The River and the Wind

I ought to mention this is pretty raw still-- I'm revising, heavily; I'd just like your help.  Let me know what to add.  I think the pictures in the fire should go on longer, what do you think?  Thanks,  Raven



If half the stories the Harper told were true, he had to be older than Grandfather.  He only looked about forty as he sat beside the fireplace and twisted the curiously-shaped pins on his gilded instrument. 

The boy lay on his back on the sheepskin rug by the hearth, kicking his heels and watching. 

The Harper always took an inordinate amount of time over tuning.  The boy couldn’t hear the difference, but he liked the carvings on the harp—particularly the lady with golden braided hair and sapphire eyes—and so he was content to wait.

The Harper plucked a string, listened, and gave its ivory pin one final turn.  “What shall it be tonight?”

The boy waited a moment to make sure the Harper was really talking to him.  Sometimes he would look at the boy while he was actually talking to Grandfather, and sometimes he would even talk to Grandmother, although she’d died three winters ago.

When no one else in the snug, oak-panelled room answered, the boy knew that the choice was really his.  They all stared at him, Bridget with her spindle and wool, Maggie sitting apart from the group as she always did, and Tom Miller sitting at Bridget’s feet and leaning his head back against her knee.  And Grandfather, of course, always Grandfather in the heavily carved chair opposite the Harper, puffing at his black clay pipe.  It gave the boy a pleasant sense of importance, and he thought for a moment before speaking.

“I want a new story.”

“There’s no such thing as a new story.”  The Harper turned his green eyes on the boy.  “Perhaps you mean a story you haven’t heard before?”

“It’s the same thing.”

The Harper shook his head slowly.  “Stories have been happening since the first man touched the tips of the first woman’s golden hair, and the same stories happen over and over.  There’s the story of the Sisters—the first woman had a sister, and that story has been telling ever since.”

“I haven’t heard that story,” said the boy.

It was unnecessary.  The Harper was already lost in his harp.  He cradled it against his chest like  a lover, stroking it, and drew music from it as though he were pulling from a very deep well.  The song floated around them as they watched the fire, waiting for the tale to begin.

Flames with blue hearts and scarlet tips danced on the blackened logs.  At first they were just flames, and then they began to have faces, bodies, and eyes.  Two women.

“The first woman was the mother of all men, but she had a sister.  They stalked each other through the good old world, watching the man and tending his children.  The mother of men had hair like flax, but her sister Lillith had hair that shone like a starling’s wing, and so did all her children.  The dark sister’s children were not men.”

The Harper paused, letting the music twine around them as the flames shifted and blurred again, a crack opening up in a piece of wood and a river of boiling sap catching fire in a spurt.

“The sisters both loved the man, but he loved his fair wife and her children more than he loved Lillith.  And so Lillith led the mother of men to the great river, and pushed her in.  She stood there with her hair streaming behind her in the wind and watched as her fair sister died.”

One of the images in the flames looked out at them with her smoldering eyes. 

The Harper never looked at the images the music made.  His fingers flew amid the strings.

“The mother of men floated down the river until she came to rest in the great sea, and her husband never ceased looking for her, building boats to leave his dark wife.  Men spread throughout the world, but Lillith and her children remained in their old home, watching the men but never a part of them.”

The image was no more than ten inches tall, but she was a fully formed woman of fire with smoky hair unfurling behind her and the burning robes of a queen.

“There is no such thing as a new story.”  The Harper’s eyes had drifted to half closed.  “Years went over, centuries, ages, and times.  Two sisters loved the miller’s son.”

A muffled sound came from across the room, but except for his agile fingers the Harper never stirred.

“So again the dark sister pushed the fair one into the river to drown,” said the Harper.  “And again the dark sister watched her as she floated down, down the river to the miller’s pond.  There she came to rest, under the willows and the wide-open sky, and the river washed her bones.”

Fire leapt and changed again as the pitch sizzled to nothing, and now the image of the woman was an image of a woman’s skeleton.  She was still looking at them.

“And that is when the storyteller found her.”  The Harper paused and his eyes gleamed like a cat’s.  “Not me.  A storyteller even older than me, one of Lillith's children.”

The music had stilled until it was only a murmur of chords like the rustle of wind in the reeds.

“The bones were lovely, long, and shone like gold in the yellow moonlight.  Her hair still clung to the skull.  He took the bones of her fingers and toes for the pins of a harp.  He used her long thighbones and sweeping collarbones to build the rest, and her shining hair for the strings.”

The Harper smiled and caressed the shimmering strings.

“He loved the harp, but the only tune she would play was the tune of the river and the wind in the reeds, until the night he played for his supper at the miller’s house and the harp began playing herself.”

The image in the fire had changed, growing until it was one grinning, blazing skull the size of a cauldron.  The music was building, painful. 

Instead of watching the fire-pictures as he usually did, the boy found himself watching the Harper. 

“What happened?”

With a loud pop, the flame reached a knot of pitch and the images in the fire were gone.

The Harper’s cheek brushed the neck of the harp and he sighed.  “The harp told her own tale.  The storyteller vanished into the night.  The dark sister stood there alone and empty as the sea, her children huddled in their beds behind her, looking at her husband.  He left her, to look for the harp…as the dark sister will always be left.”

For the first time the Harper raised his eyes and looked out across the room, his eyes resting on each of them in turn.  Bridget tucked a stray blond curl behind one ear and turned her attention to her spinning.  Tom Miller was the boiling red color that only very fair-skinned people can achieve.

And Maggie tossed her dark hair over her shoulder and met the Harper’s gaze, defiant.  The music stopped.

The boy looked from the Harper to Grandfather and back again.  The Harper rested his forehead against the harp, eyes closed.  The boy thought he saw the Harper shiver, even though they were so close to the fireplace.

“I don’t understand.”

Grandfather knocked out his pipe.  He was watching the Harper, not the boy. 

“There is no such thing as a new story,” said Grandfather.



Author’s note: Based on the traditional ballad “Wind and Rain”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twa_Sisters