Pierrot's Song

Chapter 2 - Hidden Depths-3

All fear gone now, Mina swept the remains of the ancient fabric away. She and Sofia both gasped at the embossed gold box revealed. The top bore the same seven-pointed star embedded with gems they had seen at the cave entrance. A garland of flowers encircled the star, with vines, leaves and flowers trailing to the edges of the box and down its sides. The box was not very deep. Mina quickly found a catch on the side and lifted the lid, which folded back completely like an open book. And a book was precisely what was resting inside on a lining of emerald green velvet. Its leather cover was also adorned with the seven-pointed star, another opal set at its centre.

Mina gently opened the cover. Sofia squatted beside her and they read the opening page together. Written in a beautiful script were the words ‘The Tale of Tarya’.

‘This is ancient,’ Sofia said. She stroked the page gently. ‘Yet exceptionally well preserved. It should crumble like the fabric.’

‘Perhaps the box kept it safe somehow?’ Mina mused. She turned another page.

‘Death is never expected, no matter how long it has hovered nearby …’ she read. In the shadowed light of the cave the words made her shudder. Sofia skimmed the page.

‘Whoever wrote this is talking about the death of their mother. Given the cover, and everything we’ve found so far, I’d say this was written by one of the princesses. This changes everything. I was taught the Tales of Tarya were all stories and legends. But this looks like someone wrote about events as they were happening.’

As Mina reached to turn another page, her hand brushed the velvet and she realised there was something nestled next to the book. Drawing it out, she saw a long metal taper, entwined with flowers and leaves in the same style as the book cover.

‘What is it?’

There didn’t appear to be any buttons or moving segments—the taper was exactly as it appeared to be, a metal wand. She passed it to Sofia, who began examining it. Their explorations were interrupted by Luka calling from the main cavern.

‘I’ve found something.’

Without a word Mina closed the lid of the box and picked it up. It was lighter than she expected. She moved back into the main cavern, Sofia following close behind, the wand in her hand.

‘So did we,’ she told Luka. He glanced at the box and his eyes widened.

‘The Tale of Tarya,’ Sofia added.

‘What did you find?’ Mina asked. Luka took her hand and began to lead her toward one of the columns. Pulling back, she handed the metal box to Sofia then joined him.

Luka kneeled on the floor and beckoned for her to follow. ‘Look at this!’

With her head parallel to the bottom of one of the pillars, Mina could clearly see light. ‘It doesn’t reach the ground!’

‘It’s barely a gap. I don’t know how they did it, but it’s there. Not only that …’ Luka tapped the column with his nail. It resonated with a surprisingly melodic note.

Mina met his eyes. ‘Everything we’ve found in here has been significant,’ she said. ‘This has got to mean something.’

‘There’s more.’ Luka leaped to his feet. He moved to the next column and tapped it. Again, a clear note rang out. ‘I think they’re hollow. That’s how they can ring this way. And each one makes a different sound.’

Mina walked a circuit of the room. There were sixteen columns in total.

‘We need something to make them sing,’ she said. ‘Something long we can tap them with. Did anyone notice any sticks outs— oh!’ She stopped in front of Sofia, took the wand and passed it to Luka. ‘We found this.’

Luka held it up and examined it, then nodded. He circled the room, tapping each column in turn. At first, he moved at an even pace, but after he had been around all the columns twice, he began another circuit, his head c****d to one side. This time he moved slowly at some points, faster at others. Then he moved around the columns a fourth time, certain of his pace.

‘I know this song,’ he said, coming to a stop in front of Mina. ‘I haven’t heard it in a long time—it’s very old. But my grandpapa used to sing it. They only play the beginning of the chorus, but it’s enough for me to be sure.’

Softly, Luka began to sing. It was a simple piece in a minor key, a song mourning lost love. He sang softly at first, but his voice grew as he became more confident in the tune, until his song filled the cavern.

When the starlight fades with dawn

and the moon has gone from here

I will try to hold my dreams

for in those I feel you near.

When the summer is long gone

and the light all fades to grey

I will hold you in my heart

though you’ve gone too far away.

Luka’s voice was a revelation. The low notes were as deep as the ocean, the high ones as pure as starlight. He floated across the song, filling the notes with longing. The sorrow in the words was made more painful because Luka poured his heart into every word. Mina closed her eyes and let herself drift on the song. As it filled the cavern she didn’t question why such a song had been placed here with such care. There was a rightness to it, an inevitability. Whoever built this cavern had known great loss and created all of this to remember what was gone. The melody was achingly beautiful, especially when Luka sang it. Listening to his voice, Mina thought it would not be out of place in the heavenly realms. She was not surprised when she opened her eyes and found herself standing by the River in Tarya. Something about all this felt familiar to her, like a half-remembered dream.

