Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 5

sing to them, though I must do so in secret.
    I arrived four seasons ago, with no knowledge of my past or where I hail from, possessing no more than the clothes upon my back and a trinket. Helv, the innkeeper who took me in, offered to safe-keep the polished rock that hung from a bit of deer hide, and gave me a job, mucking stalls and cleaning the carriages of passing travelers. Then one morning I'd hummed while I worked. The innkeeper's wife, Freda, gathered three times the eggs of a normal morning, and required several buckets for milking instead of the usual one.
    From that moment forward I sang whenever bidden, repaying the kindness of strangers while keeping a hat firmly pulled over my ears to hide my deformity, though my unnatural height and pale skin weren't so easily concealed.
    "Good morn, Esmeralda," I say, patting a docile milking cow. She chews her cud, eyes as brown as my own gleaming in the weak morning light. The innkeeper calls her simply "cow" no matter how many times I repeat her name.
    Passing through the barn, I call the names of my four-footed friends, silly sounds that seem somehow right. "Keep your voice low," Freda reminds me, "those be not normal names. Folks might think you a foreigner." She spat into the dirt after "foreigner" to ward against the evil eye.
    I begin to sing. Words in a language I do not know flow from my tongue, soft and low. Although the meaning eludes me, pictures form in my mind: a stream clear and cool, tumbling over rocks and into a green valley. Deep within me familiarity blooms. "Mountains," I think, though my recollections only include flat plains, from horizon to horizon.
    A comforting contentment settles over me. Eyes closed, I trill and croon until, at last, Freda, touches my sleeves. "Stop now, lad. That is enough." Lad. That is what I'm called, for no one knew my name or felt the need to give me a new one.
    The sun holds high in the sky once morning chores are ended. Exhausted, I return to my loft, to sleep away the heat of the day. My singing leaves me drained, the fatigue growing worse with each passing day.
    At sunset I arise, creeping across the ground to the backstairs of the inn. Merriment tinkles from within, and loneliness fills me. How I long to go inside, become a part of the revelry, but alas, my benefactors warn often of the consequences of revealing my presence. I remain hidden in the attic, watching the revelers through a knot hole in the floor, but my voice carries well into the chamber below.
    "Poor thing," Helv says, whenever anyone asks about who sings. "Very shy and terribly deformed. He only agreed to sing if I kept him hidden."
    I wonder about Helv's lies, but let them pass. He took in a stranger, has yet to strike me, and my belly is warm and full, usually. Freda says that makes him a good man.
    Once more words come to me in some strange tongue, different from the dream song, bringing to mind creatures that Freda calls "unnatural." Tiny souls with fluttering wings and even a half-man/ half-goat frolic behind my closed lids in my trancelike state. This tune lures coin from travelers' pockets, buying ale and meat pies. Freda tells me that no matter what village their patrons call home, they all hear a familiar tune from their youth when I sing. My melodies lend a sense of belonging, she says.
    As the evening wanes, diners leave, their places at hearth and table filled by local farmers. I change my tune, creating images of the "unnatural" creatures behaving in an all too natural way; ways often inspiring a hot flush to my cheeks. Ale flows freely in the inn below, as do coins, buying time from a trio of barmaids, two more having been brought in to fill a greater need since my arrival.
    While my vocals can bring peace and comfort, they can bring lust as easily.
    The night grows deep, and the haunting tune from my dreams springs forth, insistent. I could not stop the words. This time, I clearly see my dream lover, smiling at me in a sunlit field, or dancing with me under a canopy of bright lights in the sky.
    Faster and faster the incomprehensible sounds escape, more chant now than melody. A tightness forms in my chest, squeezing my heart and stealing my breath.
    Words cannot describe what happened next, the tingling of heat and cold vying for dominance, a shimmering sensation, like mist rising from a lake. Somewhere, somehow a door opened, though not a door made of wood. The lover in my mind locks eyes with mine, and clearly, as though he stood