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It was six-forty-eight and already dark. Outside the wind howled and post-work traffic rumbled as great waves, interrupted occasionally by sudden cacophonies of car horns, dulled by the walls of the little studio into whale-song.
Pinel plucked at her harp, picking away at the last notes of Blue Wizard’s Return. Her eyes were tired and her wrist ached.
“You need to relax your hand,” Mr. Goldsmith said, “close your fingers and thumb into your palm between the notes. It’ll prevent a lot of carpal tunnel down the line.”
He held out his own hand to show her, though she knew. Her eyes caught instead on his fingerless gloves, fine black lace in the shape of pretty flowers and spiky leaves. His long pale fingers were scarred, raised and puckered red along the fingertips, paper-rough white on the edges of his fingers. That was why he couldn’t play for long, he said.
That and how his hands shook.
“Yeah,” she said, shaking out her hand, “sorry.”
Mr. Goldsmith’s face softened, his faded gray eyes flicking back to her, losing their focus on the craft. He had a funny face, Mr. Goldsmith, all sharp angles, something kinda mean and kinda pretty to him at the same time, though oftentimes it went away when he smiled. Pinel always thought he looked a little bit elfin, though he said he wasn’t. He wouldn’t tell her how old he was, though. When they lived in Minas Tirith her old harp teacher was a college student and she thought he was older than that, though maybe just because didn’t have any zits.
“What are you sorry to me for?” he asked. “They’re your hands.”
She almost said sorry again, but didn’t.
Mr. Goldsmith glanced at his watch and the corner of his mouth twitched downwards, just a little. “Would you like to take it from the top again, kid?”
She didn’t really.
“Mom’s gonna be here soon,” she said. Mom was supposed to be here eighteen minutes ago at six-thirty. “And I’m really tired.”
“You can hang out while I clean up, then,” Mr. Goldsmith said, standing, “would you like to sit in my spinny chair?”
She did. She sat in his spinny chair, which also had wheels that slid a little bit too much on the linoleum floors in the studio, and watched as he wiped down the blackboards and took out the trash and vacuumed the front rug. It was six fifty-seven by the time he was done, which meant it only took him nine minutes.
“In three months I’ll be ten and then I can ride the bus on my own,” she said, “to get home. Mom’s just tired all the time. She’s got a lot of work.”
Mr. Goldsmith turned on his coffeemaker, which lived on the back counter away from the instruments, and waved her off. “Don’t worry about it. Hot chocolate?”
“Yes please.”
Mr. Goldsmith never turned on the overhead lights of the studio, and now even with the warm yellow lamps it looked dim. She watched him run the hot water through the coffeemaker and mix hot cocoa mix with a plastic straw. Then he popped in a pod of coffee for himself, shifting from foot to foot while it brewed, and dumped another packet of cocoa into that, too.
Then he gave her the cup to hold and sat down on his desk, legs crossed under him. Sheet music fell down on the linoleum floor.
“Mr. Goldsmith?” she asked, “how did you hurt your hands?”
“Oh,” Mr. Goldsmith said, smoothly and easily as though he had expected the question, “fell down in a vat of industrial chemicals. Horrible mess.”
That wasn’t true. “Nuh-uh!”
“Uh-huh. They were green and glowed.”
Pinel mulled that over for a bit, trying her drink to see if it was too hot. Okay. “Who pushed you?”
Mr. Goldsmith laughed. He had a very musical laugh, like those bells they hung outside of coffee shops for All King’s Day.
“My brother, I suppose,” he said, “if anyone did. He didn’t really mean to.”
For a little bit they sat and drank their drinks and watched the cars outside. Pinel was tired enough she didn’t really want to do anything else, and her cocoa was sweet.
“Were there really chemicals?” she asked.
But the bell on the door rang, and Mom was here.
***
The music school was a different place when group camps ran. They started in the fall and ran all the way to the dead of winter, and on the Night of the Lanterns, the shortest day of the year, they would hold their lights up and sing.
Some kids’ parents didn’t want to sign them up for camp because they had family things to do on the Night of the Lanterns, or they left town early to go vacation. Pinel had used to be vaguely jealous of those kids, before she started doing music camp every year. Now she was proud of it; she was probably the only one there who never missed camp, not even once (though Mr. Goldsmith tried to send her home sick one day, which didn’t work because Mom was at work and couldn’t pick up the phone, so she got to go lay down on the couch and drink a sports drink and read the brochures).
