strangetrip | [EP] Change and desperation

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[EP] Change and desperation

Being a woman and not a First Daughter, Curnen knew nothing of the men's mysteries of her community. She did not know the words of the Silent Sons, "Silence is more musical than any song." But when Kash disappeared from her life, he who had given her songs back to her... she could think of no better way to mourn. What song was there? He had not been her love, but he had been more than her friend. And her utter fucking joy at not having to keep an eye out for Zahra, at being able to move freely in their small space again, made everything even more confusing. So when out and about, for weeks there had been no singing. No playing. No whistling, no humming, no dancing, not so much as idle tapping on a table. She did not forbid herself to speak, but it was rare, if she wasn't spoken to first.

In public at least. In the privacy of her room she threw herself into a project she had been cobbling for some months now, but this it seemed was the final push she needed to see it through. She told Coby, when she realized she really needed a man's voice for the last piece, but even he was not privy to the whole of the project.

No one would have known until the flyers went up a few days before she planned to do it. "Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation" they promised. Not quite horror stories, but a story hour for the time of year. She had never performed a whole set by herself at the inn before. Kash would have told her to be brave. If it was time. If she was ready. And now, she really thought she was.

Saturday night, Curnen put on her good dress (and still no shoes) and played for the dinner crowd. She didn't expect everyone--or even anyone--to deliberately come and stay through the whole thing. Indeed, she tried not to pay attention to that, the comings and goings of faces. She sang for the audience she had. Between songs she flirted, she charmed, she teased, and she taught, explaining what pieces were and where they had come from.

Beginning with a song that could sound perfectly innocent if not for the unease infused through the arrangement and her voice, Curnen progressed through a series of tragedies and murder ballads. At the seventh and center piece she set her guitar aside and sang unaccompanied, and this was the first admission after a kind. Though she did not think anyone in the audience had the language. She explained neither before nor after what the words meant.

The center of this labyrinth wasn't the heart, though. They proceeded there next. These four songs were chosen not just for their nature, but also because each one them touched on something of Curnen's life--her curse, her losses, her trials. For anyone who had not heard the story from her already there was nothing to make it obvious. But there was something there in the increasing wildness of her eyes, in the edge in her voice. In the way she swapped a guitar for a bodhran when she came to the heart of it.

"I know least one of y'all's impatiently wondering, 'Curnen, honey, what's the worst story you know? Just tell us that and get it over with.' All right." And she told them. And she didn't die in the telling.

The twelfth song was a break, to dispel some of that dark energy. At the thirteenth she had Coby join her on guitar while she drummed, and the two of them passed "The Ballad of Tam Lin" back and forth between them.

She could not say what compelled her toward the end, when she took up the words of the fairy queen in her mouth. By now, she had done a handful of things that no ordinary girl could or should be able to do, but no one had been able to pin down and put a word to what she was. She told them as best she could now, in the way the room went colder, in the way her eyes went black from end to end, in the way her voice crashed like bells and broken glass, in the ghost of glamour wings (for still, still her own eluded her) for just those verses to show the queen's icy rage.

Then she was herself again, and the song ended. Curnen grinned. "Happy Halloween. Tip your waitress." And it took everything in her not to stumble away from the stage. Bliss would have killed her, and Curnen was terrified and defiant all at once, but also lighter for it. She had not said the word 'fairy.' But she had shown them. Maybe they'd be fine. Maybe they'd stone her. Only way to find out was talk to anybody with a thing to say.

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When she turned into him, Coby wrapped her up in his arms, the muscles of his back twitching where wings wanted to extend and do the same. Instead, he kissed her hair, head bowed over hers. "Not knowing's okay. Just... you aren't alone, you know." Anything else could wait.

Curnen nodded, and for a long time she allowed herself to retreat into silence. She had already told so much through nearly an hour of singing, she did not need more songs now. She let herself feel Coby's body, solid and warm and familiar, against hers. This was real. This was here and now. Rockhouse couldn't hurt her. Not anymore.

But that Kash also wasn't here cut deeper than she wanted to admit right now. "Some of those were true, y'know."

"Every time you sing, it's true." That wasn't what she meant, and he knew it it. It just felt important to say first. Because when music was that much a part of you, you couldn't make music without your own truth coming through. "But yeah, I know. If you want to talk about it, we can. And if it's already too much, I'm pretty good at distractions and not thinking. Whatever you need. And if you don't know that either, that's okay. I've got you."

"I... Rockhouse, he..." Curnen knew she had to say it. She had to say it to someone, but she could feel her throat closing up against the words. Coby knew that Rockhouse had murdered her husband, but he didn't know why. Not really why. She kept it close, so close that she could avoid looking at it if she wanted to. Trying to bring that into focus was disorienting and distressing, and she started to tremble.

Whatever words were stuck in Curnen's throat, Coby was confident they'd piss him off but not surprise him. He ran a hand over her back, slow strokes, warmth and hopefully comforting. "You want to get out of here?" It might make things easier, talking somewhere they were alone. Maybe outside, where her words were only for him and the night winds. But it was up to her. He'd stay here as long as she needed, whether the words came or not.

Yes... yes that sounded like the right thing to do, and Curnen nodded. Words like what were rattling around inside her were not for the ears of passerby. She didn't know if she was actually going to say them, but if she did she didn't want anybody else to hear. Kash had guessed at it, but she'd never been able to say it, even to him.

"Come on, butterfly." He kissed her temple and turned them a bit, so they could leave when she was ready, keeping an arm around her. Their gear would be all right. That was one of the good things about so few people living here. He didn't have to worry about things like that.

