Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [41]
Something magical? Probably. He should be wary, perhaps. On the other hand—
On the other hand, he thought wryly, if there was any danger, or any danger develops, I suspect my unicorn brigade would come charging down to the beach to save me. Very embarrassing, but he could probably live with embarrassment if it got him out of a tight spot.
And she was very, very pretty.
Where was the harm? How often did he get pretty girls smiling at him and wanting to spend time with him?
“You play very well,” said the girl, with a smile. “But whatever are you doing, sitting in the sand?”
“I’m staying at the inn and at the moment it is rather overfull of courting couples,” he replied. “They wouldn’t pay any attention to my music anyway—they’re too busy looking deeply into each others’ eyes, and listening to each others’ voices. I’m Sasha.”
“My name is Katya—Ekaterina,” she replied. “Would you rather be alone? I can go. The last thing I would want to do is to disturb a musician. I expect you get little enough peace.”
He noticed that she made no immediate move to get up. In fact, she looked very much at ease on her rock. Definitely magical. Who or what else could find a rock comfortable to sit on?
He grinned at her. “Well, I would be very pleased if you would stay. A musician always likes an audience.” True on both counts. His dissatisfaction and loneliness at the inn had everything to do with being the only person there who was not with someone. He felt immensely cheered now.
“I’m not a musician by trade,” he added. “I just travel about on business for my father.” Also true. It was not wise to tell falsehoods in the presence of a magic creature. They could take those falsehoods and make them true. “I play what I can remember, and some music of my own, but I can’t claim to have a large number of songs in my head. Is there anything you would like to hear?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Anything at all. I don’t know enough of your music to give you names of songs. I only know that I very much like what I have heard you play so far.”
Well the last thing he was going to do was lapse into melancholy again. So what would be cheerful? He thought about all the couples in the inn, and smiled slightly. Well, why not? He sang one of the songs of his own making, about weddings and the contentment of a couple who were happily suited to one another. He preferred that to a love song, because not every contented couple was madly in love. In fact, being madly in love wasn’t always a good thing. Being madly in love could lead to jealousy, suspicion, any manner of negative things. The Tradition had a way of twisting what you did to its own purposes, and his purpose was to keep his land from having too many bad things happen in it.
From there, he moved on to other songs, some with a purpose, some without. It did no harm to sing the songs of peace and prosperity here…and in fact, now that he came to think of it, he modified a couple of them on the fly to include the sorts of things that fisherfolk would need. Fair winds. Good catches. Safely out and safely back again. And—always, always remembering to honor the Sea King. Many a Traditional tragedy had begun by angering the Sea King. Katya nodded her head and tapped her feet in time to the music, and once or twice even got up and danced to one of his dancing tunes.
He played past sunset and into moonrise, and finally it was his tired fingers and not a lack of will to continue that caused him to halt.
“I hope your parents are not going to fly in a rage that you are out of the house at this time of night,” he said—fairly sure now, since she had said nothing about parents or needing to be home, that she was not going to have that particular difficulty. In fact, he was fairly certain that she was not human…or at least, not an ordinary human. She had told him nothing about