Well-Tempered Clavicle Read Online Free PDF Page B

enables you to play the notes, it enables you to memorize any tune you hear so you can play it yourself. You merely need to make an effort to hear a lot of music. I’m sure there will be other effects I haven’t thought of that will make you better yet. You just need to apply yourself.”
    “I will!” he promised gladly.
    “Now let me give you folk the tour of the castle. It was built to my specifications, but we receive few visitors from Xanth, for some reason.” Eve made a cute moue. Then she glanced at the three pets. “We have an indoor garden with catnip, dog fennel, and bird branches. Right this way.”
    The three animals were immediately interested. They formed a cluster right behind Eve. Dawn, Joy’nt, and Picka followed.
    It was a marvelous tour. The castle had everything, and there was no sign of the bleakness outside. Eve had made an enclave of pleasantness in an otherwise unpleasant region.
    “And how is Pluto?” Dawn inquired as they walked.
    “He’s a great lover and a fair companion,” Eve replied candidly. “He gives me anything I want, except maybe love. I’m not sure he’s capable of that. But that’s the nature of political marriages. They are for status and heirs and not much else.”
    “Heirs?”
    “Oh, did I forget to mention that? I’ll show you our one-year-old son Plato next.”
    She had forgotten to mention her baby son? Picka was not well-versed in living family relations, but that suggested that there was indeed a certain lack of something. They must have signaled the stork many, many times, because that was what living men and D/demon males liked to do when they got hold of lovely princesses, and the stork had responded. But ordinarily that would have been the very first thing a mother mentioned.
    “Oh, Eve, I’m so jealous!” Dawn said.
    “Well, you know what you can do about it, sister dear.”
    “Find a prince and let him signal the stork all he wants,” Dawn agreed. “But is there a suitable prince?”
    “One that matches a Dwarf Demon? I doubt it. But why don’t you ask the Good Magician?”
    “Maybe I should,” Dawn agreed thoughtfully. “My nose is out of joint because you’re suitably married while I’m a spinster.”
    A spinster at age almost-twenty-one? Picka trusted this was mortal humor.
    “Isn’t it awful,” Eve said smugly. “We are victims of the Demon’s spell.”
    “Demon’s spell?” Joy’nt asked.
    “When Great-grandpa Bink helped the Demon Xanth, way back when,” Dawn said, “the Demon did Bink the favor of making all his descendants have Magician-caliber magic talents. But there seems to have been a glitch, because most of them are female. Apart from Grandpa Dor and Father Dolph, they’ve all been girls, and it’s getting worse. So we have the two of us, and then the three little princesses.”
    “And all those girls really have to scratch,” Eve said. “Poor Dawn may be left out.”
    “That does it,” Dawn snapped. “I’ll do it, even if I do have to pay a year’s service or do an equivalent mission.”
    “That’s the girl. Now let’s have that banquet my staff has prepared for you.” Eve glanced at the pets. “All of you; you haven’t eaten until you have feasted on what the chefs of Hades prepare.”
    That proved to be the case. It was a sumptuous meal for all except the two skeletons. However, they were used to that. Picka amused himself by lightly tapping his ribs with his clavicles, zeroing in on their nuances. Dawn had spoken truly: he had one and a half octaves, and the two ends of his two clavicles made different sounds as they struck the ribs: ringing, muted, firm, dull, so that he could achieve different effects with the same notes. It wasn’t just his ribs; his thighs, shins, and knees had their own inflections, and his hollow skull made a drumlike sound.
    “It really is a good talent,” Joy’nt said approvingly. “I could never make music like that.”
    “I wonder.” He tapped one of her ribs with