Songmaster Read Online Free Page B

world. Only a few hundred meters away, the lake poured over a lip of rock to make the waterfall. But here there was no hint of the violence of the fall. Here the lake was placid, and waterbirds skimmed and dipped and swam and dived, crying out from time to time.
    Esste questioned him with a melody, and Ansset answered, “It’s large. Large as the sky.”
    “That is not all you should see, Ansset, my son,” she said to him. “You should see the mountains around the lake, holding it in.”
    “What makes a lake?”
    “A river comes into this valley, pouring in the water. It has no place to go, so it fills up. Until some spills out at the waterfall. It can fill no deeper than the lowest point. Ansset, this is Control.”
    This is Control. Ansset’s young mind struggled to make the connection.
    “How is it Control, Ansset?”
    “Because it is deep,” Ansset answered.
    “You are guessing, not thinking.”
    “Because,” said Ansset, “it is all held in everywhere except one place, so that it only comes out a little at a time.”
    “Closer,” said Esste. Which meant he was wrong. Ansset looked at the lake, trying for inspiration. But all he could see was a lake.
    “Stop looking at the lake, Ansset, if the lake tells you nothing.”
    So Ansset looked at the trees, at the birds, at the hills. He looked all around the hills. And he knew what Esste wanted him to know. “The water pours out of the low place.”
    “And?” Not enough yet?
    “If the low place were higher, the lake would be deeper.”
    “And if the low place were lower?”
    “There wouldn’t be a lake.”
    And Esste broke off the conversation. Or rather, changed languages, because now she sang, and the song exulted a little. It was low and it was not loud, but it spoke, without words, of joy; of having found after long searching, of having given a gift carried far too long; of having, at last, eaten when she thought never to eat again. I hungered for you, and you are here, said her song.
    And Ansset understood all the notes of her song, and all that lay behind the notes, and he, too, sang. Harmony was not taught to Bells, but Ansset sang harmony. It was wrong, it was only countermelody, it was dissonant to Esste’s song, but it was nevertheless an augmentation of her joy, and where a mere teacher, with less Control, might have been overcome by Ansset’s echo of the deepest parts of her song, Esste had Control enough to channel the ecstasy through her song. It became so powerful, and Ansset was so receptive to it, that it overcame him, and he sobbed and clung to her and still tried to sing through his tears.
    She knelt beside him and held him and whispered to him, and soon he slept. She talked to him in his sleep, told him things far beyond his comprehension, but she was laying pathways through his mind. She was building secret places in his mind, and in one of them she sang the love song, sang it so that at a time of great need it would sing back to him and he would remember, and be filled.
    When he awoke, he remembered nothing of having lost Control; nor did he remember Esste speaking to him. But he reached out and took her hand, and she led him down the hill. It felt right to him to hold her hand, though such familiarity was forbidden between children and teachers, partly because his body had vague memories of holding the hand of a woman whom he completely trusted, and partly because he knew, somehow, that Esste would not mind.

 

6

     
    Kya-Kya was a Deaf. At the age of eight she had still not progressed beyond the Groan level. Her Control was weak. Her pitch was uncertain. It was not lack of native ability—the seeker who found her had not made a mistake. She simply could not pay attention well enough. She did not care.
    Or so they said. But she cared very much. Cared when the children her age and a year younger and a year younger than that passed her by. All were kind to her and few despaired, because it was well known that some sang later