From the Ashes

Ryna matched him an octave higher, trilled slightly around it, sailed into the upper registers, found another note, and held it.

Her father responded with a note four steps down, and after a moment launched into a wild, spirited Gypsy tune that he had recently picked up. It was simplicity itself to do variations on and still return to the original melody in snatches. Ryna had been working hard to find something that could be played in a round with it and just now, just now, she realized what would work. She saw his eyes widen as she waited a phrase, then wailed out the sweet accompaniment, saw his approving grin as he recognized the tune, and saw no more as she lost herself to the music. Mist crept over the site with the fading of light, wrapped caressing tendrils around their ankles, silent and dark in the moonless night. And yet – and yet, she felt that they were not alone, felt unearthly passers-by pause in their wanderings, felt them draw closer to the music as humans would move nearer a campfire – or moths, a candle.

The fiddles cried like nightbirds, wailed like spirits, sang like faeries at a feast. With no drums to bind them to the earth, melodies swirled and danced among the invisible watchers, soaring to the stars as they twisted in a breeze that did not ruffle leaves nor make pennants ripple quietly. For a Magickal while Pendragon was theirs, and every creature that had never drawn breath in this realm paid rapturous heed to the spell they wove. In the back of her mind, Ryna idly wondered where and when they would be when the mist cleared. The song was no longer the one with which they had begun. It was no longer anything that had ever before existed, or ever would again, each moment carrying surprises and beauties meant not for mortal ears, though pulled from mortal hands.

Something bright sparked beyond the benches, but Ryna was too lost to her muse to pay it much heed as slowly, softly, the music circled home, Tremayne pulling again that first, clear note, Ryna’s an octave higher, until the last echo – lasting a bit longer than perhaps it should have – faded into realms unknown.

Father and daughter stared at one another, breathing ragged, as one by one the watchers broke from their trances and slipped into the darkling night. When the last presence had like a star winked away, Ryna started to speak, but Tremayne put fingers to her lips and shook his head, replaced his fiddle, and padded quietly back up between the two great seas of benches. His partner hurried after, pausing briefly when a flash of silver caught her eye. She bent silently to take it up before continuing, footsteps soft on beaten ground, to her vardo where she fixed tea for the both of them. Only then did she examine what she had found.

Her heart nearly stopped.

"Arbryna?"

"Uh?" She blinked up, uncomprehending, at him.

"What did you find?"

"It– it’s my bracelet, Tata. The silver one with the glass emeralds that you gave me for my birthday – the one I lost. I found it halfway up the path between the benches."

Many people would have told her that maybe she’d dropped it there. But Tremayne wasn’t most people, and with one look in his brown-green eyes, Ryna saw truth.

Tremayne had felt them there, too.

Someone (or something) had loosely tied a thin green ribbon with gold embroidery around the bracelet. She unbound it and removed her fiddle long enough to tie the gift firmly around its scroll, then turned her inspection to the bracelet. The small etching of a fiddle bow she’d done on the inner band to mark it was there, but so was something else: the perfect imprint of a tiny, tiny hand.