Heart 16 - Script of the Heart

by Robin D. Owens

  Which, he realized with a strong shiver down and up his spine, he did. No way he could match the beauty of T'Spindle's noble estate that had been tended for four centuries, but he could make his house and the grassyards and gardens around the house…acceptable. Clean them up until they were worthy of showing off again.

  As he scanned the area, he imagined the place after some work and gilt had been spent on it. He visualized another summer's day and an afternoon gathering he hosted as an actor of wealth and fame and influence.

  A sigh wrenched from him at the gratifying vision.

  Then his gaze took in the present circumstances and he grunted at the amount of effort it would take to make property a showplace.

  Right now, he didn't have a lot of time or gilt to bring his home back into great shape. Not between matinee and evening shows, the networking after performances, and, most importantly of all, developing his relationship with Giniana.

  But as he continued to stroll up the main path to the house, using Flair to banish weeds as he did so, he became aware of a difference in the land under his feet. It felt different than any other ground he trod, than any stage, or the Spindle-Flair-infused land where Giniana lived.

  Saint Johnswort ground.

  A surge of satisfaction accompanied the realization, gave him a little boost of energy so he could groom the path more without worrying about the Flair he'd need for his performance that evening.

  As soon as he stepped through the front door, he heard the continuing peal of chimes announcing a package in his mail cache. He glanced at the scrybowl in the mainspace and noted fancy gold stars floating up from the bowl in a wavery atmosphere. Lily Fescue's icon. Lord and Lady spare him from such silly symbolism.

  Before he crossed to that scrybowl, he took out his perscry pebble, found she'd left a message there, too, completely ignored in the activity of the day.

  Steeling himself, because he knew she'd left a "see message pickup" and if he didn't watch the scry message Lily would hound him for days, he played the home scry instead of the one on his pebble cache.

  "Johns!" Lily lilted. Someone had once reported that "Lily lilted" and she liked that particular alliteration. So she lilted far too often in his opinion. Her face beamed. "I'm so glad you decided to pursue finding the Amberose script that will save your career."

  He winced. Snot. Narrowing his eyes, he wondered if she'd meant to be offensive or not. Maybe not. Maybe she only wanted to provide incentive.

  Any other time, any other playwright, and he'd've consigned the whole idea of looking for the script to the Cave of the Dark Goddess merely to be recalcitrant with Lily.

  "I spent septhours reconstructing everything I could recall about Amberose's fabulous script." Lily patted her forehead with a softleaf. "I sent myself into a deep trance to wring everything from my memory! I've sent you a copy of all the notes I made regarding the plot and characters. I'm sure I have large swathes of dialog."

  Johns figured not.

  "Now I'll let you read the script and see for yourself just how brilliant the roles are! Particularly mi—the main hero's, modeled after you, as I told you before." She smiled indulgently, waved her fingers. "Don't bother to scry and thank me, I'll be preparing for my matinee today! Later!"

  He hoped not to scry or see her later. He'd forgotten how tiring and pretentious she could be.

  Nearly trudging, he went to his home cache and pulled out the sheaf of papyrus she'd translocated. His brows raised at the sight of so many pages. A good twenty pages of obviously dictated-to-the-page stuff.

  Maybe it would be worth his time and attention to look at them.

  With a sigh, he sank into the chair in his downstairs sitting room and began reading the sheets.

  More than a septhour later, when sun pouring through the window heated his legs, he surfaced from the world Amberose had spun of a mystery in a haunted Residence … and he'd better take off his good trous so they wouldn't fade.

  Lily had a better memory than he'd given her credit for, and she must have read the script more than once. If it had been him and he'd had such an incredible story in his hands and lost it, he'd have conjured all the memory spells he could, settled into a trance, and tried to record every single word he'd remembered. He hadn't believed Lily went to all that effort, but maybe she spoke the sheer truth for once.