She was the second-oldest in the younger sections of Fall Camp, which ran Tuesdays and Thursdays from two-forty-five right after school got out to five. School was only two streets down. They walked the little distance to the music school building, a square white and red house with a big painted sign and two eight-pointed stars on the door. Pinel made the two youngest kids, Arwen and Treo, who were both six, hold her hand (there were crossing guards but it was still good to be responsible). She was one of the kids who stayed after to do private lessons, too, which meant after camp ended she did her homework and colored in the backroom until it was time for her lesson at six.
Next year Mr. Goldsmith said she could probably go to the older section of Fall Camp, which was Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
“Hope you don’t mind living at the school, kid,” he said, because she really spent a lot more time there than any other kids. She didn’t. It was more fun than her other after school stuff, which was just walking home quick while it was still light out and watching TV until Mom came.
Group camp was mostly music but the last twenty minutes while most people waited to get picked up they sat at the table and ate snacks. Mr. Goldsmith put out craft supplies on the main tables (they were a privilege, not a right, and if they got pom-poms and glitter everywhere they would go away) so they could decorate the lanterns they’d carry for the final performance. Pinel was done with her lantern (she could tell it was done because there was no more room on it to stick anything on) so she just drew pictures. Right now she was drawing a picture of an elf with a harp and lots of golden glitter in his hair. Next to her Andie was making a matching one with silver glitter.
Mr. Goldsmith sat down across from her. He was eating carrot sticks, dipping them in sugar, and figs. “Who’s that?” he asked.
“An elf,” Pinel said, “he doesn’t have a name yet. I’m giving him a lot of bracelets and really sparkly hair and some birds on his head.”
She held it up so he could see.
“Nice,” Mr. Goldsmith said, “looks just like someone I used to know.”
“You met an elf?” Pinel asked. There weren’t a lot of elves left. They were mostly in the woods fading from pollution and shooting arrows at drones and stuff. She’d seen a documentary about it a few weeks ago on TV.
“Sure I did,” Mr. Goldsmith said.
“Was it a long time ago?”
“Sure,” he said again, “when I was your age.”
Not a good answer. Pinel frowned. “How long ago was that?”
Mr. Goldsmith raised an eyebrow. “How long do you think?”
“More than ten years ago,” she suggested.
“Uh-huh,” he said, “more than that.”
“Mr. Goldsmith,” Galmur said suddenly from the other side of the table, “can I use hot glue for my lantern?”
“Keep it on low,” he said, turning away from her, “plug it in the— oh, I put the new lamp there. Here, let’s go look.”
He stood, heading over to figure out the electrical outlets, and Pinel turned to Andie. “Did you hear? Mr. Goldsmith knows real elves.”
“He doesn’t,” Andie said, “he’s just messing with you. He always says things.”
“Maybe they’re true things,” Pinel said, “you don’t know everything. You’re eight.”
“Well I asked him how he got burns on his hands and he said lava monsters,” Andie said, “which aren’t real. So.”
“I saw a documentary about lava monsters,” Pinel said sagely, “they’re the natural predator of wizards. They died out when the wizards left.”
“Yeah, so he was messing with me,” Andie said, rolling her eyes, “he’s always saying things.”
Pinel scowled and went back to coloring her elf’s face. She had no argument, really, except that Mr. Goldsmith really looked like he knew things when he talked about them.
Andie’s parents came to pick her up, then. Pinel had been to Andie’s a few times for a sleepover. She lived in a warm apartment with three rooms and toys scattered everywhere. Pinel envied it sometimes, that chatter, the perpetual motion of their house.
She colored her elf a little while longer then switched to her homework when everyone left. The faint sound of music came from the front room, where Mr. Goldsmith was teaching his first private lesson for the night. But it ended quickly, and she could hear the bell on the door, then voices.
Then Mr. Goldsmith ducked back into the room.
“Gal left early,” he said, at her questioning look, “going to watch his brother in a play. Let me have a look at something and we can get you out of the way early, if you want.”
Pinel shrugged. Mom signed her up for the last possible slot so that she could pick her up as late as possible, so it didn’t really matter when they did the lesson. “Okay.”
Mr. Goldsmith sat down at his desk and typed for a little. He was an awkward typer, tapping away at the keyboard with one outstretched finger and frowning in concentration. Occasionally, when he thought better of a word, he would tap violently at the backspace, sharp movements exactly as a bird pecking at crumbs on the sidewalk.
His phone rang. He turned to it with faint puzzlement, then picked it up, holding it a little bit away from his ear like it was too loud for him. “Hello?”
A beat. Whatever the person on the other end of the line said, Mr. Goldsmith didn’t like it.
