Luke and Roxi worked steadily on their stone. As his hands pushed the spoon, pulling it back to reset, and pushed again, the fog slowly cleared from his mind. Everything still felt fuzzy around the edges, but clarity was more evident when he went searching in the vaults of his mind, seeking whatever he happened to be looking for.
While they worked, Roxi hummed or sang, the songs set to the rhythm of their spoons scratching into mortar. After a while, Luke, seeking any stimulation he could get, played with the rhythms he scratched into the mortar, adding syncopations or triplets. As he added complexity to the rhythms, Roxi kept her rhythm steady but added new subtleties to her melodies. Luke, who’d been humming along with her, kept his notes consistent, learning the key changes she made and adjusting his long steady notes to complement hers. It was like he was providing a drone to accompany her melodies like he’d first heard nineteen hundred years ago in the palace at Antiochia, when Trajan introduced him to the two Armenians youths who would become family.
Despite their proximity and coordination in their task, their conversations never lasted more than a few basic sentences to provide status updates. After the first day they’d spoken, neither initiated much in the way of conversation nor did the words they exchange include questions about who they were or what their pasts might be. Their overabundance of caution felt warranted in a prison they’d both been cast into, and when the outside world had forgotten them. It wasn’t until several weeks later that Roxi asked Luke something personal.
“You’re a pretty natural musician. Do you actually play anything? You know, on the outside?”
It took a while for Luke to process that he’d been asked something personal. “I…uh…used to play piano. I was pretty good too—I mean, for an amateur. Though, I didn’t have your average teacher.”
“Not some secondary school teacher looking to pick up a couple extra pounds on the weekend?” Roxi injected a note of humor into the question.
“No. He was a virtuoso pianist and composer. We became friends, and he taught me. I kept playing whenever I could, until…” Luke’s spoon stuttered for a moment before picking up his previous rhythm. He’d lost the taste for it after World War I.
“You said he was a composer? Anyone I might have heard of?” Roxi asked.
With his mind distracted by bad memories, he didn’t apply his usual filter. “Beethoven.”
When Roxi’s spoon stopped, Luke’s attention snapped back to the present.
“As in Ludwig Van Beethoven? Not some guy named Bill Beethoven? Becky Beethoven, the primary school music teacher?”
He picked up his rhythm again. “Ludwig was a dear friend, and my time spent with him in Vienna is one of my fondest memories.”
He’d been caught letting information drop; he wasn’t going to backpedal it. Of course, she’d been singing Parthian songs. It’s not like she was truly pretending to be a standard human, either.
“I doubt it was Beethoven who taught you how to do a proper drone.” She returned to scraping at the mortar.
“No, I spent some time in Armenia and befriended a brother and sister who played tsiranapogh. I guess it’s known as a duduk outside of Armenia these days,” Luke replied.
“I know what a tsiranapogh is. I’ve spent more than my share of time in Armenia over the years.”
They both scraped at the mortar without speaking. The outside of the seam flaked away relatively easily; it just took time and effort. The insides of the seams, though, were proving more difficult without being able to get proper leverage, since so much of the spoon needed to be shoved inside the growing crevice. With both of them working from each side, it would be easier to meet in the middle.
“You should play piano in your cell,” Roxi said, breaking the silence.
It took Luke a minute to process what seemed like a non sequitur. “What?”
“Play piano in your cell.”
“I’m not sure who to put in the request with. Think they’d bring me a baby grand?”
Roxi chuckled. “No, silly. In your mind. Close your eyes, and let your fingers find the keys. If you need something to stand in for a keyboard, scratch one in the floor.”
“Why?”
“It’s another place to escape to. I don’t know.”
He didn’t reply, thinking about her suggestion. He’d quit the piano when it no longer provided comfort. He wasn’t sure it would do much in here. He went back to scratching at the wall and humming along with Roxi.
Luke wasn’t sure he understood their end game. Neither of them could slip through the space the stone’s removal would clear. They’d be able to stick an arm through at best, but maybe it was less about the results and more about doing something, even if it ultimately wouldn’t lead to their escape. After all, he didn’t have a rock hammer and a Rita Hayworth poster, and these weren’t old concrete walls.
After a while, Roxi must have grown more curious about her neighbor and fellow spoon deconstruction enthusiast and started asking more probing questions. Simple questions one might ask on an early date, but eventually she started dropping in deeper questions.
“So, Luke, what you in here for?” she asked.
“I’m innocent. Lawyer fucked me,” Luke replied. His body gave a little shake of a chuckle, unvocalized. “Don’t you know everyone in here is innocent?”
Roxi groaned. “Do all men quote movies to avoid answering questions?”
“I’m sorry. Just had been thinking about ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ and your question kind of struck the same note.”
“I tell you what, if we meet a guy named Red, we need to scrounge up some smokes to trade for a rock hammer,” Roxi replied.
