Read Online Tales of the Dragon's Bard, Volume 1: Eventide by Tracy Hickman, Laura Hickman - Free Book Online Page B

kitchen back in order just as Plix discovered Merinda’s workroom. All of the pixies were astonished at the idea of how hats were made, and Merinda, grateful for something to distract the pixies from the kitchen, began telling them about the millinery craft. The pixies saw an immediate possibility for improvement in the craft and began reorganizing Merinda’s workspace as an expression of their appreciation for her help. This reorganization was entirely along the thinking lines of pixies—which generally categorized all of Merinda’s notions, cloths, pelts, felts, and supplies according to the third letter of the object’s name and in order of time required to manufacture it. By the fourth hour, every scrap of material owned by Merinda once more had a place, but everything was out of place and impossible for Merinda to find.
    By the fifth hour, Merinda had gratefully discovered that singing to the pixies seemed to quiet them and prevent either further damage by them or their discovery of other as-yet undamaged areas of her shop and home. Merinda was rapidly running out of songs to sing—and it was still not yet dawn.
    Merinda’s voice was hoarse but she sang on. The pixies were all sitting comfortably in pots, pans, large spoons, ladles, and anything else Merinda could find that could not easily be broken. These she had scattered across the table in the kitchen.
    Merinda knew that the song was coming to an end. She had sung the chorus four times already, and though the pixies did not seem to either notice or mind that, her voice simply could not go on.
    . . . we’ll sing to the wind and the heroes,
    Of willows in field far away, dear lass,
    Of willows in field far away.
    Merinda fell silent.
    Glix stood up on the table and pounded it with his foot, joined immediately by all his fellow pixies, their wings flicking in added appreciation. The racket their feet made jarred Merinda, who had momentarily fallen asleep, back to wakefulness.
    “That were grand!” Glix shouted. “Now it’s our turn.”
    Merinda sat up warily. “Your turn to . . . to what?”
    “Sing, ma’am!” Glix shouted. “Pixies are famed in every corner of the land for their gifts in the lyrical arts.”
    There was a lad of the name Tat
    Who came to the bawdy house and sat—
    Merinda leaped up from her chair. “Stop!”
    Glix looked up at Merinda, upset that his song had been interrupted.
    Merinda glanced around the kitchen. She had managed to keep it in order despite the pixies but her strength was waning and she knew it was only a matter of time before her guests utterly destroyed her perfect, sensible life. She had to do something to end her terrible ordeal. Her eye settled gratefully on the one object in the room that suddenly gave her hope.
    “Your song, Glix, is . . . um . . . most amusing and diverting,” Merinda said quickly. “But I have a gift for you.”
    “But what about my song?” Glix asked insistently.
    “It’s a gift . . . for your song,” Merinda replied.
    Glix’s brows arched up with interest above his violet eyes.
    “You’ve never really heard a song properly until you’ve heard it . . . inside a pickle barrel!”
    The following morning, with the storm abated and the sun not quite yet over the horizon, a bleary-eyed Merinda Oakman rolled a pickle barrel out the alley door of her kitchen. The lid she held firmly in place, and the faint sound of singing could be heard coming from within its staves.
    Merinda looked both ways down the alley, making sure that no one was watching. Then, in a rush, she snatched the top off the pickle barrel, dashed into her home, and slammed shut the kitchen door behind her. It took her the remainder of the day to put her house back in some semblance of order, and the shop itself did not open for two more days. Harv Oakman returned on the third day, and as they greeted each other warmly, Merinda could not find the words to explain what had happened. She was too embarrassed by