The Tales of Tarya, Books 1-3

Chapter 6 - Changing the Guard-1

Changing the GuardAnother wave of dispirited ‘huzzahs’ made Roberto smile. It had taken him less than a day after his return to Aurea to find another troupe willing to take him in. Sadly for the Archiari troupe, but in a marvellous stroke of fortune for Roberto, their Scapino had disappeared during the festivities the week before. No sign had been seen of him since. The Archiaris were pleased to take on an experienced Scapino.

Now Roberto stood onstage, bowing to the market day crowd. His own excitement was not mirrored in the faces of the rest of the troupe. Their performance had begun badly, for the chosen canovaccio had simply not been there when they had tried to find it. They had begun the tale of the ambitious seamstress, but the story had failed to unfold. Though most players had been in character, in their transformed state, they had been unable to draw upon the silver orb that should have been waiting in Tarya. Experienced performers all, they had quickly shifted to another canovaccio, but their energy was low and the crowd response as they took their bows was decidedly lukewarm.

Only Roberto beamed a broad smile, bowing to the audience as though they cheered his name. Long attuned to the moods of crowds, he sensed a change an instant before it occurred. Someone gasped. The sound was repeated by several others. Roberto looked sideways just in time to see Tito Archiari stumble and fall, to be caught by the players lined up on either side of him.

Sprawled across the stage, the Master Player cut a strange figure in his Harlequin costume. He was short and squat rather than lean and lithe, his paunch distorting the diamond fabric. Despite the stage make-up, his skin appeared pasty. He lay very still.

Quick as a bolt of lightning, Roberto slipped to the side of the stage and brought in the rust brown curtain, concealing the onstage drama from the curious watchers. He hurried back to centre stage, where Tito’s wife sat with his head in her lap.

One glance was enough. Roberto had seen enough dead bodies in his life to recognise the glassy sheen to the eyes, without needing to listen to the chest or feel for a heartbeat. He saw realisation sweep over the faces of the family members. Mama Archiari began a keening that cut the air like a knife.

Beyond the curtain, the sound of the crowd began to grow ugly. Roberto looked around at the troupe’s grief-stricken expressions and realised he must be the one to deal with the trouble brewing. With a bold movement, he swung the curtain aside and stepped through, holding a hand up to the wall of noise that spat at him.

It took a minute to silence the crowd. Roberto waited. Once the mutterings had subsided he bowed a deep bow, unintentionally avoiding a rotten pumpkin slice flying toward the stage. His voice filled the silence.

‘Dear gentles, I understand your ill humour. Today our gift of playing has been a disappointment for such discerning city folk.’

His soothing tone had them mollified already.

‘I must ask you to forgive us this aberration. We are a troupe of the highest standards …’

He continued to speak, offering atonement, promising a greater performance. In no time they were gazing at him with bare adoration, lapping up his mellifluous words. Finally he hit them with the punch.

‘I ask you to give us a day before we fulfil this promise to you. Our dear Harlequin, Master Tito Archiari, has just passed. He gave his all to the stage throughout his life, but now he has no more to give. His family are devastated. You will understand if I do not ask them to offer an encore performance at such a sad time.’

A murmur ran through the crowd. Roberto bowed, another elaborate, sweeping bow. They responded with a subdued cheer, shamed by their earlier anger. With a smile so small it barely twisted his mouth, Roberto offered his thanks and kissed his fingers to them. He spun in a full circle before sinking down into the splits, his arms spread wide on either side of his body. Finally he drew back to standing without using his hands, in a feat of acrobatics that brought a rousing cheer. He stood tall, his chest rising with the surge of energy from the audience. With a flick of his hand, he moved the rust curtain aside and stepped backward through it, taking one last eager breath before the curtain fell back into place. For one moment he let a grin slide across his face, then it was gone.

The Archiaris were still arrayed around their patriarch who, despite his paunch, looked greatly diminished in death. Almost as one, the family looked at Roberto with white, drawn faces. He composed his face into a solemn expression tinged with sympathy and quietly took charge of the grief-stricken troupe.

~

After healing Katriela, Mina and her new troupe of story tellers and players began the journey back to her home in Andon. As they travelled Sofia continued Mina’s apprenticeship, teaching her the practical skills of the story teller. She had already taught Mina the formulas for signalling a tale’s origins at its beginning. Now she taught her the phrases that brought stories to a close. Once she was satisfied Mina had them all, she began imparting story after story to her apprentice. Mina’s gift for memorising continued to astound the story teller, who found herself running through her repertoire of tales faster than she would ever have thought possible.

Sofia also began to focus on the art of telling itself, teaching Mina the secret tricks for creating a certain mood, or making listeners feel the story was being told only to them. Though they took the fastest route south, they made sure to stop at each village long enough for a session in the divina. Mina put her new story telling skills into practice, telling a traditional story or two before they began their healings. Her efforts were met with excited appreciation.

