Fallowblade by Dart-Thornton Cecilia

Author:Dart-Thornton, Cecilia [Dart-Thornton, Cecilia]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Macmillan Publishers UK
Published: 2011-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

Upon an exalted platform a group of four beautiful knights—three cellists and a bass violist—was creating stirring music, swaying to and fro with the passion of their outpourings, their calf-length coats and long hair flying. Another accompanied them on drums, tubular bells and tambourine. The pouring hair of the musicians curtained the left side of their faces as they bent to their bows—for all were left-handed; indeed, their hair, being so long, must have become entangled with the strings, though this never interrupted their performance; conceivably, part of the reason their music was so thrilling was because it was played upon the living strands of their eldritch hair.

Back and forth they swept the bows, with the deftness of artists executing precise brushstrokes, but their performance was utterly unlike that of some dignified human chamber quartet with heads solemnly bent, peering short-sightedly at pages of written score propped on a one-legged stand, motionless save for the fingers of one hand spidering up and down the instrument’s fingerboard and the elbow of the other sailing in and out like a pompous barque.

Quite the contrary.

The goblin musicians seemed to be lifted up with the sheer energy of the performance, tossing their extravagant hair in time to the beat, feet pounding the rhythm; vigorous, fully alive. Their instruments seemed as alive as they—as if fused, an extension of the musicians’ bodies—so that nerves linked them in one neural entirety, impulses flowing in a circuit through fingers, arms and bows, hair and strings, across the shoulders, up and down the spine, up and down the fingerboard, from head to bridge to base, engendering all the exultation that wild music can convey. Nor did the cellists remain glued to their seats, for from time to time they leaped up spiritedly, instrument and all, still playing, wielding the weight and cumber of the cello as easily as if it were a violin; jumping or spinning before flinging themselves back into their places to incite their dark, raw melodies with redoubled zeal.

Asrăthiel had no recollection of joining the dance. Across the floor she whirled in the arms of a partner who was thrilling to look upon, and she became lost in a darkness that held a scent of lightning and thunderclouds, and she thought some honeyed corrosive had excoriated her immortal spirit, and she must perish of the wounds.

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