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This Used to Be About Dungeons, ch 87, Composition
🕑 Added 2022-03-16 16:11:29 +0000 UTC~~~~
Verity played the new lute, stretching it to its limits and seeing what could be done with it. The lute that she’d used for concerts in Dondrian had been one of the best lutes in the world, and this certainly didn’t rival it, but there were a few similarities. That lute had been called the Full Orchestral Lute, and could produce the sounds of an entire symphony orchestra, though the sounds were produced together by a single instrument. It was taxing to play, but it would have been impossible without the way that the entad invaded the brain and pulled from the performer. It could produce sounds from instruments that Verity had no training in, up to the level of her skill with a lute. That single entad instrument was one of the reasons that she’d trained in the lute at all.
This new one, called the Constitute Lute (according to Grig), was far, far weaker. It seemed to have a thing for eights, having both eight strings, and being able to mimic eight lutes at once. When she’d first seen it, she’d thought that perhaps it had eight strings so that it could have a perfect octave, but no, the tuning had been set up — or simply existed, since entads had no true creator — so that there were repeated high and low notes to provide extra resonance and depth. It was non-standard, obviously so, but not terribly far from standard tuning, and the sound was nice.
She wondered whether it would be possible to use this new lute in the upcoming concert. She debated sending a letter off to her mother, but there had still been no word from Dondrian, and she didn’t want to start a line of communication. There was, perhaps, in the back of her mind, the idea that this whole issue of concerts in Dondrian would run into trouble of some kind or another, or that the impending seizure of her father’s company would cause utter collapse for the family, and then she wouldn’t have to do anything at all. This was absurdly wishful thinking, but Verity couldn’t help herself.
She wondered, idly, whether this particular lute might help her learn faster. There were very rare and very particular entads that could make a person better at something, so she supposed that it was possible. When she played, she was effectively playing eight lutes at once, so perhaps an hour of practice with it might equate to eight hours of normal practice. There was no simple way to test that though, and she wasn’t going to reduce her practice time, not with the concert looming.
Still, as she played she found herself spending her mental energy on composition rather than the actual mechanical motion of her fingers. She had been inspired to make a song of eights, eight brothers going off to fight in a war at their father’s behest, good little soldiers who would inflict violence and pain upon distant lands to try to win his approval. Each of the knights was given a different lute, played in a slightly different style, and because she didn’t have eight voices, Verity attempted to tell a story entirely through the instrumentation.
Four hours passed in a heartbeat, and at the end of it, Verity had something that she was horribly disappointed by. It wasn’t finished, not hardly, but she still thought there was something in the bones of the song, something that was compelling and interesting and worth pursuing. She had a horrible feeling that she would get it as good as she could and find that she didn’t know how to make it better, even while understanding that it was subpar. She wasn’t sure what she would do then.
It was after there was a knock on the door a second time that Verity realized she might be home alone. She preferred party chatter over the channel to be kept to a minimum, at least when she was practicing, since it felt so intrusive, but this did mean she had no idea where anyone else was.
But as it turned out, the person at the door was Xy, their local cartier. Verity immediately felt herself get flustered.
“Oh, hi,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Mail for you, express,” said Xy with a smile.
Verity felt her heart climb up into her throat, and her eyes went to the letter, which indeed was an off-white envelope with a blue and black wax seal. This was stationary that her mother was fond of.
Xy handed the letter over, and when Verity reached for it, Xy went in for a kiss. It wasn’t a good kiss, too quick, too dry, too unexpected, and Verity was feeling ill with the letter in hand.
“Sorry,” said Verity, pulling away. “Sorry, I just —”
“No,” said Xy, “I was just — trying to be cute, sorry, I’ve been thinking about you.”
Verity looked down at the letter. “It’s from home.”
“Ah,” said Xy. “Sorry about —”
“No, no, it’s okay,” said Verity. “I just — my mind wasn’t there. Isn’t there.”
“Right,” nodded Xy. Her cheeks were flushed, and not in a good way. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”
“It’s —” Verity began, but Xy was already off and away.
