Oh Susanna

The Cainites pitched their camp inside the manor palisade, crowding the edges of an open patch of dirt where the workers ate and recreated, in the limited ways available. Grant found hard leather balls a little larger than baseballs stacked in a basket to one side, but whatever sport was played with them, they probably wouldn't have the space to play it here while the Cainites stayed. Instead, as their day in the fields drew to a close, musical instruments came out.

As they unloaded, the Bayut prince– Abutai, was the name Grant had heard his shaman call him– beckoned for them to remain here while he ducked into a small tower at the far end of the outpost.

Grant recalled that these people were from the same land as Piran, and stopped near the older man as he hauled his gear from his horse to a flat, half-comfortable looking piece of ground. “Is that where the proprietor lives?” He nodded at the tower.

“Aye, in the keep.”

“When you described these places as ‘manors,’ I expected them to have some kind of big mansion or plantation-house.”

“It's the land and the tenant farmers that make the manor. Not much room for luxury out on the steppe.”

“Copy that.”

The Jalabartan rogue raised an eyebrow at that strange turn of phrase, but seemed to correctly guess that it meant Grant understood.

A few amateur musicians had their instruments tuned up by the time the Cainites finished unpacking, and launched into a tune as they settled in to await their leader’s return from the keep. While Grant could understand the song’s lyrics, and hear their meter and rhyme, he became acutely aware for the second time today that he had not been speaking English, nor any Earthly language, the whole time he had been here. The lyrics, in a language the Jalabartans and the steppe tribes seemed to at least loosely share, went:

Steskim makri osta

Khala da shebakdad

Daniedkro khata

Ashelta jal ishtad?

for the first half of the chorus, which in English would be something like:

Reeds clump up

Downstream in the canal

Without a weaver

Am I not beautiful?

Aside from the rhyme and meter, there were several double-meanings baked into the words themselves that could not survive translation. The whole song, in fact, played on three sets of imagery that its language used many of the same words for: objects becoming intermixed or entangled, textile-weaving, and marriage.

Even while some workers joined in the song, and others started the cookfires of the manor’s outdoor kitchens, some eyed the Cainites suspiciously. Their shaman, Grant noticed, in particular.

“They have no regard for the will of Heaven,” he caught from one quiet conversation, “the barbarians worship the god of death, whose name even they fear to speak.”

The musicians finished, and one took a hand off his instrument– a five-stringed affair with a large rectangular soundbox, that looked halfway between a lute and a shamisen– and shook it violently. “Accident was half the season ago, but my wrist still ain’t completely right yet.” he announced, “anyone else want to take over?”

When no one else stepped forward, Grant held out a hand. “I’ve played a similar instrument before. Give me a sec to play around with it, I might be able to do something.”

Receiving the instrument as its last player stood aside, Grant plucked and slid a finger down one string until he heard a D like the third string on the guitar he’d owned in his past life, then attempted to form a D minor scale. A musician with a woodwind instrument like a flute or recorder gave him a confused look.

Grant smiled apologetically. “Could you play a scale for me?”

The flutist played six notes. Not eight.

“They use pentatonic scales here!” a voice shouted from the milling crowd of workmen. Grant spotted the Japanese boy from earlier. “Not full octaves. Five notes only.”

“You play?”

“No, but I watched a long video essay on music theory once, when I was procrastinating on a school assignment. Traditional Japanese music is the same way.”

Pentatonic. Grant probably knew some songs that didn’t need a full heptatonic scale to play. This instrument’s sound was not quite that of a guitar nor that of a banjo, but it would do just fine for bluegrass. After going back and forth with the flutist a couple more times, he realized he had one that ought to work for the instruments at hand. With his foot, he tapped out a beat for a percussionist with a big oxhide drum. “I’ll shoot you a wink after the first chorus,” he told the flutist, “jump in there with the melody, if you can.” Nobody would understand the English lyrics, but then again, they were mostly nonsense anyway.

I came from Alabama with a banjo on my knee,

I’m gone to L’isiana, my true love for to see.

It rained all night the day I left, the weather it was dry,

The sun so hot, I froze to death; Susanna, don’t you cry.

Oh, Susanna! Don’t you cry for me,

‘cos I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee.

Grant winked, and let the flute player repeat all the notes he had just sung. He nailed the whole thing; Grant was impressed. By the end of three verses, Grant had a few of the onlookers attempting to sing the chorus in butchered English, and he even managed to improvise a half-verse in their language. That one did translate fairly cleanly to English, going something like:

And if she ain’t in New Orleans, then Lugo’s where I’ll try,

And Bekh’s boys, they don’t scare me, ‘cos that’s just twice I’d die.

At the final “banjo on my knee,” the crowd clapped, more than just politely if not quite thunderously, then wandered off to line up for the evening meal.

The Japanese boy ran up to Grant as he handed his instrument off. “You are Grant, correct? I am Yuya. Yamamoto Yuya, from Osaka. How long have you been on Nod?”

“Two weeks and change. I’d assume you've been here longer?”

“A month, I think.”

“Only that long?” Yuya had shaggy black hair, a dark tan, and a lean, somewhat toned physique. Grant had assumed he had been working on this farm for some time. But at a second glance, the hair looked like some neat long-banged cut that hadn't been touched up in awhile, the skin wasn't rough and weatherworn, and there was an awkwardness to his motions that suggested what muscle he had was new growth, belying strength and agility he didn’t yet fully know. “Anything keeping you on this farm? Found yourself a girl or something?”

The kid's glance at Iona was furtive, and Grant bit his lip to keep from grinning at it. After ten days riding with the girl, Grant was starting to get an idea just how painful a chase that might be, for a man brave enough to dare it. “Only a contract. I've been shanghaied into indentured servitude. It's good for fourteen months more, or whatever the equivalent is when you're on a moon.”

“This is a moon?”

Yuya pointed to the striped orb in the sky. “That’s a planet, isn’t it?”

“Huh. You’re a smart kid, Yuya. If I can get you out of your contract, would you ride with us?”

Yuya sighed. “It’s not a bad life, actually, but I don’t think I’ll be content with comfortable servitude forever. It might be suicide, but sure, I’m game. I’ve already died once, I think. How bad could a second time be?”