Music from Lullaby by Simon Eugene Music
Commissioned by L.J. Smith
FROM LULLABY: BOOK ONE OF THE LULLABY CHRONICLES
Brionwy the virgin courtesan and her friend Nefer, also a virgin, have just left the Head Dwenna (Duenna) Guntra’s disciplinary rooms with Sansama, Guntra’s chief spy and aide-de-camp. Sansama is elevated at the thought of punishing these two Beauties. But on the way there will be a fateful meeting . . .
Brionwy
Lord Overseer Rajan Adani
Ten blows from a birch rod on the soles of her feet, Brionwy thought. She was terrified, but it was far better of an outcome than what she’d feared.
She felt awful leaving the grieving young mother Aviva with Lady Guntra. Still, what could she have done? Not once but twice Aviva had said things that she must have known would get her banished from the harem and worse.
With a gone feeling in her stomach, she meekly followed Sansama, who was beaming at the thought of punishment, downstairs and through a maze of richly decorated, winding corridors out into the harem gardens.
There was cross-traffic on the Glimmerlight Pathway onto which they emerged, a garden filled with rainbow sweet peas, peonies, and small, dancing fountains of green marble. The cross traffic comprised people so fabulously outfitted that they could only be noble guests of the lord overseer. Male guests visiting the harem, admiring the pavilions and the rockeries, the arcades and the colonnaded gardens with the cedar cages holding songbirds . . . and the sleeping girls.
Brionwy assumed the position of respect, confident that she looked haggard and disheveled enough to be dismissed at once.
The last knot of visitors was passing in front of her, and an empty litter was being carried somewhere by two sturdy eunuchs, when one of the guests, a nightskin man with a silver-and-gold staff and a feathered eye-mask, stopped and spoke to Sansama, who was waiting impatiently.
“Where are these fragile blossoms going so early in the morning, my good dwenna?”
He must be drunk, Brionwy thought. To call Nefer “fragile” was madness and to call herself a “blossom” meant he was blind.
“To be punished, sir,” Sansama replied, hands barely crossed at her chest. “For fighting and disrespect.”
“Wha-at?” in an indolent drawl. “They certainly don’t look disrespectful now.” It was another voice, one that made Sansama jump.
Brionwy was desperately grateful for Nefer’s good eyesight and hasty elbowing. She and Nefer had gone on their knees in an instant, arms crossed so that their hands were resting on opposite shoulders, heads bent so low that their long hair trailed on the cobblestone path.
“Oh—I—I didn’t see you, lord overseer.” Sansama hastily knelt. “It’s certain that they were fighting, my overlord.”
“What could such pretty girls have to fight about?” asked the tipsy guest in the eye mask. Brionwy looked up at him nervously from under the curtain of her hair.
The lord overseer said, “Somebody’s been damaging my property, that’s certain. There’s blood on that one’s arm.” He lifted Nefer’s face by putting a swagger stick under her chin and examined her closely. “Did you make those scratches on your friend?”
“No, my overlord,” Nefer said, with her golden eyes down, but her voice verging on brazen. “I tried to get her away from another girl who was upset and had caught her by the upper arm.”
“Show me your nails, wha-at?” the lord overseer drawled in a dangerously soft voice, and Nefer held out her hands so he could inspect her long, gilded fingernails. “No, the other side. I see. You’re telling the truth; there’s no blood.”
He had a voice both smooth and surprisingly musical. Brionwy felt a jolt as she realized that he was now addressing her. Her heart was beating fast and hard.
“Let’s see your face,” he said, as the swagger stick lifted her chin up, not ungently. “You’ve been weeping, wha-at? Who was it that hurt you? What happened?”
He sounded genuinely interested, almost . . . kind. But there was no mistaking the note of command. Brionwy had no choice but to tell the truth. She kept her eyes focused on the cobblestones.
“Her name is Aviva, my overlord. She wasn’t herself because her new baby died in the night. She . . . well, she made a disturbance. She’s with Lady Guntra now.”
“Hm . . . I’m sure my head dwenna knows how to deal with hysteria.”
Then Brionwy did something totally uncharacteristic, something that astonished herself. Maybe the yanme she’d drunk had a part in it. She suddenly saw a chance and snatched at it before she could even think about what trouble it might land her in.
“My overlord, the Lady Guntra as good as said that Aviva was going to the slave pens,” she babbled. “But Vivi is only seventeen and very pretty. She’s tall and buxom, with long dark hair and fair, fair skin.”
“Wha-a-at? Are my tastes so well known by all the young girls in my household?” The lord overseer spread his hands in surprise and the tipsy guest laughed. Even Sansama forced a sour smile.
