all you have to do, is listen by HannaGoldworthy

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Chapter 1

Written to "August's Rhapsody" by Mark Mancina, from August Rush.  Incidentally, one of my favorite soundtracks, so I'm grateful for the excuse to listen to it.

 

The rain woke him in the early morning, the seemingly random cadence tap-tap-tapping against his apartment windowpane providing a steady tempo for the sigh of the wind.  Malcolm listened for an hour, trying to discern the name of the being in charge of the storm; the sound of her voice placed a face before his eyes, dark of eyes and cold in dress, yet sparkling and vivacious in the dance she’d chosen in ages past.  She’d laughed, not unkindly, when in a childish impulse he’d attempted to harmonize with her; not once in all of his youth had he captured the essence of her song, though he had tried, repeatedly.  Somehow, every attempt seemed only a pale imitation, nothing more than idle flattery, unworthy of the time it had stolen from simply listening to her sing.

 

Once, he had known the name that went along with her beloved face.

 

Once, he had been more than a gracious listener in the Music.

 

That time was gone.

 

He was determined to be a worthy audience, however thoroughly their friendship had been lost, and so he remained until the last liquid drumbeat shattered harmlessly against the glass.  Then, he stirred, awakening his service dog as he moved; Ylva was immediately alert, and her joy pumped through the Music like an orderly heartbeat.  It would seem to an outward observer as if the elkhound followed him to the kitchen, waiting patiently to be fed and clothed in her vest, but in truth he was listening to her the entire time, letting her rhythm guide the progress of his seemingly unending solo in life.  His mind would not wander if he could listen to hers.

 

As he put on his dark glasses, took up his white cane, pulled his beanie hat firmly over his ears, and set out the door behind Ylva, Malcolm searched his mind for the distant memory of another dog, which had belonged not to him but to someone he had loved.  Their faces were before him once again, their minds awash with a fierce delight, quickening the hearts of all who listened to the Music in their presence.

 

Ah, but their names escaped him again.

 

Would that he was truly blind; he might then be able to forget their faces entirely, and leave only a nameless sorrow.  Perhaps then he would be better able to bear it.

 

Still, the City that Never Slept proved to be a sufficient distraction, if only for his morning commute.  He blended into its sights and sounds quite easily, his footsteps clicking against the concrete sidewalks in time with its eternal syncopation.  The food-sellers and the pedestrians and the drivers did not know it, but they moved in accord with an undying dance, each of them an instrumentalist in the Great Symphony.  The cane was just for show; he knew each of their movements by sound before it happened, having learned (at long last) to heed every motion of the Conductor.

 

The distant siren struck his ears at precisely the right moment, as he began the descent to the subway.  The Music was in fine form today; he’d be able to perform quite nicely for the sound editing job he’d taken across town.  He was able to take his customary seat – people shifted to allow him access to the reserved seating, but he took the place next to it in a way that could be interpreted as a blind man’s mistake.  There was nothing wrong with his eyes save for their uncanny brightness, and though he did not want the attention that they brought, he was not one to take a seat from those who truly needed it.  He was no longer a thief; he remembered that, if nothing else.

 

It was then, and only then, that he became aware of hearing his own soul’s song, duplicated elsewhere in the subway car.  Malcolm froze, and, trying not to turn his head visibly, searched for the echo’s source.  Someone was listening to him.  Someone knew enough about the Music to know how to listen to him.  And, depending on who that someone was, things could turn out very badly for him.

 

The listener was very observant indeed, for no sooner had he begun to strain his ears did she make herself known with a soft mental call; obviously, she was no mere listener in the Music, but an experienced contributor as well.  She sat on the other side of the car, not directly in front of him, but not outside his range of vision either.  He stretched casually to cover how he needed to shift in order to see her properly, and was struck with the third ghost of that day.

 

His mother had looked just like her; tall, red-haired, and strong, with fine dark eyes that saw quite completely through his affectations.  Malcolm no longer remembered his mother’s name, or her occupation, or even the sound of her voice, but her face was ever before him in his mind’s eye, and now it was nearly duplicated before him in the flesh.

 

Nearly, was the operative word; his mother had an ambient glow about her features, perhaps a romantic addition on the part of his outcast heart, but this girl possessed no such thing.  His mother had certainly never seen any need to cover her ears with oversized pink headphones, which clashed dreadfully with this one’s hair.  And, though the girl was skilled, she was also young…very young, by his standards, though perhaps she was very old according to the world around them.  Still, looking at her was akin to coming home, which was a feeling he had not experienced since before the shrinking expanse of his memory.

