FSF, August 2008

by Spilogale, Inc

  "My pleasure. But how came you—"

  "After my education, in the Academy at Currish, I was hard pressed to find any post. I confess this was the first that came my way, and I had not the luxury of waiting for a more glamorous assignment."

  "Very pragmatic."

  "So I have been told. If I were more idealistic I might not have come, I suppose. Or I might have left here by now. But I feel a certain devotion, to my charge. If not for me, well ... what then?"

  Her face had grown so thin that he did not wish to push her down this avenue. They were near the top of the town now, and coming toward a tall steepled building built of unpainted boards, its shingles warped and green with moss, of a design so different from that of the residences that he took it for the schoolhouse.

  "Now,” she said, “you have gratefully offered to play for us, so I must first make the offer worth your while. If you will perform, then I can offer you board at the school. There is plenty of room, and more than enough food."

  "You not only educate but feed your pupils as well?"

  "The townsfolk provide ample fare, as you will see. Now, if we have time before the meal, it might be best...."

  The square before the schoolhouse was busy with villagers coming and going. On a long table before the front door they were laying out gifts of food like offerings. Pies and loaves of fresh baked bread; pies and more pies. It did not seem a particularly balanced diet for the needs of growing children, although certainly it was to the taste of any child. And although Gorlen himself these days preferred savories to sweets, the sight of such a sprawling dessert evoked childhood fantasies of living in a world made entirely of edible treats. Had he come on some festival day?

  Whatever the occasion, it would be hard to imagine a greater contrast than that between the grim, shifty-eyed burghers with mouths like twisted scars, and the merry cream-slathered trifles they set by the board, before darting off resentfully into the shadows.

  Ansylla gave a short sigh and took a large ring of keys from her flowery pocket, then wrestled briefly with the massive front door. The villagers tipped their hats to her and pretended not to notice Gorlen, who began to contemplate the potential for an outdoor recitation. However, he did not wish to be rewarded entirely in pies.

  "Would you mind?” she asked, balancing massive pastries in each hand. Gorlen, not wishing to draw attention just yet to his immobile right hand, slipped his wrist through the handle of a basket loaded with sweetpuffs and fruit tarts, while gathering up a twiggy bundle of brittle sugar-faggots in the other. He went behind her down a dark hall, then out into a somewhat brighter classroom with hazed windows on its far wall. School desks, stools, and benches were pushed back to make room for a long communal table. She set her burden down on the large table, then returned to the street to bring in the rest of the pastries left by the townsfolk. Gorlen followed her example.

  Only when they had retrieved the last pasty, and shut the door to the street, did he realize it had been some time since he had heard the children shrieking. He presumed they had been called in by their parents, but the conduct of their teacher made him wonder if they might be bent to their studies. In which case, who was instructing or supervising them? And quite apart from the laughter, what of the horrid sound that had interrupted it in the first place?

  The walls of the classroom were lined with faded drawings. Whatever children had drawn these were apparently limited to pigments mined from the dreary mountains that surrounded them. Smudgy strokes of cinnabar and lead, drab yellows, fingerpaintings done in mud. All color had leached from the place. Gorlen had never spent any of his own childhood inside a schoolhouse, but he had seen plenty of them in his travels, and it was rare to find one not done up in colors meant to match the cheer of the children. Here, he saw tackheads holding nothing but shreds of old torn paper, imperfectly removed. He wondered what the children he'd heard could have found to laugh about in such confines.

  "Now,” she said tentatively, taking his elbow again, “bring your instrument, if you will, and come through here."

  At the far side of the classroom were two small dingy windows, and centered between them, a door. He thought he heard the murmur of voices on the other side, children in conversation, muffled whispering. But as Ansylla put her hand on the knob and turned it, as the old hardware creaked, the voices stifled instantly.

  He found himself staring out into a flagstone courtyard, completely surrounded by windowed walls, with one antique, etiolated willow mourning in a corner.

  In the center of the court, where the children must have once come to frolic between lessons, was but one child.

