Meander [Dolorosa]

[Lancaster]

The sky still bled even as the musician trekked downhill.

Sunset was something he had missed in the long years he’d been of the undead; now, almost every twilight, he made sure he was somewhere he could see it, somewhere that wasn’t obscured by buildings or murky horizons. He’d found a spot on a hill north east of Cherrydale. The fae didn’t bother him anymore. In fact, he wouldn’t even know that they existed if he’d never encountered them before. They blended in, left him alone. He was mundane, now. A human. In all the time that he’d been a vampire he’d been set on avoiding the wild creatures of the trees, but now? Now that they wanted nothing to do with him, he felt gravitated.

But they were nowhere to be found.

The shadows lengthened as the sun set, the sky shifting from blue to purple to orange then red, the light limned the clouds like a brilliant dappled oil painting. Lancaster took no photos, and contented himself on just watching until the brilliance was gone, and only the red remained, bleeding the last of its rays until it would deplete into complete darkness. As he meandered the path down to the city below, he peered into the shadows, listened to the breeze in the trees. He wanted to hear voices, but there were none.

Stuck in a meandering, thoughtful reverie, Lancaster didn’t notice when the trees were swapped for buildings; he was back in the city, the dirt path having morphed into cement sidewalk. His hands were shoved into his pockets, the wind chill having dropped several notches. They were removed from the comfort of the thermal lined jacket only to pull the scarf tighter around his neck. His chin dipped into the softness of the wool, keeping his lips from chap. It might not be as cold as he was making it out to be, but he wasn’t used to it. Even before he was a vampire, he wasn’t used to it.

There was nowhere he needed to be in a hurry, so he continued to walk – eventually he would wind back around to the Honeymead train station and take the train back to his usual stomping ground – the one that he had reclaimed, anyway, still reacquainting himself with the faces he used to know. Every second he remained out on the street he knew that he was in danger of being found by his doppelganger self, that thing that managed to give him nightmares, the guilt of its existence eating him up inside. But nor could he live his life cowering in fear. So he took his time.

The city was different now, in more ways than one. And he realised he’d never truly allowed it to be ‘home’, regardless of how often he’d said he had. Now, it was time to make good on the promise.

[Dolorosa (DELETED 10231)]

People in this city liked itinerants as much as any other city. That is, not at all, which meant that Carmen and Grandpa couldn’t really busk or sell jewelry in a single spot. Every day, if Carmen wanted to eat and if it was not raining, she’d have to roll her shopping cart (stolen from the CF Chinook Centre in Calgary) of amp, mic, and effects pedal, acoustic-electric guitar, and cheap turquoise and “ethnic,” “Mayan-inspired” pieces---heavy on the quotation marks. Just the other day, she had been told to stay away from some River Rock because some woman had it in her head that Grandpa was a vicious beast that had mauled her kid.

The old man hardly even nipped at her.

The two of them sat side by side that evening outside the Honeymead train station, Carmen’s jewelry rolled out on the mat---clunky, colorful, made of “gold” that would tarnish and turn your skin green in the right weather. It had been a quiet, dreamy day, and nice enough that it didn’t rain. Nicer still that at least a couple of very bougie women had brought jewelry from her---the suburban housewife kind that liked all this kitschy, faux post-colonial nonsense that was trendy now.

Carmen was on her low plastic stool and Grandpa on the cooling concrete, his chin in his clumsy paws, making a low, whining noise in his throat as if humming along to the guitar and Carmen’s singing. The guitar wasn’t hooked up to the amp; it was quiet enough in Honeymead, so near to Cherrydale and the greener parts of Harper Rock, that the guitar didn’t need to be hooked up to anything to be heard.

It was one of those beautiful, crisp evenings that reminded Carmen of home, of evenings on the porch strumming along to her mother, a prodigious talent in her own right, singing ala Maria Dolores Pradera in her prime.

Déjame que te cuente Limeña,
Déjame que te diga la gloria
Del ensueño que evoca la memoria
Del viejo puente, del río y la alameda.

(Let me tell you, Limeña
Let me tell you the glory
From the dream that recalls the memory
Of the old bridge, the river, the boulevard…)

Carmen sang, and for the first time in weeks felt warm, safe. Felt that there was nothing in the world could harm her, nothing at all; that the shadows in the darkness were nothing but shadows, and they would go away if she shone a light bright enough.

A man walked by---tall, stooped, dressed in dark clothes, not unlike so many men and women in Harper Rock. Carmen shook her ankle to jingle the bells on her anklet in time with the jaunty tune as if to say, ‘Yes, hello, sir. Some music? Some shiny things?’

Jazmines en el pelo y rosas en la cara,
Airosa caminaba la flor de la canela,
Derramaba lisura y a su paso dejaba
Aromas de mistura que en el pecho llevaba. . .

