a ballad
O minstrel, why do you play so sad,
Why so sad, I pray thee?
I pine away for a sweet young maid
A servant to a lady
A servant to a lady
One morning from the road I strayed
And wandered through a woodland fair
Then from within a sunlit glade
I heard a song upon the air
The singer sat beyond the stream
And washed her garments free of grime
Her hair alight with sunrise gleam,
She scrubbed, and sang to keep the time.
a story in four parts
“Tsssss!”
The young girl looked up from the fireplace she was stoking and glanced about the room for the source of the voice. The room, as she had expected, was still empty. Mistress Adeshi wouldn’t retire to her bedchambers for a while yet, and no one else had a reason to be in the Mistress’s rooms besides the one readying them for her arrival.
She wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of a sooty hand and continued to rake together the last of the glowing coals.
“Tsssss, Tavi!”
Louder now, the direction of the voice was clearer—the window. Someone called to her from outside.
“Tavi!”
No, not just someone—she recognised the voice at last. Dana. Her brother.
Tavi shoved the brush and poker aside and stood. She checked her skirts and her feet for excess soot before scurrying across the tiles to the open window. Careful not to leave black fingerprints on the sill, she leaned over and peered into the garden. “Dana?”
Read More »I’ve put my little quilt of words to music. Please enjoy!
Read More »Tangon, apprentice scribe, had fingers long and quick like spiders’ legs, spattered with dark blue ink and incredibly, impossibly precise. That was a requirement for the job, you see. One couldn’t risk tarnishing the names of the great scholars and inestimable poets by ascribing to them things they had not said. Every word, every letter had to be perfect—even the last curlicue of the most insignificant little O.
And the quicker Tangon copied them, the quicker the sundial marks would pass until he could head home.
So his fingers flew across fresh parchment as he transcribed his master’s scrawled notes into a more legible form. Irregular angles were made more uniform, lumpy cursive was smoothed into submission, questionable conjugations were tweaked into perfect clarity. Soon another man’s words were organised in even lines, every tail of every L looped through its neighbours like a twist of beribboned curls.
He had no time to admire his handiwork. The ink had not yet dried when Master Golvad called him to a different task.
“Have you quite finished, Tangon? Come! I must dictate a letter.”
Read More »a lullaby
Close your eyes and rest, my child
Let this song surround you
Let me weave a quilt of words
Soft and warm around you.
Daylight’s final drop is poured
Drink, to soothe your crying
May it sweeten all your dreams
Pure and satisfying.
Read More »The wind may weep between the trees
The wolf may mourn beneath the skiesDon’t listen to the wind, my child
Don’t listen to the wolf, my child
Hear my song and dream, my child
Soft, and close your eyes.
A crowd had already gathered. Tälin could hear their chatter outside the canvas lean-to, although it was too far back to make out any distinct words. But the crowd was closer, thicker than usual. Evren had done a good job tonight, getting them all to come.
Tälin’s heartbeat fluttered nervously. More people in the audience meant more scills in the sweep of Evren’s skirt – but it also made it more likely that they’d be found and raided. Although the twins had an escape plan up their sleeves, she didn’t want to find out what would happen if they had to pit their fire against swords.
Someone pushed aside the canvas flap and Tälin looked up. Hrian, the shorter of the twins, stood in the doorway, a dancing flame balanced in his left hand. It cast a wavering shadow that competed with the one cast by the lamp hanging from the tent roof. “You shielded yet?” he asked.
“Sulsevo,” Tälin said. Her eyes and fingers flashed scarlet. “Now I am.”
Read More »a song
1
In first of years, in sunlit lands,
Before the gods communed with men,
They fashioned stories with their hands
And knew no whit of word or pen.
Each mother’s child was mute of tongue
However oft they worked or played;
No name was said nor song was sung
Wherever they their homes had made.
2
In first of years, as night would fall,
The children danced in leaf and fir,
But one was only half as tall
As all her older brethren were.
They would not let her venture thus
Into the woods till she was grown
And so in sunset luminous
She stayed behind and danced alone.
“Come on, Hrost.” Dwinnen grabbed her little brother’s hand and pulled him away from the stray cat he was attempting to lure with a bit of bacon rind. “You don’t want it following us.”
Hrost stumbled to his feet, the rind clutched protectively in his fist. “Yes I do,” he said. “Cats are friendly. They catch mice.”
“Well, we don’t have any mice for it to catch.”
That much was sound logic and Hrost didn’t have a counter for it. He puzzled it over in silence as he trotted at his sister’s heels, glancing back every few steps to check if the black-and-grey feline would come after them. To his delight, it wasn’t long before a set of whiskers appeared at the edge of the alley guard stone, followed by luminous round eyes. The cat slunk around the stone and, sticking to the wall closer than a shadow, began to pad after them.
Read More »a ballad for children
I went walking one day to the market,
With money enough for a treat (to eat).
I had just bought a basket of pastries
When commotion arose in the street.
A man stood out front of the baker’s,
A bright gilded cage by his side (with pride).
I joined the crowd crowding around him
As to everyone gathered he cried:
(Refrain)
The great and glorious gliff!
The rarest and finest of things (with wings) –
The great and glorious gliff!
What luck to her owner she brings!
Come see the gleam of her feathers!
Come hear the bliss of her song!
You won’t find a finer bird in the world,
Though you search it all your life long.
The delegation from the North had brought wedding gifts with them, to acknowledge the honour it was for the king to have chosen himself a wife from among their people.
For the queen mother, goblets of moulded glass, their stems glittering red like rubies. “For your hospitality in welcoming our sister into your family,” they said. “You show us a great honour.”
The queen mother accepted the gift with a gracious nod, but her smile was thin and her gaze as sharp as broken ice.
For the new queen, a cloak of deep red velvet, the hem embroidered with swallows’ wings in golden thread. “Like the swallow, may you make the South your home,” they told her, “though its summer be regrettably brief.”
The new queen pulled the cloak gratefully around her shoulders and laughed.
Read More »
An Inkling Apprentice 