Suddenly, the overseer’s voice was no longer playful and languid but sharp and direct. “Are you asking for mercy for this girl Aviva? After she slapped you and scratched your arm?”
No one ever told him she slapped me.
The thought hit Brionwy and snatched her breath away.
He doesn’t seem as evil as I’d imagined, she thought. Yet he must have a marvelous spy system. I’ll bet he knew everything that happened practically as it occurred, even though he was in the court outside the harem. He must know as much as Guntra about this—or more.
Despite herself, she looked up at the lord overseer’s face, and she froze. The world shifted subtly.
The lord overseer was much younger than she had thought. The clean lines of his face gave him a boyish look, as did the thick lock of fair hair that fell over his forehead. Brionwy had assumed that the busts and paintings of him she had seen decorating the harem in the nearly three years since he had taken ownership of Darkhemen had been idealized. They had not. In fact, they had failed to convey the full sensual charm of the half-quizzical, half-arrogant smile that curved his lips.
Neither had the paintings properly captured his eyes, which were well-formed with heavy lids. Now that Brionwy looked straight into them they seemed to shine a pale, singularly penetrating green. They were not eyes that missed much.
The ruffled shirt, the swagger stick, the languid, careless manner all said fop, but the overseer’s eyes said something else. So did the sword buckled at his hip. Brionwy wondered if it was Voidshadow, his legendary blade.
As she watched him, the pupils of his eyes sprang open. It was a reaction of interest, of ardent excitement—or perhaps revelation. It made Brionwy’s heart begin to gallop, and she wondered just what her overlord was seeing.
All at once Brionwy realized that she was shamelessly gazing directly at her owner as if the two of them were equals. Immediately she dropped her eyes, burning with shame.
When she dared glance up through her hair, she saw that he wore a little possessive smile. Brionwy felt as if she couldn’t breathe.
“Hands off this one, I’m afraid,” the lord overseer said to the tipsy guest. “You may have the other girl if you like, after you complete your work. But I think I am about to have a change of taste, the news of which will undoubtedly circulate through my house like wildfire. Let’s have a better look at you,” he added, and gestured for Brionwy to stand. She was still wearing her day clothes, but even these consisted only of a filmy pale blue chemise with a gauzy robe of the same color thrown over it.
There was no arguing with the lord overseer’s commands. Blushing, Brionwy made herself stand on trembling legs, assuming the position of respect automatically, crossing her hands over her breasts.
She wasn’t supposed to do that, any more than a bird in a cage was supposed to flutter in silence when the lord overseer wanted it to sing. She ought to drop the robe so that it fell in a pool of icy blue at her feet and pose gracefully in her translucent chemise.
She was frozen in fear. Her gaze was riveted to the ground as she waited—until she felt the touch of the swagger stick on her shoulder. Then she felt something that surprised her. The stick disappeared and the lord overseer’s gentle hand in its leather glove was there instead. He lifted the robe delicately and slid it down until it formed the correct puddle of blue at her feet.
Brionwy heard a whistle from the tipsy guest. She wondered why he wasn’t going to do his mysterious task, whatever that was—but then she felt a surge of guilt and terror, for the lord overseer had said he could have Nefer after he was finished.
Brionwy’s cheeks were on fire. Her chemise came only to her knees and was tied with blue ribbons at the shoulders. She prayed that her master wouldn’t want those untied as well, although it was no more than his right to see her naked body.
“Now, now. Down, boy,” the lord overseer told the intoxicated guest, laughing, and the man moved back a bit. Then the overseer reached out again and Brionwy’s heart pounded as she bent her head in submission.
But instead of untying the ribbons, the lord overseer was fingering a lock of her hair, peering at it intently.
“Amazing texture,” he said softly. “But the color! Is that natural, wha-at?”
“Yes, my overlordship,” Sansama said. She had stepped into the empty space the tipsy guest had vacated.
There was a moment of silence, and then the lord overseer spoke again. “The color—is that natural?”
Brionwy was bewildered. She couldn’t help looking up and she saw that the overseer had his back turned most explicitly on Sansama and was gazing at her, Brionwy. She opened her mouth—
“Yes, my overlordship!” Sansama said more loudly, implying that his overlordship was stone deaf.
Brionwy saw that arrogant, dangerous mouth tighten. She swallowed convulsively.
Coldly, her master turned his head slightly toward Sansama. “I wasn’t speaking to it, the old crone!”