Mina pondered the problem of how to restore the golden threads endlessly. She healed one or two dreamless ones at each destination, as she had Katriela, but found herself fighting an unshakable, growing exhaustion. Before long she barely had the energy to tell tales and heal, leaving the others to take care of day-to-day chores.

Every night, before she fell into her bunk, she pulled out the key mask, her hands running over its smooth surface as her mind searched for answers. But none came, and at times she wanted to weep with her inability to rescue her brother from the madness that engulfed him. They were so busy, Dario hadn’t yet had time to talk to her about what happened when players broke the threads, so she had little to go on. There was a rift between them still that caused a stab in her chest whenever she looked at him. Mina avoided spending time with him, fearful of answers to unspoken questions. Which was easy to do, with her story telling apprenticeship and the many healings taking up all her energy.

Despite her exhaustion, Mina began to teach Sofia the little she understood about Tarya. At first Sofia struggled to reach the etheric realms without Mina’s help and couldn’t seem to go beyond the Horizon. After she began secretly telling Mina some of her altered stories she was able to reach the Plain of Seas, though it took a great deal of practice for her to talk and move through the enchanted sphere with the ease Mina had. Eventually she too was able to conjure shapes and images in the blue ocean, a trick that delighted her. Emboldened, she began making up stories completely rather than just changing ones she already knew, though the strict story teller training made her wary of telling these stories in public.

As the bond between them grew, Sofia increasingly expressed concern at the changes in Mina. Her desire to help with the healings fuelled her attempts until, in the simple village divina at Balti, she finally worked out how to reach Tarya herself by chanting softly, like a prayer. She was successful in healing a young music teacher with shadowed eyes, but restoring the silver orb of the dream left her shattered. And like Mina, after the healing she found it difficult to contribute to the work of travelling.

~

After a week the group reached Kirio, a beautiful city that hovered at the eastern end of Lake Rosa. They rode past groves of trees on the western end, admiring the reflection of the city in the still water. All the buildings were built of a deep russet stone, or tiled all over with shimmering ruby tiles. Most of the houses were several storeys high, each level slightly smaller than the one below, with little towers at the top, stretching toward the sky. These tiny towers were crowned with various bright sculptures that glittered in the sunlight.

As in Aurea, many of the buildings were decorated with images on the tilework, but here they were placed in three or four rows at the top of each storey. Riding toward the city, the travellers had the impression of a banquet of rich cakes spread before them. Reflected in the lake, the buildings lent their rosy colour to the water. Isabella had once told Mina the lake was named after a king’s mistress, but Mina questioned that now as they rode their wagon beside the gently rippling russet-shadowed water.

Only when they neared the city did Mina see that the gleaming sculptures atop all the buildings were metal figures shaped as animals and flowers, stars and moons. Some were gold, some silver, and they spun slowly in the light breeze. Window boxes everywhere held thick clusters of white and gold flowers, giving the whole city a festive feel.

By now the travellers had their routine well organised. They accepted the traditional welcome given to story tellers and made their way quickly to the divina. Here in Kirio, the city divina was large and beautifully panelled in contrasting pale and dark woods, with natural light from a series of tall, narrow windows crisscrossed with stained-glass diamond-shaped panes.

Unusually, the Creator’s chair was edged with gold, reflecting the city’s wealth. It was also high-backed, unlike the typical U design, yet intricately carved as was usual with pictures from the Tales of Tarya. It sat on an eight-pointed star of wood so dark it was almost black, from which radiated points of alternating ash and oak, covering the entire floor with a sunburst of dark and light wood. Jewels of light from the window dappled this sunburst in a continuous kaleidoscope.

Sofia took her place at the Creator’s chair. Once the villagers were seated, she began telling traditional tales, while Dario, Lisette and Luka scanned the audience for those with the tell-tale signs of dream theft: the shadowed eyes and blanched skin, the pervasive aura of despair. In the smaller villages they had expected most villagers would attend the session because story telling was a special event, but here in a larger city they had to hope news of successful healings today would lead those who did not attend to seek them out.

In their eagerness to begin healing they had not at first realised the challenges they would face. Katriela’s dream had been easy to find because the players knew it well. Lisette had located the right silver orb straight away. But with each new healing they had to find the correct orb out of hundreds. To do so they had to persuade the dreamless ones to remain behind after the story telling and tell enough of their own story for the right canovaccio to be found.

Despite his quiet manner, Luka turned out to have a gift for this persuasion. Now Dario and Lisette simply pointed out the hollow-eyed dreamless to him and let him go to work, knowing from past efforts he had a greater chance of success than they.

With each dreamless one he followed the same steps. First he placed himself near the person to be healed, either seated by their side or kneeling before them, and quietly introduced himself. Then he sat in silence, giving them time to become used to his presence, only catching their eyes now and then. Like his onstage Pierrot persona, his eyes spoke of a well of grief of his own, while also conveying a depth of compassion that somehow bridged the gap caused by their despair. When he sensed it was time, he took the person’s hand. Their acceptance of this offer gave him the signal to speak to whichever family member was with them, as they never came alone.