Chương 38: Chapter 33 — Eleven Minutes

Fenwick had been sitting on the courtyard bench for twenty minutes before he wrote anything. He had the notebook open. He had the pen in his paw. He had, by any reasonable measure, a great deal to write. The hunger bar. The feint. The cloak. The letters on Nibbles' desk and the shape they made. The cage in the Cutty Sark cave and what it meant that someone had built it.

The fact that the cknoll chieftain had been wearing enchanted gear and that something had given it to him for proving himself raised a question about what the proving had looked like and what the something was. He wrote none of it. He sat on the bench in the afternoon courtyard and listened to the Order go about its business around him, and after a while, he stopped trying to start and let himself sit. The acorn bag was empty now, in serious need of a washing before they continued any hunting.

The hand was repaired with a bandage and a healer's instructions. But Fenwick had not stopped being aware of the pocket where the bag had been for most of the afternoon. The weight of it. The knowledge of what was inside. He had retrieved a hand from a creature's stomach today. He had put it in a bag and carried it through the Thornwood and across the compound and into a healer's room and handed it over like it was a piece of Order paperwork.

He thought that was probably the sort of thing that took a while to write down. Across the courtyard, a junior acolyte had dragged an upturned crate into the corner by the herb garden and was sitting on it with a lute across his knees. He was practicing. Working the same passage until the fingers stopped thinking about it, repetition that builds something too small to see until it's already built. Scales up, scales down. The same eight bars three times before moving forward.

It was, Fenwick thought, a reasonable way to spend an afternoon. He uncapped his pen and wrote: Hunger 2/10. Feinted. Unknown which. He looked at it. He capped the pen again. Max appeared in the doorway of the healing room. He had been told to stay still. Staying still, apparently, did not cover sitting up and looking through the door once Brother Corwin declared the major work complete and the hand needed only to settle.

He stood in the doorway with his left arm held carefully at his side, the reattached hand bandaged to the elbow, and looked across the courtyard. He found the sound. He stopped. The acolyte kept playing, unaware. Fenwick looked up from the notebook. Max was standing very still and holding his breath so that he could hear the sounds. Something about them stopped Max cold. His head had tilted slightly to the left. His eyes were not tracking the courtyard. They were somewhere else. His right hand moved.

The fingers found a shape against his thigh. Then another. The thumb crossed over, pressing where a fret would have been. Slow. Returning. Fenwick did not move. The acolyte finished the scales and moved to a melody. Something brighter, a tune with a bounce to it. Two junior acolytes crossing the courtyard slowed down. One of them sat on the flagstones. The other looked around for permission, found none, and sat anyway. The acolyte noticed his audience and straightened slightly on the crate.

The melody got a little more ambitious. A third child appeared from the direction of the herb garden, still holding a bunch of something green, and sat down without putting it down. Max had not moved. His right hand was still moving against his thigh — the same shapes, finding the same positions, but faster now, following the melody where it went. The thumb crossed. The fingers shifted.

He was playing something that wasn't there against fabric that wasn't a fretboard, and the children in the courtyard were laughing at something the acolyte had done with the ending of a phrase, and none of them were looking at the doorway. Fenwick was. The acolyte finished the passage and started again from the beginning. Max's fingers followed, a half-beat behind, finding their way back to the start of something they apparently remembered. Fenwick counted, later, when he was writing it down. Eleven minutes.

Max stood in the doorway for eleven minutes while the acolyte played scales and his right hand moved against his thigh, finding shapes that had no names in any language he currently had. On the twelfth minute, Brother Corwin appeared behind him and said his name. Max went back inside. He came out ten minutes later, the bandaged arm still held carefully, and crossed the courtyard to where Fenwick sat. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

He stood in front of the bench and looked at his right hand. Then he looked at Fenwick.

"The sounds," he said. He moved his right hand, the fingers finding one of the shapes again briefly before he stopped.

"Max—" He stopped. His jaw worked. The word wasn't there. Fenwick waited. Sindy's screen shifted. A word appeared, careful and clean. Music. Max looked at it.

"Music," he said. He tried the shape in the air again with his right hand.

"Max — music. Before." Fenwick looked at him. The fingers. The shapes against his thigh. The way he had stood in the doorway for eleven minutes without being called back to himself once.

"Yes," said Fenwick, carefully.

"Before." Max looked at his hand again. He opened and closed the right one, the unbandaged one, and held it out palm up, studying his own fingers. Did you play? Sindy wrote. Max looked at the word. He looked at his fingers.

"Play," he said. He tried it. Then: "Music. Play." He moved the fingers, the same shape from the doorway, slow and deliberate.

"Max — play. Before." Sindy put another word on the screen. Musician. Max looked at the word.

"No," he said. Sindy waited.

"No — musician." He moved the fingers again, the shape against his thigh.

"Max — play. Music." He stopped. His jaw tightened. He looked at the empty crate across the courtyard. Back at his hand. The word wasn't there. Whatever the word was, it lived somewhere past the vocabulary he had, and he knew it, and knowing it was its own frustration — the shape of something true that wouldn't come through yet. Fenwick waited. Max looked at his hand for a long moment. Then on the screen.

"Empty," he said. Then: "Quiet. Too quiet." He moved the fingers one more time, slow, the same shape.

"Max play. Because—" He stopped. He shook his head once. Because that was as far as the words went. Sindy put nothing on the screen. She just waited with him. Fenwick looked at his notebook. He had been taking notes all afternoon. He did not write this down. Some things filed themselves differently. Not in the shorthand he used for Order business, not in the margin notes he made when something needed following up.

This went somewhere else — the part of him that had been watching Max for two months, the part that had filed the first word and the first sentence and the hunger bar and the feint and the hand in the acorn bag, the part that was beginning to understand that what he was watching was not just a ghoul learning to be a person again. Max had been alone for a very long time. Long enough to pick up an instrument to fill the silence.

Long enough that the music had gone into the hands and stayed there through everything that came after. Fenwick closed the notebook. The courtyard was quiet. The acolyte had packed up his lute and gone.

"We'll come back to it," said Fenwick.

"There's time." Max looked at him for a moment. Then he nodded once and looked back at his hand. Morning. Max held up his left hand and looked at it. The fingers moved. Not perfectly — a slight stiffness, a fraction of a second slower than the right. Brother Corwin had warned them about this: the reattachment was complete, the nerves were knitting, full function would return over the next week or two. Max opened and closed his hand three times.

"Works," he said.

"Yes," said Fenwick. Max picked up the sword. He held it two-handed, the left hand finding the pommel. He stood in the courtyard in the early morning light and took Vom Tag — sword raised, left foot forward, right foot planted, the left hand gripping the pommel with the careful deliberateness of something testing a repair. He held it for a moment. Then he hummed. Three or four notes, low and brief, barely there. He didn't seem to notice he'd done it. Fenwick noticed. It held. He lowered the sword.

He looked across the courtyard to the corner by the herb garden, where the upturned crate still sat from yesterday. Empty now. The acolyte not yet arrived. Max looked at it for a moment.

"Good," he said. Fenwick was not entirely sure which thing he meant. ⟨ [SYSTEM PRIVATE LOG] ⟩ [Sindy — Private Log — Day 65] Eleven minutes. His fingers moved against his thigh. He didn't know what he was doing. The hands knew. He asked about it after. He didn't have the word. I gave him "music." He said "before" again. He said it to his hand. ▌ Becca, if you're reading this: ▌ He hummed some notes. ▌ He used to play music. ▌ Max is starting to show who he was.