Chapter the First of Part the First
In which the narrative recounts acts from the life of Kyle Pen Terraga in Puurraskin, Mastruum.
“KYLE!”
Kyle Pen Terraga, his arms full with a stack of freshly-washed bed sheets, stopped in his tracks in the middle of the hallway that led to the back stairs.
“How may I serve you?” Kyle asked his aunt as he braced himself for the next booming order that his Aunt Myrtle was about to hurl at him.
“The West Parlor must be dusted to perfection this afternoon in preparation for an evening gathering to be held there.”
“I will do as you ask with not a second’s delay as soon as these sheets have been carried to the upstairs linen closet.”
“Use the legs your mother gave you and get those sheets upstairs and get right back down to the job assigned you as there is not a second to waste.”
The common expression “that your mother gave you” was always painful to Kyle because his mother was a strikingly beautiful woman whom he had only seen occasionally from a distance. Not one word had ever been spoken directly between the two of them.
“I will use the legs my mother gave me as you ask, with not a second’s delay,” said Kyle straining to sound polite when he was so weary.
Kyle walked briskly through the hallway to the steps and suddenly tripped, bruising his knee and sending the sheets flying. The smug face of his cousin Meg and the broom in her hand explained Kyle’s fall.
“Kyle,” said Meg, as she handed the broom to him, “Sweep the back stairs.”
“I will do as you ask with not a second’s delay after I have taken the sheets back to the laundry room for re-washing and then dusted the parlor.”
“Is said now,” Meg insisted, raising the broomstick threateningly.
“I will do as you ask with not a second’s delay.”
With that, Meg scurried off, leaving the broomstick in Kyle’s hand. With a sigh, he picked up the sheets, piled them up and climbed the narrow stairway to start sweeping. Being the youngest disinherited child in his own family was hard enough, but being traded to the household of his Uncle Samuel and Aunt Maria made him automatically the lowest ranking disinherited child in that household so that even Meg, who was two years younger than Kyle, could order the boy in any way she chose and beat him with a broomstick if he did not do her will. Like any other disinherited child, she was taking full advantage of her first opportunity to give orders to someone else and beat them for any shortcoming.
As he worked, Kyle found his thoughts drifting to the inheritance system established in Mastruum. It was explained to him, as it was to every child, that a family could not divide its inheritance indefinitely without reducing all members of the family to poverty. Moreover, the qualities of intelligence and other talents were seen to diminish with each child born after the first. The solution established by the wisdom of the leading families and the lawmakers of the country was to limit the inheritors within each family. The younger children would be disinherited, but they would serve the family in every way as needed. Since the Pen Terragas were a leading family, they were allowed the maximum of four inheritors. Kyle was the twelfth and youngest child of his parents. It was at moments when he had a job that didn’t require much attention, such as sweeping a stairway, that Kyle would ask himself if there might be a better way to organize a family. He hesitated to think long or hard about such a thing because there was nothing he could do about his lot in life no matter what he thought of it.
As soon as he had the stairs swept, Kyle picked up the dirtied sheets and carried them down to the laundry room in the basement. As always, his Uncle Derek was at the wash tubs.
“I thought you brought all the linens down this morning,” said Uncle Derek.
“I did.”
“Then what is this?”
“I fell in front of the stairs in the hallway,” Kyle admitted, knowing that blaming Meg would only make things worse.
“And why can’t you use the eyes your mother gave you to keep from falling with an armful of linens I just washed?”
“I have no excuse to offer.”
“Do you have any other jobs assigned to you right now?”
That was a stupid question.
“Yes.”
“Then dump the linens in the wash tub and don’t waste any more time getting your other work done.”
On balance, Kyle would rather have washed the linens himself in peace, but he had learned quickly that in this household, Uncle Derek was the sort who was convinced that only he knew how to do the laundry properly.
Kyle ran back up the stairs, two at a time, as that was one way of convincing others that he was he was devoted to his duty to his family. He sped down the hall, snatched the duster on the way, and slid into the West Parlor. This was Kyle’s favorite room in the house. His Aunt Maria often entertained people there and this was the room she used for musical performances. The first time Kyle was asked to attend to his aunt at a musical performance in his parents’ house, an older disinherited brother gave him the order with a look that suggested he was assigning a most unpleasant job. Unpleasant jobs, up to that time, were all Kyle knew. Attending to his aunt meant standing behind her chair but at an angle so that she could nod to him whenever she had need of anything.
