Chapter #9Celestial Harmonies by: Seuzz   "Are you planning on doing any fornicating?"
You straighten up hard and fast. "What did you say?"
"You heard me, William." Father Ed leans on the last word and grins up at you. "Franz never got up to any good with that face."
You glower down from the roof of the house. You're holding a sodden mass of rotten leaves, and rein in the urge to hurl it at the priest's head. You just drop it to the ground next to the rest of the shit you've pulled from the gutters. You wipe streaming sweat from your eyes; the sun beats on your bare back.
"Why are you looking like that?" Father Ed asks when you don't reply.
"To keep these shorts up," you retort. "If you don't want to see me in the nude, you'll let me stay like this."
"Didn't you bring any of your own clothes? Do you borrow everything, William?"
"They're all in the wash, so I had to put on these. And I don't fit in them when I'm looking like myself."
Father Ed points at the gutter. "And Franz could get it done faster," he chortles.
"Joe could also give you a wedgie and fly into town while you were still screaming, you old--"
"What's that?"
"I said there's lots of things Joe can do that I can't."
"Yes, but can you fornicate while looking like him?"
"Why, you want me to find out with you?"
The priest turns purple. "Chuck!" he hollers.
"Joe!" Charles calls from someplace nearby.
You drop to your stomach and, hanging upside down, look in through the bedroom window. The old man is at his desk, bent over a book. "I'm sorry, sir," you say.
"Keep it in character, Joe."
Cool! Permission! You look up at Father Ed with a sharkish grin. "Hey padre, how many Jesuits does it take to screw in a light bulb?"
"How many?" he asks darkly.
"What, you're only pretending to be a fucking know-it-all?"
His eyes blaze. "Well, unlike some people, I don't have to pretend to be anything to do my job!"
"So you really are an asshole?"
He chokes and storms back into the house.
"How was that, sir?" you ask, looking back into the window.
"Perfect. If you really want to piss him off, you'll apologize later while looking like Frank."
* * * * *
But you're still looking like Joe when you pad back wetly through the kitchen after your shower. The old man glances over, and without breaking stride you shift into your own form. He smiles faintly as you grab at the front of the khaki shorts before they can slide off. You continue into the laundry room to fetch some clothes of your own.
Fucking piss 'n shit, you think as you return through the living room. Father Ed is at the piano, stabbing at the keys. He look up with a heavy frown. "What are you looking like that for now?"
"I'm done and my clothes are dry."
"I wanted Franz here with his fiddle." He points at the sheet music. "You can play like him when you're looking like him, can't you?" His lips curdle up in a very turtle-like way: an impression reinforced by the heavy glasses athwart the beak-like nose.
Why can't that fucker make up his mind? you wonder bitterly as you duck back to the boys' old bedroom to fetch the violin. Oh yeah. He's a Catilindrian, like Miko. Making trouble is what they're supposed to do.
The impromptu recital goes off well, though you're much better on the violin than Father Ed is on the piano. Naturally: the sonata is one of Joe's own compositions. "That was pretty," Father Ed murmurs when you're done.
"Very nice," Charles agrees from his recliner, for he'd come in to listen. "Did you enjoy it?"
You do feel Joe's natural pleasure in it. "Yes sir."
The old man smiles. "Did you enjoy it, Will?" he asks again.
You hesitate. "I suppose."
"But?"
You can only shrug. "I was feeling what Joe would have felt."
"Could you tell the difference, between his feelings and yours?"
You hesitate longer. "I think so. It's like part of me felt very warm, but part of me felt a lot ... cooler. I mean, I like what he wrote. I think." You grimace a little. "It's not my thing--"
You cock your head as you look at the sheet music. It's not "classical music", Joe's mind tells you, except by conventions invented by people who like cutting the world up into dry little cookie-cutter shapes. It's music, the way metal (which Joe loves just as much) is music too. And with his eyes and mind you can take apart its architecture.
"But you understand it," Charles says, as though reading your mind.
