The black and white keys of the heretofore apple-bearing piano move sprightly beneath the quickened fingers, music leaping from them as water over the stones of the thrice-running river of a wooded kingdom. Before, where proficiency of centuries collaborated openly with musical passion there is now virtuosity. And he is the music that he plucks, and he is the notes he plays, solidified.
     The music may be heard with haunting familiarity, as if it had been heard a thousand times, but only in snippets of dreams or while running in the tube trying to catch a train. As if it had always played between your ears, but when attempting to hum it you lost track of the rhythm and the timbre. But you hear it now...
     The entire castle hears it, for the doors to the grand ballroom, now music salon, stand wide open and as welcoming as his arms and the acoustics of this chamber make the sounds emitting from his fingertips rise, lifting on the air, out of the opened windows and down into the valley, sweeping as surely as the wind.
     He plays with his eyes on his fingers, a spectator to his own creation -- but closing them more often than not, so that he may hear, truly hear the source from which it comes. His hands and his feet moving the pedals below happen in such an easy concert that he appears possessed by Music Itself...
     He plays so fast and so furious, Davydd ap Owain, the rushing notes coming as relentless as the ninth wave of the sea...
     I am a sound of the sea...
     I am a wind of the sea...
     I am a wave of the sea...

     She listens with eyes closed, sitting upright in the middle of the large bed with pools of sheets falling around her to puddle against unclothed limbs. The familiarity of the music is almost disturbing; the music itself calls her out of any rest she might have sought.
     Rising to her feet, Fiona pads to the closet, pulling clothing from her own side and examining them for a moment before she then begins to dress. She chooses the clothing with her own thoughts running through her mind, verdant and careful in the longer grasses of the music, in the ripples and crashing of the waves of notes. Then, hair bound back, she follows the chain of the melody as a thread to wind her way through the labyrinthine corridors and passageways of the castle.
     Down through stone worked centuries ago, down through corridors built in a time before her grandparents were born, down past artwork wrought by hands that trembled with the knowledge of the Vision before art had been studied as a science as well as Art... Her footsteps are small, nearing silent, but they are as relentless in carrying her forward as the music which drowns them out.
     She arrives in the doorway, standing framed there with light behind her and light in front of her, dressed in a long white organdy shift trimmed with red at the cuffs and at the throat. The long braid is belled, the shift tucked loosely into a flowing blue skirt. She doesn't interrupt, standing there and listening as she watches you - waiting for the song to end, perhaps, or ... something ...

     If he knows you are there, he makes no outward signs of it. Perhaps he hasn't the slightest clue that anyone is watching, that anyone is listening. The song has three distinct movements, each one a theme in the other, with the second act slower, more melodic, with trailing minor notes that drift upward (hope through adversity, life through death) and drift, dissolving like sugar. Pooling, more like, like water of a stream swirling within an eddy, the song momentarily caught, drifting before the current leads it swiftly on.
     The third movement, the one you are witness to in the doorway, is often called the Realization or Epiphany. It is the song's completion, its understanding, its recovery from the deconstruction of the second act. Each rush of notes pools into the next, like waterfalls, splashing from rock to rock as the earth drops out beneath the coursing of this stream.
     And then...
     The music suddenly slows, the fingers gently moving, the notes drifting, trilling, like leaves falling haphazardly on this river, skimming momentarily, momentarily spinning and then flowing away...
     "Ysgrifennu..." Davydd murmurs, and upon the table in the seating area, notes appear on the page, scales and keys, notes and phrases, codas and refrains, the song transcripting itself. He exhales, his fingers trying a few notes, a few chords, a triad of thought before pausing. Only then do dark green eyes lift from the keys and to the doorway.
     And by his look of pleasant surprise, you know he truly did not hear you come in. "Nos dda," he salutes quietly, good even'. He takes a moment to look at your attire, to look at you.
     On the table, parchment paper rustles as if turned over by the wind, front to back the song continues to transcribe itself....
     "Did I wake you?" he wonders, he smiles a little, and conspiratorily he looks back to the keyboard beneath his fingers, not seeing the white keys and the black, but songs to be played, the notes themselves, the river of his kingdom and all its singing birds...

