Modern Magick

Music and Misadventure: 17

Father beheld all this magnificence in silence, and gave only a weary sigh. Mother's response was not much more enthusiastic.

Jay and I, though, were entranced. Jay especially, once he saw that, at the far-distant end of the throne room — situated not far from the throne itself, a confection of mist-whorled glass and cushions of green-and-gold moss — sat a grand piano, or something that closely resembled a piano. It had none of the mirror-polished, black elegance of a typical example from our world; instead it looked wrought from silver, or similar, its surfaces frosted over and a-twinkle with... ice? But its shape was familiar enough, and its bright white keys begged to be played.

Jay began to drift that way.

'Well,' said Father, wearily. 'Let's begin.'

'How?' said Mother.

'With music. Out here, it always begins with music.'

Jay reached the piano, and sat down upon the silvery-frosted stool before it. He made an incongruous sight: clad in his adored black leather jacket, and with his short, dark, eminently modern hair, seated upon azure velvet stitched with silver and playing a piano from which magick dripped like melting ice.

But when he began to play, I realised at once why the Queene's Rapture had struck a familiar chord with me. The melody Jay's clever fingers were drawing forth was the same as he had once played upon the spinet in Millie Makepeace's parlour, and it shimmered and twinkled like faerie bells.

Father raised his brows at me.

'I don't know,' I said. Life had been busy. I'd forgotten to ask Jay about it.

'Unusual chap, I think,' said Father.

I was beginning to get an inkling of that myself.

The sprites had been busy. The piano was not the only instrument in the throne room, I soon saw: what I had previously taken for carvings and ornaments proved to be lutes and pipes and lyres, and one by one the sprites were bringing them into melodious life.

Actually, I take that back. They were carvings. I watched, open-mouthed, as Descant soared up the length of a grand pilaster set against one wall, reaching out with her small hands to touch and touch and touch. Everywhere her fingers brushed the stone, an inert sculpture leapt free of the pillar, transformed at a stroke into gleaming metal or polished wood, and began to play. Jay had finished his gossamer tune and taken up the Queene's Rapture instead, and the sprites had every harp and dulcimer and flute playing along.

The effect was both deafening and rhapsodic. Indeed, one may even say... rapturous.

Mum made a sound that was half sigh, half groan, and folded into a chair at the table. I took the opportunity to hand her my last dose of potion, pleased to note that the empty silverware was rapidly filling up with delectable feast-goods under Cadence's capable attention.

'Drink,' I said to Mother. 'But try not to overdo it. It's borrowed strength these things give you. You'll pay for it later.'

Mother didn't even try to argue, which told me all I needed to know about how exhausted she was. She drank off the potion in one swallow, blotted her lips on her sleeve, and said grimly: 'I'll be fine.'

'Uh huh.'

She waved me off. 'Don't forget to play later.'

'I haven't the smallest desire to play that lyre, Mother.'

'You know you do. Your eyes say otherwise, every time you look at the thing.'

'That's not my fault.'