Saul performs. He rocks. He peels his music from the heart of him before the screaming crowd, and sweat rolls off of him in streams.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s helpful, really.<\/p>\n
It helps his glass harmonica play.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s friends on the guitar and drums behind him. There\u2019s rebellious globed lightning that reacts to the music, too; for what\u2019s rock for, if not to laugh in the face of the Devil, the nithrid, and all their ilk?<\/p>\n
But mostly there\u2019s just him, and his seven-foot glass harmonica, and his body, drenched with sweat.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s forgotten he was a svart-elf. That\u2019s his reincarnation!<\/p>\n
Now all he can think about is his rock and roll.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not as simple as that, of course. It\u2019s not as simple as \u201cwake up human one morning, and also a baby, and eventually go into performing arts.\u201d There\u2019s lots of stuff in between!<\/p>\n
It\u2019s just that \u2014<\/p>\n
All his life, Saul\u2019s been told he was bad, and he knew it was wrong, on some level he knew it was wrong, but he\u2019d honestly forgotten that he was good. He\u2019d forgotten about the sugar fairies. He\u2019d forgotten about the Land of Pleasure and Happiness and the fact that he could have gone there. He\u2019d forgotten about everything, really, right down to the puppy that had called him back.<\/p>\n
So after a while, he just started accepting he was wayward.<\/p>\n
He bent himself and hammered himself into the mold of somebody wrong<\/i>. Drugs \u2014 though, and he\u2019d never admit this to anybody, he mostly takes placebos. Loose sex, principally alone. He kisses budgies, lavishly, and without precautions. And of course there is his . . . Lethal . . . rock and roll.<\/p>\n
His music is the kind that can sink its teeth into the human heart. There\u2019s no one at school save Edmund who can really ignore <\/i>it. Saul was good when he was born, he was a melodious baby, and he\u2019s better now that he\u2019s grown; and a little bit of the smith-wroth\u2019s still in him, so he\u2019s best of all with the tools he\u2019s made himself.<\/p>\n
It takes a svart-elf to make a band out of guitar, drums, globes, and glass harmonica, but Saul, he makes it work.<\/p>\n
His concert ends with a crash. He smashes a carefully prepped and separable section of his harmonica. It shatters on the stage and releases scent.<\/p>\n
He takes a towel. He wanders backstage. He mops himself off.<\/p>\n
He catches a bottle of brandy someone throws at him. He mimes drinking it down. Later he drops it in the liquor recycling bin (the school has separate recycling bins for glass, paper, plastic, and unused liquor) and collapses into his chair in the rooms backstage.<\/p>\n
Tom shakes his hand enthusiastically.<\/p>\n
\u201cRock,\u201d says Tom. \u201cYou, sir, are a genius. Your music lives.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHuh?\u201d Saul says.<\/p>\n
He isn\u2019t sure how Tom got backstage and into his room there. The answer, incidentally, is \u201cTom controls swarms of robot bees.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh,\u201d says Tom. He smiles. \u201cI came to honor you.\u201d<\/p>\n
He takes off his hat. He proffers it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not underwear,\u201d says Saul, pleased.<\/p>\n
Hardly anyone gives rock stars their overwear. It\u2019s a new experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes!\u201d agrees Saul, more with himself than with the narration, and he puts it on.<\/p>\n
\u201cLo,\u201d he says, standing up, striding, preparing to declaim something, \u201cI am crowned Saul the \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
His voice shorts out. He staggers. He goes down on one knee.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, come on,\u201d he says. He shakes his head vigorously. \u201cNo!\u201d<\/p>\n
He falls over. He kicks his feet.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. I won\u2019t let a hat, I won\u2019t, it won\u2019t, a hat won\u2019t beat me<\/i> \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
Power rages through the channels of his brain. His eyes roll back. He screams.<\/p>\n
They come back down gleaming red.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
He makes a strange face at Tom. He takes off the hat. He hands it back to Tom. He improvises a red hat out of bits of torn uniforms and roses that are laying around the room.<\/p>\n
He is crying.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d says Tom. \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat have you done to me?\u201d says Saul, like he wasn\u2019t prepared for this, like at no point in all his life of rock and roll, drugs, and fevered debauchery has anyone ever warned him that he might actually be some kind of saint.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d says Tom. \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
Saul points at him accusingly. \u201cYou\u2019ll never get gout!\u201d he tells Tom, which is true, but isn\u2019t at all what he expected he would say.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks,\u201d says Tom.<\/p>\n
Then his face falls, slowly.<\/p>\n
\u201cDang it,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019d really thought you\u2019d wind up in Dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t play music,\u201d says Saul. \u201cMy drug habit. No more pirating torrents. What am I going to do with myself, Tom?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll find something!\u201d says Tom. \u201cI\u2019ve got faith in you!\u201d<\/p>\n
He claps Saul on the shoulder.<\/p>\n
Then he grimaces, like he wants to join the saint in crying.<\/p>\n
He turns.<\/p>\n
He lowers his shoulders. His back is as expressionless as a . . . back. . . is as he trudges, quietly, away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saul performs. He rocks. He peels his music from the heart of him before the screaming crowd, and sweat rolls off of him in streams. It\u2019s helpful, really. It helps his glass harmonica play. There\u2019s friends on the guitar and drums behind him. There\u2019s rebellious globed lightning that reacts to the music, too; for what\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"series":[47],"class_list":["post-5104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-storm-that-saw-itself-chapter-3","series-the-storm-that-saw-itself"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Hat_3a_nobg.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5104"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6151,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5104\/revisions\/6151"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5104"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=5104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}