Pierrot's Song

Chapter 7 - Council Business-2

Mina sensed a change behind her and turned. She didn’t understand what she saw. At first all that was there was a brilliant light. Sharp points radiated from it, forming a star of dazzling silver. Then the light began to fade, and to Mina’s eyes Miranda appeared to be frozen in mid-dance, a long way away. As the halo of light around the figure continued to subside, she realised it was a statue of a dancer, held by Jal. The glowing stars of the Horizon blinked out, swallowed in a wave as the Plain of Seas sprung up around them.

Luka was still singing, his haunting voice mirrored by Lisette’s soaring descant. Mina felt the song inside her now, its beat in time with her heart. Miranda and Paolo still moved in perfect synchronicity, dancer and cirquer twining together, then twirling apart. The dark, endless Seas around them twinkled and pulsed with the reflected silver of Jal’s statue, revealing ever-shifting shades of blue, from iridescent azure to the ponderous navy of the night sky. Then Sofia’s beautiful, deep voice echoed around them.

‘Long ago, when the stars still sang and Tarya was but a breath away, the nights were dark and fear held sway among the people of the land. Food was in short supply and danger dwelled in the forests bordering the world. The Creator saw the people knew little of joy, and his heart was saddened …’

Mina looked around for Sofia, but the storyteller had not appeared in Tarya. Even as she realised that, Luka’s voice faded to nothing. Lisette’s melody too petered out. With a jarring dislocation, Mina found herself standing in the divina. Miranda spun to a stop, crashing into Paolo, who caught her, dropping his ribbons to the floor.

‘Why did you stop?’ Miranda snapped at Sofia.

‘It wasn’t going to work.’

Luka shook his head. ‘It was working. We were all there.’

‘You’d only just begun,’ Jal added.

‘It wasn’t going to work,’ Sofia repeated. ‘I’ve told stories for a long time. I’ve touched Tarya. I know what it feels like. This time I felt nothing.’

Almost as one, the others looked to Mina. A thought flashed through her head. It had taken only half a year for her friends to see her as the expert on Tarya. It was nearly six months since she had conjured buildings from the Plain of Seas for all to see at the Festival of Lights. Now, with the heart of winter approaching, Tarya was as familiar to her as her heartbeat. Yet so very recently she hadn’t even had an inkling that it was anything other than a realm from story.

‘I was at the Plain of Seas,’ she said slowly, gathering her thoughts. ‘It seemed the same as always to me.’

‘You didn’t give it long enough!’ Miranda snarled, but her voice cracked and she fell against Paolo, thick strands of charcoal-coloured hair hiding her face so only a gasping sob gave away her true emotion. ‘If we don’t stop the Council, my parents will be destroyed.’ Broken gasps punctuated her words.

Paolo brushed back her hair and tenderly wiped away a tear. Mina watched the silent communication between them, and her childish hatred dissolved. What lay between them was real, not infatuation.

‘Sofia is right,’ Paolo said. ‘It wouldn’t have worked.’

The others stared at him. He glanced at them, then continued talking as he gazed at Miranda, one finger twining a tendril of her hair.

‘It’s strange. Tarya feels different to me now. Part of me was trapped there for so long. Now it feels like part of me. Inside me somehow. What we were doing touched all the earthly aspects of Tarya. But it felt … limited. When I was in the River,’ his eyes clouded over at the memory, ‘even though I was trapped, in a way I felt unlimited. I was part of Tarya, but it was also part of me. I could sense … infinity. Just now, I didn’t feel that. There was a border. An ending to it.’

Sofia brushed past them all and laid the ancient tome of the first storyteller on the broad seat of the Creator’s chair. She opened it to the very beginning and glanced at several pages until she found what she sought. She pointed to the book.

‘Seven princesses.’ A full-length image of a young woman in a garden setting took up an entire page. Surrounded by hares and foxes, the woman had her mouth open and her arms outstretched, singing to an audience of creatures so captivated they forgot to be hunter or hunted. Despite the passage of hundreds of years, the colours in the image were vivid and jewel-bright. Someone with real skill had painted it. A border of gold, entwined with flowers, framed the tableau.

‘Calinda. Her name means skylark. Gifted with an enchanting singing voice.’ She pointed to Luka, then turned the tome’s pages as the others watched, confusion playing across their faces.

The next picture, as colourful and beautifully rendered as the first, showed another young woman dancing through a forest, great joy lighting her face. There was such a sense of movement in the image, it was as if the trees had joined her, their branches waving to music carried on the breeze.

‘Allegra.’ Sofia pointed to Miranda.

Luka started nodding. He understood, though the others were still puzzled. Mina flashed her eyes at him, signalling he should explain but he just poked his tongue out at her as Sofia rustled her way to another page.

‘Volante.’

This picture was not outdoors, but in a grand room. There were spectators all around, dressed in the kirtles and tunics of years long gone, like the statues in the hidden cave. At the centre of the scene a young woman was juggling five items of different size and shape, a ball, a spoon, and others Mina couldn’t identify, her tongue poking out the side of her mouth from concentration. Though the image was still in a traditional illuminated style, there was a real sense of playfulness to it, as though the artist was gently teasing the juggling princess.

