’

  The lindworm stopped dead, closed its jaws with a snap, and then — I kid you not — it put its great head in the dirt and literally grovelled before my irascible parent.

  ‘Go,’ said Father. ‘Leave these halls to me.’

  And the lindworm went.

  ‘Was there something?’ said Father, in response to our three-way stare.

  ‘Nothing,’ I squeaked.

  ‘It’s good to be the king,’ said Mother, with a sideways glance at me.

  And damn her, she wasn’t wrong.

  15

  ‘Now that we’re here,’ I said, as we trudged upstairs towards the grander halls, ‘how does one go about mending the lyre?’

  ‘I don’t know, precisely,’ said my father. ‘But it is to do with its song. Something has been altered in its melody.

  ‘Which means what?’

  ‘Means it needs to remember how it used to sing.’

  ‘Vague.’

  ‘It is the best I’ve got.’

  ‘Then we’ll take it. Are these old songs recorded somewhere, by chance?’

  ‘That is my hope. There used to be a library, of sorts.’

  ‘I love libraries.’

  He smiled sideways at me. ‘We have that in common. But the library I speak of is not quite what you’re thinking. This is the Library of Music, and while it has some books of written melodies, the majority of its collections are composed of other records.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  On our previous visits, the King’s Halls had been so absolutely empty that we’d grown careless, traipsing about the place like we owned it.

  When we arrived at the Library of Music, that changed. We’d heard the distant strains of faerie melodies as we’d walked, growing nearer and louder with every step; ‘That is not unusual,’ Father had said. ‘There is always music in the Library, with or without anyone to play it.’ But as we stepped over the threshold, we found that Tom was right — and also wrong.

  I saw at once what he had meant about “other records”. Melodies hung all about the doorway as we entered the vaulted chamber, strung together like chains of bubbles — or beads. I reached out to one, touched it; I couldn’t resist, any more than I could resist caressing a particularly beautiful book. The moment my fingers brushed its iridescent blue shell, it sparked with a pale light, and a lilting song filled my mind, sung by a hundred voices. It had an air of antiquity about it, and I judged it early modern in era.

  There was no restraining myself after that, of course, for they were everywhere: wafting in puffs of light and mist from wall to wall, clustering in multitudes under the ceiling, and filling up the corners. Some attempt had been made to organise them, for the large, square room was fitted with a great number of clear glass cabinets; behind those locked doors waited many a melody, bobbing to their own tunes. But the quantity had far outpaced the librarians’ efforts to store them, and the result was a charming chaos. I went through it like a pig in a cake shop, greedily absorbing melody after melody until my ears rang and I could scarce hear myself think.

  Jay was just as enchanted as I. ‘Indira has to see this place,’ he enthused, his dark eyes alight.

  ‘Oh? Is she musical, too?’

  �
�We all are.’

  ‘All the Patels? What a talented family you do have.’

  ‘Music is a skill to be mastered, like any other.’

  ‘No doubt, but you do seem to have mastered an unusual quantity of skills between you, and at a young age to boot.’

  ‘I don’t sleep much.’

  Neither did Indira, apparently. Was that by choice or happenstance? If by choice: why were they so driven?

  And just how many siblings did Jay have, anyway?

  Before I could ask any of these questions, though — once again displaying my splendid talent for getting distracted from the main point — a dry voice interrupted us. ‘Were you looking for anything in particular?’

  So absorbed had we been, we had failed to notice that a large chair in one corner was occupied. It hadn’t even occurred to us that we might find someone else in the library. My parents were having a low-voiced argument in another part of the room, but they, too, stopped mid-sentence and observed the librarian in surprise.

  If librarian she was. She had an appearance to draw the eye, being shorter even than me, and withered, but in the way that ancient trees are withered. Her skin was dark, dark brown, almost black, and her eyes the same; her hair, though, was an airy white, and drifted about her head like wisps of summer cloud. She was wearing a pair of old grey jeans, with a long cardigan over the top that looked hand-knitted. Hardly could she have been more different from the elegant Yllanfalen, or more incongruous a presence in that room of ethereal melody and magick.

