Songs of Love & Death (24 page)

In the dark of night, her raft fetched up against something and stopped. She held to it in the darkness, glad to be still even as she dreaded that some larger snag might come with the current to slam into her. Once, she tried to drag herself up out of the water, but when she did so, the wood she clung to came loose and turned for a moment before once more halting. The rush of water against it now sheared up in a spray. Timbal averted her face from it and stayed as she was. She would wait for morning and light before she tried to move to a safer place. She pressed her elbow down into the crack between the planks and tried to stay conscious.

She did not think she slept, but there came a moment when she suddenly knew that dawn had come and passed before she was aware of it. The rain had lessened but not stopped, and the river still raged past her. But by the gray light of the overcast day, she could see that she and a great amount of branches, planks, and one dead sheep were all tangled into one large mass braced against a fallen tree that jutted out into the river. She did not shout for help. There was nothing but forested riverbank as far as she could see.

The arm Timbal had used as a brace was numb, and her other hand so cold it scarcely worked. Her legs dangled and tugged in the water that swirled past her. It took half a lifetime for her to work her numbed arm free. Slowly, she dragged her body up onto the tangle of timbers and wreckage. She lay there for a time, trying to decide if she was colder now that she was out of the water. She worked her ankles, trying to feel her feet, and moved her arm. When finally it tingled, she shrieked breathlessly at how much it hurt, until she remembered to give thanks to Eda for being able to free it at all.

Perhaps her prayer to the more kindly goddess of the fields angered sour El. She had lifted her head to try to decide her best path back to the riverbank over the packed debris when she saw what she had feared. A large chunk of the cart
bridge had decided to join the rest of itself. It was moving down the river in a majestic chaos, rolling in slow splashing turns that sent gushes of white water shooting up. It was coming straight at her. It was unavoidable.

She scrambled up on the debris raft, slipped, fell between pieces of wreckage, and for one nightmare instant was trapped beneath it. Then she saw a slice of daylight and frantically clawed her way up into it. She got her head above water, hooked an arm over a tree trunk, and then just had time to see the bridge bearing down on her. “Damn you El!” she shrieked to the merciless sky. He’d taken everything from her, father—lover, even her precious blue boots. Taking her life would probably be the only act of mercy he ever committed.

Much later, she would wonder if she said those words aloud, or if a god did not need the words spoken to respond to them. The last thing El would do was to give mercy to anyone. By a superhuman effort, she pulled herself up on the floating junk just as the bridge hit it. Timbal saw it turn as it came, saw it crashing toward her, and then saw a blast of white light.

A
DRENCHED WOMAN
awoke on the bank of a river. Her wet hair was strewn across her face. Her clothes were waterlogged, her skirts tattered. She was barefoot. Blood was thick on her hands. It took her a little while to understand that a cut on her head was still seeping blood. And she could not recall who she was or how she had come to be there.

The sun had come out and a thin light warmed the air. She managed to stand, and then to limp. She followed the river downstream until she saw a bridge, then climbed up the bank, through a shallow edging of forest, and found a road. She followed it, staggering gamely along until a woman driving a donkey cart came by and gave her a ride.

She awoke later in a room at an inn. She gazed around her groggily, then lifted her hands to look at the heavy bandaging that wrapped one of her forearms. Her head was bound also, her hair cut away from one side of her skull. She could not remember who she was or how she had come to the inn. A girl came to her room, bringing her a simple meal on a tray. “You’re Timbal,” the girl told her. “You used to work here, but you left here months ago. Looks like you fell in the river, or maybe got beat up and left to die in the storm. But don’t you worry. You’re safe here, and with friends. The King’s Patrol has been looking for you for quite a while. They found your father’s wagon and team, and the men who killed him. They had to sell off the team and wagon when they couldn’t find you, but the money they got for them has been waiting for you for a while now. So don’t you worry. We’ll take good care of you.”

It was all too much to take in. It took several long days for her to accept the past the innkeeper and his employees assigned to her. It took longer than that before she could cross the room without staggering sideways. Gissel, the pleasant girl who had been tending her, assured her that she had plenty of money to pay for her care, but Timbal soon insisted on coming down and resuming her tasks at the inn. The work seemed familiar and pleasant enough. Bits of her old life came back to her, and she fit them together as best she could. No one could tell her where she had gone after she left the inn’s employ, or how she had come back, and eventually she let that year of her life go. The money from her father’s team and wagon gave her a nice little nest egg, and she was able to add to it with her wages from the inn.