Simultaneously Sofia and Luka pointed to Paolo, and Mina saw.

‘Everyone here has the same gifts.’

Paolo lifted one eyebrow at her, a silly affectation she remembered from childhood. She couldn’t help but smile.

‘When the princesses did the ceremony, each had a different gift.’ She cast a querying look at Sofia, who nodded, and turned the page of the book. ‘Singer, dancer, cirquer …’

She pointed at an image of a young woman playing a harp. ‘Musician.’ She smiled at Lisette.

‘The Princess Aria,’ Sofia murmured as Mina leaned in and turned another page. Sofia held up one finger, signalling to wait, and turned one more page. ‘Sculptor.’

This image showed a young woman chiselling a fantastical mermaid from a block of stone.

‘That’s me,’ Jal said. He held up his father’s lithe dancer statue. ‘Or my father.’

‘I don’t think this would work just with an object,’ Mina said. ‘You must have that gift inside yourself.’

Jal stared at her, his eyes suddenly glassy. ‘I never … I could never be as good … I gave it up.’

‘It wouldn’t have worked if you didn’t have the gift,’ Mina gently insisted.

Mina could almost see the thoughts race through Jal’s mind. The realisation that a whole future of possibility was opening to him. He broke into his charismatic smile. She smiled to herself and turned the page once more.

‘Eulalia. My ancestor.’

This image was of a young woman seated at a scribing desk, quill in hand, writing in a book very like the one that lay before them now.

Miranda shrugged and pointed at Sofia. ‘The storyteller.’

‘Then what am I?’ Mina asked.

Sofia swept her hand over the book. The others crowded in close. ‘You have gifts for telling tales I have never achieved.’ As she spoke, Sofia reached across to turn the pages back to the picture she had signalled Mina to skip. ‘You are the storyteller. The fact you are related to her by blood is surely no accident either.’

She indicated the final image. ‘This is why it wasn’t working. And wouldn’t have.’

Another young woman was painting an image on a large frame. It depicted a young woman painting an image on a large frame, which showed the same young woman painting, and again and again, endless echoes. Precise lines made even the smallest repetition of the image clear.

‘This is Lucina. Her name means graceful light,’ Sofia said.

Luka spun around to look at everyone in turn. ‘None of us is a painter’, he said. ‘We don’t have a painter.’

‘We can’t do it,’ Mina said, and stumbled to one of the smaller chairs, sinking down into it with her head in her hands. Unexpectedly, it was Miranda who came and kneeled in front of her.

‘Growing up in a player troupe, I learned a lot from my father and mother. I had to learn stock speeches, all the arts of improvisation, a bunch of lazzi, how to transform … Papa would spend hours teaching me these things. But I learned other things too, by watching how he ran the troupe. The unspoken lessons. And one of the things I learned was everyone had to do more than one thing. It was no good to be great on stage if you weren’t contributing to the troupe in other ways. Building props, fixing lamps, painting backdrops.’

Mina stared at her. ‘Dario.’

She remembered the beautiful cloud stairs leading up to the stage, the dancing figures above it, the painted rooms bright with colour that always formed a backdrop to the playing.

‘I’ll go and fetch him,’ Sofia said. ‘Amora is looking after him.’

Luka came to stand next to Miranda, shaking his head. ‘How can he be part of this? He had his thread broken. He’s …’ Biting off whatever word he was about to say, he finished softly, ‘… damaged.’

‘I don’t think the Creator would value him any less for that,’ Sofia murmured. She found her abandoned council cloak. ‘And neither will we. Miranda, help me find my way out of here. Jal, you’d better come too so I can find your house. We must be swift. We risk discovery at any time.’

Paolo passed Miranda her cloak and his own. ‘You might need this to get him back disguised.’

Faces once more hidden in deep hoods, Sofia and her companions left through the council door. Paolo asked Lisette a question about the giant circular stained-glass windows and the two wandered over to look at them, leaving Luka to sit beside Mina in the first row of seats.

‘Do you really think it will work with Dario?’

‘We have to try. His gift still lies within him, even if he can’t reach it. Maybe just having him here will be enough. Sofia’s right. Just because he’s been … broken, doesn’t mean he doesn’t have gifts. Or his life doesn’t matter anymore. Every life matters.’

Luka gazed ahead, seeing nothing. Mina looked down and saw he was cradling one hand in the other. ‘Does it still hurt?’

Luka held his broken hand up, fingers bent at odd angles. ‘A little. I guess we’re all broken.’

‘Life does that. But some people take pleasure in breaking others. I can’t even begin to understand why.’

Luka shrugged. ‘Because they think their desires matter more than others’ lives.’

Mina looked across at Paolo. He seemed completely himself now, as though what had been done to him had been erased. But Mina was learning when the world damages you, healed wounds can become scars that will never go away.

‘Do you still love him?’

Luka’s question startled her.

‘Paolo? Of course! He’s my brother.’

Luka smiled wryly. Mina looked away. Of course he didn’t mean Paolo.

‘He’s damaged now. But if he’s healed, who will you choose?’