  I looked for signs of hostility in her face, or her tone, but there was none. Her eyes smiled at us, and I wondered what she had found so amusing in our behaviour.

  ‘We’ve come about the lyre,’ I said, when neither of my parents seemed disposed to explain themselves.

  ‘The lyre?’ said she.

  ‘The moonsilver lyre. Lyre of kings and queens.’

  ‘Has it come back, then?’ she said, with interest but without surprise. ‘It’s about time.’

  ‘Is it? I thought it was no longer welcome here. Was it not thrown away?’

  ‘Aye! And a greater piece of foolishness I cannot think of.’

  ‘Well,’ said my father, and held out the lyre. ‘Here it is. If you know how to mend it, I beg you’d assist us, for we can find nothing in this mess.’

  The amusement gleamed more brightly in her eyes, and white teeth flashed in a grin. ‘Rather a shambles, isn’t it?’ she agreed. ‘But it’s a pretty mess, for all that. Was it the king’s old songs you wanted?’

  ‘Any that it used to sing, before it was changed. I thought that might help.’

  ‘Changed?’ The withered woman tilted her head. ‘Has it been?’

  ‘Naturally,’ said father. ‘For it would never otherwise have chosen me.’

  ‘Would it not?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Ah. You are unqualified, in some obscure way, for the role.’

  ‘In every way, I would say.’

  ‘But it seems the lyre would not.’

  ‘It was not… thinking clearly, if we may suppose that it thinks.’

  Her head tilted again. ‘Was it not?’

  Father grew impatient. ‘You cannot tell me the Old King’s Moonsilver Lyre deliberately chose a human to fill his shoes.’

  ‘I will not, then, if the idea offends you.’ She was laughing again.

  ‘It offended the Yllanfalen.’

  ‘It offended some of them. If the lyre did not mind it, then why should you?’

  Father set the lyre onto a table, and gave a great, weary sigh. ‘I don’t want to be king of this place.’

  ‘Ahhh. Then we get to the real trouble.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Few are given the right to choose their own course in life. Our paths are as much chosen for us, as by us.’

  ‘I’m choosing not to take this one,’ said Father firmly.

  The withered woman nodded. ‘And you’d like the lyre to choose someone else.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been hiding from the damned thing for thirty years, and my daughter imagines it might be possible to stop.’

  Those bright black eyes flicked to me, and stayed there.

  I tried to look wise and innocent in equal measure, and probably failed equally too. ‘That and I thought the Yllanfalen might like to have a king again.’

  ‘They have done very well without one.’

  ‘Have they, though? Look at this place. Abandoned, ignored. All their ancient culture is seeping away, and they’re letting it go.’

  ‘If that is their choice, why does it matter to you?’

  ‘I protect culture, and tradition, and history. It is my job, my purpose… I don’t understand why a people would let theirs slip away like this. I cannot believe that they really wish it.’

  ‘Perhaps they don’t, at that.’ The woman leapt out of her chair, so suddenly as to startle me, and I took an involuntary step back. She seemed overflowing with energy, despite her apparently advanced age, and I felt in that moment that she could achieve anything. ‘Let us try to mend a culture, then, shall we? And see what comes of it.’

  ‘Who exactly are you?’ snapped my mother. ‘Do you have aid to give, or just weighty words?’

  ‘She’s a sprite,’ said Father.

  The sprite cackled in a fashion I found decidedly unspriteish. ‘I am Cadence,’ she said. ‘I and my sisters can help you find the Old King’s songs.’

  ‘Sisters?’ said Father faintly.

  ‘I am Descant,’ said a second voice.

  ‘And I am Euphony,’ said a third.

  I whirled to find two more sprites appeared out of nowhere: both shorter still than Cadence, one with skin as purple as a ripe beet, and the other as pale as me. I could not guess which was which. They were both ancient; an unforgiving fairy tale would have termed them haggish. But they were as merry and quick as their sister, and as sharp, I judged.

