Dancing — her feet pumping up and down as if climbing a mountain. Sore, as if climbing a very long time. Hearing the music — treble — main register — reed-pipes — echo...
Pietro!
She looked toward the chair in front of the keyboard. Her husband was playing.
“Melantha! Are you all right?” Pietro shouted. No one but she could hear over the music. “They have condemned you. They said the only way I could save you was to act as if nothing had happened. To play exactly the music they gave me.”
She pulled at the ropes that bound her to the railing. Even though the music was clearly temple music, slow and somber, her feet still longed to dance to its vibrations.
The temple’s vibrations. She saw, in the temple floor below her, stone start to tremble, even without the music of the great bass pipes in the cellar beneath it.
“Pietro!” she shouted. “Look at the people.” She motioned with her head to where the temple congregation was sitting, clouded with incense. Some were fidgeting on their benches. Some were already tapping their feet.
She pulled at her bindings — her hands were slender. One came loose, and she quickly untied the other.
“Pietro,” she shouted. “Start playing faster. Just a little bit. Let them join me.” She leaped from the pump-stand and started dancing.
“Melantha, the priest!”
She looked toward the altar — his and the deacon’s backs were turned. At least for the moment. Then she looked at the congregation.
Some, already, seeing her dance, were beginning to rise. Beginning to be moved to act as they saw her acting.
“The priest can do nothing. Let me tell you about him, Pietro. How he condemned me. He uses the hen’s-bane, not for healing as white witches do, but to manipulate people’s beliefs. To force them to evil. He and the others who serve him here — they are the real witches.”
“Those too, Melantha?”
He looked toward the congregation as well — more now, including even children, were in the aisles, their feet beginning to move to the music.
“Those as well. Yes. Remember the blacksmith’s son — how he betrayed us. Play faster, Pietro!”
Her husband played faster. By now, at the altar, the priest had turned to confront the ones dancing, directing his soldiers to have them sit back down.
The music rose, louder. The stone of the church — not just the floor stones — began to tremble.
“Now, Pietro,” Melantha shouted. She danced to his side, shouting into his ear. “Now pull the great bass stop!”
Pietro pulled the rightmost stirrup out, causing the music to rise to a piercing roar. Underneath, the pipes in the cellar roared back in answer.
“Now, Pietro, how much more time for the wind in the cistern to keep on playing, even without me working the pumps?”
“Five minutes, maybe. Perhaps a bit less. But look! The ceiling...”
She looked up to where the ceiling itself was starting to shake to the music’s vibration, beating in time to the pulse of the now released bass pipes below. Slowly, at first almost imperceptibly, mortar began to crack from between the tiles. Fragments began to shift and fall.
“Pietro — the trapdoor!” She pulled him from the keyboard just as he played a final chord, letting the pressure of the wind keep the pipe-valves open. She ran with him behind the windchest, behind the pipe banks, and down the stairs that led to the cistern.
They ran together through the tunnel that led to the river — even the guards had been ordered upstairs to share in the festival in the temple. They plunged, side by side, into the water as stone crashed behind them.
They swam. They fought the river’s current. They reached the opposite bank, exhausted.
“Melantha,” Pietro whispered to her as he helped her up onto the shore. “Look. Look behind us.”
She caught her breath first, then looked, as he said, back across the water — to where the last of the temple’s great towers were still collapsing, their stone still echoing with the music even though the organ had ceased. Then she looked ahead to where the forest beckoned.
“We’re free now,” she whispered. She raised her voice higher — no need for quietness now. “True, we’ve lost everything — our packs — your music — but we can restore them. My herbs, from this forest. Then later, some healings, some done for nothing, but those who are able to afford it will help us replace your pipes and your tabors. Am I not right in this, my husband?”
She smiled, then she added, once more in a low voice but sweeter than Gant’s had been. “My dancing master?”
Pietro smiled, too, then gazed with her at the sun-dappled road that lay before them. He kissed her softly. “Yes, my forest witch,” he answered.
The Provenance of Death
by D. L. Richardson
The bullets hit her squarely in the chest in a rapid succession that shoved her backward into metal garbage cans. The pain that shot up her spine was inconsequential compared to the weight crushing her chest. She felt as if she were plummeting into a smothering abyss.
From somewhere above, far above, she heard Nick. The tenor of his voice indicated he was yelling.
“McGillis? Talk to me, McGillis!”
Tumbling deeper, she tried to indentify the next sound. Material ripping? Feather-light hands on her.
“Open your eyes, McGillis!”
Warm breath on her face.
“Dammit, McGillis, open your eyes!”
She struggled to answer, to tell him to stop cursing and get the agonizing weight off her chest. But he was slipping away from her.
God, her chest hurt.
Was this what is was like to die?
The lawn glittered in the afternoon sunlight. Mylar balloons bobbed in clutches at the corners of the striped canvas pavilion. Its smaller, matching cousin, corners also tugged at by impatient balloons, stood at right angles. White tables and chairs were strewn across the green expanse with a careful air of spontaneity.
The people wandering the lawn gave off most of the glitter. Clothes tastefully screamed designer. Wrists, fingers, and necklines flashed enough gold and gems to keep a fair-sized jewelry store in business for a year. Even the laughter and floating particles of conversation resonated with an assurance backed by significant bank accounts.
“So this is how the other half lives,” Nick mused, eyes hidden behind Ray-Ban aviators, hands in trouser pockets.
“Some of them anyway.” Liz surveyed the scene from the shade of a large-brimmed straw hat that perfectly matched the navy polka-dotted sheath skimming her body.
“You come to many of these, McGillis?”
“No more than absolutely necessary.” She slipped her hand into the crook of his left elbow. “Let’s see if we can find Mother.”
“Mind if we swing by the food tent?” He indicated the smaller pavilion. “I’d like to see how the rich and richer eat.” They started across the lawn.
“They put their food in their mouths, chew, and swallow just like everyone else.”
He pressed her hand against his side. “Quit frowning, McGillis. You know I think you’re okay. For a rich kid, that is.”
“This is my punishment, isn’t it, for getting you into this?”
Nick laughed.
A spare man of an age somewhere between twenty-five and forty blocked their path. At five feet eight inches tall, he managed to look down his aquiline nose at Nick, who was six four, and Liz, at five eleven. “Mr. Fitzpatrick will see you now.” He walked away, back ramrod straight in a charcoal gray suit.
“And he is?” Nick asked as they followed.
“Emerson. Resident toady.”
As they wove their way around laughing conversations and champagne-filled tulip glasses, Liz paused to chat with people who exclaimed over her or pressed cheeks with her or smiled slyly at Nick. Emerson tapped his foot at the edge of the lawn, a boundary marked by manicured sections of hedge.