When the fleet was in, Yanus would stop by the Little Hall where Menolly held her class. Hed scowl at her from the back of the Hall. Fortunately, hed only stay a little while because he made the children nervous. Once she actually saw his foot tapping the beat; he scowled when he realized what he was doing and then he left.
He had sent the message sloop to Igen Hold three days after the burial. The crew brought back news of no interest to Menolly but the adults went around looking black: something about the Oldtimers and Menolly wasnt to worry her head, so she didnt. The crew also brought back a message slate addressed to Petiron and signed with the imprint of Masterharper Robinton.
Poor old Petiron, one of the aunties told Menolly, sighing and dabbing affectedly at her eyes. He always looked forward to slates from Masterharper, Ah well, itll keep til the new Harper comes. Hell know what to do with it.
It took Menolly a while to find out where the slate was: propped up conspicuously on the mantel in her fathers Records room. Menolly was positive that the message had something to do with her, with the songs that Petiron had said hed sent to the Masterharper. The notion so obsessed her that she got bold enough to ask her mother why Yanus didnt open the message.
Open a sealed message from the Masterharper to a man dead? Mavi stared at her daughter in shocked incredulity. Your father would do no such thing. Harpers letters are for Harpers.
I only remembered that Petiron had sent a slate to the Masterharper. I thought it might be about a replacement coming. I mean
Ill be glad when the new Harper does come, mgirl. Youve been getting above yourself with this Teaching.
The next few days were full of apprehension for Menolly: she conceived the idea that her mother would make Yanus replace her as Teacher. That was, of course, impossible for the same reasons that had forced Yanus to make her the teacher in the first place. But it was a fact that Mavi found all the smelliest, most boring or tedious jobs for Menolly once her teaching duty was done. And Yanus took it into his head to appear in the Little Hall more frequently.
Then the weather settled down into a clear spell and the entire Sea Hold was kept at a run with fish. The children were excused from the Teaching to gather seaweeds blown up by the high tides and all the Hold women set to boiling the weed for the thick juice in the stalks: juice that kept back many sicknesses and bone ailments. Or so the old aunties said. But theyd find good out of any bad and the worst of any blessing. And the worst of the seaweed was its smell, thought Menolly, who had to stir the huge kettles.
Threadfalls came and added some excitement: the fear in being Holdbound while the dragons swept the skies with their fiery breath, charring Thread to impotence. (Menolly wanted to see that grand sight one day, instead of just singing about it, or knowing it was taking place outside the thick stone walls and heavy metal shutters of the Holds windows.) Afterward she joined the flamethrower crews that checked for any possible Thread that might have escaped dragon flame. Not that there was much for Thread to eat on the windswept bare marshes and bogs around Half-Circle Sea Hold. The barren rock palisades that made Half-Circle bore no greenery at all, winter or summer, but it was wise to check the marshes and beaches. Thread could burrow into the seagrass stalks, or slide down the marshberry and seabeachplum bushes, burrow into the roots, multiply and eat anything green and growing until the coast was as bare as rock.
Flame-crewing was cold work, but it was a distinct pleasure for Menolly to be out of the Hold, in the rough air. Her team got as far as the Dragon Stones to the south. Petiron had told her that those stones, standing offshore in the treacherous waters, had once been part of the palisade, probably hollowed with caves like all this stretch of cliff.
The crowning treat for Menolly was when the Weyrleader, Flar, himself, on bronze Mnementh, circled in for a chat with Yanus. Of course, Menolly wasnt near enough to hear what the two men said, but she was close enough to smell the firestone reek of the giant bronze dragon. Close enough to see his beautiful eyes catching all colors in the pale wintry sunlight: to see his muscles knot and smooth under the soft hide. Menolly stood, as was properly respectful, with the other flamethrower crews. But once, when the dragon turned his head in a lazy fashion to peer in her direction, his eyes whirled slowly with their changing colors and she was certain that Mnementh looked at her. She didnt dare breathe, he was so beautiful!
