“I guess maybe on the lower register…” Selena blew again. This time the tones which emerged were low and dark—they stroked sensuously over Allara’s skin, making her shiver.
“Yes, I guess it does have the same register and tone as your husband’s voice.” Selena nodded thoughtfully. “This is called a French Horn, by the way,” she added, taking out her mouthpiece and putting the instrument down carefully.
“It’s Song is beautiful,” Allara murmured. “I am so grateful to hear it. I thought I would never hear the Song of the moun horn again in this lifetime.”
“Because when you came to get married to Commander Brand, you were leaving your planet for good, right?” Selena asked.
“Oh, um, yes. Yes of course.” Allara bit her lip. She could hardly tell the other woman that she had never expected to hear the moun horn because she had planned to kill her husband and then herself.
I’m glad I didn’t get to complete the mission yet, whispered a rebellious little voice in her head. I’m glad I got to hear the human’s version of the moun horn at least once!
The next minute, she pushed the seditious thought away. What would be the point of her coming here if not to complete her mission and satisfy the Blood Feud? She certainly wasn’t here to play musical instruments and fall in love with her new husband.
Fall in love with him? Are you mad? You’ll feel differently when he gets around to skewering you on that massive shaft of his, her aunt’s voice sneered in her head.
To put such disturbing thoughts out of her mind, Allara asked the first question that came to her.
“Can you play all of these?” she asked Selena, making a sweeping gesture to include all the instruments.
“Not quite.” Selena laughed. “I’m pretty good with just about any Earth instrument—although I’m definitely better at some than others. But there are some Kindred instruments in here that I don’t know how to play—and some I’ll never be able to play.”
“Why?” Allara asked. “Are they too difficult to master?”
“I don’t know if they’re hard to master or not,” Selena said honestly. “But some of them I just don’t have the physical ability to even try. Like this one, for instance.”
She gestured to a long, silver flute which curled several times at the end. It had a broad mouthpiece with two deep divots on either side of it.
“What is it? A…woodwind?” Allara asked, using the other woman’s word for flute-like instruments.
“Yes, it’s a sollan-flute. But it’s made to be played by a Blood Kindred. Look—see these places here?” She pointed at the divots in the mouthpiece. “Those are meant for the Blood Kindred’s fangs. No one without fangs can play this instrument.”
“How fascinating!” Allara exclaimed. “What other instruments can you not play?”
Selena laughed.
“Well, there’s this one here that comes from Twin Moons.”
She pointed to an instrument made of shiny white and silver metal which was almost as big as Allara was. It had a round body and three legs which held it up. There were likewise three mouthpieces—the two on either side were placed quite high but the one in the middle dipped lower, as though to accommodate a much shorter player.
“This is a volan-vance trio-sphere,” Selena said. “It’s made to be played by three players—a pair of Twin Kindred and their mate. So if I wanted to learn to play it, I would need at least two other people to help me—two other really tall people,” she added, smiling.
“Like the Kindred.” Allara nodded. She remembered that Kat had told her she had two husbands and they had been sitting on either side of her during the ceremony. She must ask Kat the next time she saw her if she was able to play this particular instrument.
“Are there any instruments from my new husband’s home world?” she asked curiously. “Maybe it would please him if I learned to play one of those.” Though of course, she should not be thinking of pleasing him, she told herself.
“Well, I’m afraid the only thing they have from Rageron is unplayable too—at least by you or me,” Selena said regretfully. “It’s over here—see?”
She led Allara back to the percussion section and pointed to a matched set of instruments sitting on a sturdy wooden rack. Both were about as long as Allara’s arm and made of some shiny black metal. They each had thick handles and round balls on both ends.
“These are rakk-shass. They look kind of like dumbbells or free weights, huh?” Selena asked, nodding at them. “They feel like them too—when you try to pick them up.”
Allara didn’t know what “dumbbells” or “free weights” were but the instruments didn’t look especially difficult to play.
“They don’t seem to have any special parts that only a Beast Kindred could master,” she said, remembering that was the kind of Kindred Brand was. “I don’t see why you cannot learn to play them.”
“Pick them up and see for yourself,” Selena said, smiling.
Walking around to the wooden rack, Allara positioned her hands on the handles of the Beast Kindred instruments and tried to pick them up.
Neither one budged an inch.
She tried again, straining, with the same result. Abandoning her effort to pick up both of them, she tried wrapping both hands around the handle of just one. But it didn’t work—trying to lift even one of the rakk-shass was like trying to lift a boulder.
“I cannot do it,” she said at last, panting.
“Neither can I—don’t have the upper body strength,” Selena remarked. “I don’t think anybody but a Kindred warrior would. It’s too bad because I’ve heard them played—they make a beautiful low chiming tone when you bang them together.”
“I must ask my husband if he plays them,” Allara said thoughtfully.
“Well, forget about him—have you decided what you want to learn to play yet?” Selena asked her. “I’ll be happy to teach you everything I know, but we have to pick one to start with.”
“Since I cannot play the rakk-shass, I would still like to make the vio-lin’s Song my own,” Allara said firmly. “Can you teach me how to play it now?”
“Well, first things first…” Selena frowned. “Before I can teach you, I need to find out if you can read music?”
Allara shook her head in confusion.
“How can one ‘read’ music?” she asked. “It cannot be captured in writing—it flows from one Song to the next, going as it wishes.”
“So you’re saying that your people have no written music?” Selena raised her eyebrows in apparent surprise.
“No—how could we?” Allara honestly couldn’t understand the concept. Music was something one felt—not something to be written down like words on paper.
“Hmm…” The teacher frowned, her brow wrinkling in concentration. “Okay, I guess we’re starting from scratch. Come over here.”
She brought Allara over to a vast, black, shiny instrument with a bench in front of it. There was a row of white and black rectangles in the front of the instrument that seemed to be laid out in a regular, repeating pattern.