The Lark and the Wren - Chapter Four

[kalinara]

So last time in the Lark and the Wren, Rune, our hero, made a very ill-advised boast. Now she has to put her money where her mouth is and fiddle for a homicidal ghost. Here's hoping she's right about her talent.



What I really like about this is that Rune does feel really, authentically teenaged. Warts and all. She's not just self-centered, she's outright selfish sometimes. She's egotistical and judgmental. She overestimates her ability and doesn't always think about others. But she's not a bad kid. She's not malicious. She's usually reasonably considerate. She's protective of her one friend. She's all those things, and the narrative doesn't apologize for it.

I think really this is why Mercedes Lackey has been so successful as an author for my generation in particular. She's not the craftsman that McCaffrey is at her best, but she has a gift for writing characters that resonate. I remember being Rune. I never had her talent and I had supportive parents, but I remember that frustration, just like I remember Talia's nervousness, Elspeth's temper, and Karal's despair at being in way over my head.

Anyway, let's rejoin Rune as she sits on top of Skull Hill and waits for sunset.

It might have been her imagination, but the trees seemed a little starved up here, a strange, skeletal growth, with limbs like bony hands clawing the sky. It seemed colder up here as well-and the wind was certainly stronger, moaning softly through the trees in a way that sounded uncannily human, and doing nothing for her confidence level.

I really like this bit because it's so wrapped up in perception. IS Skull Hill that creepy? Or is Rune just scaring herself into thinking it's that creepy? Will Rune psych herself out?

No, probably not. In fact, she's being quite practical. She finds a rock with a little hollow in it, and then pulls up some dry grass to give it a bit of a cushion to keep the cold away. This makes for a good place to sit and wait, and remonstrate about how this is one of the stupidest things she's ever done.

I'm kind of fascinated to think about what other stupid things she might have done that could possibly match agreeing to fiddle for a homicidal ghost. Sadly, neither Rune nor Ms. Lackey elaborate.

We're told that "[i]t was not a particularly spectacular sunset" and that makes me laugh a little bit, because the narration/Rune (since it's very 3rd person limited) sounds just a little disgruntled here. She IS a bard at heart, of course, and a Bard lives for drama.

As the sun sets, Rune starts tuning her fiddle. She fingers each tune she knows to keep her fingers limber. She is cold and tired, but she's less afraid. Now she's considering how easy it would be to go back down the hill and just lie about having fiddled for the Ghost:

But-that would be a lie and a cheat. She swore she'd do this; she pledged her word, and even if the villagers thought her word was worthless, that didn't make it so. If she broke her word, if she lied about what she'd done, what would that make her? As worthless as the villagers claimed she was.

Well, as reasons that a hero gives for not doing the sensible thing, I've heard worse. But are these people worth dying for?

Rune also, more pragmatically, notes that they wouldn't believe her anyway.

We get more atmospheric description, and Rune catches sight of a hare, which behaves comically when it sees her, and this causes her fear to subside completely. She can't be afraid of a place that held an animal like this. She startles the poor thing by laughing.

There's more description, but now something changes: absolute silence descends. The crickets stop chirping, the owl stops hooting. The wind dies and returns. (This bit loses some impact because it's repetitive. I didn't show it, but the wind died and returned at sunset as well.)

Now the wind turns aggressive though, which is new. It pelts her with leaves, lashes her hair, blinds her with dust. She feels something watching her, and it is malignant. She realizes something else as she stares at the whirlwind: the swirling leaves are glowing. Eventually, they merge into a cowled, robed figure with a very non-human shape. And it talks.

The Ghost asks her why she's here, calling her a stupid child, and asks if she knows what it could do to her. Rune is understandably terrified but knows better than to run. And at least it's talking to her. She tells it that she's come to fiddle for it.

This confuses the Ghost, who asks why. And I like this bit a lot:

She toyed with the notion of telling it that she'd done so for some noble reason, because she felt sorry for it, or that she wanted to bring it some pleasure-

But she had the feeling that it would know if she lied to it. She also had the feeling that if she lied to it, it would not be amused.

And since her life depended on keeping it amused-

Rune is a contradiction of a character really. She's practical and pragmatic, but the entire plot relies on her taking a massively stupid risk. Ms. Lackey rationalizes the contradiction by constantly showing us Rune thinking of the logical things she COULD do, but having her choose otherwise.

It's a little clumsy at times, but it's effective. Rune IS practical and pragmatic. She's also young, excitable, and scrupulously honest. When it matters.

