They were still twiddles, her songs, unlike the beautiful, intricate musical designs that Domick composed. But if she studied hard with him, maybe she could improve her twiddles into what she could honestly call music.
Firmly she turned her thoughts toward the gitar duet and ran through the tricky passages, slowly at first and then finally at time. One of the chords modulated into tones that were so close to the agonized cry of the previous night that she repeated the phrase.
“Don’t leave me alone” and then found another chord that fit, “The cry in the night/Of anguish heart-striking/Of soul-killing fright.” That’s what Sebell had said: that Brekke would not want to live if Canth and F’nor died, “Live for my living/Or else I must die/Don’t leave me alone. /A world heard that cry.”
By the time Menolly had arranged the chords in the plaint to her satisfaction, Beauty, Rocky and Diver were softly crooning along with her. So she worked on the verse.
“Well, you approve?” she asked her fair. “Perhaps I ought to jot it down on something…”
“No need,” said a quiet voice behind her, and she whirled on the stool to see Sebell seated at the sandtable, scribing quickly. “I think I’ve got most of it.” He looked up, saw the startled expression on her face and gave her a brief smile. “Close your mouth and come check my notation.”
“But…but…”
“What did I tell you, Menolly, about apologizing for the wrong things?”
“I was just tuning…”
“Oh, the song needs polishing, but that refrain is poignant enough to set a Hold to tears.” He beckoned again to her, a crisp gesture that brought her to his side. “You might want to change the sequence, give the peril first, the solution next…though I don’t know. With
that melody…do you always use minors?” He slid a glass across the sand so the scribbling couldn’t be erased. “We’ll see what the Harper thinks. Now what’s wrong?”
“Leave it? You can’t be serious.”
“I can be and usually am, young Menolly,” he said, rising from the stool to reach for his gitar. “Now, let’s see if I put it down correctly.”
Menolly sat, immersed in acute embarrassment to hear Sebell playing a tune of her making. But she had to listen. When her fire lizards began to croon softly along with Sebell’s deft playing, she was about ready to concede—privately—that it wasn’t a bad tune after all.
“That’s very well done, Sebell! Didn’t know you had it in you,” said the Masterharper, applauding vigorously from the doorway. “I’d rather dreaded transferring that incident to music…”
“This song, Master Robinton, is Menolly’s.” Sebell had risen at the Harper’s entrance, and now he bowed deferentially to Menolly. “Come, girl, it’s why the Harpers searched a continent for you.”
“Menolly, my dear child, no blushes for that song.” Robinton seized her hands and clasped them warmly. “Think of the chore you just saved me. I came in halfway through the verse, Sebell, if you would please…” and the Harper gestured to Sebell to begin again. With one long arm, Robinton snaked a stool out from under the flat-bottomed sandtable, and still holding Menolly by the hand, he composed himself to listen as Sebell’s clever fingers plucked the haunting phrases from the augmenting chords. “Now, Menolly, think only of the music as Sebell plays, not that it is your music. Learn to think objectively, not subjectively. Listen as a harper.”
He held her hand so tightly in his that she could not pull away without giving offense. The clasp of his fingers was more than reassuring: it was therapeutic. Her embarrassment ebbed as the music and Sebell’s warm baritone voice flowed into the room. When the fire lizards hummed loud, Robinton squeezed her hand and smiled down at her.
“Yes, a little work on the phrases. One or two words could be altered, I think, to heighten the effect, but the whole can stand. Can you scribe… Ah, Sebell, well done. Well done,” said the Masterharper as Sebell tapped the protecting glass. “I’ll want it transferred to some of those neat paper sheets Bendarek supplies us with, so Menolly can go over it at her leisure. Not too much leisure,” and the Masterharper held up a warning hand, “because that fire lizard echo swept round Pern, and we must explain it. A good song, Menolly, a very good song. Don’t doubt yourself so fiercely. Your instinct for melodic line is very good, very good indeed. Perhaps I should send more of my apprentices to a sea hold for a time if this is the sort of talent the waves provoke. And see, your fair is still humming the line…”
Menolly drew out of her confusion long enough to realize that the fire lizards’ hum had nothing to do with her song: their attention was not on the humans but…
“The eggs! They’re hatching!”
“Hatching!” “Hatching!” Both master and journeyman crowded each other to get through the door to the hearth and the fire-warming pots. “Menolly! Come here!”
“I’m getting the meat!”
“They’re hatching!” the Harper shouted. “They’re hatching. Grab that pot, Sebell, it’s wobbling!”
As Menolly dashed into the room, the two men were kneeling at the hearth, watching anxiously as the earthen pots rocked slightly.
“They can’t hatch IN the pots,” she said with a certain amount of asperity in her voice. She took the pot from the protecting encirclement of Sebell’s curved fingers and carefully upended it on the hearth, her fingers cushioning the egg until the sand spilled away from it. She turned to Robinton, but he had already followed her example. Both eggs lay in the light of the fire, rocking slightly, the striations of hatching marking the shells.
The fire lizards lined up on the mantel and the hearth, humming deep in their throats. The pulsing sound seemed to punctuate the now violent movements of the eggs as the hatchlings fluttered against the shells for exit.
“Master Robinton?” called Silvina from the outer room. “Master Robinton?”
“Silvina! They’re hatching!” The Harper’s jubilant bellow startled Menolly and set the fire lizards to squawking and flapping their wings in surprise.
Other harpers, curious about the noise, began to crowd in behind Silvina, who stood at the door to the Harper’s sleeping quarters. If there were too many people in the room, Menolly thought…
“No! Stay out! Keep them out!” she cried before she realized she’d said anything. “Yes. Stay back now,” Silvina was saying. “You can’t all see. You’ve got the meat, Menolly? Ah, so you have. Is it enough?”
“It should be.”
“What do we do now?” asked the Harper, his voice rough with suppressed excitement as he crouched above the egg.
“When the fire lizard emerges, feed it,” Menolly said, somewhat surprised, for the Harper must have been a guest at numerous dragon hatchings. “Just stuff its mouth with food.”
“When will they hatch?” asked Sebell, washing his fingers in his palms with excited frustration.
The fire lizards’ hum was getting more intense: their eyes whirling with participation in the event. Suddenly a second little golden queen erupted into the room, her eyes spinning. She let out a squeal which Beauty answered, lifting her wings higher, but in greeting, not challenge.
“Silvina!” Menolly pointed to the queen.
“Master Robinton, look!” said the headwoman and, as they all watched, the newly arrived queen took her place on the mantel beside Beauty, her throat vibrating as fast as the others.
“That’s Merga, Lord Groghe’s queen,” said the Harper, and then he glanced over his shoulder at the door. “I hope it isn’t an awkward time for him. This sort of summons could be inconvenient…”