Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 35 - The Flute

Don Miguel saw himself as the genius of the century. What were Schoenberg and Stravinsky compared with him? Rubbish! Forget them! But no one was to steal Don Miguel’s creations, no one would ever be allowed to hear or play them! No one else was to take credit for his great works!

His train of thought was a little bizarre.

And then one day he accidentally came upon a kind of theme on his flute.

A strange theme.

True, the basic idea of the atonal expressionist style was stolen from Schoenberg, but the melody itself was Don Miguel’s own creation.

He didn’t get very far with it, and didn’t have the patience to follow through with his idea. It merely resulted in a few bars that sounded mysterious and incomprehensible.

He managed to jot down the notes in two bars. Then he played them again.

Wrote a few more bars ...

But he never had the chance to play them, because the servant came to remind him about a visit he had to pay in town. The carriage was waiting for him outside.

Careless as he was, Don Miguel threw the sheet of manuscript paper onto a pile of others lying in a beautifully carved chest – and forgot all about it.

But those two bars had already been played ...

Far, far away ...

An echo on the wind?

Notes.

Long, long sought-after notes. Centuries, ages had passed.

In his resting place, Tengel the Evil opened his narrow yellow-grey eyes.

He listened to the echo that was still vibrating in the deepest cavities of the Postojna Cave.

Irritation grew within him.

It had merely been the prelude. So go on, then! Play on!

But the music itself had faded. Only the echo remained.

Play on! That wasn’t enough! More, there must be more, otherwise I can’t ...

But nothing more came.

The beginning ... the beginning had been right! And then – nothing.

He waited for a long time, Tengel the Evil, waited with frenetic, raging impatience. Waited ... waited ...

After a long, long time, he came to realize that someone had been teasing him. Someone who had the capacity to do so. Who was it? And where were they?

He didn’t have time to find out now. Right now he needed to concentrate on how far the notes had managed to release his spellbound body.

In recent centuries he had often been awake. But he had never been able to move.

The disturbance under his chosen mountain had annoyed him a great deal. Big groups of people now walked about in this magnificent hiding place that he had discovered in the thirteenth century. Silence had reigned there then. But it was not so anymore. There were times when they had been into the cave right next to his. It hadn’t been hard to cast a spell on them so they wouldn’t tell anyone about his cave. Still, the whole thing had worried him deeply.

For example, the latest ones to come: they had been there this year. They had come confoundedly close, he could sense them at the very threshold of his cave. Well, they were dead and gone now.

But more might come ...

Tengel the Evil wanted to get up and go out. He deeply loathed his more or less constant state of hibernation. The time had now come for him to take action, finally to seize power over the world and flood it with evil. His evil. So that he could control all the bad qualities of human beings and make slaves of those who were good. Or simply destroy them.

Many were prepared to help and serve him when the time came. Now ... perhaps now he would succeed?

No, how could he? After those few miserable notes?

He took a deep breath, tremendously slowly. Should he try to move?

What if he failed?

Should he lift his hand?

His brain commanded his hand to move, tighten his muscles and lift himself from his resting-place.

No, that was too much.

His malicious brain was already absorbed with thoughts of revenge on the bastard who had taken the liberty of insulting him by merely playing the introductory notes to his signal. He would have to find that devil and torture him to death unless he played the tune to its conclusion.

But the first thing he needed to do was get out of there.

Carefully he nudged one of his index fingers and tried to move it. His terrifyingly long nail had turned into a thick claw and there seemed to be an obstacle, but then it worked!

He was free!

No ...

Instinctively he knew that those few notes couldn’t possibly have been enough.

Damn!

But he had no intention of giving up, this was the closest he had ever come to actually waking up!

So there was no way he was giving up!

If he could move another finger ...

Time passed. Tengel the Evil fought a battle against his reluctant body.

The finger moved.

Could he get his whole hand to move?

Yes!

Yes, it was working now, he was able to lift his whole hand!

The only help he needed was time.

Time? He didn’t have the patience for that now, he had had too much of time. He wanted to get up and get out now!

Get out and seize his terrible power over the human vermin!

What felt like eons of patient time-consuming work passed.

Then he reached a critical point.

With great effort, Tengel the Evil tried to grip with both his hands in order to raise himself.

Slowly, like a mummy about to wake up – which wasn’t so far from the truth – he lifted his head from his resting place of centuries. He sensed it in his body: every tendon ached, and rotten, stinking clouds rose around him.

But he didn’t pay attention to that. He had lived with that stench for centuries and he thrived in it.

He hardly felt the rocky ground around him trembling as though from fear, as the whole cave system rumbled, the stinking vapour rose from the cave and drifted up through the passages, and the tourists in the public areas fled in panic back out into the daylight.

It was beneath Tengel the Evil’s dignity to concern himself with those sorts of things.

He was sitting up! He was sitting upright for the first time since 1295, when he had taken refuge here.

It was a strange feeling. The evil sizzled within him and he felt infinitely strong! His time had come!

And it was going to be long-lasting. Hadn’t he been promised eternal life?

The world was now going to see what Tengel the Evil was capable of.

But, alas! It was all going so slowly! He could barely move, and his brain was working at an alarmingly sluggish pace.

Which wasn’t good. For he had to be strong if he was going to conquer the whole world, which he couldn’t do in his present state.

The truth rushed in on him, followed by a wave of limitless disappointment.

He was able to use only half his resources.

Tengel the Evil uttered a long curse in his own, Altaic language. His people had had their own evil deities, whom they could invoke.

But his hatred was deepest for those who had betrayed him, made fun of him and scorned him in the current era.

They would be the first to experience a taste of his anger!

And here he was, still spellbound, slow and helpless like a child! Damn, damn, damn!

But never mind! Despite everything, he would manage with the resources he still possessed. It was now or never!

Laboriously, he continued his resurrection.

It was like trying to move a colossus with feet of clay. Nothing worked as he wished it to, he had to make a great effort to achieve every tiny move and then take a rest afterwards.

That pack – the Ice People! His own descendants!

They were soon going to pay!

They were the ones in whom he had initially put his trust. And then his namesake had emerged, someone who had made them turn their backs on him, Tengel the Evil! Yes, before that Tengel the Good (he grimaced at the mere thought of the word “good”), before him there had been other renegades. Not many but ...