Chapter 7
“You will have to learn the healing chant fast if you want to save Mirry’s finger,” Denson said to me, obviously hoping he’d ruined Mirry’s future as a harpist.
“Charles, can you find the inscription in the Archives of Gifted Lore?” Pollo asked.
“I hope so,” said Charles. “I’ll look.”
He dashed straight into the wall and let it swallow him up.
“So, you’re that helpless, are you?” Denson mocked me.
Pollo looked like he wanted to strangle Denson, but knew he couldn’t. I was in the same boat. Mirry whimpered, looked at me anxiously, and looked at the wall where Charles had just left the room. Denson’s cronies were gloating over Mirry’s injury, but most of the other boys were looking at me anxiously and hopefully. Dominic rubbed his face against Mirry’s arm in sympathy with him. Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait long before Charles tore through the wall. Panting heavily, he delivered a frail piece of parchment into Pollo’s hands. Such was the advantage of living in compressed time. I found out later that Charles had spent about an hour searching for the inscription. Pollo looked at the parchment with some consternation. His friends Lewis and Meredith huddled round him to look at the inscription with him. They were the two boys who sat with Pollo at dinner. Lewis was a plump, awkward boy and Meredith, in contrast, was thin and wiry. They also muttered about the inscription with concern. Then Pollo showed it to me.
“Can you read this?” he asked me.
The symbols on the page meant nothing to me. They didn’t look remotely like printed music in my world. It looked like the game was up. I shook my head. Denson kept his eyes fixed on me, not disguising his desire to see me fail.
“This notation is not easy for us, either,” Pollo admitted, “but I think the three of us can figure it out well enough.”
Pollo and Lewis and Meredith studied the parchment for some while I held my breath. They whispered among themselves what they thought different symbols meant and, in a couple of cases, seemed to decide by a vote of two against one. When I saw a wicked smile on Denson’s face, I looked away from him. Finally, they seemed to agree on how to interpret the notation.
“Nathaniel,” said Pollo, “this chant is not that simple, but judging by what I’ve heard you sing, I think you can do it if you have a good ear and a good memory. Listen carefully as I sing it for you.”
Pollo sang the brief chant in a style I’d never heard before and in a language about as foreign as a language can be. Pollo’s singing was so awesome, I thought he should be able to heal Mirry, but his singing didn’t seem to have any effect on Mirry’s finger. The chant sounded so difficult that I was afraid that poor Mirry would bleed to death before I learned the first line. I was not about to give up, however, without giving this healing chant my best effort. The increasing anxiety I saw on the faces of the other boys told me that even more was at stake than the fate of Mirry’s finger. I had a feeling that Denson held something like a reign of terror.
“Now sing the first line after me,” Pollo instructed me.
He sang the first line and I repeated it. A couple of sparks flew off my cape. To my surprise, I almost got it. Mirry’s face brightened with hope in spite of the pain he was in.
“Almost,” said Pollo. “Again.”
Pollo sang the first line and this time I did get it right. I don’t know how I did it. The bleeding in Mirry’s finger seemed to slow a bit. That was encouraging. Pollo took me through each of the last three lines, having me repeat each one several times. Mirry’s bleeding stopped. Each time I sang a line right, more sparks crackled in my cape. Then Pollo sang through the whole chant. It didn’t seem possible I could remember the whole chunk of music, but when I sang it, I had the whole thing memorized. That’s when I first found out that my memory for music is extraordinarily good. I’m not bragging; that’s the truth. I walked up to Mirry with a lot more confidence than I thought I’d ever have at anything, gently put a hand over his wounded finger, and sang the chant through. A cascade of sparks showered both of us. As I sang the chant, I imagined the wound closing and the broken skin coming back together exactly the way it was before. I started to feel hot under my cape. Suddenly I felt like I was plunging into Mirry’s bloodstream and sewing his skin with my song. I don’t know how many times I sang the chant before I floated back out of Mirry’s body and came to myself. I was afraid to look at Mirry’s hand, but I knew I had to. I shook all the way to my feet when I saw that all trace of the cut was gone. Mirry threw his arms around me. Whether I liked it or not, I had a friend for life. I felt that he was now my blood brother, which he was. Pollo clapped me on the shoulder. The other boys cheered.