Then, suddenly, the magic moment was over. Flar gave a graceful leap to the dragons shoulder, caught the fighting straps and pulled himself into place on the neck ridges. Air whooshed around Menolly and the others as the great bronze opened his fragile-looking wings. The next moment, he seemed to be in the air, catching the updraft, beating steadily higher. Abruptly the dragon winked from view. Menolly was not the only one to sigh deeply. To see a dragonrider in the sky was always an occurrence: to be on the same ground with a dragon and his rider, to witness his graceful takeoff and exit between was a marvel.
All the songs about dragonriders and dragons seemed inadequate to Menolly. She stole up to the little cubicle in the womens dormitory that she shared with Sella. She wanted to be alone. Shed a little pipe among her things, a soft, whispery reedpipe, and she began to play it: a little whistle composed of her excitement and her response to the days lovely event.
So there you are! Sella flounced into the room, her face reddened, her breath rough. Shed obviously run up the steep stairs. Told Mavi youd be here. Sella grabbed the little pipe from Menollys fingers. And tuning, too.
Oh, Sella. Its an old tune! Menolly said mendaciously and grabbed her pipe back.
Sellas jaw worked with anger. Old, my foot! I know your ways, girl. And youre dodging work. You get back to the kitchen. Youre needed now.
I am not dodging work. I taught this morning during Threadfall and then I had to go with the crews.
Your crews been in this past half-day or more and you still in smelly, sandy clothes, mucking up the room I have to sleep in. You get below or Ill tell Yanus youve been tuning.
Ha! You wouldnt know a tune if you had your nose rubbed in it.
But Menolly was shedding her work clothes as fast as she could. Sella was just likely to slip the word to Mavi (her sister was as wary of Yanus as Menolly) about Menolly piping in her rooma suspicious action on its own. Though Menolly hadnt sworn not to tune at all; only not to do it in front of people.
However, everyone was in a good mood that night: Yanus, because hed spoken to Flar the Weyrleader and because thered be good fishing on the morrow if the weather held. Fish always rose to feed from drowned Thread, and half the Fall had been over Nerat Bay. The Deep would be thick with schools. With Yanus in a good mood, the rest of the sea holders could also rejoice because thered been no Thread on the ground at all.
So it wasnt any wonder that they called on Menolly to play for them. She sang two of the longer Sagas about dragons; and then did the Name-Song for the current wingleaders of Benden Weyr so her Sea Hold would know their dragonmen. She wondered if thered been a recent Hatching that Half-Circle mightnt have heard about, being so isolated. But she was certain that Flar would have told Yanus if that were so. But would Yanus have told Menolly? She wasnt the Harper to be told such things as courtesy.
The sea holders wanted more singing, but her throat was tired. So she played them a song they could sing, bellowing out the words in voices roughened by wind and salt. She saw her father scowling at her, though he was singing along with the rest of them, and she wondered if he didnt want hera mere girlto play mens songs. It galled her because shed played them often enough when Petiron was alive. She sighed at this injustice. And then wondered what Flar would have said if hed known that Half-Circle Sea Hold was dependent on a mere girl for their harpering. Shed heard everyone say that Flar was a fair man, a farseeing man, and a fine dragonrider. There were even songs about him and his Weyrwoman, Lessa.
So she sang them, in honor of the Weyrleaders visit, and her fathers expression lightened. She sang on until her throat was so tight that not a squeak would come out. She wished that someone else could play to give her a rest but, as she scanned the faces of the holders, there wasnt any of them who could beat a drum properly, much less finger a gitar or pipe.
That was why the next day it seemed only logical for her to start one of the children learning the drum rolls. Plenty of songs could be sung just to drumbeat. And one of Soreels two children still in Teaching was sensitive enough to learn to pipe.
Someone, Sella perhaps, Menolly thought bitterly, informed Mavi of Menollys activity.
You were told no tuning
Teaching someone drum beats is not tuning
Teaching anyone to play is Harper business, not yours, mgirl. Just your good fortune Sea Holder is out in the Deep or youd have the belt across your shoulders, so you would. No more nonsense!
But its not nonsense, Mavi. Last night another drummer or piper would have
Her mother raised her hand in warning, and Menolly bit shut her lips.
No tuning, Menolly!
And that was that.
Now girl, see to the glows before the fleet gets back.
