Catastrophe Jones

Nine Trees walked through the city streets, while wagons and horses and people were milling about during the market day, and took in the sights and scents and sounds around him. Every seller of beautiful tapestry, sweet fruit and savory pie, precious silver trinket and intricately carved and molded piece of furniture beckoned to him, and he listened with an air of growing bliss. There was nothing quite like the cacophony of music surrounding him, and he drank it in without regard to the other pieces of his surroundings. Much to the dismay of the driver of a cart laden with pots and pans and clothing, Nine Trees paused in the crossing of a street to gaze in wonderment at a young woman who was all but dancing through her throng of customers, handing out her baked goods and singing brightly.

Apple pie, mincemeat pie, mutton pie, and berry.
Flaky crust and sweet delight of sugared, golden cherry.
Half a penny buys a slice, three pennies buys the whole.
Eat some here then take some home; sweet pie, hot pie for all!

She was giddy and sweet, calling her wares and offering tastes to nobles and dirty-faced children alike, but none of that interested the tinker who was currently all of ten feet from trampling the poor man caught up in staring. Just before he was beaten down by sharp hooves, Nine Trees headed off toward the woman at a quick skip, and left behind a swearing, hat-throwing man who’d lost cups and other wares from his cart when he abruptly swerved and reined in his horses.

Nine Trees approached the woman and held out his hands to her, his eyes shining, and immediately she placed a warm slice of pie into his hands and danced off, still singing. He stared for a moment at the pie, and his stomach overwhelmed all other thought. Eating became the necessary thing, and he leaned against her stall in contentment, going so far as to begin licking his fingers as he saw the young woman pocket penny after penny, laughing and dancing. When she came back to him she brightly announced “Ha’penny, good sir,” and proffered her palm, which he graced, without thinking, with a flat golden sovereign. Staring, she quirked a brow and said “Was it the whole lot you meant to buy, or are you expecting change?”

“…whichever,” Nine Trees said, smiling at her lazily, dreamily. “That was quite good,” he told her as he watched her look at the shelves full of pies that remained. “I could eat six more,” he said, wiping crumbs from his vest.

“And what of the rest?” she wondered, still clutching the coin tightly in her brown fist. “You’ve bought the lot, sir. They won’t keep for the weeks it’d take you to eat them.”

He eyed the rest of the customers who still stood near, bellies rumbling and mouths watering, and shrugged, saying “Give them away?”

“Are y’mad?” the young woman wondered of him, not unkindly.

“Perhaps,” Nine Trees answered, picking up another pie and cutting into it delightedly. “Perhaps I am.”

“So if I am to give away pies, then, it is on your ducat, sir?” the girl says, narrowing her eyes and making to put away the coin in her purse, hesitating at the last moment.

“Certainly not,” Nine Trees said, and the woman paused in putting away the coin, looking uncertain. “That, my good woman, is now your ducat,” he told her, his eyes twinkling mischievously.

“You are mad,” she pronounced, and pocketed the coin, stepping away with pies in her hands, to dance around the crowd. The words of her song were just as sweet and joyous, but had now changed:

Apple pie, mincemeat pie, mutton pie, and berry.
Flaky crust and sweet delight of sugared, golden cherry.
Not a penny buys a slice, and no more buys the whole.
Eat some here and take some home; free pies, free pies for all!

Part One — Part Two — Part Three — Part Four — Part Five — Part Six — Part Seven — Part Eight — Part Nine — Part Ten — Part Eleven

Many songs were once sung through the ages, a testament to things of Beauty and Wonder; minstrels wandering blessed their audiences with the tales of adventurers, heroes, gods, demons, conquest and failure, romance and tragedy. Many songs were lost during wars, replaced by gory recountings of battles, generals, and emperors taking the place where simple men had once been elevated by music. Where there were once epic tales of the Forest Before Time, the Banished Gods, or songs Beyond the Westerling Seas, there are now only tiny little flashes that children know in sing-song skip-rope rhymes.

Medowin could not stand the thought of such loss, and woke in her high tower, coming from dreams of memory unto a clear day, a single name held in her mind. She was growing older, but not old in the sense of wrinkled hands and brow, for it was true that Medowin had passed far more seasons than any other mortal, but she was still fair and of young seeming, and her eyes were still clear and fierce, a blue that made skies pale with envy.

There was coming a time where the songs that were lost would be of use again, and because the world had grown so, and what was once a seeming handful of people had become races in the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands, Medowin foretold that she alone would not be able to find the one who would prove to be the next catalyst, the one who would be reknowned into the next Age. She would send a squire of her own choosing, to walk the world and bring to her the news of the time of troubles, and call forth the old songs to be made new once again.

Her voice was wind and water, the sound of storm, of rain and breeze, the chatter and babble of streamtalk and river, and it carried across the world in windy fronts and fingers of blue, seeking. There were many who might hear, and so many who, in hearing, thought themselves mad, that there were fewer still who might answer. For a time, Medowin knew fear, that she had slept too long and would not find someone who might sing with her.

When the ringing answer finally came, Medowin rejoiced and all but flew to the spot where a young man lay in his sickbed, in feverdreams. His family was none too happy to give him up, for even though Medowin was a child of the gods, to be obeyed, they begged her to spare them their only heir, and heaped her with what little gifts their poor estate could manage, hoping to have her take their sacrifices instead of their son. She declined them all politely and touched each–mother, father, three little sisters–upon the middle of their foreheads, and let them forget the son she would take. Indeed, they woke the next day richer and stronger, and remembered nothing of the boy who had lain dying only hours ago. And if the mother knew a loneliness, an emptiness in her, at such times as when she recalled the lullabye she did not remember having sung to him when he was small, it was nearly filled by husband and daughters, and she questioned herself for her grief, not knowing how she had been robbed… but knowing she had been, for it was sung once, in the very beginning, that a mother’s love of her child cannot be forgotten or lost, and not even Medowin, in her ancient wisdom, who had never borne a child nor could, would understand such a thing.

The boy, for he was yet a boy, was reclaimed to Medowin’s realm, where he was healed and washed and put into a heavy sleep beside the woman who had called for him. There, she took his name, David, and instead, placed a story, a song of discovery, a myth of how she came upon him in the forest, in a copse of trees, left to the wild. She found him in a circle of nine aspen, whose leaves whispered in the wind like a thousand tiny drums, and that became his name. For years, Nine Trees stayed lost in sleep, fed on songs and drunk on dreams, until it would be time for Medowin to wake him again.

Part One — Part Two — Part Three — Part Four — Part Five — Part Six — Part Seven — Part Eight — Part Nine — Part Ten — Part Eleven