Eadgith learns to sing a new song

Eadgith’s head was bent over her embroidery, and her hands danced caressingly above and beneath the cloth. This was one of the advantages of staying with her father: no one ever bothered her about making sheets for her bridal bed, nor did anyone ever tease her about who would be sharing it with her. She could work on her dragon in full view of everyone.

Nevertheless, she wished she could retire to her own bedchamber to stitch, but her father insisted that she join him after supper when he sat with Leila and their children. Cedric and Raegan were both noisy little people, and though Cedric was rather in awe of her, Raegan wasn’t the least bit shy, and often came to tug at her skirt and beg to be played with – a request which she dare not deny in her father’s presence.

But tonight Cedric played alone in the corner, making war between the dark and light men of his father’s chess set, and Raegan was already abed. Eadgith was free to work.

Leila had suggested that she end the dragon’s tail in a tuft of fur to match his lion-​​like face, and such an appendage could easily be extended into a labyrinth of curls that mirrored the tongues of flame coiling from his mouth on the opposite side of the cushion. So far the effect pleased her very much. It was certainly nicer than a bunch of flowers in the corner, such as she normally used to fill the empty spaces in her embroidery, and, more importantly, was rather more masculine.

“Why don’t you sing something, habibi?” her father mumbled suddenly to his wife.

He was stretched out on the couch next to Leila, his head propped up on one hand, and he stared sullenly through half-​​closed lids into the few embers that remained of the fire. He was rather more drunk than usual, and when he drank alone he was seldom merry.

“Certainly. What would you like?” Leila asked soothingly. One had to speak gently with him, for the merest annoyance could rouse his anger.

“I don’t care, just sing something already.”

Leila inclined her dark head and began to sing.

Eadgith was always discomforted by the manifest foreignness of Leila’s songs. Her language was strange enough, with its guttural aspirations and its staccato inflections, but the singing was positively eerie, for although it softened the language, the melody seemed to come from a place outside of music. Leila’s songs dipped down into notes between the notes that Eadgith knew.

Perhaps they had meaning to her father, who understood the language and who could associate the melodies with other places and other times, but to Eadgith they were artifacts from a world she had never visited, and which she could not comprehend.

She shrugged her stiff shoulders and looked back at her needlework. She would ignore the song as best she could.

She was nearly done with the embroidery now, and soon she would be able to stitch and stuff the cushion. She liked to imagine how she might present it to him, and what he would say. In truth, she thought she would not dare do more than sneak into his study some evening and plant it on his chair. He would know who had left it there. He would understand. And then would come the delicious agony of waiting for him to come and thank her for it…

“Why don’t you get Eadgith to sing the other part?” her father asked suddenly, interrupting Leila in her song. A heavy silence hung over them for a moment.

“Eadgith does not know the song, and could not even understand the words,” Leila said softly.

“Well, and?” her father growled. “I didn’t understand a damned word of what I was singing in the quarries, but I sang, didn’t I? I suppose that if I could sing while your Barbary jackals were whipping my back, she can sing while she sews.”

“Perhaps I could teach her the words tomorrow, and we might sing to you tomorrow evening.”

“Son of a serpent!” he swore, rousing himself and beginning to sit up. “I don’t make provisions for my amusement a day in advance! Shut up and sing, both of you!”

Leila gave her a wavering smile.

Eadgith folded up her dragon and laid him carefully in her basket, afraid even to make a sudden movement.

“We shall sing a song that the girls sing in parts,” Leila said to her, and her father lay down again and looked back at the dying fire. “Your part has no words and is only a melody. I shall sing it with you at first, and then you will see how it fits into my part.”

She began to sing. 

In truth, the part was simple and repetitive: a liquid vocalization whose closest equivalent in Eadgith’s experience was the mournful ulalu of the old Welshwoman, Mother Duna, upon the death of one of the peasants whose last hours she attended.

Eadgith could only stare at her, gaping like a fledgling bird, unable or unwilling to follow her into the unfamiliar void whence came the notes that lay between the notes she knew.

And then her father looked at her, and she saw the scowl of his face in the green light of Leila’s glass lanterns, and she saw the red embers of the fire reflected in his dark, heavy-​​lidded eyes. He frightened her more.

She leapt – she sang. After an initial croak, she found her voice and followed.

Leila sang with her at first, but once Eadgith could sing the melody without hesitation, Leila slipped into her own part, and her voice swooped and dove into unknown places even between the alien notes that Eadgith sang.

Eadgith’s voice wavered in confusion, but for all the dipping and darting of her song, Leila’s eyes were steady, and they met and held hers in a long, firm gaze like a clasp of hands over her father’s head.

They sang on together until his head had slipped down onto Leila’s lap and a soft snore had split the air between them, and they sang for some time after, to be sure.