“You’re where? Elbereth, why?”
Another few moments; she could hear someone speaking very quickly on the other side of the line but not their words.
Mr. Goldsmith’s frown deepened. “… Since when, Dae? And you what—?”
He stood to pace, now, listening with obvious irritation.
“I know I put it on your calendar—” here Mr. Goldsmith raised a hand to his face, shutting his eyes, “— forget it, forget it. I’m not going to be done until six-thirty at the earliest, probably closer to seven. Then I guess I’ll get a cab.”
More impassioned talking from the other side of the line.
“I cannot. No. It’s not what you do, there’s children here.” A moment, where Mr. Goldsmith took a deep breath and glanced towards the door, frowning. “What name did you give them?”
A beat.
“Yeah. Yeah, good. Look, I’ll be there by seven-thirty. Don’t bite anyone else.”
He picked up his pen, twirling it between his fingers.
“Love you too. Bye.”
He put his phone face down on the desk, sat down again, and buried his face in his hands.
Pinel waited a moment, then another one.
“Mr. Goldsmith?”
Mr. Goldsmith let his hands drop and turned to her. “Pinel?”
“Is everything okay?”
“Fine,” he said, “everything’s fine.” He stood again, crossing the room to the coffee maker, and snapped another pod of coffee inside. “Oh, I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
Pinel stayed quiet. In her experience when adults said that it was usually followed by telling her whatever it was, so.
“My harebrained boyfriend got arrested,” Mr. Goldsmith said, “driving on an expired license. Hadn’t thought to update it in just about ninety-five years. They found a sawed-off he bought from some kid at a yard sale in his trunk. No license for that either.”
“Oh,” Pinel said. That seemed pretty bad. “Who did he bite?”
“Police officer,” Mr. Goldsmith said, “don’t do that if you get arrested, by the way. If you learn anything from me, learn that.”
“I already know that,” Pinel said.
“Well, good,” Mr. Goldsmith said, snatching his cup of coffee from the machine and tipping several packets of sugar into it with a feverish energy, “good. I have nothing left to teach you. Except harp.”
“I can stay here alone,” Pinel said, “if you want to go get him.”
“You cannot,” Mr. Goldsmith said, “you’re nine.”
“I stay home alone all the time,” Pinel said, “Mom says I’m responsible.”
“No,” Mr. Goldsmith said, downing half his coffee in one long sip, “it’ll be good for him. C’mon, kid. Time for harp.”
So they went and played harp. Pinel ran twice through Blue Wizard’s Return, which she was getting rather good at, and then opening notes of Swans Swans , where Mr. Goldsmith had a lot to say about her technique . She liked the Blue Wizard; liked how it started off low and rumbling, the way so few songs started off, liked the delicate notes of his homecoming. Liked to feel like it was her hands that made the sound. Like carving out pieces of air, Mr. Goldsmith had said, once.
When it hit six-thirty Mom wasn’t there, yet, and an expression that was strange and a little fey came across Mr. Goldsmith’s face.
“Would you like to hear me play, Pinel?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Pinel, who was by then a little tired of playing herself. And it was a rare treat to have Mr. Goldsmith; his hands hurt too much for him to do it for very long.
Mr. Goldsmith stood, then, taking a seat by his own harp. It was much bigger than hers, and it looked old, carved out of a heavy, dark wood. He adjusted his gloves and began to play.
She couldn’t say how long he played for. It wasn’t a song she knew. It started out slowly, the notes lingering and blending into each other, then quickened, each falling note sharp as drops of rain. She heard rolling thunder in the deep crevices of that music, heard the flutter of leaves on the breathe, heard singing birds. It seemed suddenly that Mr. Goldsmith had more than two hands, for what notes to brought into the air and let hang there; it seemed a concert played in front of her, a blended harmony. She was somewhere else; she was far from the city, outside in a meadow, flowers under her feel like delicately folded lace of all hues, and it was raining, warm summer falling all around her without touching her. The air was different, in that place, cleaner, cooler. The grass was different, untouched, un-mowed; the trees were different, huge, ancient trees, their branches whispering to the clouds.
Then the bell rang.
Pinel blinked, startled. For a moment she couldn’t remember where she was or why; the lamplit studio looked suddenly very dull, the air very heavy. Mr. Goldsmith was already standing from his harp, handing her her school backpack in the same motion as he picked up his keys.
“C’mon, kid,” he said, “your mom’s here.”
And it was all she could do to take her backpack and stumble after him, blinking at the darkness.
