The Fire and the Fog Read online

  So the fine houses passed by without notice as Gel raced down the street, free from the day’s duties. His shoes, fine though they were, had not been cobbled with running in mind, and so the slaps of leather on cobblestone echoed off the houses, following him out of the town, just a half-beat out of time with the shocks that ran up and down his legs with each step he took.

  ***

  Reaching his destination didn’t take long. The cobblestone street changed to a well-travelled dirt road just outside of town, and then it was only a minute or two before he moved into the tall grass along the side of the road. Gel listened to the bird-calls in the air as he walked, tried humming along with them, but birds had always seemed to be the most experienced musicians of all. He had no luck fitting a pattern to their sweeping calls, and so he let the birds chatter back and forth, filling the air with their conversation, their song.

  Gel had been walking for a quarter of an hour or so. The dull red roofs and dormant chimneys of the tall, narrow houses were still clearly visible off to his right, when he started to climb towards a solitary oak atop a low hill. The lute case in his hand beat against his leg with each step he took, creating the rhythm section for a melody he had decided to compose while he walked. He may not be able to compete with the birds around him, but he could still compose something that would make Sheane or Mae smile. Both if he did his job well enough.

  As Gel looked towards the old oak, his favorite spot to sit and play, he saw that two figures were already waiting there for him. Sheane sat on a blanket that had been spread over the short grass beneath the tree, her skirts arranged in a neat circle to cover her legs, and her hands folded patiently in her lap. Mae on the other hand, stood leaning against the oak, one foot angled behind her and planted on the oak for support, her arms crossed across her chest. She was scowling, and from the way her skirts hiked up around her calves from leaning against the tree, Gel could clearly see that she was tapping her foot impatiently. He could also see that she had nice legs and, while he knew that already, little reminders were always nice.

  ‘Gel. You’re late.’ Mae pushed off the tree and stood, arms still crossed, face furrowed into a scowl. Her skirts fell back to cover her legs once more, and Gel couldn’t help a wry smile of disappointment.

  ‘A thousand apologies, my Lady’ Gel bowed mockingly, sweeping his lute case out to the side as if it were a fancy hat to be flourished. ‘I shall of course endeavor to…’ Gel began, and was quickly cut off by an exasperated ‘Oh shut it’ from Mae.

  ‘Now hurry up and sit down, stupid’ Mae snapped as she herself sat down next to Sheane, leaning back on her arms, her legs stretched out in front of her rather than tucked underneath her skirts like her sisters. ‘Sheane won’t give me any tea till you sit down, so hurry up, stupid boy.’

  Gel couldn’t help but grin as he sat down across from the girls. For twins, the two had certainly come out differently. Both were beautiful, of course. Neither girl could be called skinny, but their exteriors were well rounded, and very well proportioned. Flowing golden hair came down to the mid-back on Sheane, while it barely covered Mae’s shoulders, but in both cases the wavy golden locks framed faces that must have been stolen from angels; or possibly cherubs, whichever looked better. Sheane had filled out more than Mae so far too, but both had legs to die for, from the glimpses Gel had managed to steal so far. And he very much enjoyed stealing glimpses.

  Gel shook his head quickly as he sat down, to stop his mind going down that path yet again. Suffice to say, the girls were gorgeous. And somehow they were Gel’s best friends.

  ‘It doesn’t work if you call me stupid twice in a row, Mae’ Gel said, setting his lute case down gently beside him as he crossed his legs.

  Mae stuck out her tongue while Sheane smiled silently, and began to prepare the promised tea, her back straight, her bearing demure.

  Sheane had a basket beside her from which she pulled delicately painted porcelain cups and saucers, as well as a flagon of what Gel assumed would be well-chilled tea. Gel knew that there would be goodies in the basket as well; cookies, muffins, possibly pastries, or maybe little tiny triangular sandwiches and, while he couldn’t wait to try them, he wondered, as always, how Sheane managed to pack the basket so full of snacks and drinks and cups, and never break a one. Sheane was a perfect lady, that’s all there was to it.