Luke snorted and laughed. “That’s what I was thinking about. I guess that’s only natural, given the circumstances. Although, the more I think about it, I’m feeling much more in line with Edmond Dantès in my goals. You wouldn’t happen to have been imprisoned by Napoleon over a matter of gold, would you?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
Luke sighed and stopped his spoon. “I was betrayed. Sold out for power and profit, most likely.”
“A friend?” Roxi asked.
“No, but he’d offered me and my friends hospitality.”
“He violated your guest rights?” Roxi sounded shocked.
“I’ve been thinking about that. I don’t think he ever said the word ‘guest’ to me or any of my friends. The slippery bastard chose his words carefully, though it shouldn’t matter. We broke bread together.” A simmering rage Luke tried to keep banked flared up at the talk of Mathis’s betrayal.
“And you trusted him?” Roxi sounded skeptical.
“I didn’t trust him, but I had few options at the time. I just hope he followed through and my friends made it home safely.” That hope had sustained him, knowing they’d be out there looking for a way to free him. Luke restarted his spoon chiseling. “How about you? How’d your lawyer fuck you?”
Roxi chuckled. “No lawyers, though it’s possible one of them had a day job as a lawyer—well, a night job might be more accurate—but I was trapped and captured. They caught me in a dead-end alley and filled me with tranquilizer darts. Next thing I know, I’m in this cell.”
“Night Jobs?” Luke thought. His “hunter” alarms were going off. Over the centuries, he’d run into a few hunters like him, anointed by some god or other to carry justice to the undead. If the circumstances were right, he’d team up with them to accomplish whatever common goal they had at the time, then move on. Usually, their varying masters required them elsewhere after they’d cleared their task.
Luke took a chance. “Are we dancing around the same enemies, Roxi?”
“I’m going to move to the top seam for a while. Why don’t you see if you can finish up your side of the right seem,” Roxi said, avoiding the question.
Since she didn’t answer, he respected her wishes and didn’t push further.
“I figured you were a hunter, Luke. Why else would you be in here?” She said after a while. “And how else would you be old enough to have learned piano from Beethoven?”
“Well, I haven’t seen you around the hunters’ guild hall, but nice to meet you,” he replied.
“What. There’s a hunters’ guild hall? I never got my invite…” Even though he didn’t know her at all, she sounded genuinely shocked.
“No. I was being facetious. Sorry if my voice didn’t convey the right tone. I’m…I’m struggling with”—he gestured around himself even if she couldn’t see it—“everything right now.”
“That I can understand. It’s a…a challenge to be in here, trapped with nothing but silence. It’s been nice to have you to talk to.” The energy leached out of her voice.
“Your voice and working on this stupid rock have done more to help me clear the fog in my head than anything else.” Luke remained silent for a while as they worked, finally adding, “Thank you, Roxi.”
“You’re welcome, and thank you, too. It’s been a two-way exchange.” She went silent for a while before taking up one of her hummed melodies.
They didn’t speak anymore, taking a break to rest their hands and eat their dinner meal. Neither of them felt like working after, but Luke still chose to lay next to the work area so his ear was next to the small hole they’d punched in the mortar. Roxi must have also been close to their rock because when she began singing, her voice sounded loud and clear. Well, as loud and clear as possible under the circumstances. When she finished her first song, she moved onto another, then another after it before stopping to rest her voice.
“Luke?” Roxi broke the silence.
“Yes?”
“Where did they take you from?”
“Luxembourg,” he replied.
“Is that where you’re from?”
Luke chuckled. “That’s a big question. Where are people as old as we are from?”
“How do you know I’m as old as you are? If you studied under Beethoven, you’d be well over two-hundred-years-old.”
Luke laughed. “Oh, I think you’re older than two hundred. I don’t know many people born in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries that sing Parthian songs like they were weaned on them.”
“Don’t you know it’s impolite to ask for a lady’s age?”
Choosing to ignore the deflection, Luke decided to feel around the edges of their discussion. “I was actually born not far from Luxembourg, close to Brussels.”
“Your American accent is flawless,” Roxi replied, going with a safer topic.
“I guess the US is my home these days. I’ve lived there since the fifties. How about you? Where did they snatch you from?”
“Mumbai, but I’ve been living in London for a while.”
“I thought I recognized the accent.” Luke tried adjusting his body to find a more comfortable position but didn’t achieve much on the hard stone. He didn’t press further. It wasn’t that important at the moment, and they weren’t going anywhere.
After a while, Roxi startled him by speaking. “Luke, would you sing a song for me?”
“What?” he asked. It took him a moment to process her words. “Sing you a song? My voice isn’t beautiful and trained like yours.”
“That’s sweet of you to say. I’ve been singing for you for weeks now. I’d like to hear you sing something.”
