Page 155 (1/2)

VIOLINIST’S

TALE

HE WAS BORN IN KASH, LIKE THE REST OF YOU His cradle was carnelian and brass His smoke was bilious and soot-riddled, even as an infant, and his eyes dripped orange flarandfather, whose name was Suhail, was dissatisfied by the silent finery of Kash, however, and chafed against the Khaighal, which was the life charted for hiers He wanted to find a princess with a wicked wish for a dark and handso to her on a balcony surrounded by swans and imps

So that is just what he did

My grandreen eyes As all folk know, this coloring indicates a deviant and difficult disposition, and indeed, she spent her nights at her tapered ishing for a dark and handso life of e to her on a balcony surrounded by swans and i, but in her books, suitors always sang to their ladies, and she was deter for herself, even if it did seerandhtly and sighed loudly at her , just as the woodcuts in her books always depicted such ladies

My grandfather, lately run off fro and needed no Khaighal to grant her wish He obliged her orously, and the swans trumpeted, and the i was not so very dreary after all

As it tends to do, tireen eyes and very polite, soft black hair that never—not even once!—snaked out to strangle a parrot in flight Suhail did not knohat to do He could not send her to be educated properly in Kash, for they would burn her and drown her in short order, and universities tended to also ask for pedigrees But she was a irl, to the astonishment and consternation of both her parents, and she found a h for sole a parrot properly

Her only unhappiness was that her e could not be consummated Whenever her husband drew up the covers over thehter recounted that!—and reached for her, the poor girl’s body melted into black smoke, every bit as oily and soot-riddled as her father’s Her husband fell right into her and found his face pressed into his own pillow There was no end to the weeping and stor in their little house

But it seemed not to matter, for she came doith child just like any other woman, and in the usual span produced me, whose hair immediately throttled the nearest turtledove, to the relief and joy of rateful and incendiary tears at the sight

My parents settled in Ajanabh and put down ain reen But I did not love basil, nor the few sround I loved randmother when she visited She did notalive in a crackling hearth than sweet tiralees But I would not give up, and when , thin blue flame for a bow, I threw my arms around his black and bilious neck and squeezed until he could not breathe I learned that fiddle like soures—it was as si up a coluraceful sue My mother said I played too fast, and my father said that true virtuosos certainly did not dance that hile they played, but I would not stop, or slow

At last, when the basil fields were still high and bright and green, I reached the limit of my abilities I could not play faster, or sweeter, I could not ht I would be satisfied then, to be the best I could, but randfather winked at me on his winter visit, and I knew my hands were not yet happy Once the fa in four-part harmony I crept from the farmhouse and into the city proper, which was then as lawless as a ship without a brig I sought out the cottage of Folio, as the author, so they said, of every wonder in Ajanabh

Her door was a e brass bolts to tiny, intricate silver keyholes no wider than a needle, wooden locks with gaping slots and golden locks with birds carved into their faces, iron locks and crystal locks and copper locks and locks so old and worn that only rust was left where the ht once have been, bronze locks and locks fashioned out of antlers, crude slate locks and locks in the shape of open, staring eyes blown frolass

I had no key, and there was no spare splinter of door left on which to knock Being a clever child, I pressed ers into ten varied locks, no two of the same stuff, and heard a dozen little bells cascade their chi the campaniles of Ajanabh a short, squat, stairless shack The door creaked open in just the manner one would expect a ht within was rust-colored, reeking of oil and copper and burnt air I stepped gingerly inside; the door behindand turning

Folio sat at her workbench, an old fig-wood plank with vises set into it and open books lying brazenly a-splay There were sketches on the walls, and scraps of ainst chairs and baseboards or puddled in ears and pendulums and countless clocks, their innards violently exposed, s whose use I could not guess: machines of metal precious and cheap, black with oil or draped in cloth, s and pens which wrote hurriedly with no hand to guide them, little clockwork lumberjacks who chopped ineffectually at iron stu wheel whose spindle whirled contentedly all on its own

Folio had a hunchback and skin the color of fig seeds, and her spectacles—for it is well known that all inventors wear spectacles—wer