It had been a perfect opportunity. No one else was home. Verity would have the bedroom to herself, Xy was clearly ready, had clearly been thinking about it … and the letter was still in Verity’s hand.
Verity went into the dining room and set it down on the table. She didn’t want to open it. She was still sitting there when Isra and Mizuki returned some time later.
“Oh wow,” said Mizuki. “Is that from your mom?”
“Yes,” said Verity.
“And you’ve just been sitting there staring at it?” asked Mizuki.
“Yes,” nodded Verity. “It’s going to say something that I don’t like.”
“Would you like me to read it?” asked Isra.
Verity thought about that. It was a cowardly thing to do, to have a friend read it first. “Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”
Isra took the letter and broke the seal, reading quickly. Verity watched Isra’s brown eyes as they tracked back and forth. Isra probably wasn’t aware of it, but the frown on her face was deepening, and that was making Verity’s heart beat faster. The reading seemed to go on for ages, perhaps because there were multiple sheets of thin paper with her mother’s spider-web fine handwriting. Mizuki read each page when Isra was finished, and the paper sat there, tempting Verity to join in.
“Okay,” said Isra when she was finished.
“Wait,” said Mizuki, who was still reading. They stood there for a bit while she finished.
“Can I say?” asked Isra.
“I don’t know if I want to know what was in it,” said Verity, putting a hand to her forehead. “Sorry for being such a milksop about this.”
“It’s what friends are for,” shrugged Mizuki. “I didn’t think it was that bad, just some things that need a counteroffer. Or a slap upside the head.”
“It’s two days a week, starting three weeks from now,” said Isra. “A string of six concerts.”
“Twelve concerts, technically,” said Mizuki. “Since it’s the ‘same’ concert on back to back days.”
Verity felt her stomach twist. “I had said once a week.” And even that she’d regretted immediately.
“She appears to have interpreted it as you being in Dondrian once a week,” said Isra. “Over the course of two days.”
Verity let out a long sigh. “Alright. Alright, how do I — wait, which pieces?”
“There’s a long list,” said Mizuki. “Most of these I haven’t heard of. Lots of Beruchald?”
“Each has a different program,” said Isra, who had picked up the letter again. She gave it a deep frown. “She says that the selection was compiled with the help of a former teacher, based on what people will find enjoyable.”
“Marla?” asked Verity. “It’s Marla, isn’t it?” Isra nodded, and Verity let out a moan. “I hated Marla.”
“Well then I hate her too,” said Mizuki. “Anything we can do?”
“No,” said Verity. “No, I need to read it for myself, to see how bad it really is, to get a handle on what she’s asking of me.”
“There’s a lot of guilting you into it,” said Mizuki. “Just so you’re warned.”
“Thank you,” said Verity. She took the first page of the letter and steeled herself. Knowing the parameters, that was good. It meant that she could deal with the actual content without a sense of foreboding.
It was, overall, not as bad as she’d been working it up to be. Yes, her mother was making all kinds of demands, many of them quite unreasonable, but Verity had expected that. And yes, her mother was laying on the guilt as hard as could be, but that was expected as well. Really, it was a bit startling how transparent it all was. Verity could practically tear it apart into its component pieces to point out what each section and comment was meant for: it was a composition of its own sort, not just a communication between mother and daughter or between performer and manager, but a tool used by one person against another.
“She needs me,” said Verity when she set the letter down. “She’s lost without me.” Saying this out loud didn’t quite make her feel better.
“You already knew that, right?” asked Mizuki.
“I didn’t realize how desperate she was,” said Verity. “How much she’s depending on this.” She looked down at the letter. “There’s less pressure when the words are written. She can’t answer all my objections before I have them, not when she knows how that will look.” It was a bit of a marvel to see it all laid out. She looked up at Isra and Mizuki. “Thank you for looking it over. It took some of the sting from it.”
“Okay, but what are we going to do about it?” asked Mizuki.