Brionwy heard a faint gasp and thought she saw Sansama go pasty gray. Terrified, she whispered, “It’s my own color, my overlordship. My mother’s hair was the same. She—she often played the lute for the previous lord overseer.”
“And wha-at color would you call your hair?” The great lord sounded genuinely perplexed. “Orange? Never!”
This time Brionwy’s voice was steadier. “They called her Branwen of the Red-gold Hair. Or sometimes Branwen of the Violet Eyes.”
“Red-gold, red-gold,” the lord overseer repeated, nearly as quietly as Brionwy. Then more loudly, “Look up!”
Startled, Brionwy looked up and found herself studying her master at the closest range yet. His eyes were shining that pale, peculiar green. He stood with absent-minded ease, arms crossed negligently.
Brionwy hated him.
“You could certainly inherit your mother’s eponyms,” he said, and Brionwy noticed that Sansama’s bloodless face looked rigid with perplexity. Brionwy herself wouldn’t have known that the word meant nicknames if it hadn’t been for her visits to the library.
She whispered, “My overlord is very gracious,” and he glanced around as if to show her off—like a pet animal. She understands every word I say!
Brionwy hated him more for that. He wasn’t as stupid or fatuous as that swagger stick might suggest, she thought. He was dangerously intelligent. She was very sure she hated him.
“All right, off we go!” he commanded, with a wave of his hand toward the man in the feathered eye-mask. “You take yours; mine will follow me to the Chambers of Delight.”
Brionwy felt desperate. The tipsy guest was going to breed Nefer, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Tears once again sprang to her eyes—tears of despair.
She heard Nefer speaking up boldly, causing her to tingle with shock. It was such an audacious, forbidden action that for a moment she could not make out Nefer’s words. Then she heard, “If my overlord would permit, Brionwy and I have perfected an entertainment that might please him. She plays the lute—it was her mother’s—and sings as I dance. We never thought to have the joy of performing this dance for my overlordship, but . . .”
“Is that true?” the overseer asked Brionwy, interrupting. She gulped and nodded. What else to do?
“Describe this delectable dance you’ve devised,” the lord overseer invited, although Brionwy had the feeling that it was more enjoyment of his own cleverness—at which they all laughed—than any real curiosity that moved him.
Nefer would have a name on the tip of her tongue as well as a description. But Nefer had not been addressed, and for the older girl to speak out of turn a second time would be disastrous.
For a moment Brionwy’s wits froze in terror. She heard Sansama draw in a breath, and it was as if a warm wind had suddenly melted the ice encasing her.
“It’s the story of a water nymph,” she said, taking inspiration from the many fountains that were bubbling or trickling in the garden around her, “who l-loses her child and mourns its death.” The tiny stutter was the only evidence of the terror she felt.
“I’m afraid you’re out of luck,” the lord overseer said to the tipsy guest, smiling insouciantly. “I’ll have to commandeer both these maidens. Just follow me, if you don’t mind, wha-at?” he added with exaggerated courtesy—as if what they thought mattered—and he began sauntering away, heading north-east up Arching Promenade toward his private quarters in the harem.
Brionwy knows that the Lord Overseer plans to breed her and Nefer that night. Can they save their virginity?
And later:
The Burned Child, Crispy, has outwitted a deadly mutant hunting beast, and now she is creeping outside the harem wall. On the other side the virgin courtesan Brionwy is sitting under an orange tree with her lute. And so an historic meeting is about to take place, a meeting that will rock the foundations of the world Crispy and Brionwy live in . . .
Crispy was feeling reckless. She’d beaten that old hunting beast, and she was full of adrenaline. A few moments later and she had turned around and was pushing through thorny shrubbery. Once behind the bushes, she was in a secret world, a world of gray-green thorns on one side and dark brick on the other. The harem was on the other side of the wall.
She began to crawl down the length of this barren corridor. Presently she saw a good place, with a fine powdering of masonry on the ground, along with a few bits of brick, all lit by a golden light that was shining through a ready-made peephole.
Crispy crawled up to the golden light on her belly, and then slowly raised her head to look through, ready to disappear if anything on the other side looked dangerous.
Beyond the hole was a world outside Crispy’s imagination. There were falls of clear water and lattices covered with hanging curtains of lacy overgrown ferns. There were low-growing shrubs that seemed to come in every color Crispy could imagine. Flowers, Old Useless had called them. Roses and honeysuckles and suchlike. It was the opposite of the Outside, where only mutant plants, often with spines or thorns, or stunted, twisted trees survived.
The whole scene was lit by torches, and by growing lights, which not only allowed the ferns and flowers to thrive but cast a warm glow over everything and seemed to hold away the deepening darkness.