  Much of her part, maybe thirty-five percent, looked very close to word-by-word. The male lead's, his!, about twenty percent, maybe. The language, the rhythms and word choice drew a person into the story, crafted by a master. And he loved the plot. The twists of the mystery, the thrills of the suspense. This role would propel him to stardom, he could sense that in his bones. A rich character, tormented guy who hid his true self behind a lightly amused mask. A man who wouldn't give up, who ultimately triumphed. Very layered part, demanding. It would stretch him, his acting and performance techniques, but he could do it.

  The notion he could have such a once-in-a-lifetime role burned in his gut, throughout his body, igniting need. A different need than the one he felt for Giniana Filix, but a yearning just the same.

  Like imagining his home a showplace earlier, he could visualize himself on stage, being this character.

  He walked to the kitchen room and got a cup of caff from the no-time, leaned against the counter and sipped. Fabulous dialog, the beat of it. Fascinating plot structure.

  And he'd be playing opposite Lily Fescue. A woman he didn't think understood her own character in this instance because there seemed to be glitches in that character from time to time, as if she'd already put her head into how she'd act the part and modified the script at points.

  He'd sink into the part.

  Lord and Lady, he did want this. Lily had hooked him. He could look for the script, hope if he found it, he'd get even more of an edge in landing the lead role.

  Though he had no doubt Lily had continued to scry Amberose's agent, the man who'd given the script to Lily, and might have another copy, or at least would be a contact point for the playwright, Johns scried him again. No answer.

  Wandering from the kitchen to the side sunroom eating nook, he didn't notice the shafting sunbeams, still caught in the glittering houseparty in the haunted Residence, the first scene of Amberose's play.

  Until a boy Johns had never seen before jumped over the wall and hedgerow and landed in Johns’s side grassyard—side weedyard.

  Johns choked on his coffee, kept his head enough to barrel out of the door between the sunroom and the veranda that wrapped around the sides and front of the house. He surprised the boy who stood looking around.

  At first the boy flinched, then jutted his chin. "Hey, GentleSir Saint Johnswort!"

  Huh, Johns hadn't realized his neighbors to the east had changed. Wait … there'd been a niece who'd joined her g'aunt who lived next door, hadn't there, months ago after Samhain, in the winter? Maybe the boy had come with the niece

  The boy grinned, showing a dimple in a childish round cheek, though Johns estimated he'd be hitting his teens soon. And the youngster intended to use that dimple.

  Johns said, "I'm an actor, boy, I know a false innocent smile and expression when I see it." His voice came out gruffer than he'd anticipated but made no dent in the boy's manner.

  "Ha!" the kid snorted. Even from meters away, Johns could see clever calculation in the boy's eyes, so different than the children Johns interacted with at the Moores House. "I could clean up the sideyard and maybe back grassyard for ya. Maybe some of the rest of your estate, too." He stood tall and his chin took on an additional jut Johns hadn't figured it had, since it’d looked so stubborn before. "For the rest of the summer and autumn, maybe."

  CHAPTER 14

  JOHNS CONSIDERED the youth's offer. Whatever grassyard there'd been in back would be as weedy as this, with stickers, and who knew what shape his FatherDam's vegetable and flower gardens were in. Not to mention the ancestral medicinal herb gardens.

  Nope, didn't know the condition of a
ny of those, though he vaguely recalled the nice scent of flowers wafting from…somewhere, like from the neighbor's place.

  "Yeah?" Johns asked. A lot of area even for one very active boy to clean up.

  The boy quoted an outrageous price. Johns doubled over in laughter, only part of it show. When he straightened, he shook his head. "You got gall, kid. Impudent boy."

  The youngster grinned. Johns figured he knew really well the definition of "gall" and "impudence." Sweeping out a dramatic arm, Johns intoned, "Mine is a multi-generational family who has lived on this land since the colonists landed here on beautiful Celta from the mysteries of deep space on the starship Nuada's Sword, centuries ago."

  His audience's eyes widened as if his mind whirled with the brief vision Johns had conjured. Johns stamped one foot, and the ground seemed to ripple under him, all the way toward the back and front of the property. Surprising, but he didn't let that show. He could think on his feet when he had to. "This is our land, it knows me, and I know it." True enough, though guilt surged through him at the notion that he sure hadn't been caretaking such ancestral lands—and the much younger house—very well.