She cut the long hair on one side of her head to match the short curly crop that was rapidly covering the scar where the healer had stitched her scalp closed. Soon she could serve in the tavern again as well as cook in the kitchen. She made friends easily with the regulars and was a favorite with the King’s Patrol when they were in town. Her life, she decided, was good. The only time she became melancholy was when minstrels came to the inn to entertain, and even then, it was only certain old songs that brought tears to her eyes.

Three months after her accident, she was waiting tables on the evening that the good news arrived from upriver at Timberrock Keep. “Lord Just has an heir!” a young teamster announced loudly as he entered. Timbal was shocked at the roar of approval that went up. That night it seemed that everyone in the little town and surrounding farmsteads flocked into the inn to raise a mug to the wonderful tidings. Timbal was kept busy trotting back and forth from the kitchen to the hearth tables, and only learned in snatches of gossip from Gissel why the rejoicing was so raucous. It was no newborn child they celebrated; the people of Lord Just’s holdings had reluctantly given up the hope that their beloved but crippled lord could sire a child. Instead, they had lived in fear that his lands and holdings must be inherited by his cousin Lord Spindrift. All knew how he had already plunged his own inheritance into ruin and taken all his folk with it, enacting taxes no one could possibly pay and running up debts that would never be settled. The prospect of the reckless young noble becoming their lord was now at an end.

Lady Lucent had traveled to her home, taking with her a minstrel loyal to her and her husband, so that her adoption of her sister’s son might be witnessed and made legal before Lord Spindrift could mount an objection. To hear the teamster tell the tale, it had been a plot long in the making, with the minstrel sworn to secrecy and the lady herself begging on her knees that her sister would give up her youngest son to them. By all accounts, he was a good
and likely lad, open-faced, friendly, and an excellent horseman. All the folk at Timberrock Keep were rejoicing, and all who lived in Lord Just’s holdings could now know and share the good tidings.

Timbal rejoiced in the lively trade and good spirits that provoked such excellent tips that night. The names rang familiar in her ears, but of course they would; had not she worked at this very inn since before her accident? She was accustomed to names and bits of old news that jangled oddly in her mind and almost stirred a memory to the top.

So there was no reason for her melancholy to deepen over the days that followed. Yet it did. She awoke weeping in the dark of the night, felt a weariness that had no reason, and could not find a smile for anyone’s jest. She knew her life was good and nightly thanked Eda for blessing her. But, as she explained it to Gissel, “I cannot find my heart. I feel I have lost something, that I am missing something very important, and can know no peace until I find it.”

“You lost your father not that long ago,” Gissel ventured, but Timbal shook her head.

“I grieve him. I recall him, in flashes. His face seen by firelight, and how his hands clasped my shoulders, and even that he taught me to thank the goddess for every good fortune. No, Gissel. I recall enough of him to miss and mourn him. But there is something else. Something I had and I lost.”

“Tomorrow,” Gissel announced firmly, “we will tell my father we need a day off and we will walk up to Smithfield. It’s the next village on the river. We’ll visit my cousins, for I want you to meet Seck. I believe you’ll like each other, and he may be exactly the cure for whatever you’ve lost.”

Timbal was reluctant, but Gissel pestered her until she agreed. Her father agreed to give them both the day off, for trade was slower in winter. But he frowned at Gissel’s plan to visit her cousins, reminding her, “Seck has been seeing the farrier’s daughter. I heard he was quite taken with her.”

Gissel shrugged that off. “Perhaps he is, but I am not. And once he meets Timbal, he will likely forget all about scrawny Missa and her shrew’s tongue.”

They set out the next morning, catching a ride with a carter that Gissel knew. He was taking a load of late cabbages to Smithfield and would be happy to give them a ride back as well. Timbal sat on the tail of the cart while Gissel shared the seat with the carter, and soon divined that this was a ride that had been arranged well in advance of any favor that Gissel hoped to do for Timbal. He even kissed her before he set them down at her cousin’s house.

Her father’s gossip was correct. Seck was not even home that day, having gone to his sweetheart’s house to help her father repair a fence. Timbal found she didn’t care. The cousin’s house was a noisy place with several small
children and an adorable new baby. The women there were as friendly as Gissel, and Seck or no Seck, the visit lifted Timbal’s spirits. She was reluctant to bid them farewell and lingered as long as she could. It was evening when they set out for the Smithfield inn where Gissel’s carter was going to pick them up for the ride home.

“Oh, and if I’d known, I’d have sent you on your way sooner, so you could have had a bit of music there, too,” Gissel’s cousin told her. “I’ve heard rumors of the minstrel playing at the inn. Tall and dark he is, and setting all the girls to swooning over his voice, but not a one of them will he look at! They say he mourns a lost lover, and always plays his last song to her memory.”