A deep-sounding bell rang. The vibrations tickled my feet. Several boys groaned. A ladder dropped down from what I assumed was a sleeping loft. Most of the boys and Dominic rushed to the ladder. Rusentel picked up the silver stag-fawn and tucked him away under his cape as if he was as small as a kitten, and then climbed the ladder. I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“Knew you could do it,” said Denson in a frosty voice as he put a foot on the ladder.
That left me at the foot of it with Charles, Mirry and Pollo.
“We’re with you all the way,” Pollo assured me in a low voice.
“You bet we are,” said Mirry.
Charles nodded in agreement. I could hardly believe this was happening. I hadn’t had even one good friend all my life, and here, suddenly, I had three.
“Thanks,” was all I could say before I climbed up the ladder.
The sleeping loft was, again, a much larger area than it had any right to be. I expected it to be filled with cot-size beds like in summer camp, but instead, there was a large variety of beds, ranging from large comfy-looking beds to a few that were little more than bedrolls on the floor. Dominic was already stretched out on Rusentel’s bed.
“You can make your bed here,” said Denson with a cold grin as he pointed to an empty space in the loft next to Mirry’s bed.
“Uh—how?” was all I could ask.
Some of the boys snickered at me. Obviously, my ignorance was showing again. Other boys looked uneasily at Denson and then at me. Charles pointed miserably to a sleeping bag on what looked like a small trampoline to indicate that he could not help me this time. Mirry was standing at a lumpy-looking misshapen bed, but one that had funny gnome faces at the top of each bedpost. I was beginning to realize that my situation was like the old joke about the man who is told that he could stay in a hotel as long as he made his bed. He agreed and then was given tools, wood and a mattress. This was worse. It seemed that I was expected to create a bed with a magical song or something. Gradually, most eyes turned on the dark boy in the tan cape, named Kenter. He was a tall and slender boy who, in my world, would have been taken for a South Indian. When it became obvious I didn’t know what to do, Kenter walked over to the space where my bed was supposed to be.
“It is the rule here that each boy makes his own bed,” said Denson.
The other boys were holding their breaths. Again, more seemed to be at stake than whether or not I had anything besides a piece of floor to sleep on.
“It is also the rule that each Gifted Person should help a member of the Guild of Gifted Healers who is on a healing quest,” said Kenter.
It was obvious that another line drawn by Denson had been crossed, and he didn’t like it. Kenter sang a song that caused a wood frame bed to appear, complete with a roomy mattress that promised to enfold me in comfort all night long. I suspected that Kenter was a member of a craft guild of some sort, and I learned soon enough that he belongs to the Guild of Gifted Artisans that specializes in making things from footrests to large buildings. Then Mirry came over and sang a song that caused beautiful dragonheads to appear on my bedposts. None of us in the loft could overlook the fact that my bed was slightly larger and slightly grander than anybody else’s.
I still had several other practical problems that I didn’t know what to do about. Charles saved me from having to ask for more help by telling me that he was pretty sure his clothes with fit me and that he would lend me some, starting with a nightshirt like what the other boys wore. Peter, the other harpist, gave me a bar of soap, and Bursen gave me a nifty tooth-cleaning device I wished had been invented in my world. For once in my life, and to my surprise, I wasn’t the odd kid out. To the contrary, all of the boys except Denson and his three cronies were rallying around me. That spelled trouble, but not as much trouble as I would have been in if everybody was against me. I thought I would have a hard time sleeping in such a strange place with so much to worry about, but I must have been more exhausted than keyed-up, for I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.
A clanging bell that shook the floor woke me and the other boys in the morning. We washed up in a wash room that branched off from the bedroom and ran down the ladder for breakfast. Masteress Carrasima and the two girls were waiting in the dining room to serve each of us a bowl of thick porridge. Maranissa smiled at me in a way that made it clear she wasn’t going to forget what I did for her anytime soon.
