The first lines of chapter 1…a little lyrical, a little musical, a beginning….
The Iktara river sang. At least, Piper always thought of it as singing. Sometimes a sweet murmur. Sometimes a strident song. But the sound of water flowed around and through him whenever he was near, whether it moved and coursed, dripped, whether it rained and ran, or blew through the air as soft mist, fog or clouds. Waves lapping on a beach made melodic nibbling noises, chewing on the shoreline. In places such as this, where the broad width of the river rang on stony banks, it sang back and forth in swirls of current, dancing up to the sky in frothing waves as it broke around rocks and snags and the pilings men had created for mooring barges and logs.
No matter how often he denied it, it was music he heard, though it had no real melody or words. But it wasn’t random sloshing, tinkling, dripping. The long, sonorous tones of deep water were currents of sound, each thread weaving with the others, swelling, falling. The waves slapping the shore and sparkling out in the channel were counterpoint, grace notes, high harmony lines.
That he could hear it was aggravating. Not that it sounded terrible, quite the opposite. It was that he could hear it at all. It didn’t move through the air like normal music; an inner ear received the sounds. Bound with emotions and feelings, it touched, lifted, angered, and disturbed him, as music should.
Just not this way, not this constant, unwanted barrage.