The water in the fountains was perfectly transparent, not like the cloudy muck that pen slaves fought each other to drink. In the center of the courtyard was a tree, not dwarfed but upstanding and brightly lit and decorated—so Crispy thought—with orange balls so heavy that they made the branches droop. A small cedar cage also hung from one of the branches. In the cage was a little hopping feathered shape, and Crispy could just hear a whistling crescendo coming from it.
The last thing she noticed was the girl.
Crispy had been staring at an elaborate stone bench that encircled the tree. On it was a girl unlike any pinkskin Crispy had ever seen. The girl had hair too red to be yellow and too yellow to be red. It stirred in the breeze. She had the palest skin Crispy had ever seen and was making no effort to camouflage it. Nor were her clothes disguised with dirt. They were silvery, and slightly transparent so that you could see her slim, high-breasted body through them.
She was holding something. It was made of very shiny rosy wood with a dark red design in the center. It had a round end that the girl cradled on her lap, and a short neck that she held with the fingers of her other hand. Some kind of music-making device.
Crispy realized her eyes were getting watery from staring. She pulled her head back, trying to get oriented in the real world.
As she sat in the darkening twilight, blinking, she heard deep, plaintive chords that seemed to linger in the air, and high, sweet notes that made her tingle inside. She put her eye to the peephole again and realized that she was hearing music. She’d heard rougher versions of it when people fashioned makeshift instruments in the pens. But those crude inventions had never produced any music like this tune of liquid sweetness. It was the loveliest and the saddest thing Crispy had ever heard. Then the girl added her own voice:
“Gather Here” by Simon Eugene Music
“Gather here, gather here, gather here, my children.
From the dark you have come, to the dark you must go;
Gather here, gather here, gather here, my own.
Water flows and fire glows. So shall you, my children.
Earth, it grows and wind, it blows. So shall you, my own.
Nighttime is very near; very near, my children.
Darkness is very near; very near, my own.
Never fear, never fear, never fear, my children.
All you think, all you are . . .
Will become a shooting star.
Who knows who will wish on you?
Gather near, my own.”
At the end of the song, Crispy came back to herself with a start. She felt a stinging behind her eyelids that Smart Crispy refused to acknowledge. It was a stupid song. Children—fawns—died and went into the darkness every day without anyone ever shedding a tear for them. And what was a shooting star? Stars were semi-mythical lights that Useless said had ruled the night in the old, old days.
Still, she had lost her enthusiasm for singing the mocking jingle that Roach had taught her, even though the conditions were ideal: only one Beauty around, and that one facing the peephole. But what would Roach say if Crispy told her that Crispy had got this far and then not sung the song?
Leave the Beauty alone, Dumb Crispy told her. Go!
You’ll never get another chance like this, Smart Crispy answered angrily. Stay!
Crispy stayed. First, she whistled to get the other girl’s attention. She saw the Beauty, who had been sitting with her head bowed, start and glance around. Then she saw the older girl look right at Crispy’s peephole.
The Beauty didn’t seem frightened. Instead, she got up, carefully placed the instrument on the bench and came closer to Crispy.
“Hello,” she said softly. “Who are you?”
Crispy wasn’t there to get into a conversation. She was staring and thinking. The girl was certainly a real Beauty, with that long, glimmery hair, and those heavy-lashed eyes that shone violet in the growing lights. She was the prettiest pinkskin Crispy had seen, and not abled anywhere at all. She was pathetic.
Everyone knew about Beauties. They lived in unimaginable luxury, never doing a hand’s span of real work, good for only one thing before they were done for, and that was to sit around on perfumed cushions and look pretty or wash each other with scented soaps. They screamed at the sight of a beetle-roach.
Suddenly scalding fury flashed through Crispy. Why should this girl who was wretched and without status of any kind get clean water and hidden lights strong enough to grow colored flower plants? Defiantly, she chanted:
“Look at me; ain’t I a cutie?
Eat me up, ’cause I’m a Beauty!”
She was watching the face of the Beauty, ready to be away if it looked like any kind of trouble was brewing. But the other girl only put her head down and stared at the grass, saying nothing.
According to Roach, the Beauties always had a lot to say about such jingles. Usually they were furious, and Roach had to crawl away quickly, laughing. But when this girl lifted her head, she just looked at Crispy with tears on her thick, dark lashes.
“You must be very unhappy,” she said, although Crispy had to strain to hear the words.
Crispy was feeling farther and farther off-balance. This girl wasn’t doing anything right.
