Page 10 of Ogres Don't Play

“Interesting choice of music,” he growled, the same tone as the song. His voice rubbed across my soul like a washcloth in a hot, bubble-filled tub.

I swallowed and tasted blood. Weird. Everything was weird. “It has the largest range I know.” My words were breathy, my chest rising and falling as I struggled to get enough air. Was the shop too close or was it the instrument, sucking the oxygen out of me?

“You couldn’t just adapt an angelic song to suit the instrument?”

I frowned at the harp. It still glowed, and all the gems sparkled as if they were truly proud of themselves for their excellent performance. Well. They should be. My arms were heavy, flopping to my side when I took them off the warm gold. “I suppose that would have been more rational. I didn’t think that you’d start singing.”

He raised a brow, and his scowl became quite ominous. “How could I resist? Literally. I could not resist. You had a great deal of compulsion in your song. Do you have siren blood by any chance?”

“Siren blood?” Buzzing was all over my skin. I needed to scrub myself all over with his voice, or take a bath, preferably in sushi. Everything was weird after the otherworldly musical experience.

“No, you do not. I am very good at sensing blood.” He shook his head slightly and stood, hefting the harp like it wasn’t still glowing and luring me to it.

I stretched my arms out after it, even though they were lumps of lead. “Wait! Where are you taking it?” My precious, beautiful, magnificent love. Had I ever played an instrument that grand and powerful? Would I ever again?

He didn’t answer as he tucked it back behind the basses, safely out of sight, except that I could see a flicker of gold, a glimmer of diamond before he turned back to study me with arms crossed over his broad chest. He looked dissatisfied for some reason.

I straightened up and crossed my own arms, trying to bring them back to normal. The music’s spell was still wrapped around me, and I had to admit that I felt an urge to tackle the pretty ogre to the ground and taste his skin. His song had come out of his skin, and I wanted to taste it, to see what material he was made out of. Yes, I tasted instruments. It was a completely normal impulse, but I’d never felt the urge towards a musician.Ah, because he was an instrument maker. Or something. I don’t know. My head was still full of music, like my whole body, heavy with the sound, the emotion, the reality of it. All in all, it made logical thought processes somewhat difficult.

“Are you prepared to play something else, or do you need time to recover?” he asked, his eyes still glowing, frown still firmly in place like that song hadn’t been pleasant for him.

I stiffened my spine and raised my chin. If he didn’t like that music, he had no taste, because it had been exquisite. He’d been exquisite. “I am always well enough to play. Do you have an even larger harp that needs company?” I hoped he did.

He inhaled, nostrils flaring slightly, which made me wonder if he was doing the ogre sniffing me thing before he turned on his heel and went behind his counter. He took a medium-sized instrument from beneath the counter and then brought it back over to me. I knew the weird thing immediately, the double rows of strings like one harp stacked on another, with some bells and metal bars on the side for percussion.

“That’s an ogre instrument.” I’d watched the ogre camp commander play it, the first time I hadn’t been afraid when I was kidnapped, because I’d been mesmerized by the weird, fascinating song he’d made on the barbaric instrument.

“Indeed. Let us see what exactly you can make out of this.” He held it out, then settled it on my lap when I didn’t immediately grab the thing. Sorry, but I was still in shock and awe from the most incomprehensible musical experience in my life. And now I was supposed to do something with the small, stumpy thing that had limited range in notes, tone and expression? Pardon me while I try to adjust to disappointment.

I grabbed it when he let go instead of letting it fall to the ground, but my hands were still buzzing from the other piece. Why wasn’t he more affected? Did he not feel connected, like the words had been real, that our souls had mingled for a momentof breathless wonder? I wanted to curl up in that bed with the covers pulled over my head and relive the music until my feeble flesh came to grips with its majesty, but instead I had to dive into the depths.

Oh well. I still recalled some of the tunes the ogres had played, and I’d actually messed with them, trying to make them more when I was back home, when my dad wasn’t around, because he absolutely hated when I played anything that wasn’t angelic, elven, human, or fairy. I’d gone through a mermaid music phase and after that, he’d shudder at the first strains of anything remotely oceanic.

Anyway, if Rook the Luthier wanted to see what I could do with an ogre instrument, I’d do my best to impress. Hard as that would be. He was an ogre, so he probably liked ogre tunes. At the camp, the most favorite had been this ditty about stomping bodies, and ripping heads, then making broth from bones and bread from brains. I’d combine it with a siren piece about luring sailors to their deaths. Would he sing? He’d better not, but if he did, it would be so much better. I was already composing things for his voice in the back of my head. I’d better not start, but it was already too late.

I cleared my throat. “Um, I know a battle song that you may sing to, if you wouldn’t be uncomfortable with that.”

His dark brow flicked, and he cocked his head. “An ogre call to battle?”

“Oh, no, not one of their actual battle songs. Those are far too repetitious, although come to think of it, I could probably add a line in there with the cheerful one, you know…” I hummed a few bars of the battle song they sang when they were really excited and happy to be going up against a worthy opponent. They didn’t always sing that one. Sometimes it was a song about mowing bodies down and throwing them over a cliff, because their enemy didn’t deserve the space they took to exist, but theywere usually quite happy to fight angelic hosts, so I’d heard a lot of the cheerful one.

“You’d like me to sing with your playing? A battle song? In my instrument shop? Suppose I became inspired and started destroying instruments?” Were his eyes twinkling?

I looked around at the beautiful creations, then shook my head at him. “That does sound dangerous. No, you’d better not sing any war ballads, just the destruction ditty.”

I started playing the first chords with the jingle of bells, and then he leaned back and nodded. “Ah, ‘The Rat Ate the Cat.’ I know it well. It is a children’s song, not for battle.”

“You have something against children’s songs?” I didn’t believe him because they’d sung it around the campfire, and I was the only child there. The enormous battle-hardened ogres wouldn’t have sung it so cheerfully for me, their prisoner, would they? Of course not.

“Not at all. Let us begin.”

I played the intro again and then he came in with the rapid lyrics in ogre, which was a coarse and rough language that I didn’t know. The chorus was in English, and it was the same words I remembered, about catching and cooking a human for supper. And then the next verse, I shifted keys and then I started in with an overlay I’d learned from a book on Siren songs. It was a creepy thing that had dissonance that twisted the ogre tune into something absolutely weird and evocative. Then I sang all the hissing whispers that went with the words that meant hardly anything, but it was the sound of the thing. And the sound was compelling.

The instrument wasn’t sure what to do with such contrasting pieces being played at the same time, but I urged it to submit, so it did, until the song was basically ogres happily eating humans while the sirens were cleverly luring the ogres to their deaths while they were distracted. It was an eat or be eaten, everyonehas a predator, there is no safety however confident you are in your own strength kind of moral, which I found amusing as I trailed off the last note, with a tinkling hiss. Not a lot of instruments could manage that sound, but that ogre instrument was one of them.

He took a deep breath and exhaled as he studied me. “You are more accomplished than I imagined.”

I blinked and felt awkward, because that last song I’d twisted completely out of shape to make it something else, and I’d used his voice to do it. “Um. Thanks. I apologize if that was disrespectful to your musical culture. It’s just the instrument is severely limited, but it does lend itself to the eerie siren’s sound.”

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