Verity faltered. “That, I don’t know.”
“A counteroffer,” said Isra.
“Well,” said Verity.
“Do you want help writing it?” asked Mizuki. “I’ve been getting some practice with letter writing.”
“I — yes,” said Verity. “Though I can’t have you fight my battles for me.”
“Why not?” asked Isra.
“And it’s not really a battle,” said Verity. “I just need to — to temper her expectations.” Though in the letter, her mother hadn’t seemed to leave room for argument.
“She’s setting things up,” said Mizuki. “Probably has already set things up, just to pressure you, if I understand your mom right. Rent out the concert hall so that if you say no, you’re costing a lot of people a lot of money and damaging your reputation, that kind of thing?”
“That — is probably accurate, yes,” said Verity. She swallowed. “Which means that I need to get a letter back to her as soon as possible.”
“It won’t matter though?” asked Mizuki. “Even if she didn’t say it, the manipulation is probably already in place. Or she’d lie about it.”
“My mother isn’t a liar,” said Verity. Her mouth had a sour twist to it, and she made an effort to calm herself down. Mizuki was only offering solidarity. “She’s manipulative, but she’s also scrupulous. It’s beneath her to lie.”
“Well, okay,” said Mizuki. “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“You’re right that it wouldn’t matter,” said Verity. “The problem, the real problem, is that I don’t actually want her to be destitute. I don’t want her to suffer. I just want her to quietly live her life in Dondrian, and for me to live my life here.”
“I don’t know if we’re staying here,” said Mizuki.
“No?” asked Verity. She looked at Isra. “Is that true?”
“Dungeoneering will take us away,” said Isra. “Mizuki and I were talking about it. We have time though.”
“Ah, that,” said Verity, relaxing slightly. She looked at the bulge in Mizuki’s bag, and realized that she’d been monopolizing the conversation. She also didn’t particularly want to dwell on her problems. “Did you get anything interesting in Liberfell?”
“Two dragons,” said Isra. “And …” she reached into the bag and pulled out a large glass bottle, roughly the size of a cabbage. “This.”
“Oh,” said Verity, looking at it for a moment. “Is this it? The bottle you’ve talked about?”
Isra smiled and nodded. “Mizuki, do you have some long metal sticks? I’d like to get the old tree out.”
“I have long-handled tweezers, if that would help?” asked Mizuki.
“What are those?” asked Verity.
“Easier to show,” said Mizuki. She left the dining room.
“We brought back dragons,” said Isra with a smile. “They’re flying around outside now. Perrin hadn’t been able to do that for them. He was too worried that they would escape. And Cate was there, for some reason, but she didn’t try to buy them or take them.”
“Who is Cate?” asked Verity.
“Oh, you weren’t there for that,” said Isra, faltering. “She was from the province and came to talk about what we saw in the dungeon. She offered to buy Lerial.” There was some excitability to Isra that Verity didn’t often see, like a normally stand-offish cat offering affection when you returned home after a time away.
“We’re not selling Lerial,” said Verity. “Are we?”
“I don’t think we should,” said Isra. “But it’s a matter of money.”
“I suppose Alfric would give it up for the right price,” said Verity with a frown.
“We have them all together now,” said Isra. “We’ll find out whether we can get a clutch of them, and I can do my best to make sure they grow. They are commercial animals, not pets.”
“I suppose,” said Verity. “But I like when Lerial is in among the herbs. It makes the gardening seem more worthwhile.”
Mizuki came back with needle-nosed pliers, which she handed over to Isra. “Here,” she said. “Something like this?”
Isra used it experimentally for a moment, squeezing the handles and then testing the spring that forced them apart, then put the end into the bottle, down far enough that she could grip the dead tree by its trunk. She moved slowly and carefully, wiggling it back and forth, and she was able to slowly extract it from the bottle, leaving the dirt behind.
“I was worried that it would grow bigger,” said Mizuki as she looked at the small dead tree.
“I wouldn’t have done it inside,” said Isra. She took the bottle and turned it upside down, shaking it a bit, and the dirt stayed where it was, at the bottom of the bottle.
