The chore sections were at work in the courtyard, sweeping, cleaning, raking and doing the general heavy drudgery to keep the Harper Hall in order. She was aware of furtive glances in her direction but affected not to notice them.
The door to the cot was half-closed when she reached it, but Menolly clearly heard the voices raised inside. “She’s an apprentice,” Pona was shouting in strident and argumentative tones. “He said she was an apprentice. She doesn’t belong with us. We’re not apprentices! We’ve rank to uphold. She doesn’t belong in here with us! Let her go where she does belong…with the apprentices!” There was a vicious, hateful edge to Pona’s voice.
Menolly drew back from the doorway, trembling. She lay flat against the wall, wishing she were anywhere but here. Beauty chirped questioningly in her ear and then stroked her head against Menolly’s cheek, the perfumed salve a sweetness in Menolly’s nostrils.
One thing was certain: Menolly did not want to go into the cottage for her pipes. But what would happen if she went to Master Jerint without them? She couldn’t go into the cot. Not now. Her fair swirled about, deprived of their customary landing spot by the closed shutters of Menolly’s disputed room, and she wished with all her heart that she could consolidate her nine fire lizards into one dragon and be born aloft, and between, back to her quiet cave by the Dragon Stones. She did belong there because she’d made it her place. Hers alone! And really, what place was there for her in the Harper Hall, much less the cot? She might be called an apprentice, but she wasn’t part of their group either. Ranly had made that plain at the dining table.
And Master Morshal didn’t want her to “presume” to be a harper. Master Domick would as soon she disappeared, for all he’d been willing to teach her. She had played well for him, scarred hand and all. She was certain of that. And she was clearly a far better musician than the girls. No false modesty prompted that evaluation.
If her only use at the Harper Hall was to instruct people on being bogus seamen or turning fire lizard eggs, someone else could as easily perform those services. She’d managed to alienate more people than she’d made friends, and the few friends she’d acquired were far more interested in her fire lizards than they were in her. Briefly she wondered what welcome she would have received if she hadn’t brought the fire lizards or the two eggs with her. Then there would have been no fire lizard song for the Masterharper to rewrite. And he’d apologized to her for that. The Masterharper of Pern had apologized to her, Menolly of Half-Circle Sea Hold, for improving on her song. Her songs were what he needed, he said. Menolly took in a deep breath and expelled it slowly.
She did have music in the Harper Hall, and that was important! There might not be girl harpers, but no one had ever said there couldn’t be girl song-crafters and that mightn’t be a bad future.
Not to think of that now, Menolly, she chided herself. Think what you’re going to do when you appear before Master Jerint with no pipes. He might seem absent-minded, but she doubted very much if he really was. The pipes were in her room, on the little press, and nothing, not even obedience to, and love of, the Masterharper would force her into the cot while those girls were raging on about her.
Beauty took off from her shoulder, calling to the other fire lizards, and when they were all midair above her, they disappeared. Menolly pushed herself away from the cot’s wall and started back to the Harper Hall. She’d think of something to say to Master Jerint about the pipes.
The fire lizards exploded into the air above her, squealing so shrilly that she looked up in alarm. They were grouped in a tight cluster, hovered just a split second while her eye took in their unusual formation, and then they parted. Something dropped. Automatically she held out her hands, and the multiple pipes smacked into her palms.
“Oh, you darlings. I didn’t know you could do that!” She clutched the pipes to her, ignoring the sting of her hands. Only the stiffness in her feet prevented her from dancing with the joy of relief and the discovery of this unexpected ability of her friends. How clever, clever they were, going to her room and bringing her the pipes. No one could ever again say in her presence that they were just pets and nuisances, good for nothing but trouble!
“The worst storm throws up some wood on the beach,” her mother used to say; mostly to soothe her father caught holdbound during a storm.
Why, if she hadn’t needed the pipes so badly, and if the girls hadn’t been so nasty, she’d never have discovered how very clever her fire lizards could be!
It was with a considerably lightened heart that she entered Master Jerint’s workshop. The place was unexpectedly empty. Master Jerint, bent over a vise attached to his wide and cluttered worktable, was the only occupant of the big room. As she could see that he was meticulously gluing veneer to a harp shaft, she waited and waited. And waited until, bored, she sighed.
“Yes? Oh, the girl! And where have you been this long time? Oh, waiting, I see. You brought your pipes with you?” He held out his hand, and she surrendered them.
She was a bit startled by the sudden intensity of his examination. He weighed the pipes in his hand, peered closely at the way she had joined the sections of reed with braided seaplant; he poked a tool into the blow and finger holes. Muttering under his breath, he brought the pipes over to the rank of windows and examined them minutely in the bright afternoon sun. Glancing at her for permission, he arranged his long fingers appropriately and blew on the pipes, his eyebrows arching at the pure clear tone.
“Sea reeds? Not fresh water?”
“Fresh water, but I cured them in the sea.”
“How’d you get this dark shine?”
“Mixed fish oil with sea grass and rubbed it in, warm…”
“Makes an interesting hint of purple in the wood. Could you duplicate the compound again?”
“I think so.”
“Any particular type of sea grass? Or fish oil?”
“Packtail,” and despite herself, Menolly winced at having to mention the fish name. Her hand twitched. “And shallow-water sea grass, the sort that clings to sandy bottoms rather than rock.”
“Very good.” He handed her back the pipes, gesturing for her to follow him to another table where drum rings and skins of varying sizes had been laid out, as well as a reel of the oiled cord necessary to secure drum hides to frame. “Can you assemble a drum?”
“I can try.”
He sniffed, not critically—reflectively, Menolly thought—and then motioned for her to begin. He turned back to his patient woodworking on the harp.
Knowing that this was likely another test, Menolly examined each of the nine drum frames carefully for hidden flaws, for the dryness and hardness of the wood. Only one did she feel worth the trouble, and the drum would be a thin, sharp-sounding instrument. She preferred a drum with deep full notes, one that would cut through male voices in a chorus and keep them on the beat. Then she reminded herself that here she would scarcely have to worry about keeping singers in time. She set to work, putting the metal clips on the frame edge to hold the skin. Most of the hides were well cured and stretched, so that it was a matter of finding one the proper size and thinness for her drum frame. She softened the chosen hide in the tub of water, working the skin in her hands until it was flexible enough to draw across the frame. Carefully, she made slits and skewered the hide to the clips, symmetrically, so that one side wasn’t pulled tighter than another lest it make an uneven tone along the outside of the drum and a sour one in the center. When she was sure she had the hide evenly placed, she lashed it around the frame, two fingers from the edge of the surface. When the hide dried, she’d have a taut drum.