  The destination of all those pies was suddenly obvious. The boy was immense, his eyes small and black, his mouth wide enough to more than earn the appellation “batrachian.” A few strands of lank black hair lay damp across his domelike brow, and but for those strands he was entirely hairless. He also lacked a neck. The child reminded Gorlen of nothing so much as a huge egg, peeled and incompletely boiled. Squatting in the midst of the courtyard, it devoted all its energy to not tipping over. Fat legs jutted out like the points of a broken tripod. Gorlen realized the boy was leaning back against a second willow, this one completely stripped of leaves and most of its branches. A reminder of greener days, it served the child as a scaly gray prop.

  "Here we are!” Ansylla said brightly, and he did not understand the reason for her merriment until he realized she was not speaking to him but to the child, as one would speak to a very young and temperamental babe, or to an idiot. The child's behavior instantly confirmed his conjecture, for as soon as she spoke, it began to bang its heels against the flags and set the bare twist of willow shaking violently.

  Gorlen would have held back, but she held firmly to his arm and tugged him forward.

  "I've brought you something wonderful today,” she said. “Music! Lovely, lovely music! Did you hear it a little while ago? I thought you had. I thought for certain I heard you calling. Isn't that right? Oh, isn't that so?"

  She turned to Gorlen with a wide smile, grinning and nodding at him until he could only nod and grin back like a lunatic, understanding none of it. Were they to humor the repellent child?

  "Now this nice young man,” she said, “is a bard. He's the one you heard! See this lovely instrument he holds, with its strings and polished wood? That is called an eduldamer. E-dul-da-mer! Now, he is going to play his eduldamer and sing you a song, one I'm sure you'll like. You will like that, won't you?"

  The egg regarded them with watery confusion. Then it began to bleat.

  He recognized the sound as a very gentle warning of the greater horror he had heard from outside the gate. No wonder the other children had ceased their play and fled when this monstrosity began to wail.

  "No, no!” she said, deftly swooping in to take one of the child's tremendous hands and begin to pat it. “He'll play now, and you'll eat after, isn't that all right? You always like to sleep after you eat, but you wouldn't want to miss this. We don't know how long Mr. Fizzinforth can stay. Let's hear him now, shall we, and then you can ... then you can ... Mr. Fizz ... Gorlen, why don't you ... why don't you...."

  Truly, it was a sound that would have rattled anyone's concentration. He could hardly believe she submitted herself daily to such a force of ill nature. Gorlen stood his ground, although his one desire was to bury his fingers deep in his ears and back steadily away. Quickly he unslung his eduldamer and began to play—not the rondel he'd started on earlier, as there were no voices to join in, but a tune much simpler and more direct. A song of childhood; and in fact, one originating in the province of Twilk, whose capital was Riverend. When Ansylla realized he was playing it for her, she raised her eyes from her student and gave him a grateful glance. Nervously, she plucked the waxy red wand on its leather cord and began to gnaw at it, red shavings gathering on her teeth. He realized it was not a talisman but a crayon—a teacher's stylus for correcting student errors, arithmetic mistakes, the like. He had spen
t so little time in school that he'd hardly recognized it.

  As Gorlen played, the child watched him fixedly, his mouth pressed shut. There was grave suspicion in those eyes, although it was surprising to see anything in them, considering their resemblance to a crustacean's glossy black eyespots. The child lacked eyebrows, or apparently even lids, from which Gorlen could extrapolate joy or displeasure. But at least Ansylla looked relieved. He could not have been doing badly.

  At least, that was, until one of his strings broke.

  "One moment! With apologies!” he cried, and dug into his knapsack to pull out a coil of bright new wire.

  He replaced the wire quickly, but he could feel those fat heels drumming at the flagstones and sense the child's growing impatience even as he hurried. In fear for his physical wellbeing, he overtightened one peg and struck a high sour note, and instantly regretted it.

  The child threw back his head and wailed, howled like a mirewolf calling to its pack.

