Galdon stared at the columns of figures –some taller, some shorter–and felt hopeless.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Around him, his brothers and his uncles and his father worked at similar desks, the elders with pen, the younglings with styluses on wax tablets.\u00a0\u00a0 Galdon had a wax tablet and a stylus and this was only the fourteenth day of what he could not imagine doing for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n
A stool scraped; footsteps neared.\u00a0 “How are you coming, lad?” asked his youngest uncle, leaning over to look.\u00a0 Galdon braced his shoulders.\u00a0 “Umm,” said his uncle.\u00a0 “You’ll need to do better than that.”<\/p>\n
“I’m trying,” he said.<\/p>\n
“You’re trying your father’s patience,” his uncle said, warm breath in Galdon’s ear.\u00a0 “Do you want<\/em> a whipping?”<\/p>\n “No, Uncle.”<\/p>\n “Then you’d best have the rest of your tablets done by the next turn of the glass.”<\/p>\n The footsteps went away, his uncle’s stool scraped on the floor again. Galdon stared at the figures.\u00a0 They were just numbers.\u00a0\u00a0 If only they were musical notes…he blinked.\u00a0 Maybe they could be musical notes and maybe–maybe he could do sums with them.\u00a0\u00a0 He let himself hum the first note of a tune–very quietly.\u00a0 Let that be one.\u00a0\u00a0 Plus…seven, all right, that could be…that note.\u00a0 And the seven plus one was eight which might be…that note.\u00a0 So far so good.\u00a0\u00a0 He finished that tablet, sweating heavily, tongue between his teeth to keep from singing out loud.\u00a0\u00a0 Now…if only the answers were right.\u00a0\u00a0 But at least he could set that table aside and take the next one.<\/p>\n ……………………………………………………………..<\/p>\n Of all the chores in his family’s cheese-making business,\u00a0 Mala hated most scrubbing out the vats.\u00a0 Not that he had any choice.\u00a0\u00a0 He was big enough now to reach the bottom with the scrubber, and yet young enough to be the all-around chore boy for the rest of them.\u00a0\u00a0 Last year he and Galdon, a boy from down the street, had been able to spend most of the day playing…well, sneaking into inns to listen to traveling bards, sneaking into a luthier’s shop to watch how instruments were made, making what music they could out of anything they could find–for neither family thought providing even the simplest reed-pipe or drum was worthwhile for boys whose lives were firmly set in the way of the family business.\u00a0 He and Galdon had made their own reed pipes and learned to produce sound, if not music, from them.\u00a0 They had tapped with sticks on stones, railings, trees, boxes…anything they could find.<\/p>\n He tapped on the vat wall with the scrubber…it really did have a musical sound to it…the copper rang a little, not really bell like but it had a tone–<\/p>\n “Mara, you thick-head–stop beating on that; you’ll make dents in it!”\u00a0\u00a0 His oldest sister, now a journeyman cheesemaker,\u00a0 strode toward him, her crinkly hair burstin out of confinement yet again.\u00a0 She stopped, stuffed it back under her cap, and glared at him.\u00a0 “Don’t do that.\u00a0 Don’t sing, whistle, hum, tap rhythms–just clean the vat before the next milking comes in…NOW.”<\/p>\n Mara thought about the pitch tones in her voice as she scolded.\u00a0\u00a0 If you could only get it on paper, or on something, all the ups and downs and the places her voice broke–her hand caught him by surprise, a hard smack to the side of his head, and he stumbled.\u00a0 She grabbed his arm and held him upright, leaning close to glare into his face.\u00a0 “Do your work or Da will make you wish you had.\u00a0 You’re lucky he’s at the market right now.\u00a0 GO!”<\/p>\n She could not hear the inside of his head, full of melody and rhythm.\u00a0\u00a0 He bit his lip and went back to scrubbing vats, first with soap and hot water, then with vinegar and hot water–his brain told him that vinegar smelled the way some music sounded, but he tried to ignore that–and finally with water alone, boiling water to scare away the demons that spoiled cheese.<\/p>\n His mother came by to inspect and finally nodded.\u00a0\u00a0 “This one’s done, ” she said.\u00a0 “Now quick–do the rest before the milking comes in.”<\/p>\n ……………………………………….<\/p>\n The writing life is writing.\u00a0\u00a0 Whether there’s a contract, or a suggestion, or not.\u00a0\u00a0 So…this is what came to me suddenly today.\u00a0 I have no idea whether it’s going somewhere or not, but it started with iphinome’s comment about pages of writing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Galdon stared at the columns of figures –some taller, some shorter–and felt hopeless.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Around him, his brothers and his uncles and his father worked at similar desks, the elders with pen, the younglings with styluses on wax tablets.\u00a0\u00a0 Galdon had a wax tablet and a stylus and this was only the fourteenth day of what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[107],"class_list":["post-1961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-writing-life","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1961"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1963,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961\/revisions\/1963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}