  Not quite as bad as Giniana's father, Mas Filix, who'd brought a wife and daughter to his land, then mortgaged it and let it go to some other family. Johns had been absent-mindedly neglectful rather than downright dishonest.

  Drawing a breath, dredging up knowledge he'd learned hard from his FatherDam, he narrowed his eyes and focused on the weeds, separating them in his mind from the plants his FatherDam had instructed he keep and tend. Which he really hadn't. Too late for that past mistake now.

  Another sweep of his arm and huge effort yanked out of him, causing him to sweat through his clothes, sink into his balance before dizzying exhaustion took him down.

  "Zow!" screeched the boy, a little too high for Johns's newly sensitive ears. He'd used a lot of Flair and all his senses now seemed too sharp.

  Opening his eyes that he didn't recall closing, he squinted at the sideyard. Yeah, he'd ripped out all of the weeds and they lay in untidy bunches against the wall, revealing clean and turned dirt ready for planting good groundcover.

  "Zow. You really did a great job on the sideyard," the boy said. He ran a few steps up and down the newly bared flagstone path, halted just outside arm's length from Johns. The kid stared at Johns. "But looks like that effort took a lot outta you, since you aren't botanically Flaired like me."

  Johns straightened from his slump, didn't think he had the energy to go up the few steps to the veranda and lean against one of the supports. What had he done? He'd need all his strength and more than a little Flair for his performance tonight. Hell.

  "Huh." The boy turned his stare back to the clean sideyard. "Guess your generational link with the land can let you do something like that."

  "I would say so," Johns replied dryly.

  "Somethin' to tell my Master of Botanical Studies." The youngster gave Johns another wide grin. "I'm an apprentice and will soon be a journeyman."

  Johns grunted.

  "But I can surely plant somethin' that'll sprout quick and look good in that newly turned dirt. And I can groom the resta your yard. Landscape it, too."

  From the gleam in his eyes, Johns thought he'd like that. "You enjoy your work."

  "Well, yeah!" The youngster shrugged. "Why do it if you don't enjoy it? And it's my Flair!"

  For a few mindful breaths, Johns thought of his own Flair and felt great gratitude from it, murmured a silent prayer to the Lady and Lord for all the abundance his life had brought him.

  "Don't let following your Flair and career take over your life," he advised the kid.

  "Huh?"

  "Never mind. What really brought you onto my land?" Johns asked, though he thought he knew. Color rushed to the boy's cheeks. He grimaced then jerked his chin toward the back grassyard meters away and toward one of Johns's huge trees with limbs hanging over the east wall. At the bottom of the tree stood a small pink playhouse that Johns had designed for a little girl as a sample. He'd built two or three of them in minor nobles' yards after his mother had died and he'd become an adult. In that period of his life, he hadn't been making a living acting and needed gilt.

  And in the huge branching tree itself, Johns had built his first treehouse as a child. As he’d aged, he’d added onto it. He’d trained branches so the structure could be a fancy castle Residence like the FirstFamily Nobles, or a sailing ship, or an airship. The tree also held a thrusting deck that he'd used for practicing his lines when he determined to be an actor.

  Sure enough, the boy pointed to the treehouse.

  "Thought so," Johns said. He didn't ask if the boy had snuck onto his property on the evenings of his theater performances. He eyed the tree tops he could see in the neighbors' yard. "I can make you one," Johns said, then added, "With your mother's permission. And it will need additional spells from someone not me to shield it so you can't fall." Thankfully, he'd kept those shields funded in his own treehouse. Now that he thought on it, he usually spent a septhour or two in the treehouse during warm months. Earlier in the month he'd slept there one night after he'd been revved from the theater and had trouble settling down inside the house.

  "Can you, please, please please!" the boy squeaked.

  "Sure, for your continued work in my yard." Slowly the sun and the land beneath him seeped Flair into Johns. "I'll have to get permission from your folks, though."

  The boy frowned. "Hmmm."