“I’m not that good of a singer,” Luke warned.
Roxi chuckled. “I’ve listened to you hum along or hold a drone for my melodies. Your voice will do fine.”
“OK. Let me think of something to sing.”
An old melody had been bumping about in Luke’s head for a while now since he’d been stolen from his friends and those he loved. A song his mother had sung to him when he was little and scared. Later, she’d sung it to remember the times when her son Lucius was small and she could hold him in her arms. As the images of his boyhood emerged into clarity in his head, the words slipped into order. Once he thought he recalled the first couple of verses, he spoke the words quietly, trying to wrap his tongue around the language he almost never spoke anymore. He was the last native speaker of his Belgic dialect of the Gaulish Celtic tongue, at least that he knew of. Hell, he was the last Gaul. For the space of a song, his people could live, his language heard upon the earth once more.
Oh, Cernunnos, you have carried them all away
Now your high horned brow, swaying low
Your back bent under the strain, too many
Carried deep, returned to darkness
All to dust, deep and dark
Where have your children gone
They go to feed the children of the wolf, they go to feed the eagle
Lugus shining, shining and luminous no more
Three faces, all-seeing, six eyes to weep
Who is to learn your truths, when all are gone
Carried deep, denied your bright light
All to dust, deep and dark
Where have your children gone
They go to feed the children of the wolf, they go to feed the eagle
Beloved of blood, Teutates, watcher of the people
Between Dubnos and Albios, astride Bitu
Were our offerings not enough, to you the sap of our lives
Carried deep, watering your withered roots
All to dust, deep and dark
Where have your children gone
They go to feed the children of the wolf, they go to feed the eagle
Lofty Taranis, thunderer and the gentle breeze
And so your wheel spins, be your judgment bolts or blooms
Lofty one on high, so low we are brought
Carried deep, ashes in the stream
All to dust, deep and dark
Where have your children gone
They go to feed the children of the wolf, they go to feed the eagle
Your children they are no more
They go to feed the children of the wolf, they go to feed the eagle
Once he found the melody, the words fell into place. The first verse was shaky, but as his confidence grew and his mother’s voice in his ear steadied, so did his voice. By the time he was halfway through it, hot tears rolled down his cheeks, though they didn’t interfere with his singing, only adding the shading that brought Luke’s love for his long dead mother back to life. When he finished, he moved to the corner farthest from Roxi’s stone and buried his face in his hands, letting the tears take him.
Once they stopped, he unspooled a few squares of his toilet paper and blew his nose. For the span of a few minutes, the song his mother had gently crooned to him brought the color back into his life, brought her back, but now the tears had leached away the brief spark of joy. Feeling numb, he stared at the wall, the stones blurring away into a dull gray mass.
“Luke? Are you alright?” Roxi asked.
He sniffed and returned to his previous spot along the wall near their hole in the mortar. “I don’t know…I guess. It’s been a long, long time since I heard that song.”
“It was beautiful and sad.” Warmth and kindness infused her words.
“My mother used to sing it to me as a boy when I was scared. I haven’t heard it in a very long time,” Luke said.
“I don’t recognize the language. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it.”
“Not unless you traveled very far west, but no one’s spoken it regularly in hundreds of years.” Luke inhaled, holding the breath and allowing it to expand his chest.
“How long?” she asked.
“Oh, maybe fourteen hundred or fifteen hundred,” Luke replied casually, his walls temporarily taken down by the song.
“What is the language?”
Luke smiled at the gentle, probing tone Roxi was using. “It was my local dialect of Gaulish.”
“Gaulish? Celtic?”
“Mhm,” he replied.
“How old are you?”
“As old as you are, Parthian.”
Roxi laughed. “All the little pieces we drag long with us always seem to trip us up, don’t they?”
“They do.”
“I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone as old as I am,” she said.
“Me either. Most people like us don’t make it this long in the life we lead.”
Roxi didn’t reply. When the lights went out, Luke lay in the near total darkness, save for a bit of light leaking through the door flap at the bottom. He wasn’t sure how he felt about meeting another hunter nearly his own age. His ego wasn’t big enough to feel like he was losing his unique place in the world. He wondered if it had to do with her being a Parthian. They’d been his enemies briefly nineteen hundred years ago, but he’d never held grudges against human enemies, certainly not after he’d accepted Mithras’s mission.
Roxi broke the silence. “Luke?”
“Yeah?” he replied.
“Thank you for sharing your song with me. You do have a nice singing voice, by the way.”
“Thank you for the compliment and also for your songs. They make this place…” He couldn’t complete the thought; he couldn’t say the songs made this place less of a hell. “They help some.”
“I understand. It’s very nice to meet you, or at least learn more about my neighbor,” she said. “Goodnight, Luke.”
“Goodnight, Roxi.”