Captured, enraptured by the sound, Reece abandoned himself to the music, his body writhing in ecstasy. He dropped the bag and began to dance while Wally’s hands moved with confidence, grace and skill. Harp and man learning and teaching each other in a passionate exploration.
The Harp’s music filled the small room, lifted them up, bonded their senses with joy, and set them free.
When Reece got home, he discovered his mother waiting for him.
“There’s ‘bin people ‘ere, asking fer you,” she accused. “’Bin sayin’ some music-man were robbed of his stuff - his real valuable stuff. They’ll pay ‘ter get it back.”
“Ain’t seen nothing,” declared Reece, feeling his heart stop. No!
The woman got up from her seat, swift, despite her size. Her face was clenched in an unpleasant grimace as she snatched up her son and shook him violently.
“Yeah. You see nuffin’ so often, I’m wundrin’ if you ain’t blind.” She cuffed him. “Passed it on, didn’tcha.”
She studied him with a knowing look that only heightened the avarice in her face. “So, how much d’old man give ya, eh? Can’t ‘magine it be much.”
Reece cried out in denial and in doing so, gave away his secret. She grinned at him, triumphant.
He stammered something but his heart was pounding too hard to spare the breath. He wriggled out of her grasp, retreating until his back was against the wall.
“You, you didn’t say - you didn’t send them to Wally’s?”
Wally! The Harp!
Her smile said everything.
The next moment, Reece was out the door and bolting blindly through the corridors. Even taking shortcuts, he knew he could not beat the men in long coats.
All the way, between gasping breaths he sobbed, “oh no, oh no”, knowing that he was already too late.
* * * * *
Wally lay the Harp down on his bed and gently ran his hand down its side. Languorous swirls of phosphorescence followed in the wake of his caress and it gave a quiet hum of contentment; a peaceful melody with undertones of loneliness and past suffering. The sound trailed away into what might have been a question, “How long?”
Wally’s eyes filled with tears. He wanted to think that the Harp understood him, this alien heart of a now extinct forest but even if its music was only a resonation of his own feelings, he did not care. It was precious, it trusted him and these moments were a joy. This time was a sanctuary of sorts, and in their own way, both knew it could not last.
Wally’s back was turned to the door when it exploded inwards with a muted thud and a vicious hail of plastic and twisted steel. Wally did not feel the thin blade of shrapnel that hit him in the back, piercing his thin old body. His legs collapsed beneath him and he grunted as he hit the floor.
He was conscious of several pairs of black boots entering his compartment, crunching the remains of his destroyed door. He was conscious of being kicked in the side but he did not feel anything.
Something crashed into the side of his face and his world fractured into spinning kaleidoscopes that threatened to drown him. He wanted to cry out, beg for understanding.
The Harp! Please don’t hurt it. But no sound came.
With an exclamation of triumph, one of the men swooped down upon the bed, the edges his long cloak swept the walls of the small compartment like the wings of some great bird. The Harp made a sound that could have been a whisper of fear as it was grasped around its neck.
The intruders spoke words that Wally could not hear. He did not really care that he was dying. After all, what was the worth of an old man’s life when his music and his love were stolen?
He saw the Harp, one final time, as it was swung down in front of his face still in the grasp of the black coated intruder. It seemed that the man was taunting him.
Wally wanted to touch it, to say goodbye, but he could not move and the only sound he could make in farewell was a quiet sigh of regret and loss, carried away on his final breath.
A small group of tenants crowded around the remains of the old man’s door. None of them had entered the small compartment. A light strobed the corridor in flashes of blue, and an alarm rang shrilly, but security would not hurry to this part of the station.
Reece shoved his way through the observers, his feet skidding on debris. His breath came in a harsh, rasping moan as he knelt down beside his friend’s body.
He gently touched the shard of steel that protruded from Wally’s back. Blood was already turning his clothing black, creating a sticky pool amidst the rubbish.
The old man’s face was turned towards the door, one eye a bloody, pulped mess, his hand stretched out across the floor.
Reece sat beside Wally for a long while before getting up and making his way to the door. What was left of the crowd of onlookers moved aside quickly, falling back before the look on the boy’s face.
* * * * *
Finally! Safely in his suite, the Maestro caressed his prize. It had cost him a fortune to obtain this treasure and now at last, the journey was over, the Harp was safe in his hands.
His.
The Maestro could wait no longer. He stroked the Harp and his hands, sticky with anticipation, left streaks down its greenish sides. The Harp’s puckered opening was clenched tight.
Disappointed at first, the Maestro soon became angry. His elegant, powerful fingers stroked and probed, growing intrusive, impatient and demanding while the Harp’s surface grew dull and grey, its phosphorescence fading.
Eventually, the Maestro put it aside - but as he did, the Harp sang.
A single chord that captured unmistakably a whispered sigh of regret and loss: the last breath escaping an old man’s lips in a soft exhalation of life.
* * * * *
About the author:
Lynette Aspey is married with one child and lives on a sailing yacht currently anchored somewhere in the Caribbean. When not painting, repairing, cooking, reading, writing, home-schooling or enjoying a swim, she’s sailing.
Exhalation was first published in Aurealis, in 2000.
Check out my profile at:
Or connect with me online:
https://sleepingdragon.info/
* * * * *
OTHER STORIES BY
LYNETTE ASPEY
Sleeping Dragons
When Elaine Ashton's father brought back a beautiful egg-shaped rock from Vietnam as a gift, he told her it was a dragon's egg. He didn't expect it to hatch a gorgeous, black-haired baby.
From that moment, Elaine and her Dad knew that someone would come for Ryan and that they must let him go. For how can one lonely man and his daughter raise a child of dragons?
(8500 words) Young Adult
“...Good short stories are like small gifts: but each gift may be different. This is a well-written, gripping story, enjoyable to read, satisfying in its conclusion, but the real gift here is the promise of something more. I couldn't read this story without thinking of the best novels from Tim Powers—contemporary fantasy that succeeds both as magical fantasy and as mimetic literature. One can't help but connect on a sensory level with the plight of the characters, and with that connection comes the desire for more.”
The Internet Review of Science Fiction August 2004
www.irosf.com
“Many of the selections, notably Lynette Aspey’s “Sleeping Dragons,” condense the complexity and nuance of a full novel into short stories of undiluted power.”
Sarah Meador/2005 for curled up with a good kid's book
www.curledupkids.com
Sleeping Dragons by Lynette Aspey:
First published 2004 Asimov’s Science Fiction and Fantasy
Reprinted 2005 The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens
(edited by Jane Yolen and Patrick Nielsen Hayden)
Reprinted 2005 The Year’s Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy
(edited by Bill Congreve and Michelle Marquardt)
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&nb
sp; The Pocket Gnome
Twelve-year-old David Mishram did not believe in magic. If he had, he would not have made the trap that caught a black-hearted pocket-sized gnome called Lod Fomori, or encountered a mysterious two-natured woman, or fought the vicious Fomori tribe to save the last seed of Power. If he had believed in myth and magic, he would NEVER have set that trap - and our world would be a very different place.
(9600 words) Young Adult / Mature Children
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