Read Online Song Of Time by Ian R. MacLeod - Free Book Online Page A

closer inspection, the scratches and marks seem to lack the pattern which you might expect from someone who’s merely been buffeted by the sea. Illuminated in the sun’s low light, a cat’s paw of cuts runs almost playfully across his smoothly hairless chest, whilst a large lozenge of bruise shapes his right thigh. He isn’t circumcised. He’s perfectly dry now, and he smells warm and clean. The salt would probably be good as an antiseptic. His knees are grazed. So are the palms of his hands. He could have been crawling, like some penitent from one of those mad sects. Now there’s an explanation I hadn’t thought of. Perhaps he wanted to die…
    It’s down to you now Sis. The air soars past me and my hands redouble as I look down on them. I feel as if I’m falling, but I ride these sensations. I drift apart from them. I feel as if I could pull down these old walls, tread the evening sky, burrow the earth, re-arrange everything. How much are these fugues down to my age and illness, how much is caused by the process of dying? My disease and the silvery roots of the crystal seed which was implanted in my skull now co-exist within me. They co-operate in my change and degeneration. I ride the feeling. I let it come. Suddenly, I’m exhausted—I’m tumbling towards death even as I stand here in this music room. But at least I’m not alone.
    “Hey…” I risk nudging him. “Rip van Winkle. What’s your name…?”
    He murmurs something, although it may just be a leave-me-alone groan. It sounds, though, like it begins with an a. Aaddduubbnmmm . Adam? Is he telling me his name? But it still seems a shame to wake him, and I can feel the drag of sleep as his face relaxes, his body recurls. There’s something touching, almost abject, in the way he’s pressing the insides of his wrists together, although around them I can see a pattern of dug-in cuts and discolorations. Similar marks also circle his ankles where his feet project from the blankets. It’s as if he’s been roughly shackled by ropes.
    I go towards the windows. Winter is brewing—it comes earlier each year. I can feel it in my and Morryn’s bones. Even now, on this fine evening, the wind is rising, pushing at the glass, testing the slates and eaves. I shiver, touched by outriders of the true cold which will soon turn the earth to stone, freeze rivers to grey and push the sun so far off into the sky that it will seem much as it must to those machines which mine the distant planets. But still, there is always music and the grey rectangle of my once hi-tech violin case rests on its usual chair. Keying the code, lifting my precious Guarneri from inside, I wipe an imaginary dusting of resin, then pluck each of the strings. Sensing the delayed beginning of our daily routine, the automatic piano’s keys dip in response as it sounds g, d, a, e. Tweaking the adjusters, I strum back at it, then shoulder my instrument, lift the bow, and draw a longer series of open notes. The piano has fallen silent now, but a ghost I cannot see has raised his hands from the keys, and is looking towards me with a mischievous expression I recognise as entirely my husband Claude’s.
    We’d do this sometimes. I’d start something, and he’d have a guess, recognise, catch up. It was our private game, although we’d often do it before an audience as well. Occasionally, there was no piece, and we simply riffed, extemporised, improvised. Of course, the musically knowledgeable clapped all the louder when we’d finished. It was part of our glamour, our success, our so-called swagger and synergy—Claude Lewis and Roushana Maitland astonish the world again! Not that I feel particularly swaggerish now, standing in my music room with a half-drowned man as unwitting audience as my fingertips squeal against the cold strings. In fact, there’s always this moment, this gathering barrier, when my mind feels empty and my hands lifeless. What awaits next? Silence? Agonised screeching? It will