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Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at https://archiveofourown.org/works/43669956.
Fandom: Friends at the Table: Fall of Magic
Rating: General audiences
No warnings
Published 2022-12-25 for the Yuletide exchange
Words: 3,464
After the world was remade, Harp went back to the lane of statues at the Sculpture Gardens.
They were a flock not yet in control of their actions, not equipped with instincts for homing or migration, so when they left the burning heart of magic they went to the last place they had seen other birds. They descended on the heads of statues representing statesmen and orators, shepherds and fishers, generals and poets, none of which had agreed to serve as Harp’s allies in the rebirth of the world, but all of which were useful now as perches, outlooks, nests.
Harp was multitudinous and lonely, and they had never before experienced hunger. They fluffed their feathers and looked at the world around them with a new perspective: some of the world could feed them, and some could not. Harp had always been interested, as a golem, in things, but now they understood for the first time what things could mean to a living creature. They could mean life or death.
A wind picked up and momentarily carried off a few of the birds until they could gather their faculties and rejoin the group.
Grandmother Black was gone from her ship: perhaps under the water to join her husband, perhaps back to the sky where it seemed like she had begun, or perhaps she had simply wandered away. The ship, without her, changed. Piccolo returned from the heart of magic to find a frigate with bright white sails in the new world’s sunlight, decks smooth with scouring and giving off the tang of fresh wood, lines neatly coiled and, when he pulled it up, a silvery anchor, lightweight and sharp, that showed no marks of use. And Caspian, wordless, affixed to the helm.
“Aw, geez,” Piccolo said. “I feel weird about having you stuck there.”
Caspian said, “I need to be of use.”
“You sure you don’t want to climb down and be of use as a person? It seems like I’ve lost my crew.”
Caspian closed his eyes against the salt wind and said nothing further.
“Well,” said Piccolo, “no need to stay where we’re not wanted.” The captain’s cabin was in the same place as it used to be, and so was the rack of maps, although they looked as new as the ship did. Piccolo rolled out a map on the table and looked at it for a long time without knowing his purpose. Grandmother Black was a pirate, so probably she went where she could capture other ships. Piccolo was ready to be a captain, but he wasn’t so sure about piracy. The world had been remade; it seemed only fair that people should get a minute to get used to it before anybody started up again with crimes.
He decided to strike out toward the unmapped sea. Something might be out there—maybe other islands, and maybe other ships. Someone might be out there hunting whales. Someone might be observing the sky or learning about fish. People might be doing anything at all.
Harp flew east to an island they had never seen before. It seemed like the right direction to go. Now that they had no one giving them orders, they were discovering what it was like to make their own choices from a position of relative freedom. This was complicated by the fact that they were no longer a single individual. Every bird in the flock wanted something. Harp was not sure where they, Harp, were located, or whether they could still be said to exist at all, but somewhere in the flock was a tendency, a will, that still seemed to amount to consciousness. Somebody somewhere was asking the question of whether they still existed, and that had to indicate that somebody somewhere did.
When Harp transformed, they had been traveling east for some time, and afterward it seemed as if continuing in that direction would be as good an idea as any.
They found an island where it was springtime. They weren’t certain that it was supposed to be spring now—it had been autumn rather recently—but the world in general was rethinking its habits, and here there were lilac blossoms and bright red early berries in the bushes.
Harp landed among the bushes and ruffled their feathers, preened and cooed, discovered a desire to bathe in the puddles left in the morning after a nighttime rainfall and did so. When they were made of stone, Harp had been a little bit porous, but mostly not; when rain slid off of them it left them cold and clean, if sometimes speckled with the detritus blown in by a storm. As birds, they had feathers with some resistance to water, but as they entered the water they discovered an instinct to fluff those up and let the water in close to the skin, to wash away dust and oil and tiny bugs. It was fun. Harp wasn’t used to having fun.
The berry bushes were tantalizing, and one bird tried a berry and found it sweet. Another bird tried another berry and found it slightly sour. They moved through the bushes trying more, becoming so absorbed that they were not prepared for the human voice that suddenly cried, “Oh, no, the birds have been here!”