And here, it matters. So Rune tells the truth: she was dared to do it by the boys in town, and she wants to prove herself. She'll let the Ghost decide if she's "a second-rater or a wizard with [her] bow.".

The Ghost asks her why they call her second-rate, and she tells him that it's because they want her to be, to justify how they treat her. She tells the Ghost about everything (mercifully for us, it's a summarizing paragraph, not word for word. I wish certain OTHER authors could learn this trick), and muses that this is the most even-handed hearing she's ever had.

Once she's done with her explanation, the Ghost cryptically tells her that they have something in common and it tells her to fiddle. If she pleases it, it will let her live. Something it's never done before. But if its attention lags, she'll die like the others. He tells her that she can also attempt to run. Key word: attempt.

Rune freezes, fear making her mind go blank, and then plays a single note, which cascades into others, and she finds herself playing one of the earliest tunes she knows. We're not told every single thing she plays, of course. Only that she goes from one song to another, letting her memories take her back to her friendships with the many musicians who have come to Westhaven over the years...and actually, there are a lot: Linnet, Heron, Nightingale, Raven, and the as yet unmentioned Robin, Jay and Thrush.

(Robin is an interesting one, because we meet another character who goes by Robin later. Probably not the same character though, as the Robin we meet later is only a few years older than Rune herself. Then again, I suppose there are only so many birds, that they're bound to be recycled.)

When she starts running out of songs, she remembers bits and pieces of things she'd heard musicians play but had never fully caught, and then cobbles together children's game rhymes into reels and jigs. She adds "cradle-songs, hymns, anything and everything she had ever heard or half heard the melody to."

Then when she's about to run dry, she starts improvising melodies of her own. She's always wanted to write songs, so they've always kind of been in the back of her mind. Sadly, she can't try them over again, because the Ghost is waiting.

She plays for hours and starts feeling the effects: aching, cramped arms and fingers. Sharp pains in chin and collarbone. Spasms in her back. But she keeps going. She plays another tune and then goes completely blank. She figures the Ghost would not be on board for repeat music, and then, she finds herself starting to play "the wild, sad, wailing notes of the laments that the [Roma] Nightingale had played for her..."

THIS gets a reaction from the Ghost. It wants more. Rune plays every note she remembers, losing herself in a kind of trance where there's nothing but the music. Eventually, she gets as far as she can: plays the last notes of the Roma song that she'd been told was Nightingale's lament for her long-lost home, and opens her eyes. And she sees the rays of dawn. There are birds calling. And the ghost is gone. But he left silver coins where he stood. A LOT of them.

She hears the voice tell her to take her reward and go. It tells her that she deserved gold, but no one would believe she'd gotten it honestly.

...I kind of love that the Ghost is aware of classism.

In a way, I wish the chapter had ended here, because that was such an evocative scene. I think that the whole thing was a really good example of when "tell, not show" really works as a storytelling device. We always hear the opposite, of course. But there are times in a narrative, when too much detail can be repetitive or distracting. Here, we don't need to know every single song that Rune played, and I think that if we had, we might have lost the sense of time passing. Instead, we get the ebb and the flow of the music, and it's much easier to feel the length of time that Rune played, and allow us to feel her exhaustion with her.

Though interestingly, for all her exhaustion, her hands are unmarred and unblistered. She puts her fiddle away, and only then gathers up the coins. (Heh, instrument always comes first.) She has to tear off part of her shift to make a pouch for the money, and the coins come in all sorts of varieties: old and worn and some with unfamiliar faces.

Rune realizes that this is her chance. This money is her freedom. But is she really cold enough to leave everyone behind?

Rune is torn: does she go or stay. And then it's decided for her. She goes back to the inn and pauses outside the door when she hears voices inside.

Conveniently, Stara is complaining about Rune. She notes that Rune's bed isn't slept in and her fiddle is gone. She thinks Rune ran away because she didn't have the guts to take the dare. Rune hears a petulant whine in Stara's voice and wonders why she never noticed it before. Me too, since it's not like Rune was particularly sympathetic to her before. She notes that Stara sounds both "aggrieved and triumphant, as if Rune had done this purely to make her mother miserable, and as if she felt she had been vindicated in some way."

The bully, Kaylan, is there too. Weird. WHY? We've never heard anything about Kaylan having any kind of relationship with Jeoff or Stara in the past. Nor has he been mentioned to frequent the inn. This seems a little contrived. Anyway, he thinks she ran off too. Also, apparently, Jon had told everyone she'd flirted with him, and took it badly when he said no.

