A tale to start the spring with, and the county anthem

[Scott of Hyperborea]

Listen. One cold morning the King of Walruses gets stuck in the last blizzard of winter, and gave up all hope of making it out alive. But along comes Joy, the eldest son of Truth and Beauty, who loves everything for no good reason. He lights a fire for Walrus, and together they tell tales and huddle by the fire until the blizzard passes. Then Walrus swears an oath to Joy that one day he will repay the debt, and heads back to his palace in the cliffs of the rocky fjords.

Then the spring comes, and Truth and Beauty call their child Joy to the ultimate north to celebrate the new year with them. Joy doesn't want to come without a present, so he calls upon his old friend the King of Walruses, saying "Give me your tusks." And Walrus frets and argues, but in the end he's got a debt to settle, so he gives Joy his two big ivory tusks.

Joy takes his sunmetal knife and whittles away at the walrus tusks until he makes two little flutes. One he inlays with the finest gold, and then he crushes lapis and paints a blue rose on the back. The other is worked with silver filigree except for a four-pointed gold star. As he works, he hums a tune to himself, one that's been in him for a long time, and he sanctifies his work. Then he rides a ice bear up to the ultimate north beyond the aurorae.

He gives the first flute to Beauty and the second to Truth. Beauty takes hers to her lips and starts to play. Music! That's what it was! The whole world had been empty of it until now, but now it filled every corner and fjord and iceberg and mountain. And all the spirits and demons and ice bears and stars and cold lights listen, enrapt, and they're all trying to memorize the melody so they can sing it later, but nine heartbeats later they've lost the tune, one and all.

Then Truth begins to play his flute, and it's a colder, clearer music. Note follows note like the steps of a mathematical proof, each entirely necessary yet a revelation. While Beauty's flute inspires, Truth's describes, and things tremble knowing that they've been described correctly. Then Truth puts down his flute, and everyone tries to remember the music, but nothing remains but a vague sense of hard reality.

From that day forward, every night at sunset, Truth and Beauty play their flutes, and each time the world hears a new melody only to forget it by the time darkness falls.

One night Salus, one of the Cold Lights that flicker in the northern sky, she starts to covet the flute of her mistress. So she flies northward to the great spiral tower where Truth and Beauty dwell at the pole, and she tells Beauty she's going to dance for her. And she dances the endless weaving dance of the Northern Lights, but she does it so skillfully and gracefully that Beauty's entranced, just sitting there with her eyes half-closed and her mouth open. So Salus takes the flute from Beauty and flies off to the Bar, the range of impossibly high mountains that divide the ultimate north from the world. All the while Truth is just sitting there, and he knows what's happened, but it's not his destiny to intervene and he's not going to.

So then Beauty comes to, and she finds her flute gone. She flies into her most terrifying aspect, the Queen of Night, and she calls her children the dark and glowing stars around her and tells them to find her flute. The stars all fly down from their crystal perches and start searching. All the humans and spirits and ice bears are looking up at the sky, mouths agape, as the stars start speeding this way and that in burning anger. Finally Ankrana the dark star finds Salus sitting atop the peaks of the Bar, trying to play her flute. They get in a fight, and what do you think happens? Right. They end up fighting over the flute, and it falls to the ground and shatters into one big piece and nine hundred different little pieces. All the songs come flying out. All the humans and demons and spirits and stars and cold lights and ice-bears start running about, trying to catch the songs, but it's no use. They seep deep into the essence of things, and no one ever sees them again quite as they were.

But from that day on, there's music everywhere. Maybe the songs aren't quite as they were, but anyone can sing them, from the Elder down to little kid without his second name to even the albatrosses that try to sing a note or two as they circle above Talisre. You can even take an ordinary walrus tusk, hollow it out, and draw some of the old music out of that. And some people can summon up so much of the old music that the demons and stars and spirits and ice-bears look up from whatever they're doing and wonder whether Beauty's gotten her flute back after all.