     "Good evening," Fiona answers courteously, standing there with a grin curving up the edges of her mouth. "No, you didn't wake me. The weather woke me." Not the physical weather, she means, but the currents moving through the house - so perhaps in a way you did wake her, but she doesn't seem to mind. She moves into the room with a light step, the grin still on her face. "You're active," she comments.
     As if you were ever truly idle...
     She moves to the piano but doesn't touch it, a trifle wary - as if touching it might summon forth more apples, or the ghosts of apples past. "We should make an applewood piano," she says suddenly. One thought leads to another, bearing such strange fruit. She seats herself on the floor, tucking her knees up to her chest and looking up at you without apparent hurry. "Did you find anything today? I've been looking for something, but I'm not sure what - it's as if I left something in the other room, but no matter what room I go to, by the time I've gotten there I've forgotten what it was that I was looking for. How is," she points with her chin to the piano, "your composing going?"

     There's a glance over to the pages on the table now lying flat, covered in complex notes rather reminiscent of a Jackson Pollock painting suddenly, and then he looks to you with the start of a smile. "Fast... there's just... a lot in there," he murmurs. He's not puzzled by it. Amazed by it, for certes, but not puzzled by it. His fingers move unconsciously, and he feels it there again, notes leading to other notes and taking form. This song slow... melodic...hesitant...wistful...
     Or, maybe like you said, looking for something...
     Fiery eyebrows cock up at the mention of applewood pianos, and with a grin he turns back to the keys. "I think it might be taboo to cut them down for instruments. Likely better still to make it out of ash like a bow." Bow of Ash, arrows of Yew. "But if you want to grow another one out of it, be my guest. I could do with a bit of easy supper," Davydd quips softly. The song continues, the song takes shape, there is longing in it. Softly, borne in the minor keys, there is the sorrow that can only be felt in a long life tucked within it.
     Weather? You see Davydd glance to the windows as if expecting thunder and wind and rain and then looking at you: what weather? "Nah," he rumbles, "...didn't find anything, didn't lose anything. Woke up, showered, snacked, played. Pretty uneventful, apart from the composing." He tosses a wink toward you, removing his hands from the keys. This one is yet unformed, this song...not yet ripe, it is not yet plucked from the Song of Songs that bears it. Perhaps another night.
     Davydd spins about to straddle the bench, hands slapping quietly on his thighs and turning his attention to you. A curious expression for your curious questions given. "Looking for something, eh," he rolls out, lyrical tongue shaking loose the lilting syllables of Welsh-colored English. "Does it have a feeling attached to it, or does it seem more... nostalgic. Like you're trying to remember something, recall something..."

     "If I grow an apple tree, how much supper do you think you're going to get in?", Fiona retorts easily, not even bothering to redden this time. There's a briefly reminiscent little grin, and she narrows her eyes at you, smile slowing and spreading. "Besides, nothing's easy."
     It passes, she looks to the piano again, tucking her braid over her shoulder and forward, playing her hands over it as if it were a rope. "There's a lot to that song," she agrees. "But it's yours - make use of it. I think it might have caused the storm that knocked me out of bed..." A storm of notes to attack at windows as if a swooping flock of birds, she intimates with a gesture of one hand. "It's very full of you."
     She frowns, then, looking down at herself. "I don't know what I'm looking for. It's not nostalgic, not really. More like when you misplace your keys - except everything of that sort, I know where I put. Maybe it is something I've forgotten. Maybe I need to go back down to London for a day." She climbs to her feet suddenly, stretching until her vertebrae make audible popping sounds. "That's better. - So do you want me to go see what I can find in the kitchens?"