  Mae, on the other hand, sat leaning back with her hands in the grass, and she had already started to tear out clumps of the stuff, most likely to dump on Gel’s head, or down his shirt, at some point during the day. She did so frequently and, though he fought back, Gel always managed to wind up on the losing side.

  Quickly, and more in an effort to stave off any grass attacks from Mae than any urgent need to play, Gel leaned over and began to remove his lute from its case.

  ‘I wrote you a song on the walk over’ he said as he made small adjustments to the lute’s tuning pegs, tuning by ear and instinct.

  ‘Wrote who a song?’ Mae questioned excitedly as she sat up, her small hands still clutching at wads of grass, and leaned forward, hugging her knees to her chest.

  Gel sighed slightly as he finished his tuning. Sheane had sat forward excitedly at the prospect of a song as well, and she sat absently holding a cup of tea out to the side for her sister, her excitement-filled eyes a perfectly blue match for her sisters, both fixed on Gel.

  They were both so beautiful. Eyes like sapphires surrounded by fields of golden-wheat hair. Gel didn’t really like that metaphor, but he smiled absently anyway, already knowing what their reactions would be.

  ‘Can’t it be for both of you?’ he asked, trying to inject his words with as much feigned innocence as possible, eyes wide in what he hoped was an endearing look.

  Sheane smiled and nodded, her head moving in small, quick jerks of assent, just as Mae spoke out vehemently.

  ‘No! Pick one of us.’ Just as Gel knew she would. Mae always competed with Sheane, and Sheane always deferred to Mae. It was funny, really, but it always made Gel feel even worse about choosing just one of the sisters.

  ‘Fine’ Gel said, openly grinning now, ‘Then I wrote this for Mr. Oak, the tree’ and he began to play, and the afternoon drifted slowly away.

  II

  If life were all girls and music, Gel would have been more than happy. But as the warm, heavy sun of the afternoon faded slowly into the pale evening; as reminders that humans unfortunately require more sustenance than cakes and tea; as rumblings of hunger sounded, too deeply to ignore, the trio headed for home. They walked together back to the town, but split ways when they reached the change between dirt and cobblestone road. Sheane and Mae lived at the Eastern edge of town, just off the main road, while Gel had to make the long trek to the top of the low hill the town was built upon.

  As Gel walked home through the narrow cobblestone streets towards the Mayor’s house at the edge of town, he found himself thinking of the song he had written for Sheane and Mae, and had played for the old Oak tree. He had thought of it at the time as blue; slower and more mellow than the jumpy, excited yellow of Don Vole’s song from earlier, yet with enough movement, enough transition and change to remain interesting. It was a nice song, and had been perfect for his audience. Calm and smooth enough for Sheane, with enough trills for Mae. Balancing anything between the two of them could be interesting, though with music Gel thought he could always give them both what they wanted.

  He did wonder though. He always played for people, and he was always, or nearly always, able to understand what his audience wanted to feel from the music, was always able to pull that feeling out of the notes and make it come alive for his listeners.

  Sheane and Mae wanted to feel warm and loved, and Gel had no problem letting that feeling out through his music. He had trouble expressing feelings with words, with actions, but with music? With music his feelings just flowed. Gel often wondered why he should speak, when he could play instead.

  Many of the nobles that Gel had played for wante
d perfect renditions of ancient songs, note for note as they had been written and, while boring, he was always able to provide that too. The feeling he got from those songs was stuffy, uptight, and not more than a little wrong. He always wondered if this was how those ancient composers had wanted their legacies to be played. But if stuffy was what the nobles wanted, stuffy was what he would play.

  His tutors, as well, wanted him to play exactly what they told him to and, while he could generally manage that too, it became much more difficult if he got distracted, which happened much more often than he’d like to admit. Part of the problem was the difficulty of obtaining proper tutelage in the small, remote town of Feyen. His fourth tutor in two years, Gel’s parents had already told him that if he ran lady Vaen away that would be it. Not that he was worried. He figured that he could do better on his own anyway. He was the best after all, even if no-one had yet realized it.