"Sure!" You tap the score again with your bow. "It opens with a standard fugal exposition, second entrance at the fifth, third on the violin on the tonic. Modulation to the dominant for another round of statements and answers. The middle portion--" You puff out your cheeks thoughtfully. "Well, it's just the theme in the bass, but augmented and in retrograde motion while the piano and violin play a canon." You feel a shadow cross your face.
"What does all that mean?" Father Ed grumbles. "I thought I was just--"
"Well, you wouldn't have noticed," you retort, and color flushes across the padre's brow. "It means with your left hand you play the opening theme backwards, but twice as slow as earlier. Your right hand plays a different melody. I play the same melody, but at a different interval, and come in a measure after you start. It's a single melody, chasing itself on two different instruments while the first melody slowly unspools backwards."
"Ingenious," the old man says.
"No sir, not really," you say. You suddenly have a touch of a headache. "I know why you'd say that, and I'd say it too, normally. And Joe was really proud of it, thought he was so clever there ..." Your voice trails off.
"But?" the old man again prompts.
"But I know why he wrote it that way," you frown. "He was stuck. He didn't know what to do after the second episode. So he just wrote the first theme backwards and slowed it down. It sounds awful by itself!" You chew your lip. "The canon up above disguises it, but even that's just cleverness. He wrote it with the harmony in mind, a little bit at a time, so-- Fuck!" You wince. "It looks like a neat little jigsaw puzzle, but he filed the pieces down so they'd fit."
"Is that what Joe thinks?"
"No sir. That's what I think. It is clever, but I see the seams. He's too proud of it to notice."
"I think it sounds beautiful," Charles murmurs.
"It is," you sigh. "If you listen to it as a whole, and not to the individual parts. Like this part here--" You point at another passage. "The left hand just diddles around uselessly. No offense, Father, you're just playing what he wrote--"
"Something tells me Franz uses his right hand when he diddles around uselessly," the priest cackles. You glare at him.
"But I judge it by its whole," Charles says, and stands with a grunt. "The harmonies are lovely, and each part, however ugly by itself, contributes to the beauty of the whole. That is each part's purpose."
"Yes sir," you say.
That seems to be the end of it, and you return to the bedroom, to change into your own clothes and into your own face.
* * * * *
You're scrubbing the kitchen counter the next morning when Charles comes in. "Don't stop, son," he says. "But I want to talk to you a little bit about yourself."
"Yes sir?" You can't help tensing.
"You carry many things within you. Not only faces, but parts of the Libra Personae. Your first night here, you said something about 'cutting' it out of you."
"Miko said that, sir, and I wouldn't mind."
"I would," he says to your surprise. "The Libra is a bad book--"
"And I've got it inside me!"
"No, you hold pieces of it within you. All of its pieces, I suppose."
"Maybe, sir. Kali says I'm recapitulating it, but I can't sense all of its sigils within me. I think I have to unlock them, like you have to unlock the book to get deeper into it."
"That would make sense."
"But I don't want to! Most of them-- They're horrible!"
"So they may be. Singly, and as they exist in the Libra. But you may have to unlock them. More important, though, is the fact that you hold more than the Libra. You are still yourself, as you showed yesterday, when you criticized Joe's sonata even while wearing his face and using his own mind to understand it. And as long as you are yourself, then the ugliness of the Libra's sigils matters less than you fear. For you provide the harmony that holds them. You govern them, and you are responsible for the beauty or the ugliness they create."
You scrub thoughtfully at a spot on the tile.
"You've spent a lot of time with Rick, son. You know there is a lot about him that is ugly. I hope you don't look at the Stellae and think it is ugly because it contains him."
"No sir! And I don't think Rick is ugly--"
"Because you've seen what he contributes. You hear him in our harmony. It's our arrangement of the music of the spheres."
You're quiet for a very long moment. "I think I understand, sir."
"Then know that that is how I look on you. And remember to look on yourself the same way."
He touches your shoulder. "We'll talk of it often, though you may not realize that's what we're talking about."
To wake from this reverie: "The Boy from Before Everything, Part 2"   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
| Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author