On the other hand, there was plenty of worrying about other stuff, mostly the people he loved, if he felt the need to dwell.

Once they started moving, Curnen knew how right this was, going outside. And when she felt the night wind against her skin, something that had shrunk and dried inside her unfurled. She lifted a hand against the stars and made a sign, an entreaty for protection and guidance. "Fuck, that's better," she whispered.

"Well yeah." Like it was obvious, going outside was better. When mostly what he was feeling was relief. He could still practically feel the pain coming off Curnen, but it was like they could breathe a little now. He hadn't thought much about it before, and he couldn't say he really understood what the night winds meant to Tufa, but it felt kind of like getting in the surf for him. Something about the roll and pull of the water, like completing a circuit.

Oh time makes men grow sad
And rivers change their ways
But the night wind and her riders
Will ever stay the same

The verse came to her lips so smoothly that Curnen jumped when she realized she'd just sang that. This song had been floating at the edge of her consciousness for so long, and she'd known it was important, but she'd had no way to snatch it back. It wasn't a song that the Tufa had ever written down anywhere. It was too important to risk anyone finding it. "Shit."

It wasn't a song Coby had heard her sing before, here or in London, but he didn't have to know it to hear it was a Tufa song. Her reaction after she sang it though was... He didn't know, but if he was going to guess, "Memory hitting hard?"

It had. It had, but at least for the moment it had hit in the best way. Curnen lifted her head and sang to the night.

When these hills were sharp as claws
Raked slow across the sky
We rode the wind that wore them smooth
And came to this place to die

We thought our time had ended
As it does for all true things
But here we found a new green home
And room to spread our wings

Listening to her sing, he could almost feel it, that sense of home and belonging, that connection between Tufa and the land that was part of them. The depth of years turned to centuries turned to more.

In his head, the more familiar lyrics, Life is old there, older than the trees, younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze blended with her song.

More important, though, was the story she was telling, one that went all the way back to the beginning of the story she'd shared tonight for those who tried to hear it. So he listened, and he loved, letting her be who she was and enjoy finding it again.

As the song died away, the tears came. Curnen had fully expected to cry tonight, after everything threatened to overwhelm and swallow her up. She hadn't expected the tears to be those of joy. But now she was just crying and she couldn't stop smiling.

"Shit," she said again, trying to wipe her face clean with her hands.

"No shit."

Reaching to help thumb away her tears of joy, Coby couldn't help it, he had to look. Hoping and maybe even a little expecting to see the familiar butterfly wings that were supposed to be there.

But the wings were not there. Curnen didn't take much notice of that, though, focusing on the feeling of his thumb against her cheek.

"He hated that about us," she whispered. "That we loved them, and they loved us. He wanted to keep us together, and unchanged, until the queen changed her mind and welcomed us home."

That felt familiar in ways Coby kind of assumed weren't memories of this life.

"He was wrong." About everything, if you asked Coby, but especially about love.

"He thought..." Curnen swallowed bile. "He thought that we were going to fade away. That sooner or later, we'd just be people like everyone around us. No more riding the night wind, no more songs, no more Tufa. So he wanted to... preserve... our pure blood."

"You all pretty much agreed as a community giving him access to little girls was a bad idea," he echoed, the words coming out of hazy memory of getting to know each other through music back in London.

"And I know... he's your mom's brother." Had she told him that here? Or only before? He couldn't remember, but it seemed more important to give her an idea what she didn't have to tell him. Especially when words could be hard.

Oh. That was when he'd heard that song before. She'd sung it the night she told him about what Rockhouse had done to her mom. The night Coby first showed her his wings.

Curnen shuddered, though in a way hearing it from his mouth made it easier for her to say the rest. Clearly even in another reality, she had trusted him. "He didn't... stop there," she said. "He wanted more children, and..." her vision swam. "We were on the road together, just Brushy and me and... and him." She couldn't finish it. She put her hand to her throat and practically willed the words to come, but they wouldn't.

He could feel the words like they were caught in his throat as much as hers. Later there would be a cold, hard anger aimed right at Rockhouse, and satisfaction knowing how very dead he'd been before Coby left London. Right then, though, all he felt was hurt, for Curnen.

He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close but not trapped, his wings appearing instinctively to help shut out everything that wasn't them.

Curnen wrapped her arms around his neck and shook violently, so hard that she didn't know if she would be able to keep to her feet without Coby there to hold onto.

She did not cry. Or scream. Or make a single sound. Only hid herself inside the circle of black feathers and tried not to fall completely to pieces.

And yet for as grateful as she was, she felt the absence of Kash like an icy weight in her stomach.

Coby held her, wishing he could do more than be there and steady while she stood right on the edge of breaking.

He began to hum softly, calmly melodic, but no particular song because he couldn't grasp one that felt right. Sixties and seventies folk, the stuff his parents used to sing him as lullabies, more traditional tunes he'd picked up, mostly from Maire, they all slipped through his head and floated on, not what she needed right then.

The call of music would always be a strong one deep in her blood, almost an instinct in itself, and Curnen felt it smoothing and straightening the tangles of her emotions and thoughts. She started to hum as well, and in a way the lack of a specific song helped in its own way because she had to listen to make her voice twine around his instead of letting muscle memory take over.

There were things he could say, like how fucking glad he was she'd ripped out Rockhouse's throat and took his singing along with it. But with her humming along with him, and how he could feel her unknotting, he didn't want to stop the music for anything. Instead, he shifted his embrace so he could take her weight, kissed her temple softly, spread his wings and lifted into the air. The roof, he thought, unless she wanted to fly, then they could take off for somewhere.

[EP] Change and desperation

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