Garden
Songs
By
Lazette
Gifford
Once
upon a time a farm boy with the voice of an angel and the ego of a god sang
before a fae lady he met on the road. He was wandering to escape a day's farm
work with his father and she was traveling to see the queen of Eliria.
The
boy didn't belong on the farm, walking behind a track of stubborn oxen who
would never appreciate his voice. Oh
yes, she thought him quite good, but also too smug.
"You
have a lovely voice. Your voice shall
always be lovely," she said, a foretelling that she did not offer to mortals. He nodded as though he had always known the
truth. "But what will you do with
it, boy?"
"I
will travel the land, sing at the court and win the praise of even the
rulers."
"You
think so, do you, child?"
"That's
my future."
"And
if you don't win such fame, will you come back here and sing in your
village?"
"I
will not come back to this place until I have the fame given to me by the
sovereigns of the land," he said, his head lifted.
"So
be it."
She
walked away, down the path and into the forest.
He turned towards home . . . and couldn't go there. He couldn't go back.
So,
at the age of thirteen, he started a long journey. The pretentiousness of the child quickly
disappeared as he sang for scraps and slept on the streets. It was a long ways from his village to the
castle. . . .
But
he made it.
At
nineteen, Loren played for the Queen of Eliria on her sixty-fifth birthday. He had a wonderful voice and deft fingers drew
the sound of a gentle breeze or a crashing storm from his lyre. In taverns, men often forgot their ale to
listen, enraptured by the sound of his voice and the stories he sang to them.
But
the Queen sighed with boredom, looked past him towards her guests, and yanked
at a thread on her sleeve, obviously anxious to have the music over.
Loren
skipped two versus and sang the last of a ballad he had written for her. She nodded as the others clapped. With a wave of her hand, she sent him out of
the room.
The
Castilian handed him a bag of coin, his cloak and his lute case and escorted
him to the door.
Loren
stood outside in the courtyard, watching as groomsmen curried the horses of
nobles. He could have played for them and
they would have forgotten their work.
He
wanted to go home. He had been a
pretentious boy when he met the fae woman.
The king had died. The Queen. . .
.
"She's
tone deaf, you know."
He
looked up, startled. A young man
dressed in rich cloth of greens and gold stood on the walkway.
"Pardon?"
he said.
"The
Queen. She's tone deaf. More than that,
she's nearly entirely deaf. And it
annoys her that others take pleasure in something she cannot. You shouldn't take the dismissal so
badly."
"She
couldn't hear me. There's no hope,
then." Never go home.
"Come
sit in the garden," he said.
"No, it's all right. I'm
Prince Pierce, the Queen's grandson. I
pretty much get to do what I like."
He smiled, and guided Loren off the tree-lined path and into a garden of
flowers, fountains and benches. Loren
gratefully settled on the nearest and found he still had the lyre in hand. He looked at the instrument as though it had
betrayed him.
"You
are acting as though dismissal from the queen is the end of your career. I know you're too good to just give up music."
"Give
up music?" The idea shocked him.
"No, of course not."
"Good,
because she's not the one you should be playing for. I'm holding a party tomorrow night, here in
the garden. I'd like you to come and
play for us. I pay well."
He
started to feel better. The mention of more coin didn't hurt, either. Living in the capital proved to be far more
expensive than he'd expected -- but when he could get jobs, they paid very well.
"I
would be honored to play at your gathering," he said and finally had the
grace to bow his head to this prince.
"Excellent. And the good news is that people come to my
parties because they want to, not because they have to."
So
he unexpectedly came back to the palace the next night and played in garden
where the Prince's friends gathered. He
played at the palace often over the next few years, even at the old Queen's
funeral where he sat beneath the statue they erected at her monument. Irony, that.
But he sang gentle songs, because she had been a kind woman in her own
way. And sometimes, in the years to
come, he would go to that tomb and sit at her feet to play, just for her. He thought maybe she might hear him now.
He
sang at the coronation of the new king, Pierce's father. He wasn't a man of music, though, and spent
almost all of his four year reign at the military camp where he'd lived before
he ruled.
He
sang for Pierce's coronation, his wedding, and at every ball thereafter. For the next three years he lived at the
castle though he often slipped into the city to play at the taverns for free.
One
day the fae sent ambassadors to the king to discuss trade. Among them stood a tall, serene woman with a
familiar face. She crossed to Loren and
shook her head in wonder.
"So
here you are. I watched for you to pass
by the forest again. The curse lifted
years ago, you know. Why didn't you go home?"
He
looked at her and smiled. "Because
I am home."
The
End
994 words
Find
more of the Forward Motion Flash Friday Group here: http://www.fmwriters.com/flash.html
No comments:
Post a Comment