The Beacon: Prologue (1)
Episode 1: "The Singing Tinker"
Bumping westward along the rutted road, a small, enclosed wagon approached the farming town of Shipton in southwestern Margonne. An undersized red-brown mule pulled the wagon, generously painted a bright lemon-yellow and ornamented with words, figures, and shapes in various shades of red, blue, and green. As it negotiated the many bumps, dips, and rocks in the well-traveled and poorly maintained road, it swayed dangerously, setting off a cacophony of clinks and clangs that often continued until the next uneven patch of sun-hardened dirt.
Above this riot of color and sound sat an old man, olive-skinned and deeply tanned despite the vast straw hat that covered him from shoulder to shoulder. One of his calloused hands loosely held the mule’s reins, as neither steering nor encouragement was necessary at the moment, while he slowly raised the other toward the sunny blue sky above him in time with the lengthened final note of the love song he sang. Abruptly, he concluded the note and bowed from his waist to his adoring, non-existent audience.
“Thank you! Thank you, my beautiful people!” he shouted as if trying to be heard above the din of applause. He smiled broadly and raised his hat, nodding right and left. “Thank you! You are right: ‘The Ballad of the Lonely Seamstress’ is an amazing composition and an emotional feast! What else would you expect from the heart of the Master Bard, Noacheen Ensello! Thank you!”
He deposited his hat back onto his sparsely populated white-haired head and pulled back on the reins. “Whoa there, Booto! I must get down and stretch my legs and get a drink of water! Singing for the cornstalks is tiring work!”
He walked forward and checked the mule over, affectionately patting her flanks and neck. He ruffled her ears and kissed her broad forehead. “I will get you a little water first. What do you say to that, my little pet?”
After stretching his back, he clumped toward the back of the wagon. On his way, he passed the large lettering on its side that proclaimed:
Pietro the Singing Tinker
then explained in a smaller script:
Housewares and Hard-to-Find Items
and finally:
Specializing in Knives and Sharpening.
Reaching the back doors, Pietro the Tinker opened one and lifted down a heavy, covered pail of water and then an empty one, into which he poured a few inches of water and carried to his tired beast. Once she had finished, shaking her head in what he took to be thanks, he pulled out an earthenware mug for himself and satisfied his thirst. He packed everything neatly back in its place, closing the door.
Leaning back against the doors for a few moments, he enjoyed the wedge of shade provided by the wagon’s blocking of the westering sun. It gave him a moment to let his eyes sweep the countryside, cultivated fields as far as he could see. Just a few miles away, Shipton, the town he was heading toward, sat on a small plateau that jutted from the western hills. The area below it had proved incredibly fertile, growing far more than the nearby people and livestock could consume. The larger farms exported their produce to the capital city, Palisade, a week’s ride to the northeast, and many farming families had become comfortably well-off.
Since a visit to Shipton often netted Pietro a sizable profit, he tried to return to the town a few times each year. Its citizens welcomed him every time they saw—or heard—his wagon toiling up the road, and its children loved his gentle Booto. Once or twice, he had even considered settling down in the town and setting up shop, but in the end, he loved the road too much.
Thinking of the road, he kicked the dirt with his toe. The poor condition of the road was the only part of the journey to Shipton that bothered him. He was sure he would lose a wheel or break an axle each time he came this way, but he had so far escaped without damage. Even so, the road was worse this time than the last time he had been here just five months earlier. He decided to drop a heavy hint to the mayor during his stay.
As he turned his gaze back the way he had come, he had to look twice and rub his eyes. On the horizon, the ground seemed to be rolling toward him, yet as he watched more intently, he realized that the ground was not itself moving, but the air above it was distorting. The distortion silently pushed toward him at a walking pace like a slow, oncoming wave, disturbing nothing as it passed over the landscape.
A bolt of fear shot up his spine. Looking over his shoulder, Pietro scrambled around the wagon's side and climbed onto his seat, clicking the mule into motion. The wave plowed forward about a furlong behind him, but it was steadily gaining ground. Despite Pietro flicking the reins and encouraging her with shouts and curses, Booto stubbornly kept to her accustomed plodding walk. When the wave had advanced to half a furlong away, Pietro surrendered to the fact that he could not outrun it. He decided to face whatever this fearsome phenomenon was with a song on his lips, one of his few real joys in life.