“Don’t forget,” she said to me, “if I can help you with your healing quest, you’d better let me know.”
I didn’t have the slightest idea how a girl from the Guild of Gifted Culinary Artists could help me on my quest, but something in those brown eyes of hers made me think twice about counting her out. I sat down next to Charles and then Mirry promptly sat down on the other side of me. Denny, one of the drummers, quickly sat down next to Mirry. I wasn’t expecting more of the porridge than some filler to get me started in the morning, and was pleasantly surprised with how tasty it was. Some loud noises from another table got me looking over there. Poor Jorland was making horrible faces over his bowl of porridge. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how that happened and why.
As soon was breakfast was over, we went over to the church for morning service music rehearsal. Before we got started with the music, Master Lesentrange gave Mirry a dressing down for starting a jet flame duel and almost getting himself disabled for life as a result. I could see Denson purring as Master Lesentrange poured it on my friend. Then, to make matters worse, Master Lesentrange bawled me out for trying to sing chants that were obviously too hard for me. Pollo and Lewis and Meredith got chewed out for trying to teach the chant to me. That got Denson and his friends purring even more, but the sympathetic looks I got from all the other boys made it clear whose side they were on.
Once the rehearsal got under way, I was amazed with the music and the sound of our choir. All of the music was new to me except for a few hymns I knew. Even music that comes from my world or a close parallel to it, like stuff by Bach and Mozart was as unfamiliar to me as the music unique to other worlds. Once I got to sing some Bach and Mozart, I wondered, again, where I’d been all my life. I felt like I was born with a love of music like this and that I must have been singing as soon as I was born. I couldn’t believe I could have given it up just because my mom died. I wonder now if it was something like a Trappe-family complex where music was banned from the household out of grief for a lost wife and mother. A lot of the music was out of this world, or, out of my world anyway.
Much as I was thrilled by the sound of the choir, you wouldn’t know how good it was by listening to Master Lesentrange yell at us almost nonstop the whole time. I saw that the other boys took his insults in stride and I decided to do the same. I have to admit that when we’d sung a line four or five times after getting yelled for getting it wrong, we ended up sounding better than we did before. I couldn’t read any of the music, but Mirry and Charles stood on either side of me and helped me keep my place. Denson was asked to sing a solo in one piece we did, and I wondered why he was the one asked instead of Pollo. Denson was a pretty good singer, much as I hate to admit it, but he wasn’t half as good as Pollo. That wasn’t a good sign that Master Lesentrange was going to be any more of a help in my healing quest than Denson.
After the service morning rehearsal, we returned to the cottage for various educational activities. A large room that served both as a workshop and study hall opened up off the common room. Some boys worked on Gifted Singing to build things with Kenter helping them out, when needed. Others worked at Gifted Writing where Charles, Meredith and Lewis seemed to be the tutors. Master Galleon told me that he was required to give me a singing lesson, and so singing for him was what I did. The workshop and study hall branched off into several hallways with little rooms off them. Master Galleon took me into that labyrinth that made me fear I was going to be permanently lost after my lesson. I stopped worrying about that when I saw Mirry and Denny follow at a distance. Master Galleon took me into one of the small rooms and pulled a keyboard out from under his cape. How people in this Gifted World could carry such impossibly large things under their capes was something I did not understand at all at the time. The walls of the room were formed out of stones of various sizes that gave it a rough texture.
“These walls are soundproof and they will hold in any Gifted power thrusts,” Master Galleon explained. “If you see any of the stones turning red, that means you are not controlling the power of your singing, and you would be breaking church windows if you were singing, unshielded, there.”
Then Master Galleon played a chord on his keyboard, played a scale, and asked me to sing it. Then he had me sing another scale. And so it went. Nothing of interest; nothing that was anywhere close to the style of the healing chant Pollo had taught me the night before. Master Galleon himself spent the whole time staring into space, giving me the impression that the lesson bored him as much as it bored me. If I got a scale or some other exercise wrong, Master Galleon would play it for me and make me sing it again. Everything I sang seemed to turn the stones pink and sometimes red. When the shade of red got quite dark, Master Galleon told me to hold the music in.