But wait now. There's still that one big piece of the flute. Maybe it's still got a song or two in it, one of the old songs, one that's still perfect. That's what Ori Kalirion the Bear King thinks. He climbs up the highest peak of the Bar, and it's no trouble for him, because he controls more magic than anyone else who'll ever live. He takes the flute and sure enough there's a single song left inside of it. So he goes back to Tilion Kalir the big ice-bear capital and he plays the flute for all the ice-bears, and there's great rejoicing and the Bear Kingdom becomes even more glorious than it was.

But then the Bear King's daughter Laike dies, and the Bear King's got to make a deal with the King of the Dead if he wants her back. He argues and threatens and fulminates, but in the end, what does the King of the Dead want? That's right, the fragment from the flute of Beauty. Ori Kalirion the Bear King threatens to invade the Land of the Dead itself, but in the end he's got to give up the flute. And to think that Laike's just going to run off with Authi Kalirion in a few centuries anyway.

The King of the Dead goes back to wherever he lives in the East with the flute, but then he finds he can't play the flute because he's got no breath. Doesn't matter. He's the King of the Dead, he doesn't need reasons. He sticks the magic flute under a rock and goes back in his sepulchre for a few thousand years.

Way later, in the days of the men whose grandfathers fought with Kadham, there's a struggle in the little town of Rhinge. The family of Neri Sultayyion's been ruling for as long as anyone can remember, but now the Tretri family wants their turn. So Tretri Iutakion tricks Neri Sultayyion's ten sons. Tretri knows they're too brave for their own good and can't turn down an opportunity to go on a quest. So he tells them he met a man who said he knew where the King of the Dead hid the last piece of the flute of Beauty. Sure enough, Neri's ten sons run off looking for the flute, and Tretri takes over the town.

Nine years later, two of Tetri's sons come limping back into town. They're Mori and Veri, and they look about twenty five years older than they were when they left. Mori's lost three fingers on his left hand from frostbite, and Veri's gained a finger on his right, and how that happened your guess is as good as mine. Veri takes from a pocket of his tattered robe a fragment of flute. There's still that one song in it, after all those years. He plays it. The people of Rhinge hear the song, and they all put their differences behind them and Mori gets put in charge of the town. That's the power of the flute of Beauty, or at least that's what they say in the stories.

When the Prince-Elder in Tala hears about this, he throws a big festival in honor of the people of Rhinge, and then he asks them to give him the flute. This is back in the good old days, when people's grandfathers still remembered Kadham and the voice of the volcano, so of course they give it to him. He gives it to the High Priestess of Beauty in Tala, and every night at sunset she'll go up to the cupola of the Temple of Beauty and play the last song that's still in the flute, the last song that still has all the melody of the old music. And when she dies it goes to her successor, and then to her successor's successor, and so on for millennia.

Then when the volcano destroys Tala, the Temple of Beauty's about to get covered by the ash, and the High Priestess knows the flute will be lost forever. So she takes it and drops it off the cupola of the temple, and the fragment of the flute shatters, and the last pure song bursts out of the flute and into the world.

But this time Beauty raises her hands high, and she blesses the song, and even though it falls into the world and mixes with all the mud and slush and demons and humans, it stays pure and it still sounds the way it did when Joy put it into that flute way back when the world was young.

That song is the anthem of Raikoth. It's short, and quiet, and there are no lyrics, and instead of one of those big bands that play the anthems of most countries, all you need to play it is a single flute. Sometimes it's called midion veri, Veri's song, and sometimes it's left unnamed.

It sounds suspiciously like "Greensleeves".

[Allot]

A distinctive Keatsian element, n'est-ce pas?

Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

[Andreas the Wise]

Lovely, as always, Scott.

[Scott of Hyperborea]

A distinctive Keatsian element, n'est-ce pas?

Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Bah. They're not the same at all - that's the Melein Heresy and Keats was thus an arch-heretic. Darned good poet, though.

[Harvey Steffke]

I think you tried a bit too hard with this one. Good choice on Greensleeves though. That's a nice tune.