Anne McCaffrey: Dragonsong

She sighed, turning from the room. By now the Masterharper would have heard of Petiron’s death and be sending a new Harper. Maybe the new man would be able to open the message, and maybe, if it was about her, maybe if it said that the songs she’d sent were good ones, Yanus and her mother wouldn’t put such restrictions on her about tuning and whistling and everything.

As the winter spun itself out, Menolly found that her sense of loss when she thought of Petiron deepened. He had been the only person in the Sea Hold who had ever encouraged her in anything: and most especially in that one thing that she was now forbidden to do. Melodies don’t stop growing in the mind, tapping at fingers, just because they’re forbidden. And Menolly didn’t stop composing them—which, she felt, was not precisely disobeying.

What seemed to worry Yanus and Mavi most, Menolly reasoned to herself, was the fact that the children, whom she was supposed to teach only the proper Ballads and Sagas, might think Menolly’s tunes were Harper-crafted. (If her tunes were that good in her parents’ ears, what was the harm of them?) Basically they didn’t want her to play her songs aloud where they would be heard and perhaps repeated at awkward times.

Menolly could, therefore, see no harm in writing down new tunes. She played them softly in the empty Little Hall when the children had left, before she began her afternoon chores, carefully hiding her notations among the Harper records in the rack of the Hall. Safe enough, for no one but herself, ’til the new Harper came, would discover them there.

This mild deviation from the absolute obedience to her father’s restriction about tuning did much to ease Menolly’s growing frustration and loneliness. What Menolly didn’t realize was that her mother had been watching her closely, having recognized the signs of rebellion in her. Mavi didn’t want the Hold to be disgraced in any way, and she feared that Menolly, her head turned by Petiron’s marked favor, was not mature enough to discipline herself. Sella had warned her mother that Menolly was getting out of hand. Mavi put some of that tale down to sisterly envy. But, when Sella had told Mavi that Menolly had actually started to teach another how to play an instrument, Mavi had been obliged to intervene. Let Yanus get one whisper of Menolly’s disobedience and there’d be real trouble in the Hold for the girl.

Spring was coming and with spring, the quieter seas. Perhaps the new Harper would arrive soon.

And then spring did come, a first glorious day. The sweet scents of seabeachplum and marshberry filled the seaward breezes and came in through the opened shutters of the Little Hall. The children were singing loudly, as if shouting got them through the learning faster. True, they were singing one of the longer Sagas, word perfect, but with far more exuberance than was strictly needed. Perhaps it was that exuberance that infected Menolly and reminded her of a tune she’d tried to set down the day before.

She did not consciously disobey. She certainly was unaware that the fleet had returned from an early catch. She was equally unaware that the chords she was strumming were not—officially—of the Harper’s craft. And it was doubly unfortunate that this lapse occurred just as the Sea Holder passed the open windows of the Hall.

He was in the Little Hall almost at once, summarily dismissing the youngsters to help unload the heavy catch. Then he silently, which made the anticipation of the punishment worse, removed his wide belt, signaled to Menolly to raise her tunic over her head and to bend over the high harper’s stool.

When he had finished, she had fallen to her knees on the hard stone flags, biting her lips to keep back the sobs. He’d never beaten her so hard before. The blood was roaring in her ears so fiercely that she didn’t hear Yanus leave the Little Hall. It was a long while before she could ease the tunic over the painful weals on her back. Only when she’d got slowly to her feet did she realize that he’d taken the gitar, too. She knew then that his judgement was irrevocable and harsh.

And unjust! She’d only played the first few bars…hummed along…and that only because the last chords of the Teaching Ballad had modified into the new tune in her head. Surely that little snitch wouldn’t have done any lasting harm! And the children knew all the Teaching Ballads they were supposed to know. She hadn’t meant to disobey Yanus.

“Menolly?” Her mother came to the classhall door, the carrying thong of an empty skin in her hand. “You dismissed them early? Is that wise…” Her mother stopped abruptly and stared at her daughter. An expression of anger and disgust crossed her face. “So you’ve been the fool after all? With so much at stake, and you had to tune…”

“I didn’t do it on purpose, Mavi. The song…just came into my mind. I’d played no more than a measure…”

There wasn’t any point in trying to justify the incident to her mother. Not now. The desolation Menolly had felt when she realized her father had taken the gitar intensified in the face of her mother’s cold displeasure.

“Take the sack. We need fresh greens,” Mavi said in an expressionless voice. “And any of the yellow-veined grass that might be up. There should be some.”

Resignedly, Menolly took the sack and, without thinking, looped the thong over her shoulder. She caught her breath as the unwieldy sack banged against her scored back.

Before Menolly could avoid it, her mother had flipped up the loose tunic. She gave an inarticulate exclamation. “You’ll need numbweed on some of those.”

Menolly pulled away. “What good’s a beating then, if it’s numbed away first chance?” And she dashed out of the Hall.

Much Mavi cared if she hurt, anyhow, except that a sound body works harder and longer and faster.

Her thoughts and her misery spurred her out of the Hold, every swinging stride she took jarring her sore back. She didn’t slow down because she’d the whole long track in front of the Hold to go. The faster she went, the better, before some auntie wanted to know why the children were out of lessons so soon, or why Menolly was going green-picking instead of Teaching.

Fortunately she encountered no one. Everyone was either down at the Dock Cave, unloading, or making themselves scarce to the Sea Holder’s eyes so they wouldn’t have to. Menolly charged past the smaller holds, down aways on the marshroad, then up the righthand track, south of the Half-Circle. She’d put as much distance between herself and Sea Hold as she could: all perfectly legitimate, in search of greenery.

As she jogged along the sandy footpath, she kept her eyes open for fresh growth, trying to ignore the occasional rough going when she’d jar her whole body. Her back began to smart. She gritted her teeth and paced on.

Her brother, Alemi, had once said that she could run as well as any boy of the Hold and outdistance the half of them on a long race. If only she had been a boy…Then it wouldn’t have mattered if Petiron had died and left them Harperless. Nor would Yanus have beaten a boy for being brave enough to sing his own songs.

The first of the low marsh valleys was pink and yellow with blooming seabeachplum and marshberry, slightly blackened here and there: more from the low-flying queens catching the odd Thread that escaped the main wings. Yes, and there was the patch that the flamethrower had charred: the one Thread infestation that had gotten through. One day, Menolly told herself, she’d just throw open a window’s steel shutters and see the dragons charring Thread in the sky. What a sight that must be for certain!

Fearful, too, she reckoned, having seen her mother treat men for Threadburn. Why, the mark looked as if someone had drawn a point deep groove with a red-hot poker on the man’s arm, leaving the edges black with singed skin. Torly would always bear that straight scar, puckered and red. Threadscore never healed neatly.