  Gel’s parents just wanted to hear him play. As with all parents, they loved anything he did; it was their job. It made them at the same time the hardest and the easiest audience to play for. On the one hand, he could do no wrong. On the other, he always felt he had to do better for them, in order to truly deserve their love and praise.

  This all brought Gel back to the song he had played that afternoon. The song he had claimed to be playing for the old Oak tree on the hill. That pretty blue song had not been written or played for the tree, not truly, but what if it had? What if he had written it for the old Oak, and played it for the tree to grow, to sway and dance in the wind? What would that sound like, feel like; what colour would it be?

  Gel walked alone through the empty streets, the sun setting slowly at his back. The sounds of his footsteps on the worn cobblestones and the occasional twit of a robin or lark that had taken to nest in the awning of a nearby house were the only sounds that accompanied him on his walk home. But inside his head, his mind was buzzing. His ‘Ode to the Tree’. He knew it would have to feel green, how could it not, but how should it start? Some light arpeggios on a major scale? Or was that too light green? A song for the old oak, that solitary, ancient tree, stuck in the middle of miles of empty, rolling hills and short, twisted grape vines, a modern town of wood and stone its only company, a song for the old oak would have to be slow, mellow, in a minor scale. Possibly C Minor, with a slow tempo, plenty of legato notes. The song would have to be a dark, ancient green, as deep and ancient as the tree itself.

  Just as Gel began to write the first bars of his new song in his head, his fingers moving through the empty air in concert with the notes he imagined, he walked into the large iron gate of the Mayor’s house. Stepping back quickly and realizing where he stood, and what he had run into, mild embarrassment coloured Gel’s cheeks, and he quickly forgot about his song for the Oak, at least for the moment.

  ‘Right. Home.’ Gel muttered to himself, laughing in his head as he shook it slowly, hoping no-one had seen his gaffe, and trying to remember when he had climbed the incline to the house as he opened the front gate. The gate was heavy and tall, but the stark wrought-iron swung easily as he pushed on it.

  The Mayor’s house was his fathers’ house, and thereby he supposed his house. It sat on a low hill at the Western edge of the town. The large stone manse loomed over the town, its height and gravity separating the town proper and the wheat fields in the East from the towns’ vineyards to the west.

  The Mayor’s house was a ‘gift’ to the Mayor from the church. If ever Gel’s father was removed from his position as Mayor, Gel’s family would be removed from the house, not that that was likely. Gel’s father was a good Mayor. But it still made it hard for Gel to think of the house as his own, even though he had lived there all his life.

  The Mayor’s house was one of only two stone buildings in the town, the other being the old church. Other buildings had stone in them, mostly as foundations, but only Gel’s house and the church were made wholly of stone. Both the manse and the church were old, much older than the rest of the town around them, and both must have been built at the same time. No-one alive knew when they were built, or from which quarry the stone for the buildings had come from; there were no quarries for miles and miles in any direction. All Gel knew was that the grey stone slabs of the two buildings, seemingly arranged haphazardly and all the more beautiful for it, were much nicer than the newer polished and painted wooden houses that populated the rest of the town. Gel would live in one of these old stone buildings one day, and it would be like a castle or keep out of his mothers stories. Cold and drafty but defendable, maybe with a moat, and it would have open fires in braziers and swords on the walls and knights on horses galloping about…

  He was getting sidetracked again, and he knew it. But, as Gel opened the polished wooden door at the front of the house, he was sure. Once he was done his Ode to the Oak, he would write a song for the old stone manse; possibly a dirge of some sort, grey like the houses’ stone; heavy, but with an airy sound; open and clean.

  As soon as the door was open, Gel was hit by the smell of stew and freshly baked bread. Suddenly remembering he was ravenous, Gel took the stone stairs to his room two at a time, threw his lute on his bed, and rushed back downstairs, skidding through the kitchen door in time to watch his mother place a large bowl of steaming stew, thick with meat and potatoes and other earthy goods, and a thick slice of fresh bread at his empty spot at the table.