 

Suddenly, the Music shifted at her request.  What is your name, it asked within his heart, knowing somehow that his mind would not be able to produce the answer.

 

And his heart answered with a vision; a sweeping tableau of a great, golden field of autumn grain, which he cleaved by walking slowly amidst the stalks.  The girl’s presence flitted toward him as he approached, taking the form of a velvet-footed butterfly, its orange-dappled wings the precise color of her hair.

 

The vision disappeared as quickly as it had come, and Malcolm was left staring into the girl’s eyes, which were warm with a recognition he did not feel.  Ylva whined concernedly against his leg; she’d taken the experience for a seizure, and desperately signaled for him to return.  He patted her head absently in the gesture that meant the seizure had passed; Ylva did not believe him any more than he believed himself.

 

He and the girl alighted at the same stop, by some signal which was not made known to Malcolm.  Trying to maintain the part of the blind man, he tilted his ears rather than his eyes toward her as she approached.

 

“Vanessa?” he said in greeting, holding out his hand, as if they had been supposed to meet each other.

 

“Makalaurë,” she murmured, taking his hand and holding it, rather than shaking.  And oh, but he had forgotten that name first, and it belonged to a person he had not been for years.  For the first time he could remember, he felt the scars that her palm gently caressed, and thought he had an idea of how he got them, thought he could remember the self which had been lost on that day.

 

“Malcolm,” he replied, for though the name felt foreign to him now, his true one would sound stranger to anyone listening (if anyone remembered how to listen these days).

 

He felt her smile through the touch of her mind.  “Nessie,” she replied, guessing his thoughts and following his little deception.  “I’m to start work today as a vocalist in your office.  I’m glad we could meet beforehand.”

 

“As am I.”

 

She relinquished his hand, and he felt its absence keenly.  Ylva nudged him, and he startled into a slow pace toward their shared workspace.  She ambled beside him, her hands in her pockets in the ageless slouch of the young, and out of the corner of his eye he examined her, wondering where he knew her comportment.

 

“Not all of the Tatyar went on the Journey,” she whispered to answer his unspoken question, in a language he’d no memory of learning.  “Mahtan had a brother who stayed, and his children and grandchildren live on today.”

 

The story struck a chord in his mind, but alas, it was too completely faded for him to retrieve completely.  He simply nodded in response, assuming rightly that she knew well of what she spoke.  She eyed him knowingly.

 

“Perhaps you will remember better with time.”

 

“Perhaps,” he agreed, his tongue curling into her language with the confidence that came with muscle memory.  “Or, perhaps I’ll simply become better able to listen.”

 

She laughed, then, and took his hand as surely as she would a dear friend’s.  Another face came before his mind – of a person whose hand he’d been unable to hold when it counted, one whose name felt closer to his mind than any of the others he’d forgotten – and Malcolm found that he’d missed the touch for what felt like thousands of years.

 

“I doubt I’d be able to teach you anything great, old man,” Nessie chuckled, her smooth right thumb caressing his ruined left.  “But I’d be glad to help you remember, if you let me listen.  I’ve not been given the chance to learn much.”

 

There was a deep sorrow under her light tone, and in it Malcolm could hear notes that resonated with him.  There was a home shattered with the loss of a mother; latent distrust for a child born harshly; wanderings away from a people that feared her features and origin.  But Nessie did not yet elaborate, nor should she.  They had nothing aside from time, and this promised to be a friendship that could last.  For now, they could simply be at home with each other, for the first time in a very long while on both of their accounts.

 

After a moment, she grinned mischievously, and spoke again in English.  “So, gramps…did you really name your dog ‘wolf’ in Norwegian?”

 

Ah, so she was a connoisseur of language as well.  “It suits her rather well, I think.  Better than simply ‘dog.’”

 

“It is a good name.  Well met, Ylva.”

 

The dog twitched her ear, and refocused on her task.  Today was going to be a good day.

Chapter End Notes

Vanessa annabella is the scientific name for the West Coast Lady butterfly, as well as a rich name for alternate elvish meanings.  It is perhaps too subtle a clue for Maglor to pick up on (yet), but some readers might be able to pick up on the stealth crossover I'm toying with.  If not, never mind; I rather like my Nessie as she is, and the series I kidnapped her from does her no justice.

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