Soul Music - Terry Pratchett [2]
Imp the bard sat under the evergreens, more out of habit than any real hope that it would keep the rain off. Water just dribbled through the spiky leaves and formed rivulets down the twigs, so that it was really a sort of rain concentrator. Occasional lumps of rain would splat onto his head.
He was eighteen, extremely talented, and, currently, not at ease with his life.
He tuned his harp, his beautiful new harp, and watched the rain, tears running down his face and mingling with the drops.
Gods like people like this.
It is said that whomsoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. In fact, whomsoever the gods wish to destroy, they first hand the equivalent of a stick with a fizzing fuse and Acme Dynamite Company written on the side. It’s more interesting, and doesn’t take so long.
Susan mooched along the disinfectant-smelling corridors. She wasn’t particularly worried about what Miss Butts was going to think. She didn’t usually worry about what anyone thought. She didn’t know why people forgot about her when she wanted them to, but afterward they seemed a bit embarrassed about raising the subject.
Sometimes, some teachers had trouble seeing her. This was fine. She’d generally take a book into the classroom and read it peacefully, while all around her The Principal Exports of Klatch happened to other people.
It was, undoubtedly, a beautiful harp. Very rarely a craftsman gets something so right that it is impossible to imagine an improvement. He hadn’t bothered with ornamentation. That would have been some kind of sacrilege.
And it was new, which was very unusual in Llamedos. Most of the harps were old. It wasn’t as if they wore out. Sometimes they needed a new frame, or a neck, or new strings—but the harp went on. The old bards said they got better as they got older, although old men tend to say this sort of thing regardless of daily experience.
Imp plucked a string. The note hung in the air, and faded. The harp was fresh and bright and already it sang out like a bell. What it might be like in a hundred years’ time was unimaginable.
His father had said it was rubbish, that the future was written in stones, not notes. That had only been the start of the row.
And then he’d said things, and he’d said things, and suddenly the world was a new and unpleasant place, because things can’t be unsaid.
He’d said, “You don’t know anything! You’re just a stupid old man! But I’m giving my life to music! One day soon everyone will say I was the greatest musician in the world!”
Stupid words. As if any bard cared for any opinion except those of other bards, who’d spent a lifetime learning how to listen to music.
But said, nevertheless. And, if they’re said with the right passion and the gods are feeling bored, sometimes the universe will re-form itself around words like that. Words have always had the power to change the world.
Be careful what you wish for. You never know who will be listening.
Or what, for that matter.
Because, perhaps, something could be drifting through the universes, and a few words by the wrong person at the right moment may just cause it to veer in its course…
Far away in the bustling metropolis of Ankh-Morpork there was a brief crawling of sparks across an otherwise bare wall and then…
…there was a shop. An old musical instrument shop. No one remarked on its arrival. As soon as it appeared, it had always been there.
Death sat staring at nothing, chinbone resting on his hands.
Albert approached very carefully.
It had continually puzzled Death in his more introspective moments, and this was one of them, why his servant always walked the same path across the floor.
I MEAN, he thought, CONSIDER THE SIZE OF THE ROOM…
…which went on to infinity, or as near infinity as makes no difference. In fact it was about a mile. That’s big for a room, whereas infinity you can hardly see.
Death had got rather flustered when he’d created the house. Time and space were things to be manipulated, not obeyed. The internal dimensions had been a little too generous. He