  To my surprise, these two bowed before my father and said: ‘Majesty.’

  ‘I’m not your king,’ he growled.

  Their eyes strayed to the lyre sitting meekly atop the nearby table. ‘But the lyre says—’

  ‘And should a pile of enchanted metal make all your important decisions for you?’ he said.

  ‘It is the way of things,’ said the pale one (Descant?)

  ‘Hush, Euphony,’ said Cadence. ‘It is unwise to argue with kings.’

  ‘But you did! A moment ago! I heard you.’

  ‘Aye! And it is the king’s will that I shut my mouth and bend my wits to the task at hand.’ Her laughter was back, squarely directed at my father.

  ‘The sooner then you may be rid of me,’ said Father calmly.

  ‘We don’t want to be rid of you,’ said Descant. ‘It’s dull here all alone. We want the music back.’

  ‘You have every imaginable strain and song in here.’ Father gestured vaguely at the plethora of magickal musics drifting every which way. ‘Is this not enough for you?’

  ‘They are echoes,’ Descant replied. ‘Like memories. Imagine if you had only memory left, nothing real—’

  ‘I would love for you to have your kingdom back the way it was,’ Father interrupted. ‘But not with me at the head of it. I will do everything I can to help you replace me. Fair?’

  Descant looked ready to argue, but a warning look from Cadence silenced her, and she bowed her head. ‘Only it is perfectly king-shaped already,’ she muttered rebelliously, almost too quietly to be heard.

  ‘It is!’ said Euphony. ‘Tall enough, to be sure! And the lyre loves it.’

  ‘It does not love the lyre.’

  ‘It is a fool.’

  ‘Shall we want a fool for a king?’

  ‘Why should a fool not be a king? It has come about before.’

  ‘But is it a good king? Shall we want one that is not a fool?’

  ‘A wise fool? A merry fool?’

  ‘A cross fool! Look at the face. It despises us.’


  Father took a breath. ‘Can we just get on with it? Please? I’ve a book to finish.’

  Cadence waved her sisters to silence. ‘The old king’s old songs. Old, old, old. Find them all.’

  ‘Is it better to be old?’ whispered Descant. ‘If so, we’re in a fine space, sisters.’

  ‘Always better,’ said Euphony wisely. ‘The King says so.’

  ‘I didn’t say that—’ protested Father. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’

  Mother, to my surprise, laughed. ‘I like you,’ she said to the sprites.’

  ‘It is missing a hand,’ said Euphony to Cadence, and waved about both of her own. ‘How does it play?’

  ‘It doesn’t,’ said mother. ‘But then it never did, particularly. It’s my daughter that’s the musical one. And she’s got the king’s pipes, look.’

  All three sprites surveyed me, with expressions deeply thoughtful, and — speculative.

  ‘Shall we have this one for the king, then?’ said Descant.

  ‘It looks merry enough,’ said Euphony.

  Cadence smiled broadly at me.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ I said, for my father’s words seemed to sum up the situation nicely. ‘Can we all please get off that idea?’

  16

  Some half an hour later, a period of intense search on the part of the three sprites, and the four of us as well, it was Descant who suddenly screamed, ‘I FOUND IT!’

  Her sisters rushed to her side, as did Jay and I, though there was nothing to see. She had hold of a fine, large bubble in her small fist, its shell pearly-white, and she waved it around in triumph. ‘It’s the oldest of all the old ones! Here, Cadence, see if it isn’t the oldest.’ And she delivered the melody into her sister’s hands with a flourish.

  Cadence considered it closely. ‘It is well-found, Descant. We will see if the lyre remembers.’

  ‘How old is the lyre?’ asked Jay.

  I looked at it, but being unfamiliar with Yllanfalen aesthetic history I was unable to determine anything to the purpose at all. Except that it was pretty. So very, very pretty… its curves shone moon-bright, and its strings flowed like sunglow on the sea— ‘Ves,’ said Jay, and gently turned me around until my back was to the lyre.