***
Pinel didn’t actually meet Mr. Goldsmith’s boyfriend until the Night of the Lanterns. They were off school and there was a lot of choreography to run through, not to mention all the last minute set up and coordinating with the older camps, so he said to come as early as they wanted to.
Pinel’s mom dropped her off at eight in the morning, when the first snowflakes were starting to stick to the pavement, and at that point there were only a few kids there. Mr. Goldsmith had them at the craft table making stars out of popsicle sticks and tinfoil, hot gluing the popsicle sticks together to make eight points to match the star on his sign. He said they were going to use a step ladder to hang it all up over the stage.
Mr. Goldsmith’s boyfriend came out of the basement, where the boxes of old stuff were. He was tall, like Mr. Goldsmith, and he had dangly earrings and very long hair, like Mr. Goldsmith, but that was where their resemblance ended. He had very dark eyes and perfectly straight caramel brown hair. Where Mr. Goldsmith tended to wear drapey black tunics and leggings he wore dark jeans, worn out around the knees, a wide-brimmed cowboy hat, and a leather jacket with very many tassels.
He picked up one of the stars, holding it up to the light and raising an eyebrow. “Child labor,” he said drily, “and blatant partisanship, as a continuation of your reign of terror.”
Andie reached for to pull on Mr. Goldsmith’s sleeve, holding out her hand. “I burned my fingers with the glue,” she said, “look, we match.”
“And now ritual maiming,” Mr. Goldsmith’s boyfriend added.
Mr. Goldsmith elbowed him.
“This is Mr. Thrussel,” he said, “he’s come to help out tonight. He has power tools I am not allowed to use.”
“You can call me Mr. Strussel,” Mr. Goldsmith’s boyfriend said, “bit easier to say.”
For whatever reason this was funny to Mr. Goldsmith.
“What’s ritual maiming?” Arwen asked.
“That one’s on you,” Mr. Goldsmith said, patting Mr. (Th/S)russel’s shoulder, “I’ll go finagle the electric box downstairs. Last thing we need is another surge during the performance.”
In the next five minutes, before Mr. Goldsmith came back, they learned quite a lot about self-immolation and ancient Numenorian tradition.
Pinel watched him for the rest of the day, as they met the older kids camp and ran through the choreography, but outside of encyclopedic knowledge about a wide range of obscure and pretty upsetting things Mr. (Th/S)russel showed no signs of being the kind of person to bite a police officer. He climbed the step ladder to hang up their stars, dutifully readjusting them eight times to suit Mr. Goldsmith’s vision, carried chairs out of the basement for their parents to sit on, told horrendous knock-knock jokes, and reached to steady Mr. Goldsmith’s hand when it shook too much to work the touch-screen projector.
On a normal day they’d be all over him anyways, but that day it was easy to let him blend into the background; there was too much to do, too much to remember, notes and words that they had known to boredom the day before suddenly scary again, chairs not fitting into the room and having to spill out into the hallway, Gal running banging his lute against the corner of the door and busting through a string.
By the time they were backstage, lanterns lit, giggling and biting their lips and whisper-running through the words of song, the voices of their parents clear behind the curtain, Pinel had almost forgotten about Mr. (Th/S)russel entirely.
Mr. Goldsmith did not give them the cue to go up at six, like he was supposed to. One minute ticked by, Pinel saw, watching the clock, then two, then five, then Mr. Goldsmith slipped backstage with them and set a hand quietly on her shoulder, pulling her aside.
“Pinel,” he said very quietly, “I just wanted to give you a warning. Your mom didn’t come yet. We can give it a few more minutes, then we’re going to have to start.”
Pinel’s chest suddenly felt very very tight. Mr. Goldsmith set both his hands on her shoulders, giving them a little squeeze. “I’ll make a video tape we can show her, okay?”
“Okay,” she said.
Mr. Goldsmith hesitated. “Are you alright to go up there?”
“Yeah,” she said, “yeah, I think.”
“Do you want a hug?”
“Yeah,” she said.
He wrapped his arms around her, giving a tight squeeze. His hair smelled strongly of sea salt, and he was warm and very solid.
“It’s probably just traffic,” he said, “it’s snowing hard out there. We’ll make sure it’s a good video, okay?”
“Yeah,” she said again. Mom worked late. Mom was always tired. This was, she tried to tell herself, nothing new.
They waited three more minutes, and then they went up.
