You can tell other's thoughts by the song you hear in their minds. One day, you find someone who's thoughts have no sound at all.
Don't feel like advertising and you know all my works anyways so
A melody sweetly hums through my ears as I pass along the shore of a wide, sparkling river. This melody is familiar. It is peaceful, happy, and full of opportunity. It belongs to a fair lady whose husband fishes daily in the river. Every day I pass by them, and her tune does not change. Always happy. Always wistful.
She does not fish alongside her husband whose thoughts whistle with a bustling, focused tune. Usually she washes clothes in the water and hangs the fabrics to dry over a branch of a tilting pine, but today she twirls in her skirts as she raises a small child in her arms.
The child has shocking white hair and pale, soft skin. He appears to be no more than five or six years old. Just a young lad with a large grin on his face as his mother twirls him in the air, their laughter bouncing off the trees.
Why hadn't I noticed him before? I had walked this path every day long before he was born. Why would his mother choose today to bring him to the river? Possibly, she had brought him before, and I just hadn't noticed.
But that is impossible. I notice everyone, because each and every day I walk this dirt road and hear the songs moving through me. The songs of the souls of my people. Their thoughts sing to me as they did when I was a small child.
I pause on the road, walking to the edge and grabbing hold of the hilt of my sword hanging at my hip. Something about this white-haired child unsettles me.
"Lady Evelyn? Is everything alright?"
I flinch, feeling embarrassed to have been snuck up on by the lady's fisherman husband.
I turn to him, smoothly moving my hand higher up to my hip, away from my sword.
"How often do you bring your boy down here to the river, sir?"
The man's sun-kissed cheekbones strain under his leathery skin, his freckles shifting with the movement. "Nearly every day when the weather permits, my lady...is something wrong?"
I take note of the quickly shifting tune playing from his mind. The beat has picked up, and instead of whistling, it is the sound of distant drums, ready to march and defend if necessary. He does not think of me as the threat, in fact he trusts me to inform him of the threat, whatever it may be.
"May I see him?" I ask softly, "I have never once noticed him until today."
The fisherman's tune changes into an excited, hyper beat with loud, glorious horns. Pride; a warrior wishes to meet his son.
"Why, of course Lady Evelyn! No need to be so shy. He's quite a handsome lad," he says with a chuckle.
Yes, I forget the strangeness of the ways of the common people. They like to marry both boys and girls young.
I nod and wait on the road as the father of the boy ambles down the grassy hillside to the bank where he interrupts his wife and motions for his son to go up to where I'm standing.
I can't help but narrow my eyes and peer into the boy's mind as he scrambles up towards me, his shocking white hair bouncing thanks to the slight curls adorning his head. His eyes are a pale blue, but they don't seem to read depth or even shallowness. I can't pinpoint anything, and I feel my heart begin to pound as he comes to a stop in front of me, his chin tilted up so that he can see me.
"Hello," he says, greeting me with another one of those wide grins.
I stand still for a moment, my eyes raking through those mysterious irises. Why can't I hear a melody, a beat, a tempo? Where are the horns, the bells, the whistles, the drums? Something has to be there.
I kneel so my eyes are level with his, and then reach out my leather gloved hand.
"Hello," I repeat, dumbfounded as a trickling realization begins to come over me.
"My name is Jacob! What's your name? Are you really a warrior? I want to be one too when I grow up!" He exclaims ecstatically, taking my hand and shaking it vigorously much to my amusement.
I smile gently. "I am Evelyn. It is a pleasure to meet you at last, Jacob," I say, releasing my hand from his grasp and reaching around to the back of my neck.
I unlatch a necklace hanging from my throat. I haven't removed it in over thirty years, but it seems today it needs a new resting place.
"Yes," I continue, holding the songbird necklace in the open palm of my hand, "I am a warrior, and I know in my heart you will be too, and so much more," I murmur just loud enough for him to hear.
I then motion for the boy to lean forward. His blue eyes sparkle as he sees the necklace, and he respectfully bows his head as I latch it around his neck.
"Wear this always," I instruct him, "it will help with the noise."
His eyes widen in understanding, and then that grin comes out again. He then goes to hug me, wrapping his small arms around my scar ridden shoulders.
"Thank you, Evelyn," he whispers.
I shut my eyes, listening to the song beginning to pour from my heart. "You're welcome, my songbird."
