Everafter Song by King Emily R

Author:King, Emily R.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-12-09T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

I step into the workshop. Tools and scraps of wood cover the workbenches, and crates overflowing with cogs and gears are stacked in the corners. I spent years of my life in and out of my uncle’s workplace, listening to him hammer, chisel, and saw wood. Running my finger across one of the dented workbenches, I endure a fresh swell of grief. Elderwood Manor is a splendid home, but the estate doesn’t have the same nostalgic ambiance as this simple workshop.

The marionette waits for me in the opposite doorway. My clock heart spins faster as I follow her out of the shop, down a short corridor, and into a grand theater.

Hundreds of seats sized to accommodate humans face the raised stage, and two tiers with viewing boxes line the left and right wings. Sconces flicker light across the damask-covered walls, and chandeliers brighten the stage. How can a hall of this size exist inside the storefront we entered?

In the center of the stage sits a man—a human—strumming a silver harp. He’s seated on a chair, his fingers gracefully flowing across the strings, serenading the empty theater with the loneliest song I have ever heard. My bones ache from the simple yet moving melody. I go down the rows of seats to the base of the stage. The harpist is of variable youth, somewhere in his twenties, and wears an old-style three-piece suit with a dashing mustard-yellow necktie and a pocket-watch chain hanging from his vest pocket. His winsome good looks are traditional in taste, the arrangement of his features intriguing but not especially striking. He plays for so long I sit in the front row to rest my aching side until the last note hangs in the air.

“Please forgive me the indulgence,” says the harpist, his voice musical in tenor. “It’s been decades since I’ve had an audience.”

The marionette reappears and offers me a cup of black tea, which I decline.

“Do you live here?” I ask the man.

“Yes, and except for my servant, Maisie, I am alone.”

His marionette stands between us, her expression blank.

“How did you bring her to life?”

“Ah, but you already know the answer, don’t you?” He strokes the strings of the harp again, playing a soft, ethereal scale meant to put me at ease. It doesn’t. “A long, long time ago, I animated Maisie with heartwood.”

I notice the piece then, the coin-size section of wood in the center of the marionette’s chest.

“Maisie and I have been together here three hundred and fifty years or so, banished into hiding by the last Time Bearer.”

“You’re the Bard,” I state, and he nods. “Then you’re immortal?”

“Who can say what qualifies as immortality? Is immortality living endless months and years? Is it resiliency to those years? Or is it an absence of time?” He squints at me in question. “You’ve seen time cheated, traded, gifted, and stopped. Why not stretched?”

I have no clue what he’s rambling on about, but he’s the luthier I’ve come for. “Why do you stay if you’re alone?”

“I was whisked away from the Land of Youth.

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