  ‘Nice of you to join us’ Gel’s father rumbled, blowing lightly on a chunk of meat from the stew as Gel quickly slid into his seat at the table. ‘Is this your house only when it comes to food, or do you intend to sleep here tonight as well?’

  Othwaithe was a large man. Big of shoulder, broad of chest, hands that looked large enough to crush bricks into dust. He could be intimidating at times, looking as he did like a large bear. But he was always gentle, kind, and fair. Gel had written a song for his father years ago, when he was seven years old; a slow, deliberate song filled with held staccato notes that Gel still felt perfectly matched the way his father, or a bear, would walk.

  ‘Soreh’ Gel mumbled, trying to speak through the stew-soaked bread he had just shoved into his mouth. ‘Ws wth Shne n Mae.’

  ‘Gel,’ his mother cut in, ‘chew your food. You will choke.’

  ‘And how would we explain a dead son to Fulhar Chaeveh?’ his father rumbled again, smiling as Gel washed down the bread with a gulp of watered-down wine. The Fulhar was the Church’s representative in the town. He was nice enough, but generally entirely too serious.

  Smiling as she shushed her husband with a wave of her hand, Maerge turned to Gel. ‘How was your lesson today Gel?’

  ‘Do we have to find you another tutor again?’ Othwaithe rumbled in the background, his eyes focused on his stew as Gel spoke over him. Gel’s mother tried to throw a quick glare in his direction, but Othwaithe’s already diverted eyes shielded him.

  ‘The lesson was boring,’ Gel whined, dragging out his syllables as he rolled his eyes. ‘Lady Vaen had me playing more of Don Vole’s 4th cantata, but it’s just wrong, and she won’t let me fix it. So I went and played for Sheane and Mae instead.’ As Gel took a break from talking to shove in more mouthfuls of stew, his mother spoke up.

  ‘What did you play for them? And have you decided who you’ll take to the Harvest Festival?’

  ‘And have you forgotten that you have to play Don Vole’s cantata for the Duke in two days? You had better learn it well.’ Othwaithe said as he leaned back calmly and began wiping the bottom of his already empty bowl with a torn-off piece of bread.

  There were a few moments of silence as Gel voraciously shoveled spoonfuls of stew into his mouth. His parents waited calmly, both eating with the patience that comes with years and the knowledge that food normally doesn’t disappear if it’s already in a bowl in front of you.

  As Gel finished off his first bowl of stew, he looked up to respond.

  ‘Yes, father, I know I have to play in two days, but it doesn’t matter,’ he replied, exasperated
. ‘I know the song already, and more lessons on it are just boring.’

  Othwaithe began to open his mouth to respond as Maerge fetched Gel another bowl and more bread, but Gel interrupted. ‘And yes, father, I know. Practice makes perfect. But I already am perfect, so why should I practice? Gel said, smiling smugly at his father as only a teenager could manage.

  ‘And the girls?’ his mother interrupted as she put more stew in front of him, trying to bring him back on track to what was important, to her at least.

  ‘Right’ Gel said, smiling as he cut up a large chunk of potato into more manageable pieces. ‘Well, we went to the old oak tree and I played them a song I wrote. It’s like Don Vole’s, only I fixed it, and made it into a smoother blue for Sheane and Mae, instead of yellow. It was really nice. Then I played them some more songs, and we talked, and Sheane brought tea and pastries.’ Gel took quick bites in between sentences, keeping just enough stew in his mouth that he could eat and talk at the same time, leaving all his sentences slightly muffled. ‘And now I’m going to write a song for the Oak, and one for our house too. They’re old, and they seem so lonely.’

  ‘Very nice dear, I’m sure they’ll love it. Have you decided which of the girls you will ask to the festival?’ his mother asked again as she began to clear the table. Gel’s father had already left the table, and was heading to his study as he did every evening. Othwaithe always said after dinner was the best time for paperwork, though it was understood that he spent more time napping than working. Gel, on the other hand, sat and stared at his stew for a few moments, pre-occupied with poking at a small chunk of carrot.