The Dream Compass by Jeff Bredenberg

Author:Jeff Bredenberg [Bredenberg, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: E-Reads
Published: 2011-03-22T03:22:02+00:00

20

Music Not Thrown

“Music is the nearest expression of man’s actual soul and being. Do not taint it with impure thought.”

—From the writings of Rutherford Cross—Book III, Chapter IV.—Excerpted by permission of Ligkh Priest Lit Mannah,—34UH5.

Tha’Enton nearly fainted trying to purify his music this night. He could not allow himself to think of these unknown wanderers in the village and what they might mean. The advocations chosen for him—Sound Maker and Defender—had defined a spartan livelihood that promised many spiritual benefits were he to remain faithful to his task until death. Now, more than ever, he must concentrate.

Out of all musical positions, being a bonesman required the most dexterity. Some instruments were considered totally rhythmic, and others were much more melodic, but being a bonesman required an intuitive facility at both. His instrument was the Pa—a wood, leather, and cotton-fiber assemblage measuring 5 1/2 feet wide, surrounding him in the shape of a concave quarter sphere. There were actually 718 instruments included in the Pa, 718 pairs of “bones” arranged in this rack surrounding Tha’Enton. Each set of bones consisted of two slightly curved pieces of ebony made to be rattled between the fingers. At precisely the right time, the bonesman was to pluck the proper set of bones from the rack, let them twitter or rumble in his hands (the size determined the tonal range), and then toss them back into their proper place with a carefully aimed flick.

The confident and showy bonesmen lately had taken up a sport that enraptured the more knowledgeable among the spectators: During the course of an evening’s play, such musicians would toss a set of bones aside when they had thocked out their final tones for the evening, instead of returning them to the rack, where they could be safely retrieved. The trick lay in having the foreknowledge of when during the night’s repertoire each of the 718 sets of bones had become obsolete. To toss the ebony sounders aside prematurely, into a growing pile of the polished sticks, would mean musical disaster and months of shame for the musician. Not coincidentally, the musicians who reveled in the game of chess also tended to immerse themselves in the risky throwaway of bones.

Bone tossing was by no means a required activity, but still there were those in the milling audience who loudly expressed their disappointment that Tha’Enton was not attempting the feat this evening. (There was a small band of purists in the community, on the other hand, that argued that such throwing actually chipped the little ebonies occasionally and was therefore detrimental to the musical art. But a Sounder as brash as Tha’Enton could not suddenly claim to be among them.)

There would be no stick tossing tonight. Let them fibber, Tha’Enton told himself. I have a throb of foreknowing, and I mustn’t be distracted.

So it was that the crowd pressing and shifting through the village Center for the evening’s Sundown carried an edge of dissatisfaction. There was a dusty tussle or two, ending with the loser’s limp body being dragged off to the pyres.

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