The show went fine. There was no one in the crowd to look at but maybe it was easier like that; Pinel focused first on her parts in the choir, singing to the sun to bid her to return, then on her solo of Blue Wizard. That one was easy to lose herself in; she knew it so well now that she did not need to think at all about where to place her hands, and all her mind went to the timing and form of the music. She saw Mr. Goldsmith’s boyfriend in the crowd, holding up a camera and zooming in on her, and that was nice.
Then it was over, and everyone had applauded, and the older kids had done their part, everyone was leaving, and Mom still wasn’t there. Mr. Goldsmith was busy collecting signatures from all the parents signing their kids out, so it was Mr. (Th/S)russel who saw that she was crying.
His dark eyes got very wide and very worried. He glanced helplessly at Mr. Goldsmith, who was too busy with the clipboard to take note, then offered her his hand.
“Hey, c’mon back with me. We’ll get you some tissues.”
She took his hand, and followed him. Part of her felt silly and awfully young to be crying, but part of her felt righteous. Everyone else had someone. Everyone else’s parents showed up.
In the backroom Mr. (Th/S)russel gave her tissues and told her to sit and take few breaths. There were no chairs left since they’d taken them all down for the audience to sit in, so she sat on the couch.
Mr. (Th/S)russel looked at the pods by the coffeemaker.
“Do you want hot chocolate?” he asked. If Pinel wasn’t miserable it’d be a little funny.
“Yeah,” she said.
He took out the pod and held it up to the light, then squinted at the many buttons on the coffee machine.
“You need to pour water through the black part and press the red button, then when the water runs through it you can add the powder,” Pinel said.
Mr. (Th/S)russel laughed, opening up the black part to do as she directed.
“I heard you’re here a lot,” he said.
“Yeah,” Pinel said, “I heard you got arrested because you had an illegal car and an illegal gun and then you bit someone.”
“Uh,” Mr. (Th/S)russel said, “well. The car was perfectly legal, actually. Does he tell all the kids this stuff?”
“No,” Pinel said, “I’m just here all the time.”
The water was done getting hot. Mr. (Th/S)russel tore open the hot cocoa packet and dumped it into the cup, swirling it around to stir.
“Hard getting left behind,” he said, handing it to her.
“Yeah,” she said, and she thought she might cry again. The hot cocoa was sweet but not quite as good as when Mr. Goldsmith made it. She thought he mixed better.
“You played really well tonight,” he said, “takes a lot of guts. To come out and play after everything. You like Blue Wizard ?”
“Yeah,” Pinel said, “when you get to the low notes and the rocks fall. And then when he’s coming home.”
“You can take that with you anywhere,” Mr. (Th/S)russel said, “the music. It’s part of you now.”
And that was nice, she thought. That it wasn’t just for Mom and she’d missed it; that she’d made something, done something beautiful, and it was part of her now. She could feel it, settling into her bones. The Blue Wizard, and his fallen rocks, and his homecoming.
For some time they sat in the backroom. Mr. (Th/S)russel showed her pictures of their dog on his phone. She asked him if he was a cowboy, and he said no, he was an accountant and that everyone who wanted to run a music school ought to be married to one, because that was where the real money was (here she asked if he and Mr. Goldsmith were married, and he said he couldn't give an answer without consulting several different texts and they all disagreed). She told him she watched a lot of documentaries about elves and he asked what she liked about them; she said they had pretty hair. He said he couldn’t argue with that.
By the time Mr. Goldsmith came back into the room, holding his phone in his hand, she felt more or less alright.
“Mom just called,” he said, holding up the phone, “pileup on the roads. She couldn’t get cell service because of the snow. She’s really sorry, and she’ll be here soon. I said we had a video, and that you could do your solo on the stage just for her, if you wanted to. Sound good?”
“Yeah,” Pinel said, “that sounds good.”
“Did great tonight, kid,” he said, ruffling her hair as he passed by, “sorry it didn’t quite go as planned.”
“That’s okay,” she said, “it was all very pretty.”
He took out a bucket of caramel popcorn and sat down on the couch next to her. “Would you like to hear a little something I composed for my nephew?” he asked. “He loved the Night of the Lights— the Lanterns, I mean— when he was your age.”
“Yeah,” Pinel said, “sure.”
And so Mr. (Th/S)russel took out a flute, and Mr. Goldsmith began to sing. Pinel sat on the couch, ate caramel popcorn, and watched the snow fall outside, huge wet flakes of snow, pirouetting on the wind, people outside swaddled up in heavy coats holding glowing lanterns over their heads. And there, in the little studio with the linoleum floors and the popsicle stick stars, she heard a song she had no words at all to describe.
All in all it wasn’t a bad night, really.