(Jasmines in the hair and roses on the face
The Cinnamon Flower walked airily
She spilled candidness and on her way, she left
The aroma of mixture that she carried in her bosom . . . )

[Lancaster]

Lancaster had been about to take one street – down which he could see a sign for a patisserie, the scent of freshly baked goods wafting on the breeze to tantalise his tastebuds. His wallet was tucked into his pocket and he could imagine himself buying a whole box of treats and taking them home with him; he’d have all good intention of sharing them, but in the end would forget. And one by one he’d eat them all, until they were all gone. He could imagine the way the dough would melt in his mouth, the sweet icing sugar coating smeared over his lips, fluttering to mar the darkness of his jacket.

But, sweeter still than the promise of sugar was the sound of music. Music, Lancaster’s first love. Music, which he knew he’d been good at, once. He had a music store. He had guitars and his own piano. He had a stage upon which he’d been told he’d performed quite often, but the songs were still distant memories. He’d lost everything and, try as he might, not everything came back to him. Least of all the inspiration to play, to write. He knew he had the skill. He’d once had to step in for a guitarist who’d vomited on stage at Lancaster’s, and he’d read the music with no issue. They’d told him he could, and he’d trusted them.

The music that wafted on the breeze down the other forked street was a product of the heart, of the soul. He could tell. It was genuine. And that proved more tantalizing than the sweets. The jingle of the bells on the musician’s foot were not required to grab Lancaster’s attention, as it was attention that she already had. His feet scuffed to a stop as he surveyed the scene; musician, dog, mat and wares. Jewellery. None of it would suit him, nor did he particularly have anyone to buy it for. A man giving a woman jewellery was a statement, and that was a complication he wasn’t prepared for just yet.

And besides, it wasn’t the jewellery he was interested in. It was the busker. The wallet was pulled from his pocket and from it, a crisp twenty dollar bill that he might have used to buy sweets but which he now used to pay the busker for her music. He approached only to allow the note to flutter into whatever receptacle she had waiting for such monetary accolade, and then stepped back a reasonable distance. Just to listen.

[Dolorosa (DELETED 10231)]

Déjame que te cuente, limeña
¡Ay! Deja que te diga moreno,
Mi pensamiento
A ver si así despiertas del sueño
Del sueño que entretiene, moreno,
Tu sentimiento

( Let me tell you limeña, Hey!
Let me tell you, tanned girl, my thought
So you can wake up from the dream
The dream that entertains, tanned girl…)

Carmen paused for half a second in her strumming to tip an invisible hat at the man in front of her, although for whatever reason she couldn’t bring herself to look into his face. There was something in the man’s expression, something implacable, that when it caught her attention made her avert her gaze. Heavy thoughts tugged at the corners of his eyes and his mouth, made them droop; private, weighty thoughts. It felt a little wrong to look at him, so she didn’t look. She looked down at Grandpa instead, who was sniffing at the twenty-dollar bill in the open guitar case, a curiosity among the coins and discarded receipts.

When the song finally finished, the sun had gone down over the flat tops of the low buildings in the south. Now a few people coming home from work or heading off to their night shifts were walking to and from the station or milling around the stalls that sold coffee and quick food. No one else came to see Carmen and Grandpa—only the man with the winter scarf. “Thank you,” she finally said, filling in the silence after the song. Her voice scratched at the roof of her mouth. “Nice evening, isn’t it?”

[Lancaster]

That Lancaster could even witness a sunset -- even through buildings -- was miraculous. That he was standing there on that street with remnants of the sun’s heat still lightening the sky, he couldn’t help but breathe it in, luxuriate in it. Never again would he take the sun for granted.

Still, despite the moment and the simple beauty of it, a chill ran down Lancaster’s spine. A movement out of the corner of his eye -- a shadow, flickering, and when he turned to look it was gone. He swallowed the anxiety that prickled at the back of his neck and cleared his throat. The music had stopped; in its absence the swell of late afternoon foot traffic greeted him. There was laughter and the clink of coins; a register whirring open before being slammed shut. A babble of conversation filled what could never be silence. It took him a good few seconds to realise he had been addressed by the singer.

”It’s a beautiful evening,” he said, before gesturing toward the woman’s guitar. ”Made all the more beautiful by your music. You play wonderfully,” he said. She did not have to thank him for the money. It was money that she deserved. All those people who walked past without paying her any mind -- they were drones. Mindless robots, stuck in the rat race they called life. Sometimes, a person had to stop and appreciate the metaphorical roses. Otherwise what was the point in living?

”Where did you learn?” he asked. The song had sounded almost traditional, and he wondered if it was a family thing.