Though he was the one being celebrated, Maestro Layton Hartwell had had a very long night. He’d personally bid hundreds of nobles, critics, and common admirers farewell. After 56 years of putting up with that crowd, he owed them a proper — and firm — goodbye.
So he’d labored through a set of his greatest hits, then shook the hands of people he half-recognized; watched as they toasted him over and over; listened half-heartedly to their grandiloquent praise; heard them recite tales he’d heard a thousand times about hearing his music for the first time; even endured the pompous, pretentious critique of his work still.
He lived with that, for just one night more. And now it was all but over. The overdressed crowd still chattered across the ballroom, but he rested before the oaken doors, ready to slip into twilight.
Hartwell took a few largo breaths, time kept perfectly. Even over all the noise, he heard the beat, shut his eyes, and listened.
He began to tap his knee in an odd rhythm. Three quick kneetaps, one inhale; four measured slaps, one exhale. Not the beautiful simplicity his adoring crowds had come to love; this was a complex meter, his own to savor in silence.
“Hey, mister! Are you OK?” called a voice in front of him.
Hartwell opened his eyes. There stood a small child, entirely unfamiliar. Well-dressed, a mop of hair, and eyes wide enough to hold the whole world.
“Just… catching my breath, dear boy,” Hartnell answered. “Where are your parents?”
The boy jabbed over his shoulder without looking. “Enough about them. They’re boring. What about you?”
Hartnell recoiled. “What do you mean, what about me?”
“Well, you know, how’s your night?”
Hartnell stretched dormant muscles in his cheeks, an old but welcome feeling. “I am tired, dear boy. But glad the night is ending.”
The boy tilted his head. “Why?”
“Because I am ready to go. I have been for… oh, quite some time now.”
“But it’s so late! Where are you going?”
“I do not know. But I cannot stay any longer. Truth be told” — he glanced around — “I am tired of all these people telling me what to do and what to play and how to play it.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Like when Mother tells me to stop playing so much football.”
“A bit like that, yes,” agreed Hartnell, though it was so much more than that. “They say my music is not what they expect, that it is not as graceful or as joyous as it should be. And still they beg me not to go.” He sighed. “But I must, dear boy, for I no longer feel graceful or joyous.”
It finally dawned on the boy. “You’re Maestro Hartwell!”
“Indeed… but no longer.”
“Why? Everyone here loves you! We all came here for you, Mr. Hartwell!”
“No, they aren’t here for me. They’re here for the great Maestro.”
“But that’s you!”
“Not really. Not truly.”
“I don’t understand.”
Hartwell sighed, seeking the right words. But he’d never learned the language to explain even simple things, let alone something so complex, to a child.
His gaze drifted across the ballroom. There — there was an altogether different language that Hartwell had always been master of. He’d limited his vocabulary, perhaps, but he was still more than fluent.
“Would you like to understand?” The boy nodded. “Then follow me.”
Hartwell led the boy to the back of the room, where his lifelong partner, the grandest of pianos, rested upon a dais. He laid a hand on its frame, a gunslinger saddling his horse for one last ride. Then he sat, and began to play.
The powerful notes rang out, silencing all else. Their attention captured at once, the crowd turned towards the titan’s encore. But though it was so much more passionate than the pieces he’d spat out at the night’s beginning, this coda had none of the Maestro’s elegance. His music was renowned for being as opulent as a fist-sized diamond; as calming as soft waves across sandy beaches; so otherworldly, it must have been crafted from a broken piece of heaven.
That, however, had never been Layton Hartnell.
If he was anything like a diamond, it was only in his hard and unyielding nature. a product of a childhood under persistent pressure; if he was waves across the beach, it was only in his wearing away at everything and everyone around him, for none recognized the emotions he brought forth; and even a broken piece of heaven was, in the end, only a broken piece. For the first time and the last, he showed his edges.
Hartnell pounded the keys, summoning this storm from shadows he’d never brought to light, with its own broken grace and unshared joy. This was how it had felt to play, so long ago. Not for royal congregations or packed houses, but to think. To feel. To release all that had been unsaid, that could never have been said, and never would be said.
He played like 56 years had never passed.
He’d always wondered what would come of him when he had played his last piece. Now he knew.
Hartwell accelerated the tempo, building an eternal crescendo. The harsh, heavy dissonances rang louder and louder. Yet there was something missing, always missing. Hartwell crossed from one end of the piano to the other and back again without ever finding it. Still the song rose, and rose, and rose, a tapestry of music that would have taken days to unravel.
But Hartwell did it in mere seconds. No one realized, but the piece slowed, and all was clear. Notes fell away like years in his life, each singing a quieter truth, each wearier than the last, until he was playing one last scale, then one last chord, then—
Then, at the very front of the shocked crowd, there was a boy, heart holding the weight of a lifetime.
“I understand,” he whispered. “I really, really understand.”
[Author’s Note: I must have said, more to myself than actually to anyone, that I wouldn’t share anything from my Creative Writing class, but the site’s gone too long without a post and anyways I accidentally ended up liking this one, so here it is. This is, I suppose, the start of a new, likely exceedingly infrequent series – Voltas: Works Beyond The Thyriaverse, which are almost never going to be a story after this, it’s really just for me to think about things and work through them. If sometimes they present themselves like this, so be it. Thank you kindly for reading, and until we have need of one another again.]