All his disinherited relatives told Kyle that music was dull and so he expected to be bored by the little concert he was forced to listen to while attending to his aunt but, to his surprise, Kyle liked it very much. The music stirred up strange feelings inside of Kyle and afterwards, he could not get the music out of his mind. Neither did he wish for the music to leave his mind. Since a disinherited child was never allowed to ask for a job, Kyle could only hope that his aunt would ask for him to be her attendant at another musical performance. Not only did Aunt Maria ask Kyle to do that very thing, but she began to ask Kyle to be her attendant at musical events in the assembly hall at the Town Center of Puurraskin as well. Again, Kyle was deeply stirred by the music, even though he had to stand behind her chair the whole time. He could never tell his aunt how much he liked the music, but she seemed to realize that he did. She was a rare inheritor who seemed willing for a disinherited relative to enjoy an assigned job. Then the day came when Aunt Maria asked that Kyle to be traded to her household in exchange for one of her disinherited daughters. The offer was accepted. Nobody asked Kyle what he thought about the exchange. On balance, in spite of the extra bad treatment from his cousins in his aunt’s household, he was glad to have made the move.
The West Parlor was a room large enough for a small group of musicians to perform and a dozen or so inheritors to sit in gold-colored upholstered chairs and listen to the music with their attendants standing near them. There was a writing desk against one wall, and a hammerharp in a corner was handy to bring out when it was needed. The floor was made with hard white tiles that enhanced the acoustics for music. Kyle wondered if his Aunt Maria might play the instrument herself this evening, as she was rather accomplished at it. He decided to dust the instrument first thing and then go over it lightly a final time at the end. He carefully moved the duster across the wood casing with dark red flowers painted against a black background and then put up the lid to dust the keys. As usual, Kyle longed to play a few notes on the instrument just to see what kind of sound he could make, but he did not dare. He doubted that his aunt would mind but there was no shortage of disinherited cousins, uncles and aunts who would beat him for such a thing. He had to content himself with listening to the music in his head that he had heard before. Kyle went on to dust the tall porcelain lamps and fill them with oil, then washed and dusted the tray tables that would hold the drinks and snacks served to the inheritors present. Dusting the room included washing the windows and Kyle went on to that task. The view of the back yard was pleasant, but it made Kyle sad because he knew he could never walk in the garden except to bring snacks or drinks to somebody there who asked for them.
There was more glass to wash in the parlor as the books that lined the walls from floor to ceiling were encased in glass. As he worked, Kyle longed to open a door and take one book or another off the shelf but that, too, was forbidden. There were strict laws against any disinherited child being allowed to read as much as a shopping list. When asked to do errands, he was expected to use the memory his mother gave him and not forget as much as one item.
As he wiped clean the glass door covering the book shelf across from the door, Kyle found himself humming a tune he once heard played or sung in that room. He stopped himself because that, too, could lead to a beating if he were heard. But Kyle had not cleaned much more glass before he found himself humming again. Deciding that this was one of those days when he could hardly stop himself, and he no longer wished to try, he went on humming. Sometimes a bit of humming was worth a beating.
As he worked and hummed along, Kyle wandered off from the melody as he remembered it and began to sing it his way, a way he liked better. That was a dangerous thought. Kyle wondered if any disinherited child had ever thought that he or she could make up a better musical tune than an inheritor. Kyle worked faster and hummed more slowly until he opened the next glass door and the whole shelf of books came with it. Kyle jerked it back quickly, afraid of what he had done. Kyle started to push the shelf back to where it belonged but he was so overcome with curiosity that he peeked through the crack in the wall that had opened up. He saw nothing, but the air felt a bit cold, and very stale. Kyle stuck his head into the gap a second time and looked again. This time he saw a sparkle here and another sparkle there. Although he did not think he was actually hearing anything at all from this place, Kyle started to hear a melody going through his head that he knew he had never heard before.
Realizing that there was just enough room in the gap for him to slip through into the secret room, and having reached the point where nothing he did could lead to a worse fate than was his lot in life already, Kyle decided to risk stepping through. Kyle’s hand tried to find a wall behind him but found nothing. Kyle’s knees shook and he retained his balance by luck more than anything else. He scraped a shoe along the surface he was standing on to try and give himself some bearings. The sound of the scraping was echoed by a half-heard note from somewhere in the room. A few more sparkles lit up in front of him and Kyle thought he could make out the shape of a harp not far from where he stood. Kyle stood where he was for some time. The silence became as thick as the stiff, cold air. As Kyle looked about, he could see the sparkles more clearly now that his eyes were adjusted to the dark. These sparkles looked like the effect that sunlight has on the stone path leading to the garden in the back yard. Only in this place there was no sunlight, no light of any kind that the stones could be reflecting. Kyle looked again at what seemed to be a harp. His eyes also began to make out a few shadowy columns that came up roughly to his waist, but not to the ceiling, if there was a ceiling. Kyle was not so sure he should even call the place a room. The space did not seem to extend very far but there were no walls that he could see; the space receded into darkness.
