Enough of this, she told herself severely. She imagined that both Trag and Lanzecki were watching, then struck the shelf with the tone wedge. Sound poured over her like tsunami. Every bone and joint reverberated the note. Her skull seemed to part at its seams, her blood pulsed like a metronome in time with the vibrations. Echoes were thrown back to her from the other side of the claim and, oddly soured, from crescent valley.
“Cut! You're supposed to tune your cutter to the note and cut!” Killashandra shouted at herself, and the echo shouted back.
Nothing as devastating as this had occurred when Moksoon had sung for note. Was it because she was sensitive to the black, not pink, nor attuned to his claim? He had also not been standing in the center of his claim but on granite. Nor was this experience like the scream of retuned crystaclass="underline" there was no agony, no resentment in that glorious resonance, overpowering as it was.
She did not have to strike the crystal again. The A was locked in her head and ears. She hesitated just once more as she steadied the infrasonic blade to make the first incision. As well, for only an unconscious resolve, an obstinacy that she had never had to invoke, kept her cutting. Sound enveloped her, an A in chords and octaves, a ringing that made every nerve end in her body vibrate in a state that wasn't painful, was oddly pleasurable but curiously distracting. She felt the blade sound darken and pulled it out. She made the second vertical cut just before Keborgen's mark. This block would be shorter than the others and narrower. It couldn't be helped. She gritted her teeth against the coursing shock as blade met crystal and sound met nerve. Her hands seemed to respond to the endless hours of drill under Trag's direction, but she didn't consciously tell herself to stop the second vertical cut. Some practiced connection between hand and eye stopped her. She let that instinct assist her in making the horizontal slice that would sever the crystal from the vein. Its cry was not as fierce.
Carefully, she put the cutter down, awed by the thread thin separation she had caused. With hands still shaking from the effort of guiding the cutter, she tipped the rectangle out and held it up. Sun caught and darkened the oblong, showing to her wondering eyes the slight deviation from a true angle. She couldn't have cared less and wept with joy as the song of sun-warmed black crystal, now truly matte black in response to heat, seeped through her skin to intoxicate her senses.
How long she stood in awed thrall, holding the rectangle into the sun like an ancient priestess, she would never know. A cloud, one of the few that day, briefly obscured the light and broke the song. Killashandra was conscious then of the ache in her shoulders from holding weight aloft and a numbness in fingers, feet, and legs. She was strangely unwilling to release the crystal. “Pack crystal as soon as you have cut.” The echo of Lanzecki's advice came to her. Moksoon, too, had packed as soon as he had cut. She remembered how reluctant the crazed old Singer had seemed to release the rose into the carton. Now she appreciated both advice and example.
Only when she had snuggled the crystal block into its plastic cocoon did she realize her debilitation. She leaned, drained of strength, against the crystal wall and sank slowly to the floor, marginally aware of the murmuring crystal against which she rested.
“This will never do,” she told herself, ignoring the faint, chimed echo of her voice. She took a food packet from her thigh pouch and mechanically chewed and drank. The terrible lethargy began to ease.
She glanced at the sky and realized that the sun was dropping to the west. She must have spent half a good clear day admiring her handiwork.
“Ridiculous!”
The scoffing “d” sound spat back at her.
“I wouldn't mock if I were you, my friend,” she told the claim as she eyed the cuts for the second block. She'd want to get this one squarer or she'd end up with a suspiciously symmetrical puddle as Keborgen had done.
She didn't need to tap for pitch the A was seared into her mind. She turned on and adjusted the cutter, nerving herself for the crystalline response. She was almost overset by the pure, unprotesting note given back. Immensely relieved, she made the two vertical cuts, watching to keep the cutter blade straight. She made the third, horizontal slice and cursed herself for unconsciously following the pattern of her first, uneven cut. Sensation palpably oozed off the cut black, but this time she knew crystal tricks and quickly buried it beside its mate in the carton.
The third crystal ought to have been the easiest. She made the first cut deftly, pleased with her expertise. But the vertical incision to sever the rectangle from the face went off the true pitch. She halted, peered in at the grayish, pale brown mass, touched it and felt, not tactilely, but through the nerves in her finger tips that she was cutting on flaw. If she moved a half centimeter out . . . The block would not match the other two but the crystal cried clear. She turned it over and over in her hands, her back carefully to the sun, inspecting the block for any other sign of flaw. This was, she told herself sternly, an excuse to caress it with fingers that delighted in the smooth, soapy texture, the whisper of sound, the sensations that reached her nerves as delicate as . . . as Lanzecki's kiss in her palm?
Killashandra chuckled, her laughter tinkling back from all sides. Lanzecki, or recollections of him, would seem to constitute an anchor in this exotic arena of sound and sensation. Would he appreciate that role? And when, or if, she returned to Lanzecki's arms, would she remember crystal in them?
Thoughts of him effectively blotted the lure of the third rectangle that she packed away. She was then aware of a coolness, a light breeze, where before the air had been warm and still. Looking westward, she realized that she had once more been crystal – tricked. The day was almost over, and she'd only three black crystals to show for sixteen hours' work – or mental aberration. There was a whole side to be cut.
Obviously there was much about the cutting of crystal that could not be explained, programmed, or theorized. It had to be experienced. She hadn't acquired enough tips or tricks or insights from watching Moksoon. She had learned a good deal from observing Keborgen's cutting. Intuition suggested that she would never learn all there was to the cutting of crystal. That ought to make a long life as a Singer more eventful. If she could just handle the frustration of losing hours in contemplation of her handiwork!
The three crystals were quiescent in their packing case, but her hands lingered on it as she fixed the stowage webbing. She assembled a large hot meal for herself and a beaker of Yarran beer. Taking food and drink outside, she strode to the dip and seated herself on a convenient boulder.
She watched the sun set on her claim and the moons rise. The cooling crystal cried across the blind valley that separated them.
"You had your way – " and Killashandra stopped her mocking sentence as her first word was echoed back from the newly exposed crystal. "You who – " And the vowel came back to her, in harmony. Amused by the phenomenon, she pitched a second "you who" a third lower and heard it chime in with the faint reverberations of the first. She laughed at her whimsy. Crystal laughed back. And the first stirrings of the night breeze as great Shankill moon rose brought counter harmonies to her solo.
She sang. She sang to the crystal; the wind learned the tune, though gradually the crystal chorus died as the last sun warmth left it, and only the wind softly repeated her lyric line.