Gossamer Axe Read Free

woods—willow and oak and mahogany and cherry—wire strung and gut strung. They were uniformly small, meant to be held on the lap or set on a stool, for Christa taught the older styles of harping that had evolved before the instrument grew from a slender maid into a grand lady of gilt wood and corinthian pillars.
    One harp, though, Melinda had never seen, for it was covered with a blue velvet drape. It stood alone and upright on a low table in front of an open window; and now, looking past it, she noticed that it was exactly framed by two trees in the garden. The arrangement was too symmetrical to be anything but deliberate.
    Christa reentered with two glasses. Melinda took one and sipped. “What is this?”
    “Medeclin,” said Christa, taking the other chair. “Honey and water and some mint from the garden. Will it do?”
    “Uh… fine.” Melinda’s stomach was settling, and the calm atmosphere of the room was easing the trembling in her hands. She laughed a little. “I might actually be able to play.”
    “Hmmm.” Christa thought for a minute, then reached to a shelf and picked up a harp. She felt the side of the soundbox carefully. “Good. It’s dry. Let’s see if we can’t do something about the shakes today, Melinda. After all, that’s why you’ve been coming for lessons.”
    “I knew it’d be a shot in the dark.”
    Christa adjusted the pitch of two strings. “I think your aim might be better than you think. There’s an old tune I’m thinking of. It’s called a
sian
. Mothers used to sing their babies to sleep with it. I’ll teach it to you today, and you can see if it helps tonight.”
    “I don’t think I’ll be able to play it that soon.”
    “It’s best on harpstrings, but I’ll write it out for you, and you can play it on your bass guitar for now if that will work better. Do promise me, though, that you won’t rock it up: the rhythm is important for the effect.”
    The harper sounded a chord, the bronze strings sweet and bell-like. The melody she played was simple and short: a theme, an answer that was almost questioning, and then the theme again. By the end of the third repetition, Melinda’s hands had stopped shaking, her headache had fled, and she was drifting off into vague daydreams about Christa—so familiar now, as though she had known the woman for years—and a forest, and a cluster of houses that looked like overturned baskets by the side of a still lake…
    “Melinda?”
    The room came back, but the headache and the shaking did not. Her head was clear, without a trace of pain. “How did you do that?”
    “I’m a harper,” said Christa. “That’s part of what harping is.”
    Christa wrote out the
sian
, pointing out fingerings and stresses within the rhythm, suggesting interpretations.
    Melinda had only studied harp for a few months, and some of what her teacher said was technically beyond her. But she was enough of a musician to know what Christa meant even if she could not herself play it.
    “This isn’t coming,” she muttered as her left hand struggled with the second section.
    “It’s a little grace followed by a turn,” said Christa. Her voice was quiet, reassuring. “Break it down. Put your right hand in your lap, and just play the upper-hand notes slowly.”
    With concentration, Melinda stumbled through the phrase.
    “Now, pick it up little by little. Not until you have your left hand do you add the right: a woman is free unless she gives herself willingly. Treat the turn as an independent section. You’ll find you can use the same figure elsewhere, in other pieces.”
    Melinda brightened. “Like a guitar lick?”
    “What is that?”
    “A set bunch of notes that you can fire off without thinking,” Melinda explained. “That’s how some of those guitar heroes play their leads so fast. There’s actually not much original stuff in what they’re doing. It’s mostly just licks strung together. You’ve heard it done, haven’t you?”
    Christa