The music running through Kyle’s head became stronger and clearer. It sounded like a harp and it seemed to need a voice to sing over it. Before he knew it, Kyle was humming a suitable melody. The sound seemed to die in the air and, fearing that he might be overheard by somebody in the household, he stopped. Only then did Kyle notice that more sparkles had appeared in the stones of the floor, almost looking like stars twinkling in an upside-down sky. They did not exactly light up the room but they did allow him to see that some of the shadowy columns were stacks of books and others, stacks of papers. Kyle picked up a book that felt older than the world. More music flooded Kyle’s mind as if it were coming straight out of the book and into his ear. As he was coming to feel that the laws of his world did not apply in this place, Kyle longed to open the book and look at the print, but there was not enough light even to see the cover, so Kyle put the book back on the pile where he had taken it. The music grew dimmer in his head but did not cease altogether.
Still, Kyle could see no boundaries to the space. He looked behind him to the pale light coming in from the parlor. He listened for footsteps but no sound of any kind came from the house. Once more Kyle hummed to the harp-like music inside his head, no longer willing to suppress the sound of his voice. As he hummed, he moved towards the harp, step by step, this time making sure he did not scrape his shoes on the floor. When he reached the harp, Kyle felt vibrations coming from the instrument, as if it were being played by an invisible pair of hands. The vibrations seemed to fit the harp sound inside Kyle’s head. Kyle’s voice swelled with the melody he was singing. It was a melody Kyle had never heard before. Perhaps nobody had heard this melody before if he was making it up as he went along. Although Kyle sang with no words, he began to sense the sort of words that might fit the song he was singing. The song was filled with a sense of loss for the life Kyle could be leading if he were not disinherited. An inheritor could sing if he wished, and perhaps even join a choir he heard his aunt mention. But nothing of the sort could be his lot. Kyle was expected to keep his mouth shut and his hands busy so that others could talk and sing to their heart’s content.
As the melody Kyle sang soared up higher than any note Kyle could remember hearing anybody sing, he held a note that made his heart feel as if it were being stabbed. Kyle’s fingers moved along the strings and he plucked a low-pitched note that continued to sound after Kyle jerked his hand away from the instrument. Kyle sang another anguished phrase over the bass note that leaped up to a note higher still. As soon as that note sounded, Kyle saw a pin-prick of a star appear above him. The star sparkled like a star in a night sky but Kyle still could get no sense of there being either a ceiling or a sky above him.
Kyle ended his song, but the low note from the harp continued to sound, as if it were a bass string being bowed. The harp-like accompaniment and Kyle’s singing continued to echo in the space. The star above him started to drop. Kyle watched it carefully, poised to move out of the way if the star threatened to land on top of him. Instead, the star plunged down to a spot in front of him and then suspended itself in the air at about chest level. From there, the sparkle no longer looked like a star but rather appeared as a small cluster of sparkles. Curious about them, Kyle moved carefully, testing each step to make sure there was still a surface to walk on, until he reached the sparkles. This close, Kyle could see a rough stone and the sparkles shining on the stone’s surface although, once more, there was no light that the stone could be reflecting.
Kyle wanted very badly to touch the stone to make sure it was real, but he was afraid to touch it and find that it was not. However, after what had transpired in the space thus far, Kyle was not in the frame of mind to turn away without touching the stone, or trying to, and so he did. The stone was very cold to the touch and Kyle could not keep his fingers on it for long. For the few seconds that he did touch the stone, Kyle heard the music resounding inside his head echo from somewhere outside his head as well, as if the stone itself were singing the song. Even with his hand withdrawn, the song continued to sound. Kyle felt that he wanted to stay in that place forever, but he was afraid to stay in it a minute longer. If somebody should come to inspect his work in the parlor and see the gap in the bookshelf, Kyle would be in more trouble than he could handle. He slipped through the crack of pale light and blinked his eyes in the West Parlor. The room was the same as when he left it. The duster rested on top of the tray table where he had left it when he went to work on the glass casing. The gap that had opened the way into the secret space was gone with no sign that it had ever been there.
“KYLE!”
Loud footsteps announce Aunt Myrtle’s coming as clearly as the shrill voice. Kyle moved to the door to intercept his aunt as quickly as he could.
“How may I serve you?” he asked her.
“For one thing, you can answer me the first time I call,” she replied tartly, “as I have other things to do with the feet my mother gave me than to run after you, who should be even more capable of using the feet his mother gave him to run to me. For a second thing, I need my order picked up at the fish market.”
“I will do as you ask without a second’s delay,” said Kyle.
He was out of the house in flash, knowing he would have to hurry. He had learned that nobody in this household was willing to waste fare money for the public carriage on him when he could use the two legs his mother gave him to run errands.
Proceed to Chapter the Second of Part the First