The piano room had thirteen rows of neatly arranged pianoes, a rarely played organ, and a comforting smell. The smell could be associated with that of a library, of old and new books, although the smell here wasn't of books, a distant kin of it.
"Ye be skipping class?" Someone spoke in the quiet. Zion moved forward.
Lancelot Nettles, partially hidden by the lid of a larger paino (rumoured to be once played by a younger Bach), was plucking the strings of his lute.
"I don't have that privilege." Zion pressed a key in E minor.
"Young blood, ancient professors; free spirit, uptight ass ego." The strings were stroked frantically, a hurried rhythm replaced the nee lazy one. "Ye got kicked out, I s'ppose?"
Zion perched himself before a piano. The long legged wooden stool wobbled slightly. A beautiful tune rose in response to his gentle, knowing caress on the black and white keys.
"I was politely told not to disrupt the class."
"Ayuh." Lancelot took out a folded paper from the breast pocket of his shirt and gave it to Zion. "Gimme a tune to this."
The words were scrawled in spidery handwriting making it difficult to comprehend at first glance. A minute of basic observation later, noting how similar the 'e's and 'c's were, incomplete loop of 'o's, Zion thought of a tune. It came to him easily, those rustic medieval tunes residing at the back of his mind all along.
"Ye play good." Lancelot started singing, his lute picking up the tune of the piano.
Hey diddle, diddle, diddle
A foe in the middle
The brat shouldn't have fiddle'
Sirrah, heigh-ho!
I fetch me my steel
Duel'll end in a kill
With one of us still
Heigh-ho!
The world around Zion condensed to a blur of colours; euphoria filled his heart, the slack nerves and senses in his body awakened slowly like an unfurling bud. The discontentment of his injured relation with Rosemary slipped into forgetfulness for the moment.
Before him, Lancelot Nettles, face contorted in a weird showmanship of concentration mirrored Zion's faraway yet focused look; his senior, the prodigy dabbling to take a year's sabbatical before applying for Julliards.
Atleast that's what Lancelot told him during one of their impromptu music "session." Zion suspected sabbatical was a term given to the fear of unknown, of stepping outside of the four walls of graduation school and not knowing what lay on the other side of the road. He'd wisely shut his gob and nodded then, saying something stupid along the lines of "Rest is best."
Currently, Zion's ept fingers glided over the piano and produced a tune conjuring in listener's mind an image of gentle ripples of water. It flowed and stopped. So did Lancelot's baritone and lute.
"That was fun," Zion said when the song ended. He meant it. The world restored to its state of crisp lines and colours.
"Likewise. The lyrics soakes though." Soakes for sucks. Lancelot got up, attempted to iron the creased jeans with his hands and plopped before the piano next to Zion's.
"Let's play another tune. Will ye be late for class?"
"I got time."
Togethet they played Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Whether Lancelot Nettles was shunning his peers, or early for his class, or skipping one, Zion did not know. Neither did he wish to. The guy was here playing alongside him, talking about things which could be easily talked about, the insecurities of present put aside; that was all it mattered.
YOU ARE READING
Bottle Green Daffodil
General FictionWhen intervention, in an unlikely form, makes two individuals head for Heathcliffe, their paths cross and collide. One is a loner yet to get over his best friend's premature death; the other is trying to evade reality for a best friend who is imagin...