Harp, startled, flew up into the air in a massive susurration of wings, and the person who must have spoken flinched and covered their face with their hands. “Go away,” they said. “People need these berries.”
Harp wavered, fluctuated, and said,
castigate
not
sweet
enervate
good
The person shivered as Harp’s words rang from five different directions throughout the glen. “How did you do that?”
Harp wondered the same thing, arrived at no answer, and said nothing.
“I’m sorry if I spoke harshly. I know you need to eat too.”
Harp fluffed and resettled their feathers. They did need to eat. It was a new need, and one that they were not accustomed to defending. But that wasn’t why they had reacted the way they did. They said,
sweet
acrid
bitter
tart
brief
long
The person took longer, this time, to respond. “I guess the berries are all of those things. Well, most of them. I might argue with you about ‘long.’ They’ve got such a short season.”
Harp shuffled their feet on the branches. They hadn’t thought about how long the season would last. Were they responsible for thinking about things like that? They used to be a gardener. They weren’t anymore.
different same
different? different
same different same
The person took off their wide-brimmed hat and scratched at the thin hair underneath it. “You’re kind of a confusing flock of birds.”
Harp flapped their wings, trying to express themselves more clearly:
sweet different acrid
different bitter
tart same sweet different
“Huh,” the person said. “Some are the same and some are different? Wouldn’t that mean they’re all different? Or—oh, for some of you it’s one way and for some it’s another? But how can you tell if that’s you or if it’s…well.” They thought for a moment. “I guess I can see why you’d keep eating. Though birds usually do that anyway.”
Harp said,
new
new
new
new new
The person looked around at the birds in the branches, small and fluffy and unremarkable and united, for the first time ever, in saying the same thing. “This seems important to you. Can you leave a few, though? This is my spot. It’s important to me, too.”
The birds fluttered and sang, without planning on it, a few notes of a song.
A week after setting out, Piccolo put down anchor a little ways off from a new island.
Well, it was new to Piccolo. It probably wasn’t brand new to existing or anything like that. There were trees, a little ways in from the shore, that seemed like they’d been there for a few decades at least, and there were houses underneath the trees that were made of stone and brick and such, houses that would take a long time to build. Overall he thought it probably wasn’t likely this island had just sprung into existence when the world shifted. Not that he could be certain about something like that. There wasn’t a whole lot of precedent for what it should look like when things changed that much.
He tried to convince Caspian to come ashore with him, but Caspian didn’t respond, so Piccolo took the dinghy ashore by himself.
“Ahoy the house!” he said, when he was close enough to one of the stone houses that he thought they might hear.
Nothing happened for a while, and then one of the house’s red shutters banged open, clattering against the stones, and someone stuck out their head and yelled, “What?”
“Ahoy!” Piccolo repeated, hoping this would clarify things.
“I hear you! If you’ve got something to say, come up here and say it!”
That seemed like a good plan, so Piccolo rowed as close as he could to the land, and then he stepped out into the water and dragged the dinghy up onto the pebbles of the shore. By the time he’d finished tying it to a tree, the woman from the house had made her way down to meet him. She was wearing a blue dress, a yellow apron, and a red cap, and she looked a little like a kids’ primer about colors.
“Been a long time since we got ahoyed,” she said. “That your ship?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Piccolo said. “That’s the Sea Wing.”
“Who’s aboard her?”
“Now that I’ve come ashore, just the figurehead. He’s a friend of mine.”
“I’ve heard the Sea Wing is a pirate ship, but I’m guessing you’re not going to plunder my home, then, if it’s just you.”
“Wasn’t planning on it, ma’am.”
“Appreciate that. So what brings you to our island?”
Piccolo involuntarily shuffled his feet. They made a krrt-krrt-krrt sound on the rocky shore. He was, he realized, waiting to get some instructions. They weren’t forthcoming. Instead he opened his mouth to discover what would come out, and he heard himself say, “I’m making a survey of these islands. Has anything changed around here recently?”
The woman folded her arms across her chest and sized him up. “Lots has changed. What are you interested in? Tides? Harvests? Politics? Religion?”