  "Oh no, my dear!” cried Ansylla. “There, there, all will be well ... just a moment, my dear, just a moment! The nice man will soon make the pretty music again, you'll see! Won't you, Gorlen?” Pleading in her eyes.

  His ears now ringing with the shock of sound, he nodded mutely and began to play again, hoping this would calm the brute. And indeed, his strategy was effective to a point. The piercing wail cut off, but in its place was another sound, more disturbing: The sound of weeping.

  It was a weird chorus of voices. Children's voices. If he closed his eyes, which he did to hide the face of the animated egg, he could almost imagine that the courtyard was full of distressed children. Yet they all had one source. It was an uncanny performance.

  "There, there, happy now! Happy!” she said. And the tone of the voices began to change. The cries faded out, turning gradually more garrulous as Gorlen played, and soon he realized that this one throat had given rise to the sounds he'd heard outside the gate. The entire range of children's voices had emanated from this child.

  Ansylla must have seen his dawning wonder, for indeed, it was a miracle that such lively and beautiful noise could pour from such a gullet. She must have felt her charge's mood had stabilized sufficiently that she dared to reach out and touch Gorlen lightly on the shoulder, with a nodded promise that all would soon be clear. Once he'd finished that song, he turned to a more festive birthday jig, in honor of all the pies spread out in the next room; and that in turn spurred him to laugh out the words to the “Pie-So-Long Song” for the first time in many seasons. By the end of it, he felt quite jolly, and Ansylla's mood had also lifted. As for the child ... his mouth had closed in a sleepy grin, almost attractive in its elongated way, and the courtyard enjoyed the benefits of its master's contentment. Even the naked willow seemed relieved.

  "Why don't we bring him something to eat?” she said, just above a whisper, wiping red wax from her two front teeth.

  Gorlen went to this task with a will. Anything to put some distance between himself and the now peacefully grinning child, and to have a chance for a moment's conversation out of the lad's hearing. Back in the classroom, he loaded her arms with pies, and as he held the door to let her out into the courtyard again, he dared, “A moment, Ansylla, if you will...."

  "Yes? He does not like to be kept waiting, Gorlen. He is sure to be famished."

  "I'm sure not. I just ... simply ... is the child an idiot?"

  She pursed her lips delicately. “We do not use that term in the Academy,” she said. “He has been traumatized, no doubt, by the gradual disappearance of his many classmates; and never has he been completely what you would call normal. And yet ... yet, he has wonderful gifts."

  "Gifts?” These had not been at all apparent.

  "Why surely you noticed. He is a splendid mimic!"

  "Ah. The myriad voices. That is certainly remarkable."

  "Yes, remarkable. We are fortunate to have him ... although he is the only one left."

  "What became of the others? I can't believe the Academy posted you here to care for a single child. And if I might say so, your current task seems more suited to a nurse or nanny than a highly decorated Marm. Your ribbons seem wasted, when your only charge is so....” He held off using any word she might find offensive. If “idiot” had been met with approbation, he could only imagine her response to “moronic."

  "When I took the post, the school was full, and bustling. But that did not last long. I arrived just as a shadow had begun to fall across—"

  But now a shadow fell across her features. From beyond the door, the beginnings of a titanic moan. The edge of greediness, beyond mere hunger, brought him again to the all-devouring sound that had come keening through the gate earlier that afternoon.

  "We'd best....” She shrugged, with her burden of pies, and Gorlen opened the door.

  A thin pink tongue darted from end to end along the mouth's extensive lower lip, like a lizard running back and forth along a mossy wall. Now he saw that the eye did indeed feature lids, for they drew open wide at the sight of the numerous pies. The black knobs protruded slightly, lending credence to his earlier suspicion of crustacean ancestry. He felt he had seen such eyes deep in the dark cracks that clove these forsaken mountains; usually these were watchers that shrank from light or movement, so that one never had any more than the vaguest impression of their form. Still, the white hands that came grasping for the pies were those of a pudgy child. And the way the child ate was purely human: Spoiled beyond belief. Human hunger, human gluttony, a childish human rapacity for self-indulgence. So very spoiled.