“See, and there I was worried you’d get a bunch of dirt on the table,” said Mizuki.
“The dirt is a part of it,” said Isra. “It’s a feature of the bottle.” She raised an eyebrow. “You know that I wouldn’t dump hundreds of pounds of dirt onto our table, right?”
“Er, right,” said Mizuki.
“This was something we did every week or so, once we’d harvested the tree,” said Isra. There was something loving in the way she looked at the bottle, like a childhood toy. “It was my favorite thing in the winter months, the only way for us to get fresh fruits.”
“There are fresh fruits at the market in winter,” said Mizuki. “Shipped express from elsewhere.”
“Expensive,” said Isra with a frown. “Far too expensive.”
Alfric came in the front door at that moment, calling hello, and he was in the dining room in just a moment. “What are we — oh, is this the bottle?”
“It is,” said Isra. “I’m thinking about what to plant in it.”
“Alfric, Dondrian doesn’t really have seasons, right?” asked Mizuki.
“We have seasons,” said Alfric. “No snow though, and it’s a relatively narrow range of temperatures. It’s twenty or thirty degrees cooler in winter.” Verity had experienced a single Pucklechurch winter, and knew that this was absolutely nothing in comparison. “Why?”
“I was just thinking that you probably don’t have to deal with seasonality of food,” said Mizuki. “We were talking about fruit in the winter, which is expensive here, at least if you want it fresh. Preserves and pickles, much less so.”
Alfric shrugged. “We mostly ate entad-made food.”
“Ah, right,” said Mizuki.
“What’s the output like on that bottle?” asked Alfric.
“Output?” asked Isra. “Meaning?”
“If you wanted to make as many fruits as possible,” said Alfric. “If you wanted to maximize revenue from it.”
“I don’t know,” said Isra. “A hundred oranges over the course of a week?”
Alfric’s eyes went wide. “Ten days total, seed to the end of production?”
“Something like that,” said Isra. “I don’t know. Why?”
“He thinks it’s valuable,” said Verity.
“It is valuable,” said Alfric. He turned to Mizuki. “Did he sell the fruit in winter?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” said Mizuki with a frown. “Or I guess if he did, maybe he didn’t sell it in Pucklechurch?”
“A hundred oranges is a lot,” said Alfric. “A hundred oranges, out of season, would be worth — I don’t know, a lot. At least a few rings each.”
“He left sometimes,” said Isra. “Went out and didn’t say where he was going, or … lied about it.”
“It doesn’t add up,” said Alfric. “When you told me about the entad, I’d thought that it sounded too good to be true, but I didn’t want to say anything given that it had gone missing. But from what you’re saying, it would be a constant revenue stream, the kind of thing that you’d just never find sitting in a random cabin in the woods, not unless it was bound or —” He stopped himself, but the word ‘stolen’ hung in the air.
“If he were alive, I would ask him about it,” said Isra. “At the time, I didn’t think much of it.”
“A running theme, it seems,” said Mizuki. She hid her smile behind a cup of tea.
“I’d love some tea, if there’s still water left,” said Verity.
Tea, inevitably, turned into a bit of a production. Hannah made them bread almost every day, but she had also been gradually stocking the kitchen with cookies in different tins and jars, and Mizuki brought almost all of these out, arranged on a huge platter. Hannah’s style ran towards symmetry, of course, but there were all kinds of designs, and she’d been doing experiments with some chocolate they’d brought back from Dondrian. Added to the selection of cookies were sweeteners for the tea of different kinds, honey and lump sugar, and there were three different kinds of jams and spreads for the bread, along with rich yellow butter. For some reason, unknown to Verity, the butter in Pucklechurch was much more yellow than she’d ever seen in Dondrian.
Hannah showed up at a fortuitous time, though she hadn’t responded when she’d been invited over the party channel, and by her ruddy cheeks, she had hustled to return home, or perhaps been engaged in some other physically strenuous activity.