Suddenly the Beauty did something that was more like what Roach said other girls did. She got up and went to the decorated tree and began to pull orange balls off it. They were heavy, Crispy could tell that, but they weren’t a very good choice for missiles to be thrown at the peephole. They would hit the brick wall and bounce off or maybe shatter, depending on what they were made of. Crispy stayed where she was; ready to protect her eyes from shrapnel.
“Here,” the Beauty said, still softly, coming close and kneeling. “If I pull away some more of this crumbling brick, we can get these through the hole.”
“Through? Why?”
“Because it’s the Feast of the Oracle today. Because I want to give you a present. Please. Please take them.”
“Give” was not a word much used among the drudges and outcasts of Darkhemen. Crispy watched the Beauty squeeze one orange orb through the peephole. Then an irresistibly delicious scent floated up to her nostrils. The slightly crushed ball smelled sharp and sweet and cool all at once.
“What are they?” Crispy whispered suspiciously, having to swallow and swallow the saliva that filled her mouth.
“They’re food. Fruit. Oranges,” the other girl said.
“I know they’re orangest, but what’s their name?”
“Oran-ges. They’re named for the color, I guess.” The Beauty smiled.
Crispy didn’t. “Why should you give me anything?” she said in a stern little voice.
“I don’t know. I just wanted to—well, make you happier. You weren’t very happy a minute ago, were you?”
Crispy shrugged. She was still suspicious, and now she was angry and embarrassed, too. The Beauty picked up another fragrant globe.
“Don’t you want to try one? You peel them like this,” she said, and she stripped the outer hide off the ball to reveal a much less attractive interior. But the smell was all around Crispy now, and she had to wipe her mouth with the back of her grimy hand.
“Then you break it into pieces, like this,” the girl said. Clearly seeing that Crispy was still mistrustful, the Beauty took one of the sections and bit into it. “Here, now you have some,” she said, chewing. She pushed the other half through the hole.
Slowly, Crispy put the half-segment in her mouth. The pressure of her tongue caused a little juice to run down her throat. She couldn’t stand it anymore. She bit.
Explosions went off in her mouth. Little juice-filled papules burst and squirted their sweetness onto her tongue. Crispy couldn’t remember ever tasting anything so good. When she swallowed, she could feel the cool tart sweetness all down her throat, refreshing her.
If every slave on the estate had just one of these each day, she thought, they could sail through the hardest work. It was better than being bellyfull. Why didn’t the overseer or guards think of things like that?
“We might as well finish this orange off,” the other girl said, and they did, to Crispy’s bliss. Crispy saw, too, that the Beauty was giving her much more of the fruit than she was keeping for herself—and looking happy at Crispy’s happiness.
“I heard what you sang,” Crispy confided, feeling exalted, and the Beauty smiled faintly and gave Crispy another segment.
Crispy herself had never given anyone something as precious as this fruit. She’d never had it to give. To her, the orange was on a completely different level from the nutritious but terrible tasting graybread she gathered each day.
“What’s your name?” the Beauty said suddenly. Crispy looked up, defensive, but there was no sarcasm in the violet eyes. I guess she just doesn’t know that’s a question you don’t ask right away. Crispy thought, slowly swallowing her anger along with a piece of the fruit.
“Crispy,” she answered briefly.
“Christie?”
“Cris-pee,” Crispy enunciated distinctly, and then less distinctly, as she bit into another orange segment, “Roach thought of it, but I named me myself.”
An expression of horror suffused the Beauty’s face. “Oh, I’m so sor—”
“Sorry? ‘Oh, you poor thing?’ Why? Because I got burned? I got lucky.” Crispy’s voice was hard now. “I lived through two Hunts,” she boasted. “On the first one, I almost got burnt up, but I didn’t. I just got crispy. See?” She pulled at her ragged tunic to better display her baby arm.
The Beauty took a deep breath, as if to keep from crying.
It enraged Crispy. “Doncha get it?” she demanded. “I’m a little bit abled now.”
“You mean you’re a little disabled?”
“What’s that, diss-abled? I’m abled, sort of.” Crispy couldn’t help bragging this one time. “I’ve got friends a lot more abled than me. Roach can get into places you wouldn’t think a fly could. She can walk down walls—” Crispy stopped. Roach wouldn’t like all this talk about her without her permission. Crispy went on the offensive, rubbing her hands together to distribute the juice and dirt evenly. “What’s your name?”
“It’s Brionwy. Brionwy Ceridwen Morgan.”
And so it all begins . . .
The Patriarchal world of the harem is about to be rocked by two females who won’t accept the rules.
Crispy and The Pigeon
The Phoenix Way of Fighting
Nefer
Lyria
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