neetha Napew - The Time Of The Transferance

They filed out, Jon-Tom’s gaze lingering long on the fragments of his duar. He felt as though he was abandoning his only child to another’s care. Better care than you gave it. he reminded himself.

There was a large guest house out back. Amalm found beds for all of them and bid them a good night. They fell asleep instantly, lulled by the music of the house and the waterfall nearby which combined to sing them a liquid lullaby.

XVI

They spent several days as Coulb’s guests, enjoying Amalm’s cooking and exploring the village, regaining the strength they’d expended during the arduous journey to Strelakat Mews. Many times Jon-Tom was tempted to look in on Couvier Coulb. He did not, mindful of Amalm’s admonition that the master worked best when he was not disturbed.

There came a day when Coulb interrupted their breakfast. He was tired from working through the night but quietly exultant. The right lens of his work glasses was almost obscured by varnish and he held a brush in his right paw as he looked straight at Jon-Tom and smiled.

“It’s done. Come and see.”

Though he wasn’t finished eating, Jon-Tom pushed back his chair and moved to follow Coulb. So did Cautious. Weegee dragged a disgruntled Mudge away from the food.

Even Amalm put her apron aside and came to see what musical miracle the kinkajou had wrought.

Miracle was the only description that fit, Jon-Tom thought in wonder as Coulb proudly displayed the restored duar. At the very least he expected cracks and seams to show. After all, the duar had not merely been broken; it had been shattered.

It hung between padded metal clamps atop the workbench, and it glowed. Coulb had done more than restore it, he had improved on it. Those sections which had been irreparably damaged had been seamlessly replaced with jewel-like pieces of exotic woods. New wood and old had been polished to a mirror-like sheen. The tremble and mass controls sat flush with the resonating chamber.

“May I...?”

“Of course you may, young man. It is your instrument, is it not?”

Holding the duar by its neck, Jon-Tom loosened the clamps and removed it from its mounting. He tried the controls. They turned with a fluid firmness. The old uncertain give and play was gone.

Even. the feel of the wood was different. It was soft, almost malleable, the result of penetrating oils Coulb had worked into top, bottom and sides. Yet no matter how much he caressed it there was no lingering greasiness on his fingers.

The strings looked right. They gradually ran together over the openings in the resonator, vanishing into another dimension before reappearing on the other side. Yet when he ran his fingers lovingly over their taut surfaces the sounds they generated were unnaturally discordant.

“We still have to tune it.” He was enjoying himself, Jon-Tom saw.

Taking the instrument, Coulb placed it between two braces beneath the strips of material that hung from the underside of the gneechee collector plate. Moving to the peculiar keyboard that encircled the concentric glass cylinders, he began to play.

Oddly clear, lilting notes filled the workshop. Slow Mahler on a glass harmonica. The chords deepened as Coulb leaned harder on the keys and picked up the beat. Sounds of several symphony orchestras mixed with synthesizers assailed the ears of the onlookers. Mudge put an arm around Weegee and pulled her close while Cautious closed his eyes. Amalm looked on and nodded knowingly, her face alight with pride.

The sonority brought forth a glow, one familiar to Jon-Tom and his companions. Gneechees, attracted by the thousands to the magic of the music. They clustered around old Couvier Coulb .until he was encased in a luminescent blanket. More of them swirled around the glass columns. As Jon-Tom stared they began to filter through the minuscule perforations, filling one cylinder after another, until at last the most persistent of them reached the central and final tube.

It conveyed them up in a neon arc, up and around and into the collection plate as the cylinders separated out those gneechees whose especial affinity was for music. They filled the collector plate to overflowing, the glass growing so bright with the light of their concentrated bodies that Jon-Tom could hardly bear to look at it. Compacted within the plate they continued their joyous, celebratory dance, thereby agitating the tuning strips which hung from the underside of the glass. Jon-Tom began to cry from the sheer ecstasy the resultant music produced.

And as it poured into and through and around the duar that extraordinary instrument strained against its braces, bending slightly upward in the middle. But the clamps were strong and held it in place as it and everyone else in the room quivered in time to the rampaging music.

Then it was done. Couvier Coulb stepped away from his keyboard. The gneechees put forth a few Final, questioning chords before they began to filter out of the collection plate and concentric cylinders. The music faded with them, back into the unreal realm from which the master instrument maker had summoned them forth.

Coulb took a deep breath and then, as if in intentional contrast to the indescribable musical sweep they had just endured, cracked his knuckles. He walked over to the now transparent plate collector, reached beneath the motionless tuning strips, and removed the duar from its braces. In appearance it was unchanged, but when Jon-Tom took it from the kinkajou’s grasp a subtle trembling ran from the instrument through his fingertips and up his arms, drifting away like a lost sigh.

Coulb looked up at him out of wise, gratified eyes. “Now try your instrument, young human.”

Jon-Tom put the strap over his shoulder, let the duar rest against his chest. It felt familiar, comfortable, a part of him. The wood was golden and the strings gleamed like chrome. It had not been restored so much as resurrected.

The first sounds that issued from the resonating chamber when he passed his fingers across the double set of strings were exalted.

Couvier Coulb looked satisfied and found himself a chair. “Play something. Not for magic. For the music.”

Jon-Tom nodded and smiled at the old craftsman. The bond between them transcended such insignificant differences as species. This was to be the kinkajou’s reward. Play he would for the master, something high-spirited and full of life. A celebration.

Too much of a celebration for Mudge, who never had become a heavy metal fan. He ran from the workshop, his paws clapped over his ears. He was followed by a reluctant Weegee and an apologetic Cautious.

Though she winced a lot, Amalm stayed. As for Couvier Coulb, he seemed to drop twenty years. As the smile on his face grew broader he began snapping his fingers and tapping his feet, and his long prehensile tail twitched back and forth behind his chair like a furry metronome. The house went dead quiet for about five’ minutes before it began to join in, hesitantly at first, then with growing confidence.

Jon-Tom had never felt better in his life. Never played better either, he reflected happily. He bounced and pranced and leaped about the room, even managing an exuberant aerial split h la Pete Townshend. And when he concluded, the sweat pouring from his face and beneath his arms, the breath coming in long sweet sucks, it still was not silent in the workshop. Couvier Coulb was on his feet, applauding mightily.

“Such depth of feeling! Such insight and enthusiasm. Such wanton expression of personal karma.”

“Say what?” Jon-Tom straightened.

“What do you call it?”

“A song for my lady love, who I wish was here to share this moment with me. It’s called “The Lemon Song,” by a quiet bunch of good-natured fellows who named themselves Led Zepplin. Very refined.”