Songmaster (12 page)

The vigil lasted all night. Esste watched as Ansset drove the splinters of the door into his nose and brow and cheeks until blood flowed. She watched as he tried to grip and tear the stone until his nails broke. She watched as he slammed his face into the rock walls until he bled and she feared he would cause permanent damage. It seemed he would never sleep. And in between the self-mutilation he would, in a wooden, controlled voice, his body held as rigid as he could hold it for all the trembling, say, “Now please. Now please. Help me.” There was Control, but that was all. No music. His songs were gone.

Just for the moment, she told herself. Just for now. His songs, his good songs, will come back if I just wait for this to run its course, like a fever that has to break.

Morning came and Ansset was still awake. He had stopped thrashing, and Esste went to the machines for food. She set it in front of him, but he did not eat. She reached a piece of it to his mouth, but instead of taking the food he bit her, he set his teeth into her fingers with all his strength. The pain was excruciating, but Esste’s Control was not even tested by this—physical pain, at her age, was the least of her weaknesses. She waited patiently, saying nothing. Blood from her fingers drooled out of Ansset’s mouth for minutes as both silently looked at each other. And it was Ansset who made the first sound, a moan that sounded like the slow breaking of rock, a song that spoke only of agony and self-hatred. Slowly he released his bite on her fingers. The pain rushed up her arm.

Ansset’s eyes went blank. He did not see her.

Esste went to the machine and covered her fingers with salve. She was exhausted after a night of no sleep, and Ansset’s savage bite had disturbed her far more than the mere pain. I will stop. This has gone too far, she decided. Her hand shook, despite Control, despite the calm she tried to enforce on herself. I can’t do this anymore, she said silently.

But for twelve days she had been silent, and sound did not come easily to her throat. Came with such difficulty, in fact, that as she looked at Ansset’s blank face she could not make any sound come. Instead she lay down on her blanket, unused that night, and slept.

She awoke to the sound of wind howling through the High Room. It was cold, icy even under the blanket. It took only a few moments for her to realize what that meant. She leaped up from the floor. It was afternoon, but dark with wind and clouds. The clouds were so low that mist trailed into the High Room with every gust of wind, and the ground was invisible. Every shutter of every window was open, some of them banging against the stone walls outside.

He has jumped from the tower. The thought screamed in her mind, and she gasped aloud.

Her gasp was answered by a moan. She whirled and saw Ansset lying on the table, curled up with the thumb and little finger of his right hand in his mouth, the other fingers pressed into his forehead and eyes like an infant’s involuntary pose. The relief that swept over her forced her to lean on the table, taking her breath in great gasps. Any illusion of Control was gone now. Ansset had won, forcing her to break before her task was completed.

The cold forced her to take action again. She went to the windows and closed them all, leaning out over the sills to catch the handles of the shutters and pull them closed. The mist was so dense that it seemed to swallow up her hand as she reached into it. But inside she was singing. Ansset had not jumped.

The windows closed, she returned to the table, and only now realized that Ansset was asleep. He trembled with cold and, probably, exhaustion, but he had not seen her panic, her relief, had not heard her gasp. Her first thought was gratitude, but she realized that it might have been good for him to see that fear for his safety could overcome even Esste’s iron reserve. It is as it is, she told herself, and looked in his left hand for the key to the shutters, found it, and went around and locked them all, then replaced the key on the chain which had fallen to the floor after he took it from her neck in her sleep.

She went to the computer and turned up the heat in the High Room. Instantly the stones under her feet grew warm.

Then she took her blanket and Ansset’s and covered the boy where he lay on the table. He stirred slightly, moaned and whimpered, but did not awaken.

Ansset’s face was stiff when he awoke. He was not cold anymore. His head ached, and where the splinters had been driven into his face, the stinging was a constant undercurrent. But he felt something cool touching his face, and wherever it touched, the stinging went away. He opened his eyes just a little. Esste leaned over him, dabbing salve on his face. For the moment Ansset forgot everything bad and carefully said to her, “I didn’t jump. They told me to jump and I didn’t.”

She said nothing. She said nothing at all, nothing at all, and her silence was a blow that knocked him back in on himself, and his struggle returned. The water was rushing up to meet him, a vast whirlpool sweeping higher and higher and Ansset was at the top and there was nowhere higher that he could go to escape it. He looked inside himself and there was no escape and as the water touched him, swept his feet out from under him, bore him in fast, dizzying circles around and around, he screamed. His scream was a voice that filled the High Room and echoed from the walls and shattered the stillness of the mist outside.

He was no longer in the High Room. He was being sucked down into the maelstrom. The water closed over his head. Spinning faster and faster he plunged deeper and deeper toward the mouths of the waiting terrors below. One after another they swallowed him up. He felt himself being swallowed, the massive peristalsis driving him into gullet after gullet, hot warm places where he could not breathe.

And he was walking into a room. Walking and walking but getting no farther into the room than he had been before. And all alone, no other sound, he heard the song he had been searching for. Heard the song and saw the singer, but could not hear and could not see, not really, because the singer had no face that he could recognize, and the song, no matter how carefully he listened, kept escaping the moment after he heard it. He could not hear the melody in his memory, only in the moment, and as he looked at an eye, the other eye vanished, and when he looked for the mouth, the eye he had seen before disappeared.

He was no longer walking, though he had no memory of reaching the woman who lay on the bed. He reached out. He was touching her face. He was stroking her face so very gently, tracing the features, the eyes, the mouth, and the voice sang, “Bi-lo-bye. Bi-lo-bye,” but the moment he understood the words he lost them. Lost them, and the mist came and swallowed up the face. He clutched for it, held it, held it tight; she could not disappear from him in the mist which was all white invisible faces that swallowed her up. This time he held on tightly and he would not let go, nothing could pull him away.

He heard the song again, heard the song and it was exactly the same song and this time the words were:

He knew where he was now. Somehow he had been pulled from the lake. He lay on the shore of the lake and he was dry and safe and the song he had been searching for had at last been found. He still gripped the face tightly, clinging to the hair, holding the face close over his own as he lay there, and he knew her at last, and cried for joy.

Ansset lay across Esste’s lap, his hands frantically gripping her hair, when at last his violent shaking stopped, and his jaw slackly opened, and his eyes at last focused and he saw her.

“Mama,” he cried, and there was no song but childhood in his voice.

Esste opened her mouth, and tears poured from her eyes and flew as she blinked to Ansset’s cheeks, and she sang from the deepest part of her heart. “Ansset, my only son.”

He wept and clung to her, and she babbled meaningless words to him, sang her most soothing songs to him, and held him tightly. They lay on the blankets in the warm High Room as the storm raged outside. As she held his bruised and cut face into her shoulder, she also wept; for two hidden places had been plumbed, and she did not know or care which had been the greater achievement. She had locked him into silence in the High Room in order to cure him; he had returned the favor, and she, too, was healed.