Raised to Kill

“These are rakk-shass. They look kind of like dumbbells or free weights, huh?” Selena asked, nodding at them. “They feel like them too—when you try to pick them up.”

Allara didn’t know what “dumbbells” or “free weights” were but the instruments didn’t look especially difficult to play.

“They don’t seem to have any special parts that only a Beast Kindred could master,” she said, remembering that was the kind of Kindred Brand was. “I don’t see why you cannot learn to play them.”

“Pick them up and see for yourself,” Selena said, smiling.

Walking around to the wooden rack, Allara positioned her hands on the handles of the Beast Kindred instruments and tried to pick them up.

Neither one budged an inch.

She tried again, straining, with the same result. Abandoning her effort to pick up both of them, she tried wrapping both hands around the handle of just one. But it didn’t work—trying to lift even one of the rakk-shass was like trying to lift a boulder.

“I cannot do it,” she said at last, panting.

“Neither can I—don’t have the upper body strength,” Selena remarked. “I don’t think anybody but a Kindred warrior would. It’s too bad because I’ve heard them played—they make a beautiful low chiming tone when you bang them together.”

“I must ask my husband if he plays them,” Allara said thoughtfully.

“Well, forget about him—have you decided what you want to learn to play yet?” Selena asked her. “I’ll be happy to teach you everything I know, but we have to pick one to start with.”

“Since I cannot play the rakk-shass, I would still like to make the vio-lin’s Song my own,” Allara said firmly. “Can you teach me how to play it now?”

“Well, first things first…” Selena frowned. “Before I can teach you, I need to find out if you can read music?”

Allara shook her head in confusion.

“How can one ‘read’ music?” she asked. “It cannot be captured in writing—it flows from one Song to the next, going as it wishes.”

“So you’re saying that your people have no written music?” Selena raised her eyebrows in apparent surprise.

“No—how could we?” Allara honestly couldn’t understand the concept. Music was something one felt—not something to be written down like words on paper.

“Hmm…” The teacher frowned, her brow wrinkling in concentration. “Okay, I guess we’re starting from scratch. Come over here.”

She brought Allara over to a vast, black, shiny instrument with a bench in front of it. There was a row of white and black rectangles in the front of the instrument that seemed to be laid out in a regular, repeating pattern.

“This is a grand piano. Come sit with me,” she told Allara, having a seat on the bench.

Uncertain of what was going to happen next, Allara sat beside her.

“Look.” Selena opened a piece of white paper covered in lots of black lines and dots. At the top were alien-looking letters but after Allara stared at them for a moment she found she could understand them.

“Twinkle, twinkle, Little Star,” she read aloud, delighted to be able to read in an alien tongue. But no matter how hard she stared at the black lines and dots, they refused to resolve themselves into any kind of words she could understand.

“This is what we call ‘sheet music’,” Selena told her. “It’s music that has been written down so that everyone who sees it can play it the same.”

“The same? Every time? You would make everyone’s Song the same as everyone else’s?” Allara was horrified. “But everyone’s Song should be different—the Gods of All Creation have decreed it,” she protested.

“Maybe on your world,” Selena said firmly. “But on Earth, we like to write down a piece of music so that more than one person can enjoy playing or singing it.”

This put things into a rather different light, though Allara was still disturbed at the idea of trapping music on a page.

“So I take it these notes—those are the black dot things—don’t mean anything to you?” Selena asked, pointing to the paper.

Allara shook her head.

“I am sorry—no, they do not. I was able to read the name of this music, but the dots won’t make words, no matter how hard I stare at them.”

“They do make words though—or at least, phrases,” Selena said. “Watch.”

Placing one hand on the row of white and black rectangles, she began to play a simple tune. It was pretty and sparkly and left a sweet taste on Allara’s tongue. It was also over quickly.

When Selena finished, she smiled at Allara.

“See? That was Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. If you learn how to read music, you can play the exact same song that I just did.”

This idea—the idea that a person’s Song could be repeated exactly by many other people—was perhaps the strangest thing Allara had run across yet aboard the Mother Ship. One person might sing a variation of another’s Song, but they did not copy it exactly—nor did they need it to be written down in order to remember it. Music lived in one’s heart and sang in one’s soul—how could a person forget the sound of their own soul?