“Some of those cookies would be better off in the garbage,” said Hannah. “Chocolate is a temperamental ingredient, one that I’m none too fond of, at least so far. The taste might be good, but it’s a difficult beast. A sugar glaze I can get glossy, but this,” she held up a cookie which had a coating of chocolate on the top of it. It wasn’t remotely glossy. “And it burns easily, seizes up when it comes in contact with water, there are all sorts of issues I’ve had, and I’m sure that there are all kinds of solutions to those problems, but they’re a bit beyond me.”
“The taste is good,” said Mizuki.
“Well, ay,” said Hannah. “I appreciate you sayin’ so, but it’s just not what I’d wanted to create, and it’s a bit frustratin’, that’s all. I’ve had these ideas in my head and haven’t been able to match them.”
“I’ve been feeling exactly the same,” said Verity. She was surprised at how excited she was about that. “I’ve been trying to work on composition, to actually work on it, seriously, and everything that I’ve been coming up with is so riddled with problems that I’d be laughed out of a concert hall. I spent four hours today on something that seemed like a good idea at the time, but at the end it was just … mush.”
“Can we hear it?” asked Isra.
“Oh,” said Verity. “Well, do you … like mush?”
“I like your playing,” Mizuki offered.
“Mush it is,” nodded Hannah. “If you don’t mind playin’ your mush. You are eating cookies you’ve effectively disparaged, mind you.”
Verity looked down at the cookies and took a sip of her tea. “I didn’t say that I didn’t like the cookies,” she said. “Only that I was dealing with the same thing, the feeling of not having things come out just as I wanted, knowing that there were probably tricks that could help, or lessons I needed to learn, but nothing more.”
“Well, I’d like to hear what you’re so embarrassed about,” said Hannah. “But I wouldn’t want to put any undue pressure on you, so I suppose it’s no big deal. I do like your dungeon songs, which come to you on the spur of the moment, or near enough, and if you’ve somethin’ for us to hear that you worked harder on than that other stuff, I think we’d all like to listen.”
“And we can give you advice,” said Mizuki. “In case you want it.”
“Ah,” said Verity. “I think if I’m going to perform this very rough and unfinished song, it will be without much in the way of commentary after the fact. If that’s okay.” Really, what she wanted to say was that she wanted praise or nothing, but she was trying not to make cowardice a running theme of the day. If they did say nothing, that would be just as bad as mean or dismissive comments.
She went up to her room and grabbed her lute, along with the sheet music she’d been writing. It was incredibly messy, done in a shorthand she’d invented on the fly, and it would be virtually useless when actually playing, because as much as the finger flute and the lute together would allow her to move sixty-four fingers, she still only had two eyes to read the sheet music.
She did the performance standing, as she played in the dungeon, an unfamiliar piece with an unfamiliar instrument. These were not exactly ideal conditions, but at least the lute tuned itself to perfection.
As she was in the middle of the performance, she realized what she’d been missing: the father. It was a song of eight knights, one for each of the parts the lute could play, but the voice of their father, the king, was absent. It wasn’t a problem, per se, but it was what would tie the piece together. Unfortunately, it would need something to make it distinct, and since the tuning couldn’t be changed all that much, she would have to think about what the king himself should sound like within the bounds of what the instrument could do. Better for the king to have some other sound though, trumpets or something like that to stand in contrast.
Playing the lute took her concentration, but she couldn’t keep the other thoughts out, and the performance was undoubtedly worse for it. Still, it was a song with no lyrics to go with it, as they were only half-baked, and the story itself was still a work in progress.
When she finished, Mizuki burst into applause, and the others quickly joined her.
“It was so long,” said Mizuki.
“Ah, sorry,” said Verity.
“No, no,” said Mizuki. “You just said that you were still working on it, and I’d thought that meant it would be a short little thing.”
“It should be about seven minutes,” said Verity, looking at her hasty sheet music.
“It was incredible,” said Hannah. “Did you weave in symmetry for my sake?”
