“Enough, Menolly. I’m bone tired, and why you aren’t…”

“But you’re a journeyman harper…”

“I know but this journeyman harper cannot spend all his time playing…”

“What do you do? Besides cross-craft.”

“Whatever the Harper needs me to do. Primarily I journey…looking among the youngsters in hold and craft to see if there’re any likely ones for the Craft Hall. I bring new music to distant harpers…your music most recently—”

“My music?”

“First to flush you out because we didn’t know you were a girl. Second, because were exactly the songs we need.”

“That’s what Master Robinton said.”

“Don’t sound so surprised…and meek. Admittedly it’s nice to have one modest apprentice in this company of rampant extroverts…what’s the matter?”

“Why isn’t music like Master Domick’s—”

“Your music can be played easily and well by any half-stringed harper or fumble-fingered idiot. Not that I’m maligning your songs. It’s just that they’re an entirely different kettle of fish—to use a seamanly metaphor—to Domick’s. Don’t you judge your songs against his standard! More people have already listened to your melodies and liked them, than will ever hear Domick’s, much less like them.”

Menolly swallowed. The very notion that her music was more acceptable than Domick’s was incredible, and yet she could appreciate the distinction that Sebell was making. Domick was a musician’s composer.

“Of course, we need music like Master Domick’s, too. It serves a different purpose, for the Hall, and the Craft. He knows more about the art of composing—which you have to learn—”

“Oh, I know I do.” Then, because the problem had been weighing heavily on her conscience, she spilled the words out in a rush. “What do I do, Sebell, about the fire lizard song? Master Robinton rewrote it, and it’s much, much better. But he’s told everyone that I wrote it.”

“So? That’s the way the Harper wishes it to be, Menolly. He has his reasons.” Sebell reached out to grip her knee and give her a little shake. “And he didn’t change the song much. Just sort of…” Sebell gestured with both hands, compressing the space between them, “…tightened it up. He kept the melody as you’d written it, and that’s what everyone is humming. What you have to do now is learn how to polish your music without losing its freshness. That’s why it’s so important for you to study with Domick. He has the discipline: you have the originality.”

Menolly could not reply to that assessment. There was a lump in her throat as she remembered the beatings she’d taken for doing exactly what she was now encouraged to do.

“Don’t hunch up like that,” Sebell said, almost sharply. “What’s the matter? You’ve gone white as a sheet. Shells!” This last word came out as an expletive and caused Menolly to look in surprise at the journeyman. “Just when I didn’t want to be interrupted…”

She followed the line of his gaze and saw the bronze dragon circling down to land beyond the courtyard.

“That’s N’ton. I’ve got to speak to him, Menolly, about our teaching tip. I’ll be right back.” He was out of the room at a trot, and she could hear him taking the steps in a clatter.

She looked at the music they’d been playing, and Sebell’s words echoed through her mind. “He has the discipline; you have the originality.” “Everyone’s been humming it.” People liking her twiddles? That still didn’t seem possible, although Sebell had no more reason to lie to her than the Masterharper when he’d said that her music was valuable to him. To the Harper Craft. Incredible! She struck a chord on the gitar, a triumphant, incredible chord, and then modulated it, thinking undisciplined that musical reaction had been.

They were still twiddles, her songs, unlike the beautiful, intricate musical designs that Domick composed. But if she studied hard with him, maybe she could improve her twiddles into what she could honestly call music.

Firmly she turned her thoughts toward the gitar duet and ran through the tricky passages, slowly at first and then finally at time. One of the chords modulated into tones that were so close to the agonized cry of the previous night that she repeated the phrase.

“Don’t leave me alone” and then found another chord that fit, “The cry in the night/Of anguish heart-striking/Of soul-killing fright.” That’s what Sebell had said: that Brekke would not want to live if Canth and F’nor died, “Live for my living/Or else I must die/Don’t leave me alone. /A world heard that cry.”

By the time Menolly had arranged the chords in the plaint to her satisfaction, Beauty, Rocky and Diver were softly crooning along with her. So she worked on the verse.

“Well, you approve?” she asked her fair. “Perhaps I ought to jot it down on something…”

“No need,” said a quiet voice behind her, and she whirled on the stool to see Sebell seated at the sandtable, scribing quickly. “I think I’ve got most of it.” He looked up, saw the startled expression on her face and gave her a brief smile. “Close your mouth and come check my notation.”

“But…but…”

“What did I tell you, Menolly, about apologizing for the wrong things?”

“I was just tuning…”

“Oh, the song needs polishing, but that refrain is poignant enough to set a Hold to tears.” He beckoned again to her, a crisp gesture that brought her to his side. “You might want to change the sequence, give the peril first, the solution next…though I don’t know. With

that melody…do you always use minors?” He slid a glass across the sand so the scribbling couldn’t be erased. “We’ll see what the Harper thinks. Now what’s wrong?”

“Leave it? You can’t be serious.”

“I can be and usually am, young Menolly,” he said, rising from the stool to reach for his gitar. “Now, let’s see if I put it down correctly.”

Menolly sat, immersed in acute embarrassment to hear Sebell playing a tune of her making. But she had to listen. When her fire lizards began to croon softly along with Sebell’s deft playing, she was about ready to concede—privately—that it wasn’t a bad tune after all.

“That’s very well done, Sebell! Didn’t know you had it in you,” said the Masterharper, applauding vigorously from the doorway. “I’d rather dreaded transferring that incident to music…”

“This song, Master Robinton, is Menolly’s.” Sebell had risen at the Harper’s entrance, and now he bowed deferentially to Menolly. “Come, girl, it’s why the Harpers searched a continent for you.”

“Menolly, my dear child, no blushes for that song.” Robinton seized her hands and clasped them warmly. “Think of the chore you just saved me. I came in halfway through the verse, Sebell, if you would please…” and the Harper gestured to Sebell to begin again. With one long arm, Robinton snaked a stool out from under the flat-bottomed sandtable, and still holding Menolly by the hand, he composed himself to listen as Sebell’s clever fingers plucked the haunting phrases from the augmenting chords. “Now, Menolly, think only of the music as Sebell plays, not that it is your music. Learn to think objectively, not subjectively. Listen as a harper.”

He held her hand so tightly in his that she could not pull away without giving offense. The clasp of his fingers was more than reassuring: it was therapeutic. Her embarrassment ebbed as the music and Sebell’s warm baritone voice flowed into the room. When the fire lizards hummed loud, Robinton squeezed her hand and smiled down at her.

“Yes, a little work on the phrases. One or two words could be altered, I think, to heighten the effect, but the whole can stand. Can you scribe… Ah, Sebell, well done. Well done,” said the Masterharper as Sebell tapped the protecting glass. “I’ll want it transferred to some of those neat paper sheets Bendarek supplies us with, so Menolly can go over it at her leisure. Not too much leisure,” and the Masterharper held up a warning hand, “because that fire lizard echo swept round Pern, and we must explain it. A good song, Menolly, a very good song. Don’t doubt yourself so fiercely. Your instinct for melodic line is very good, very good indeed. Perhaps I should send more of my apprentices to a sea hold for a time if this is the sort of talent the waves provoke. And see, your fair is still humming the line…”