Piccolo felt a little dizzy. “All of it. Wait, no—” The woman’s eyebrows had shot right up to her hairline. “I mean, I am interested in all of it, but that’s because what I really want to know about is magic. How the magic here has changed. Recently.”
Something cleared in her face when he said that. “A-ha. So you’re looking for the professor, then.”
“Yes? Yes. Is there just one?”
“No, but there’s one who’s particularly relevant. I’ve got things to do, but if you just follow the road up between the trees, through the clearing, hang a left and follow it past the fountain that didn’t use to be there—not that you know what was here before, but you’ll see what I mean—there’ll be a group of houses but that’s not it, keep going, and then you’ll get to the college, or the church, or whatever we’re going to call it now. The professor should be there.”
“Should I ask for them by name? You said there was more than one.”
“If you could, I’d recommend it, but they won’t tell us their name. Just tell them what you told me and they’ll straighten you out.”
“Thanks kindly, ma’am,” Piccolo said. She nodded and headed back toward her house, apparently satisfied that the interaction was over. Piccolo looked over his shoulder and considered shouting at Caspian where he was going, but it seemed like he might make himself ridiculous doing that, and he realized that he cared whether the woman from the cottage saw him acting ridiculous or not. He drew himself up straight, made sure his dinghy was tied securely to a tree, and followed her directions down the path.
The trees were there like she had said, and the clearing, and the fountain that didn’t use to be there. It was bright sparkling white stone, a gaudy sight in the middle of the woods, with a statue on top of a merman breaking a clamshell open. Water poured out from the clamshell to fill the basin at the merman’s feet, and the whole thing was conspicuously, immaculately clean, without a speck of moss or any worn spots on the stone. The merman was seated on a pillar that brought him a little higher than eye level with Piccolo. He didn’t appear to be a golem, but Piccolo said hello, anyway, just to be sure. The merman didn’t respond.
He kept going through the woods until the trees dropped away to leave him in a more open, grassy area. There was a building here, made of stone the same color as the fountain. It was a strange sort of building. It was just one story high, except for some places where it had towers. The walls were plain white stone, except for the places where they were covered in colorful tile mosaics. There were lots of doors and windows in a style that Piccolo didn’t know how to identify; parts of the lawn that seemed to be outside had furniture in them, and there were openings in the walls, like decorative openings in a lattice, through which he could see plants on what was probably supposed to be the inside.
Piccolo cleared his throat. Now that he was on land again, he felt a little foolish saying “ahoy.” Instead he tried, “Hey there.”
The ground in front of him, which looked ordinary and grassy, buckled and swayed and belched, and then part of it gave way and pushed up, as if they were standing on a platform that was being lifted up on ropes or something.
“Oh!” The person in front of him looked even more surprised than Piccolo felt. She was wearing a black dress with long sleeves that were rolled up to her elbows, apparently to keep them out of the way of whatever she’d been doing with her hands, which were covered with some stuff he couldn’t identify. “Oh, that hasn’t happened before. You must have called it, somehow. What happens if you do it again?”
Piccolo cleared his throat. “Uh. Hello?” Nothing happened. “Oh, sorry, I don’t think that’s what I said before. Hey there?”
The person in front of him looked around expectantly, but there was nothing to observe. “Hm. Maybe it’s not words. Maybe it’s need. Now that I’m here you don’t need to call me anymore—don’t you think?”
“With respect,” Piccolo said, “I haven’t really got any ideas on the subject.”
“No, you must,” she said firmly. “Where have you come from? What do you need?”
“I’m the captain of the Sea Wing, ma’am. Professor.” She didn’t really react to either title. “I came to see if there have been any—changes? Round this way? That is, I’m conducting a survey of the islands in this area. Professor.”
“Very interesting,” she said. “I must consult with you on this. Please, come into the cloister.”
“The what?”
“This,” she said, and she spun around to look at the building. “Oh. The door’s gone.”
“You’re locked out?”