  Johns waved a hand at the pink playhouse, the extensive treehouse, and the other two small buildings further back in the yard that he'd constructed as samples. "You've seen my work. I'll need to take a look at yours."

  Clapping his hands, the youngster moved a short step ladder to the east wall, gave his own flamboyant gesture, a poor imitation of Johns's. His had been casually elegant. Nope, the boy wouldn't be an actor.

  "By all means," the youngster pronounced in pompous tones.

  Johns suppressed a grin. Just talking to the boy gave him enjoyment, all that optimism. He hadn't been around a lot of optimistic and savvy people lately. He figured the kid would be fun to watch, too. Good entertainment value. Had to keep in touch with younger generations, too, to understand their tastes.

  Gingerly, Johns took a step, found his energy returning. He walked over to the two meter-high wall, gauged whether the kid would prank him by toppling him off the steps, decided the boy wanted a treehouse too much—that need radiated from him.

  The boy continued to grin at him, so Johns took the steps up and gazed over the wall to the neighbor's back grassyard. Simply breathtaking with green grass and flowers, and an extremely tidy and pretty vegetable garden. He kept his expression easy, turned his glance back to the boy who stood, smirking.

  Yeah, focus on the kid. Do not look back at his own pitifully untended land. He angled his chin. "Your work?"

  "Only some. Mom has really good botanical Flair, too." He laughed. "She would love to get her hands on your land!"

  "I'm sure," Johns said.

  "I did the landscaping."

  Johns raised his brows.

  "Well, I helped. That's what I like best, and will specialize in when I have the chance."

  "Uh-huh."

  "I could landscape your place." A young, winning smile.

  Johns saw gilt running out of his savings into his land. Well, it needed some money spent on it, for sure. "I'll consider that."

  The boy deflated a little.

  Johns stretched, popping his muscles. The boy sighed. Yeah, the kid would be the long and lean sort, not as big or muscular as Johns. He said, "I'll make you the treehouse you want, as elaborate as my own." Another elegant flick of his fingers. "I give you permission to visit my treehouse as much as you want, and your folks—"

  "My mother and G'Aunt," the kid put in.

  Nodding, Johns said, "—as much as your mother and G'Aunt, allow." The boy was being raised by two women, like Johns had been, and of similar ages to him
as Johns's mother and FatherDam. Yeah, Johns would have a weak spot for this child becoming a man. "And," he pointed at the boy, "if you get me a design of the type of treehouse you like, I'll build it to your specs."

  Big brown eyes widened at him. "Zow."

  "That's my offer," Johns said.

  They stared at each other for a couple of minutes. "Um…" the youngster began, then his gaze cut away from Johns's. "Can I landscape … please?"

  Wanted to practice his Flair more than the boyish treehouse. A surge of pride flashed through Johns. He looked at his land, his weeds, his shaggy hedges, his out of control bushes, his trees again. Needed something for sure. "No mucking with the medicinal herb gardens." Who knew if one of his descendants would have that familial skill? Would probably show up sometime.

  "Those gardens, there are plants nowhere else in Druida City, my mother weeps—" The boy sniffed and placed crossed hands over his heart.

  "She and I will talk." Johns paused. Lord and Lady knew what he could offer the woman in trade. "Maybe she'd like to harvest some of the herbs—or take cuttings—"

  "Yes!" Then the boy sidled aside a pace and Johns figured the neighbors had already done a bit of harvesting or cutting. Huh.

  He studied the youngster, recalled his own apprenticeship and journeyman experience. "I can talk to you and your Master about the landscaping being a training project for educational credit."

  That caused more wide eyes and another squeak. "Yeah? Yeah?"

  "Yes. I'll drop off the land boundaries and maps to your house and meet your mother later?" He frowned. "What are you doing out of your training program on a summer's afternoon?"

  "Master gave me the afternoon off."

  "Which Master?"

  The boy gave Johns a name he didn't recognize, but could contact. "Right. You have any training work to finish today?"

  "No, sir." Another cheeky smile. "Only working here to show you my good will and technique."

  "All right." Much as Johns didn't want to, he angled back to see his yard, let his face go impassive instead of wincing. "I have tools—"