The Fire and the Fog Read Online Free

or lark that had taken to nest in the awning of a nearby
house were the only sounds that accompanied him on his walk
home.  But inside his head, his mind was buzzing.  His
‘Ode to the Tree’.  He knew it would have to feel green, how
could it not, but how should it start?  Some light arpeggios
on a major scale?  Or was that too light green?  A song
for the old oak, that solitary, ancient tree, stuck in the middle
of miles of empty, rolling hills and short, twisted grape vines, a
modern town of wood and stone its only company, a song for the old
oak would have to be slow, mellow, in a minor scale.  Possibly
C Minor, with a slow tempo, plenty of legato notes.  The song
would have to be a dark, ancient green, as deep and ancient as the
tree itself.
    Just as Gel began to write the first bars of
his new song in his head, his fingers moving through the empty air
in concert with the notes he imagined, he walked into the large
iron gate of the Mayor’s house.  Stepping back quickly and
realizing where he stood, and what he had run into, mild
embarrassment coloured Gel’s cheeks, and he quickly forgot about
his song for the Oak, at least for the moment.
    ‘Right.  Home.’ Gel muttered to himself,
laughing in his head as he shook it slowly, hoping no-one had seen
his gaffe, and trying to remember when he had climbed the incline
to the house as he opened the front gate.  The gate was heavy
and tall, but the stark wrought-iron swung easily as he pushed on
it.
    The Mayor’s house was his fathers’ house, and
thereby he supposed his house.  It sat on a low hill at the
Western edge of the town.  The large stone manse loomed over
the town, its height and gravity separating the town proper and the
wheat fields in the East from the towns’ vineyards to the west.
    The Mayor’s house was a ‘gift’ to the Mayor
from the church.  If ever Gel’s father was removed from his
position as Mayor, Gel’s family would be removed from the house,
not that that was likely.  Gel’s father was a good Mayor.
 But it still made it hard for Gel to think of the house as
his own, even though he had lived there all his life.
    The Mayor’s house was one of only two stone
buildings in the town, the other being the old church.  Other
buildings had stone in them, mostly as foundations, but only Gel’s
house and the church were made wholly of stone.  Both the
manse and the church were old, much older than the rest of the town
around them, and both must have been built at the same time. 
No-one alive knew when they were built, or from which quarry the
stone for the buildings had come from; there were no quarries for
miles and miles in any direction.  All Gel knew was that the
grey stone slabs of the two buildings, seemingly arranged
haphazardly and all the more beautiful for it, were much nicer than
the newer polished and painted wooden houses that populated the
rest of the town.  Gel would live in one of these old stone
buildings one day, and it would be like a castle or keep out of his
mothers stories.  Cold and drafty but defendable, maybe with a
moat, and it would have open fires in braziers and swords on the
walls and knights on horses galloping about…
    He was getting sidetracked again, and he knew
it.  But, as Gel opened the polished wooden door at the front
of the house, he was sure.  Once he was done his Ode to the
Oak, he would write a song for the old stone manse; possibly a
dirge of some sort, grey like the houses’ stone; heavy, but with an
airy sound; open and clean.
    As soon as the door was open, Gel was hit by
the smell of stew and freshly baked bread.  Suddenly
remembering he was ravenous, Gel took the stone stairs to his room
two at a time, threw his lute on his bed, and rushed back
downstairs, skidding through the kitchen door in time to watch his
mother place a large bowl of steaming stew, thick with meat and
potatoes and other earthy goods, and a thick slice of fresh bread
at his empty spot at the