Rune and I both wonder how he explained his injuries then.

Anyway, Kaylan basically says Rune's been causing trouble, insulting girls and mocking boys, and couldn't take having her bluff called. He thinks she's gone bad.

Jeoff is almost more sympathetic: he says they need the help, and if they can find her and bring her back, they ought to. He starts to say something about a good hiding... Dick. Maybe hear her side of the story first?

Kaylan's got an answer though, and this maybe explains why he's suddenly at the inn. His father's got a cousin with too many kids, and there are a boy and girl about twelve, ready to work. Jeoff is interested, if they're willing to work for what Rune got.

I wonder if Kaylan taunted Rune with the specific intent to drive her away, to clear up some space at the inn.

Anyway, when Jeoff starts moaning about how he can't afford to pay the kids more than that, Rune realizes she also hears a note in Jeoff's voice that she'd never heard before: a tight-fisted whine just like Stara.

Rune realizes what's likely going to happen if she goes home: no one would believe her. Jeoff and Stara would take the money. She'd be accused of theft. If that doesn't go anywhere, they'll let her out but keep the money "for her own good". Possibly Stara would use it as her dower, which would supposedly ensure Rune's future. (No one else can put up a dower like that.) Rune would be trapped. MAYBE if she's lucky, Jib would marry her. Jeoff would get both of them as unpaid labor and never need to pay a dowry. And Rune would still have to live with being a bastard, and the social stigma that implies.

Rune is excitable, but I don't really think she's wrong here.

We hit kind of the same lack of nuance that we saw in Dragonsong here. Rune has to choose to leave and not look back, so all of a sudden, we see everyone's worst sides. It's a bit less glaring than Dragonsong, since at least no one's like "oh, she must be dead, serves her right". But the fact that they're having this discussion right now, with unlikely people present, feels a little clumsy. Which is a shame when the first half of the chapter was so good.

I will give Ms. Lackey credit though. When Menolly became a Harper, it was oddly a bit unsatisfying, because for all of her talent and passion for music, it mostly came about because of other people's initiative. T'gellan brags about her. Elgion realizes she's the missing student. Robinton traps her into revealing herself. She's pushed along and it's not completely clear she has any idea what a Harper does.

Rune, on the other hand, is making a very clear choice. She doesn't really have any idea what being a Guild Bard entails any more than Menolly knows what being a Harper entails, but Rune has a better understanding of what she thinks she's getting out of this deal. She knows what she wants and she has a reasonable idea about how to go about getting it. She was lucky to have so many willing instructors, but none of them are here to push her into taking that first step.

So back to Rune's choice. Her decision is made now. She spares a moment to think about Stara, but really, given that she's been listening to her mother slag her off behind her back, her lack of sympathy is understandable. Stara can take care of herself.

Rune is a bit more worried about Jib though. He gets targeted by the bullies too, and she's always protected him. But then again, no one's threatened him with rape. He doesn't have to live with Stara's reputation. His problem is really just that he's seen as an easy target, and the older boys are going to be busy with work and apprenticeships. The girls don't care about him. He'll be all right.

Rune decides to "make the truth out of part of the lie." She climbs a heretofore unmentioned oak tree that conveniently stands next to the inn, and gets to the rooftop, then manages to break into her bedroom. She grabs her very few belongings and wraps it in her bedding. She feels a bit guilty about taking that, but then figures given that she's worked most of her life for Jeoff without pay, he owed her a few sheets and blankets. Fair enough. She gets everything out and heads for the road. The chapter ends here.

And there ends the Westhaven part of Rune's life. I don't think we'll be seeing any of these people again (except for a cameo in the sequel.) Overall, I think Ms. Lackey did a better job of giving us characters with a bit of nuance. Stara is awful, but we know enough about her circumstances that we can understand a little bit about how she got that way. Jeoff is weak-willed and wishy-washy, and penny pinching, but not intentionally cruel. The bullies don't have much by way of dimension, but there are enough detail to keep them from being cartoon characters.

I think the ending confrontation was a little bit contrived, but I also don't think it was out of character. I just have my doubts that they'd have said that stuff out loud.

Now Rune gets to move on, free and clear, and I'm on board with that. She's got an instrument to buy, some lessons to obtain, and well, she's just left the only life she's ever known. It will be interesting to see what she does now.

Comments

[copperfyre]

On to ADVENTURE!