“Probably not, I just can’t go back in the same way I—oh that’s right, I didn’t leave, I got sucked through the earth to be out here. That’s why there isn’t still a door there waiting for me. Can you make one?”
“Like—with a saw or something? I don’t know much about carpentry.”
“No, with words, the way you brought me here. There’s tea and cakes inside.”
“What difference does that make?”
“If you really want to go in, it might make your commands more effective, no?”
“I guess so, maybe. Hey there, cloister. Can you make me a door?”
The building creaked in the wind for a little while, and then, in between one blink and the next, Piccolo noticed something he hadn’t before. It took him a minute to clear his eyes enough to be sure it was there. “Isn’t that a door over there?”
“Ah! There we are. Thank you.”
“I mean, I just found it. I think it was there the whole time.”
“No,” she said, decisively. “The last time there was a door, it was all the way on the other side of the building. Come, let us tell each other what we have learned.”
By the time Piccolo made it back to the dinghy, his head was spinning, and not just with information. He rowed out to the Sea Wing feeling taller than he was used to, and he felt rather satisfied with how he hauled himself aboard and secured the dinghy without any help. Usually a ship like the Sea Wing would have a crew to do that kind of thing.
When he was finished with that task, he stood on the deck watching the sky for a while, wondering which direction to go next. The professor had given him a lot to think about. There were more islands out this way, and her maps looked different from his—because of a mistake in the maps, or because something had changed? He’d have to get better at navigation if his maps weren’t reliable. He’d gotten pretty decent at that under Grandmother Black, so he wouldn’t be starting from scratch.
He said to Caspian, “Do you think I could command a crew?”
There was a slow sound that might have been Caspian sighing, or might have just been the ship adjusting to a change in the water and the way the anchor pulled against its line. Caspian said, “Be careful what decisions you make about other people.”
“Well, sure,” Piccolo said. He looked back up at the sky. “Lot of birds all of a sudden.”
It was a lot of birds, and they were very sudden; the next thing he knew they were landing on his decks and railings and masts, and a strange concatenation of sounds surrounded him:
hello back changed
now before
what is it miniature
all together bright east
seawater long way
Harp had not been looking for Piccolo. They just liked the uprightness of the masts like trees in the harbor and flew down to see if they were good for perching. They were surprised by Piccolo’s face, familiar but older, shaded by a sailor cap and looking like he belonged there.
Piccolo was surprised, but he recovered himself quickly. “Harp!” he said, “I didn’t expect to see you again. This is my boat! My ship, I mean. The crew’s all gone, don’t know where, and it’s not really a one-person job sailing it, but I’m figuring it out.”
work rest
difficult
“Aw, I’m fine. I’ve got work to do. I’m sailing to the next island and I’m going to see how they’re adapting, and then I’ve gotta get some supplies from the one after that, and maybe hire some crew. Can you imagine? Me being in a position to hire anybody?”
no of course
strange maybe
yes
“Caspian’s here and he tells me things, but the world’s been made new or something, so there’s a lot of stuff that he or anybody doesn’t know and we’ve gotta find it out. Are you out there learning things?”
sweet difficult
alone selfish
berries people us others
tart sharing
Piccolo tipped his head to the side and thought about that. “You did what you were told for a long time, didn’t you? Me too, I guess. It’s complicated being…in charge.”
free
old
novelty
“Hey, I’m not old.” There was a trill of chirping from around him, a little like laughter. “I mean, older than I was, but so’s everybody.”
no everywhere
new sunlight
brand new
“I guess you’re not, though, are you?”
stone
birds
hills younger
“Yeah, it’s—wow. You’re younger than you’ve ever been.”
The birds chirped again, and many of the chirps coalesced into song. It was a song such as birds sing, so it didn’t have a melody or any direction. Nobody had written it. It had no history. It was exactly as old as the moment it was sung.
Piccolo straightened his cap, and the gesture made him feel for a moment like an old sea hand, someone who had straightened his cap in that same way many times while he surveyed the horizon. The birds didn’t say anything more to him, but they kept singing as they lifted off the mast and flew back toward shore.
“That’s about the long and short of it,” Piccolo said, and he went to raise the sails.