“Only the sound should escape; not its essence,” he told me, but without bothering to tell me what the “essence” was or what to do about it.
When Master Galleon announced the end of the lesson, I heaved a sigh of relief, but I also fretted that I wasn’t getting any further along with fulfilling my quest. When I left the room, I almost tripped over Mirry and Denny who were sitting right outside.
“Have a good lesson?” Mirry asked me in a tone of voice that suggested it was not possible for anybody to have a good lesson with Master Galleon.
“It was all right,” I replied with a weary shrug.
“Just as I thought,” said Mirry. “Come with me.”
The two boys led me through the warren of hallways paved with cobbled stones to another small room where Pollo and Charles were waiting for me.
“If your face speaks truly,” said Pollo, “your lesson with Master Galleon was as useless as I feared it would be.”
I nodded. Mirry then gave Pollo a recounting of the exercises I’d been given, using a lot of jargon that I didn’t understand. Pollo nodded gravely when Mirry finished his recital.
“Even more worthless than I thought,” said Pollo. “He should have started you right off with the basic healing modes. I hope that Master Lesentrange is not suppressing the musical knowledge you will need, but I fear it may be so. Nathaniel, are you willing to tell me what healing chant you need to learn?”
Once again, I was faced with the question of how much information I should give out. Since I had already told Master Lesentrange the healing chant I needed, and Pollo, Charles and Mirry had promised to help me with my quest, a promise that neither Master Lesentrange nor Master Galleon had made, the question became a no-brainer.
“I’m supposed to find the song that sings a blossom from the windmere willow into dalebark,” I replied.
Pollo pursed his lips.
“I know nothing of this. Charles, what modes do you think would be the basis of such a chant?”
“Probably the mode family for trees,” Charles answered, “maybe for flowers. Could be a family of modes that combines the two. We’ll have to ask Meredith and Lewis for what they think.”
“That narrows it down a little, but not as much as I would like” said Pollo. “I wish we could consult a couple of masters in the Guild of Gifted Singers who could help us, but we are quarantined here at Saint Percivale’s Church and this cottage so that we can’t get to them.”
“Quarantined?” I asked. I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Yes, we are quarantined because of the smothering pestilence,” Pollo answered. “We are being protected from the pestilence, but we are also being protected from learning the chants you need to know.”
“Then, are you saying I’m stuck here?” I asked.
“Just as stuck as we are,” said Mirry. “Usually, we can go back and forth to the rest of the Academy for Gifted Musicians, but now we can’t. I can’t even get my harp lessons until this smothering pestilence is defeated, and Denny can’t get his drum lessons, either.”
“And I can’t sing with the Norwich Cathedral Choir back home the way I used to,” said Charles.
This was sounding worse and worse.
“I was given instructions to return to the guildhall when I learned the healing chant,” I said, “or if things didn’t work out. Do you think I can get back there if I need advice?”
“Did you have any trouble getting here in the first place?” asked Pollo.
“Yes.”
I told them how the wind and the eagle tried to keep me out, and then the eagle let me come after all.
“Again, just as I thought,” said Pollo. “Master Lesentrange has most likely made the barrier stronger than it was. I’m afraid you are stuck here. My friends and I will do what we can to prepare to learn the healing chant, and then we’ll figure out what to do next. Mirry, play the healing radical, please.”
Mirry played an odd-sounding chord on his harp, then played it one note at a time. My second singing lesson was underway. As soon as I started to sing the notes assigned to me, a few sparks crackled inside my cape and the stones turned a deep red. I stopped right away, waiting for Pollo to tell me to control my singing.
“Master Galleon is trying to teach him how to sing without letting the music out,” said Mirry.
“I should have known,” said Pollo. “Nathaniel, if you learn how to sing without letting the music out, you will not be able to make a healing chant do anything. When you sing with me, turn the rocks red.”