That job took Menolly inexorably to the Harpers room: swept clean of everything that had been personal to Petiron. She was also reminded of the sealed message on the Record room mantel. What if the Masterharper were expecting a message from Petiron about the songmaker? Menolly was so very sure that part of that unopened message was about her. Not that thinking about it did Menolly any good. Even knowing it for a fact would be no help, Menolly decided gloomily. But that didnt stop her from going past Yanuss Record room and peering in at the tempting package on the mantel.
She sighed, turning from the room. By now the Masterharper would have heard of Petirons death and be sending a new Harper. Maybe the new man would be able to open the message, and maybe, if it was about her, maybe if it said that the songs shed sent were good ones, Yanus and her mother wouldnt put such restrictions on her about tuning and whistling and everything.
As the winter spun itself out, Menolly found that her sense of loss when she thought of Petiron deepened. He had been the only person in the Sea Hold who had ever encouraged her in anything: and most especially in that one thing that she was now forbidden to do. Melodies dont stop growing in the mind, tapping at fingers, just because theyre forbidden. And Menolly didnt stop composing themwhich, she felt, was not precisely disobeying.
What seemed to worry Yanus and Mavi most, Menolly reasoned to herself, was the fact that the children, whom she was supposed to teach only the proper Ballads and Sagas, might think Menollys tunes were Harper-crafted. (If her tunes were that good in her parents ears, what was the harm of them?) Basically they didnt want her to play her songs aloud where they would be heard and perhaps repeated at awkward times.
Menolly could, therefore, see no harm in writing down new tunes. She played them softly in the empty Little Hall when the children had left, before she began her afternoon chores, carefully hiding her notations among the Harper records in the rack of the Hall. Safe enough, for no one but herself, til the new Harper came, would discover them there.
This mild deviation from the absolute obedience to her fathers restriction about tuning did much to ease Menollys growing frustration and loneliness. What Menolly didnt realize was that her mother had been watching her closely, having recognized the signs of rebellion in her. Mavi didnt want the Hold to be disgraced in any way, and she feared that Menolly, her head turned by Petirons marked favor, was not mature enough to discipline herself. Sella had warned her mother that Menolly was getting out of hand. Mavi put some of that tale down to sisterly envy. But, when Sella had told Mavi that Menolly had actually started to teach another how to play an instrument, Mavi had been obliged to intervene. Let Yanus get one whisper of Menollys disobedience and thered be real trouble in the Hold for the girl.
Spring was coming and with spring, the quieter seas. Perhaps the new Harper would arrive soon.
And then spring did come, a first glorious day. The sweet scents of seabeachplum and marshberry filled the seaward breezes and came in through the opened shutters of the Little Hall. The children were singing loudly, as if shouting got them through the learning faster. True, they were singing one of the longer Sagas, word perfect, but with far more exuberance than was strictly needed. Perhaps it was that exuberance that infected Menolly and reminded her of a tune shed tried to set down the day before.
She did not consciously disobey. She certainly was unaware that the fleet had returned from an early catch. She was equally unaware that the chords she was strumming were notofficiallyof the Harpers craft. And it was doubly unfortunate that this lapse occurred just as the Sea Holder passed the open windows of the Hall.
He was in the Little Hall almost at once, summarily dismissing the youngsters to help unload the heavy catch. Then he silently, which made the anticipation of the punishment worse, removed his wide belt, signaled to Menolly to raise her tunic over her head and to bend over the high harpers stool.
When he had finished, she had fallen to her knees on the hard stone flags, biting her lips to keep back the sobs. Hed never beaten her so hard before. The blood was roaring in her ears so fiercely that she didnt hear Yanus leave the Little Hall. It was a long while before she could ease the tunic over the painful weals on her back. Only when shed got slowly to her feet did she realize that hed taken the gitar, too. She knew then that his judgement was irrevocable and harsh.
And unjust! Shed only played the first few barshummed alongand that only because the last chords of the Teaching Ballad had modified into the new tune in her head. Surely that little snitch wouldnt have done any lasting harm! And the children knew all the Teaching Ballads they were supposed to know. She hadnt meant to disobey Yanus.