  There were more loads of food to be carried out before the table in the classroom was cleared. One loaf, slightly less sugar-encrusted than the others, Ansylla held back for herself and Gorlen. The rest went into the cavernous pit of her pupil's mouth. Maw. Gorge. Such words came readily to mind as Gorlen watched him eat. It was a squeam-inducing sight. One benefit of the heavy traffic into that mouth was that sounds ceased emitting from it, other than the noises of gulping, gnawing, and slobbery mastication. The troubling echo of a children's chorus did not intrude on the meal, for which Gorlen was obscurely grateful, although he could not have said why. There was something horrible in the cosmic indifference upon that vast visage, something wholly at odds with the spontaneous clatter of excited remembered voices.

  "So ... a mimic, you say. And these sounds...."

  They were gathering up empty pie tins, old cracked plates, bread baskets, and retreating with them back into the classroom. The table was heaped with the remains of the child's meal.

  "The cries of his schoolmates, yes. He makes them to amuse himself, I believe, for he is so stricken and lonely. This is his way of expressing feelings of loss. Can you not hear how forlorn those calls are? He has such a remarkable talent that at times I can almost make out the individual voices of his classmates ... my former pupils. How they used to play around him, right here in this very yard. Between lessons, such energy, such bright times.... It could not have failed to make an impression on him, although he was much as you see him now, seeming to take little note of those around him. But I can hear it in the cries. How much he misses them. It is a forlorn mimicry, is it not?"

  Loading his arms with empty platters and pans, Ansylla motioned him down the hall to the front door. Gorlen followed, but his mind was far from the chores of cleaning.

  "It certainly gulled me when I first heard it,” he said. “I thought the village overrun by children."

  "That is what it sounded like when I first arrived. He replays their sounds endlessly, and in endless variations. It is his only pleasure. Besides eating."

  "I was going to mention that as the more obvious source of satisfaction.” He realized he had not completely expunged a tone of ironic judgment from his voice.

  "Yes ... he is spoiled,” she quietly conceded, hesitating before she opened the door into the square. “The villagers cannot help themselves, and I can hardly blame them. He is the last child, after all. If they were to lose this one
, what would they have left to hope for? What future? So ... I do my best. That is why I cannot leave. I have grown accustomed. Attached, even. And besides, the Academy has no other postings for one of my limited qualifications."

  She opened the door, admitting the dim light of early evening. The square was quiet but not unpopulated; in fact, a small crowd of citizens had gathered at the edges, and seemed to be watching with great interest as Gorlen followed her out into the light and set his clattering load upon the common table. Several of the villagers came forward to reclaim their housewares. They gave him sullen, even hostile looks, before trudging off to their cheerless, childless homes. These were the parents, he realized. Who else but the bereaved would have bothered to feed such a child unless they saw in him some connection to those they had lost? He could not imagine what they must have felt, hearing their children's shrieks parroted back to them, forever beyond reach. He felt a pang of pity for the whole village; but was still relieved to retreat into the schoolhouse and pick up the thread of their conversation.

  "So you have considered changing locations?” Gorlen asked.

  "Why deny it?” She shut the door and turned, putting her back against it, a look of resignation aging her prematurely. “This was hardly what I pictured even in my most despairing moments, when it seemed the Academy was sending us into a world that had no use for education, no interest in the betterment of its children, a world proud even of its own ignorance."

  "Well, well,” said Gorlen. “We must do something about this. No situation can be considered permanent. My way may take me through other towns that would almost certainly use you better. That red crayon of yours needs errors to correct! If you like, if you ... trust me, that is ... I would be happy to carry your credentials, to tout your qualities to any town with something more to offer than this dreary place."

  "I ... I think I do trust you, Mr. Vizenfirthe."

  "Again, Ansylla. My name is Gorlen.” And he touched her cheek with his left hand. This caused her to glance down at the right one, which he had so deliberately not used.