by Jared Povanda
As the well-dressed pass him on his corner, the bard’s thorn-thick claws move like ink over the strings of his lute.
“Would you like to hear the story of Queen Paloma? The story of the Righteous Few? Any story at all?”
Some coins scatter his way, mirror stars beside his sooty paws, but no one stops and listens. This is a festival night, and the scent of pork fat dripping onto open fires draws the crowd as the bard’s music floats above disinterested heads.
Down the narrow road, wolf children rush past with colorful streamers, though one is slower than the others. They yip to one another, and the bard stops playing to watch. When was the last time he laughed among his den-fellows in such a way? The bard, most nights, curls up as tight as he can, as small as he can, bushy tail over his face, to be a compact ball of dirt and dirty fabric on the cold, unpaved earth. There is no money in art. Or, perhaps, there is simply no money in him. Stories, though, always fill his throat with tongues of light like a dragon whispering embers along his vocal cords. He wants to sing until he sears the sky.
One careful step at a time, he moves from his corner, and even as festival patrons part to allow him passage, he ignores their stares of contempt. They know nothing of how a little joy on a dark night can decide the difference between death and life for a fox.
The bard clasps his lute to his chest, calloused paws caressing old, warm wood, and peers at crisp ermine participating in a strange festival game. Some kind of sack toss. The ermine stand behind a white line and lob burlap bundles in high arcs to hit painted targets many paces away. The bard joins in with their barks, but because he has to keep his coins for tomorrow morning’s fish, he plucks a string and continues on before the urge to bet consumes him.
Outside of a raucous tavern, steps from the game and the ermine who play, a peacock with glossy, iridescent feathers passes to his left. She smells of apples, he realizes. Apples piquant with the faintest tinge of brandy. He follows the bobbing of her tallest feather until she drifts beyond view, the blackened feathers near her fragile legs hovering like his notes that never fell.
More daring than he’s been in many years, the bard finds himself stopping where the town’s roads fork. He becomes an island inside his mind. The festival fades away. If he were famous and loved, he’d start playing, and every word he sang would be honey. Milk and honey and pork shoulder so tender the meat would dissolve on his tongue. The bard dreams of this splendor, casting his consciousness far into the raven night until there’s a gentle tug on his tail. One of the wolves from before, streamer gone.
“Can I help you?”
“How much is a song, bard fox?”
“Free tonight. What would you like to hear?”
The wolf shrugs. There’s an ugly scar along the left side of his muzzle.
The bard begins to play a tune he remembers from his childhood. A song as lithe as one of the valley stoats. The bard sings of strange meerkats befriending storms and wicked snakes with knives inside their bellies. The improbable miracle of a mouse monk’s prayers to Dev’tal’an, and how faith stopped the demon blight from spreading into Sir Brown Bear’s home. The child wolf doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe until the last note disperses. But once the spell breaks, he shakes himself, not unlike a wet hound, and limps off with the barest hint of a smile on his battered face.
The bard once again holds his lute like a second heartbeat and watches the child go. He joins the thronging and aimless revelers, and even though he can’t afford anything here, he’s glad he chose to move from his corner. He acquired a new story tonight, and he supposes that stories can be better than coin when told well.
Near him, however, a percussion of sudden shouts arise as cold rain starts to fall. The bard is no stranger to these demon hours, and he gargles hot light in the back of his throat as he slips silent through new gaps in the thinning crowd. He circles around to his familiar corner, soaked to his skin.
The bard curls onto his side and rests his tail over his face once more, light trailing from between his sharp teeth as he thinks of the peacock who smelled of ripe fruit and liquor and how several torches coughed their deaths into storm-sodden air. He thinks, too, of the child wolf’s mutilated muzzle and how the other wolves in his pack left him behind, but then of the soft happiness on his face after an adventurous song rife with relief from evil. The fox thinks, and then he hums the bright beginnings of an ode he already knows he will call Little Joy.
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About the Author
Jared Povanda is a writer, poet, and freelance editor from upstate New York. He also edits for the literary journal Bulb Culture Collective. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and multiple times for both Best of the Net and Best Microfiction, and he has been published in numerous literary journals including Wigleaf, Uncharted Magazine, and Full Mood Mag. You can find him online @JaredPovanda, jaredpovandawriting.wordpress.