By her side Luka continued to sing. In front of her the rainbow lights she knew were lost souls were rising from the River. They drifted close to Luka and began circling him. Their movements were slow and purposeful. Watching them, Mina imagined she could see a pattern in their careful weaving, like a courtly dance. Luka sang with his eyes closed, oblivious to the beauty around him, caught up in the dance of the notes.

The song, Mina thought. He is calling them with the song. The song was drawing the souls. Would it do that any time it was sung? If so, this could be the answer to one of their problems. To restore all those damaged when their gold threads were broken, whether by the players or the Council, they needed to be able to draw the souls from the River. This song might be the answer. Yet finding it raised more questions too. This cavern was old. The crumbling fabric attested to that. All this had been here for years, so the melody in the pillars could not possibly have been placed here for them. It would have taken careful thought and artisanship to build columns pitched to particular notes, so why had it been done originally?

Realising she might never know the answer to her question, Mina brought her thoughts back to the present. They were a step further forward now; if this was not a one-off happenstance, they had a way to call the lost souls. Next, they would need a way to restore the broken gold threads. Which are trapped in the key masks of the players, she thought, and suddenly the way became clear. They would need to devise a ceremony, starting with the song, then releasing the threads from the mask. Was that all it would take? Could it be so simple? Or would it require her to call on the power of Tarya to complete the process?

Mina thought of the vision she had experienced before her uncle’s farewell ceremony. She had deliberately gone to Tarya and placed his broken painting in the River, and it had come out healed, but not completely—there had still been a fine fissure down the picture. It was only when she had been caught up involuntarily in a vision of the past that the painting had healed completely. She searched her memory but couldn’t think of any particular event that might have brought this about. Yet something had made the portrait whole. That something had to be the final step in healing the broken souls.

Luka was still singing, she realised, and the soul fragments still circled him. Here at least was part of the puzzle. They had left Uberto’s key mask in Andon though, so they would have to return home to test Mina’s theory.

‘Mina.’ Sofia’s voice called her back from Tarya and her thoughts. Luka’s song broke off abruptly. The silence that followed was expectant and oppressive.

The River and the soul lights were gone. They stood in the cavern, the flickering torches creating moving pools of light and darkness all around them. For a moment Mina couldn’t place what had changed in her brief time in Tarya, then she realised the shadows had crept much closer. Sofia was standing by one of the wall sconces, a torch in her hand. She reached down and ground it into the pebbled sand of the cavern’s floor until the torch went out. Only two torches remained lit, along with the flaming bowl in the centre of the room. She hurried to the next sconce and lifted the torch from its bracket, bringing it to Mina.

‘Someone’s outside,’ she whispered urgently. ‘Check for another way out.’

Luka seized the final torch and began circling the alcoves, his free hand reaching around the sculptures and rocks, searching for anything that might be loose. Mina hurried to the tiny hidden chamber and began her own search.

The walls were craggy and pitted, much like the caves at home in Andon, but there was nothing obviously out of place. Beginning at the left of the doorway and moving as swiftly as she could, Mina began checking for anything that might release a doorway. She wasn’t hopeful of finding anything. The cavern was a place people would come to in its own right, not a place they would need to pass through. But she knew, from her long-ago explorations with Paolo, that caves concealed many secrets.

Mina held the torch as high as she could reach, then swept it down toward the floor, her eyes scanning the rock. Nothing. She took a step forward and repeated the action, then systematically moved to the next patch of wall. It was on the fourth pass that she found it. Something glinted near the floor. She kneeled to examine it and saw an eye identical to the one that had formed the cloak clasp for the masked statue in the main cavern. At the centre of the eye, catching the light in myriad colours, was an opal, mostly obscured by sand. Mina brushed it clear, then pressed it, and a rumbling filled the room, then part of the wall slid aside. In the torchlight she saw a crude staircase descending into the heart of the Fureys. It quickly turned a corner, and she couldn’t see what was beyond.

Mina ran back into the cavern and beckoned the others. She nodded in response to their questioning looks and they hurried over to her. With Mina leading the way they slipped through the hidden chamber and began their slow progress down the stairs, which curved gently. Even with two torches the darkness was enveloping, and they moved slowly, unwilling to risk a fall.

After descending through two gradual turns of the staircase, they all stopped through unspoken agreement. Sofia quickly filled them in on what she had heard while Mina and Luka were in Tarya.

‘There were voices outside. At least three different people, I think. They were too muffled for me to hear what they were saying, but by their tone they were trying to get in. I imagine they were standing at the star, trying to make it work. How did you make it work, Mina?’

She shrugged. ‘I still don’t know. There’s a lot about this that’s strange. Isn’t there anything in the Tales of Tarya to explain what I did?’

Even in the torchlight they could see all the blood drain from Sofia’s face.

‘What? What is it?’ Mina had never seen Sofia so shaken.

‘I left it in the cavern. The book we found in the golden box. The Tale of Tarya.’