That was enough to pique the curiosity of both girls, and they hurried, shawls up against the light rain, until they came to the inn. Gissel’s carter was late, but they found a table near the back. Gissel’s cousin had been right. The inn was crowded with a mostly female population. The minstrel was repairing a harp string when they came in, his head bent over his work. “I’ll get us some cider while we wait for your carter,” Timbal offered, and Gissel declared, “He’s not ‘my’ carter. Not quite yet!”

“Oh, but he will be,” Timbal called over her shoulder and made her way through the throng to reach the tavern keeper.

The minstrel struck up while she was trying to get the man’s attention. The chords rang strangely familiar to her ears. She did not recall learning the song, but she knew it. It was about a warrior come home from his wandering too late. His love was lost to him, carried off by death. A strange prickling ran over her skin, lifting the hair on her scalp. Slowly she turned as he sang of his lost love, and her raven hair and her tiny hands. Then he sang of her blue boots.

Cider forgotten, she pushed her way slowly through the crowd, ignoring the unkind comments of those she jostled. She found him by the hearth, seated on a low stool, his harp leaned against his shoulder as he played. His fingers knew his strings, and as he played, his eyes rested only on the chair before him. Enthroned on the chair were a pair of blue boots. They were clean, but water stained. She knew them. Then suddenly she knew herself. She looked at the minstrel. Her eyes devoured him, and at the sight of him, a flood of memories thundered through her blood.

Azen did not see her. Not until she reached the chair and took the blue boots from the seat. Wordless and pale, he said nothing as she sat down and pulled them onto her feet. But when she stood, he was waiting for her. He was shaking as he embraced her. “I thought I had lost you!” he managed to say through the uproar of the crowd’s delighted response. “Gretcha told me you were dead. That they’d found your boots on the riverbank, that you’d thrown
yourself in!”

“Gretcha lies about many things.”

“Yes. She does. Blue boots, you must never go away from me again.” He folded her close and held her tight.

“Eda willing, I never shall,” she promised him.

As demonstrated by the subtle and melancholy story that follows, memory can be a very unreliable thing, even in matters of the heart. Or perhaps particularly in matters of the heart…

One of the hottest stars in science fiction, fantasy, and horror today, Neil Gaiman has won four Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards, one World Fantasy Award, seven Locus Awards, four Bram Stoker Awards, four Geffen Awards, one Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and a Newbery Medal. Gaiman first came to wide public attention as the creator of the graphic novel series The Sandman, still one of the most acclaimed graphic novel series of all time. Gaiman remains a superstar in the graphic novel field. His graphic novels include
Breakthrough, Death Talks about Life, Legend of the Green Flame, The Last Temptation, Only the End of the World Again, MirrorMask,
and a slew of books in collaboration with Dave McKean, including
Black Orchid, Violent Cases, Signal to Noise, The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch, The Wolves in the Walls,
and
The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish.

In recent years he’s enjoyed equal success in the science fiction and fantasy fields with his bestselling novel
American Gods
winning the 2002 Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker Awards,
Coraline
winning both Hugo (2003) and Nebula (2004), and his story “A Study in Emerald” winning the Hugo in 2004. His novel
The Graveyard Book
won the Hugo and the Newbery Medal in 2009. He also won the World Fantasy Award for his story with Charles Vess, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and won the International Horror Guild Award for his collection
Angels & Visitations: A Miscellany.
Gaiman’s other novels include
Good Omens
(written with Terry Pratchett),
Neverwhere, Stardust,
and, most recently,
Anansi Boys.
In addition to
Angels & Visitations,
his short fiction has been collected in
Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions & Illusions, Midnight Days, Warning: Contains Language, Creatures of the Night, Two Plays for Voices,
and
Adventures in the Dream Trade,
and
Fragile Things.
He’s also written
Don’t Panic: The Official Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Companion,
A Walking Tour of the Shambles
(with Gene Wolfe),
Batman
and
Babylon 5
novelizations, and edited
Ghastly Beyond Belief
(with Kim Newman),
Book of Dreams
(with Edward Kramer), and
Now We Are Sick: An Anthology of Nasty Verse
(with Stephen Jones). His most recent books are
The Graveyard Book,
and two YA novels,
Odd and the Frost Giants,
and, with Gris Grimly,
The Dangerous Alphabet.
A movie based on his novel
Stardust
was in theaters worldwide in 2007, and an animated movie based on
Coraline
was in theaters in 2009.