Clearing his throat, he launched unsteadily into one of his favorites, “The Curse of Lady Anilia,” a song written for a woman but well-suited to his range:
How could I have known you would betray me?
How could I have seen that you would stray?
My dear, were you not happy beside me?
What could I have done to make you stay?
But you have spurned my love for another,
And you have made me look like a fool.
You will never hold your pretty lover,
But learn a lesson brutal and cruel.
I will not hear your lying entreaty!
I can never trust your honeyed tongue!
Dare not even think to call me ‘sweetie’!
I am no maiden, naive and young.
There is just one way to deal with your kind,
And that is to strike without remorse!
I have begun down this path in my mind,
And my body will follow its course.
A curse will I shout into the heavens!
Your name—
Pietro risked another look over his shoulder to see the rolling wave overtaking his little yellow wagon. Seeing it so close, his voice cut off abruptly, and his brown eyes grew wide. Expecting to be engulfed and destroyed as the strange distortion passed through him, he instead felt nothing. Perhaps it is some kind of weird mirage, he thought. After it passed, he watched it pull away toward the town. He barked a laugh at himself for becoming so spooked. Whatever it was, it was harmless.
Relieved, the song’s melody returned to his mind, and he hummed a few bars. The words of the last stanza spilled from his mouth in his rich tenor voice:
I will not wait for heaven to aid me!
I am my own avenging angel!
With just one swift stroke, my blade will save me
From a man who cannot be faithful.
“With one swift stroke, my blade will save me!” he sang again louder and stronger. “With one swift stroke, my blade will save me! With one swift stroke, my blade will save me!” He sang the line over and over as he jumped down from the wagon, clutching the long, wickedly sharp knife he kept hidden under his seat to fend off brigands. He was no longer smiling and really no longer singing but chanting slightly changed words in a ragged, raging voice. “One swift stroke of my blade! One swift stroke of my blade! One swift stroke of my blade!”
With each repetition of the words, he slashed at the wheel, the spokes, the traces, and the harness as he moved forward. With a final, “One swift stroke of my blade!” he ripped the knife across docile Booto’s neck. As her crimson blood poured out, she silently fell to her knees and then to her side and lay still. Pietro danced triumphantly, holding the knife in the air and shouting repeatedly, “One swift stroke!”
As he danced, blood dripping from the knife onto his clothes, another distortion rolled up and over him, chasing the previous wave into the west. Pietro stopped dancing and gaped at the knife in his hand. Slowly, his eyes slid down to his dead Booto on the ground, seeing her blood soaking into the hard earth of the road. He could not fathom what he was seeing.
He felt dazed and thick as if he had just woken from a deep, drugged sleep and found himself somewhere other than where he had gone to bed. He could remember nothing but singing “The Curse of Lady Anilia” as he drove. But the scene before him shouted to his senses that he had done an evil deed. Gentle Booto lay dead at his feet, her sliced leather traces scattered around her. He still clutched the gleaming knife in his hand. As he stared at it, a drop of blood fell from it to the ground.
“What have I done?” he whispered and dropped to his knees, weeping.
A note:
Poor Pietro was originally from Delphino in Satele, which had a long history of operatic musical theater. A rather emotional people, Satelens loved highly dramatic plots and themes of lost love, feuds, and revenge. This was reflected in “The Curse of Lady Anilia,” the final aria of the long-running opera, The Lady’s Blade, by the man touted as the master of the art form, Fabrizio Riva. Many considered the other composer mentioned, Noacheen Ensello, a Master Bard, Riva’s equal, though, during his lifetime, Ensello never succeeded commercially in Delphino. The elite panned his style as “rustic” and “low-brow,” but normal Satelens loved his music and sang and danced to his songs in taverns, parks, and wherever they might gather.
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Poor Booto!
Good to see the opening of this story! Poor Booto.