     "Oes," Davydd quips, leaning in toward you with a smile, "...and I'm very full of it." Whatever it is. "I'm not the sort of man who says no to a meal -- I can't cook, someone has to." He does keep a cook on, gods be praised. "That'd be nice, actually. As for London, funny you should mention that... I ...likely have a night or two of remaining business myself. To be honest," he turns about, facing the keys again, "... we should take up an apartment there...something. The entrance to my kingdom is ...anywhere I am. I do not need to grow mossy and stale in the country..."
     The music that starts is neither the first song nor the last song he played, but something else in the process of composition. Fingers spread in octaves, and then he finds his key, tipping his head back... yes.. that's it... as he sometimes does when he is with you, and then it begins.
     Something rhythmic and easily hummable, something with a hook, a chorus. Something waiting lyrics. And then they follow, too. In Welsh, he sings:

Fire flies upon the river,
up and over the swollen stream,
she said, don't you believe in anything?
Or me...
She set fire to a thousand paper ships
She's worse than Helen,
She said, don't cry a river when I'm gone,
Can't you just picture it,
a thousand burning ships,
setting fire to the forest,
She's worse than Helen
ever was to Troy...
What am I supposed to do,
tell her no and send her packing?
She said, don't you have faith in anything?
Or me...
She set fire to a thousand paper ships
She's worse than Helen...
ever was to Troy...
     There's a little smile that forms at his mouth as his voice, that voice, leaves him, the acoustics of the chamber letting him fill it easily. His voice is smooth despite the cigarettes and scotch, more beautiful, just like his face, than it was before. But more than this, there is the power that moves through him and all around him, until the entire castle becomes his instrument. It hums at the plucking of its string...
A thousand burning ships
set sail down the little stream
She lit the candles one by one,
...and then some...
She said, don't you dream of anything?
Of you...
She's lovelier than Helen...
     Davydd halts suddenly, murmuring "Ysgrifennu" once again, and once again the parchment turns without him, notes and this time words (and in Welsh) fill the bars that stroke along the page. "If you grow an apple tree, I'll get fat... and hard..." he laughs. "I might roll around in them and make my own applesauce. I think for the better of us we should abstain just now." Fiery eyebrows wiggle and with an exhale he closes the piano, pulling the lid over the keys. "It's alright, Fiona. Not knowing." Green eyes lift and find their way to you. Davydd inclines his head and after a moment more he stands. "I'm still looking, too. If I weren't, then I'd be dead. You'll sort it out, and then you'll look for something else," he smirks. And so on.

     "Full, full - oh, don't give me straight lines like that one." She grins as she brushes her hands along her skirt's sides, then moves to lean on the piano. "I think the country's causing me to slow down - the more I'm away from the world, the less I am of it. You wouldn't want me to be all unworldly, now would you?"
     She props her chin on her hands, clasped as they are together, listening to the music with a small, almost quizzical smile as you start to play. Then the smile fades slowly, until she looks almost as if she's about to cry; face puckered and held, she straightens up, turning away from the piano to look fixedly across the room. In a stilted little voice, she murmurs something incoherent. Ducking her chin downwards, she moves towards the door.
     "You and apples," Fiona mutters, "I should grow a tree and shake it until you get hit on the head, Davydd ap Owain... I, I'll be in the kitchens. I'll figure out something for our dinner, Annie won't mind." One hand comes up, turned away as she is from you, rubbing quickly at her eyes.

     "Bah, they've already got a equation for gravity," he notes. He watches as you start to move away. "There's no escaping from the world, and we wouldn't want to," he all but says it to himself. "What would it serve..." Very little, to be lost. But London will come with its own strange motions, commotion, challenges and inertia. Davydd takes a seat upon the sofa, a seat first but then he stretches out. There he lies and there he's going to wait for you...
     Music is with him, always in his ears now, and pictures that come with it, like running music videos. He shuts his eyes and throws and arm across them to create a deeper sort of self-inflicted evening.
     You've trotted off too fast, he'll have to save his vesper salutations for your return. You and a plate of food and thoughts of apples. It makes his mouth twitch its way into a grin. Maybe a little honey and bread comes the voice in your head, a whisper at your ears, deep within them. Little sandwiches and scones. Have Annie make us up a plate of sommat and trot back in here and onto my lap...we'll talk of London a little while...
     There's a pause, a moment of silence. It can't possibly last...
     But I can't promise I won't want to fondle ya...

Posted by rowan at July 02, 2004 01:41 PM