“Yes,” said Verity. “I had it in mind.”
“I didn’t notice that,” said Isra. She was slightly reserved, more so than usual. “There were no words.”
“No lyrics, no,” said Verity. “I don’t know if there will be, there are already eight parts, and quite a bit of amazing music tells a whole story — delivers a whole feeling — without a single word needing to be said.”
“I like your voice,” said Isra.
“I know it means nothing, coming from me,” said Alfric. “But if you had told me that was a song by one of the masters, I would have believed you.”
“Well, thank you,” said Verity, but he was right, it didn’t mean much. Comparing her with someone like Beruchald was, of course, absurd. But without Alfric having musical training, it was difficult to explain the depth to which the comparison was in-apt. Verity was a bear in the woods knocking rocks together compared to Beruchald, or Cannling, or any of the others.
“You should play it for Grig,” said Mizuki. “He would tell you it was amazing.”
“Maybe,” said Verity with a shrug. “He’s also much more of a bard than a musician.”
The fawning continued on for a bit, which Verity was grateful for. They weren’t musicians, but they seemed to genuinely appreciate what she had created, and she was happy that she could bring something of value to them, especially since Hannah and Mizuki provided the fruits of their labor so often.
“I kind of don’t get what you mean about a story though,” said Mizuki.
“Um,” said Verity. “I don’t understand what you don’t understand.”
“The music provides the story,” said Alfric. “Each of the eight lutes was a different character, I think, and they start out sprightly and bright, and grow darker over time, more of a feeling of battle, or sorrow, or something like that. And it’s only at the end that they come together again, overcome their foe or whatever it is, and the music returns to the brightness.”
Mizuki twisted her mouth in a frown. “I guess.” She gave Verity a skeptical look. “And you were trying to tell a story?”
“I was,” nodded Verity. “But with music, it’s alright if you don’t immediately grasp it, part of hearing a new piece is having your own reaction to it, your own interpretation.”
“Like with Beruchald’s seasonal pieces,” said Isra. “Only he told people outright what they were.”
“Yes,” nodded Verity. “But there are parts that are left as a puzzle for you, feelings that you’re left to connect on your own. Beruchald might tell you outright that it’s a winter symphony, but you’re left to interpret the stillness of the third movement as being the quietude of the woods after a big snowfall. Something which I didn’t really understand until I’d experienced a proper winter, incidentally.”
“So what was the story?” asked Mizuki.
“I’m still working on it,” said Verity. “The whole piece needs something more, and while I was performing it, I was thinking about all the things I could add to it, places where I’m just dipping back into stock melody or engaging in repetition when I should be doing something fresh.”
“Can you give me a hint?” asked Mizuki.
Verity thought about that. “No,” she finally said. “I’ll play it for you again, in a week, when I’ve worked on it more, and you can listen to it with a story in mind. Let me know what you notice, what you feel.”
“I know very little about music,” said Mizuki. “I can hold a tune, and I sing on temple days, but it’s really not something I could tell you much about.”
“Indulge me?” asked Verity. “If you liked the song, I’d like to know what you get out of it. It’ll help me make it better.”
“Deal,” said Mizuki.
“When I came in, I saw there were three dragons flying around outside,” said Hannah. “Does anyone want to tell me what that was all about?”
The conversation moved on from the song, and Verity was happy for that, since she couldn’t have asked for any more praise. She had asked for little commentary after the fact, but it was the praise she craved, and had gotten in abundance. All her misgivings about the song had been assuaged, and while she knew that she could make the song better, and roughly knew how, she had some renewed confidence in her endeavor as amateur composer.
Mizuki and Isra seemed to have had quite the day together, and Verity let herself be swept away with the stories of this mysterious woman, and after that, Alfric talked about what he’d been up to, and Hannah carefully talked around the fact that she’d been with Marsh. It was nice and lovely, and the cookies were soon gone from the big plate.
Verity was almost able to forget about the letter from her mother and the looming concerts. Almost.
Comments
fbt
great chapter, tyvm
