A Fool's Bucket - Ch. 2.2

A/N: I forgot that YWS formatting makes songs look less pretty. Hope it's not too hard to separate the song from the prose. Also I hope it's okay that it's in italics for when Buck's singing. I wasn't sure what to do about speech marks.

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A man came from the North one day,

He brought his son and wife.

Soon they found a place to stay,

And they began their life.

Buck hoped the simple iambic four-foot, three-foot lines wouldn’t be too disappointing for his audience, who were used to short tail lines and him harmonising with himself.

Well science was this North man’s trade.

Back home he made his name.

There were pulley systems that he’d made,

And this device secured his fame.

He winced as the word ‘pulley’ came out of his mouth. Such a vulgar matter for the sorrowful tune he’d employed. It was an old ballad tune, about a girl whose brother deemed her true love unworthy and killed him on the moors. And he was using it to sing about squeaking rope mechanisms.

To operate take a water bag,

And freeze ice underground.

Then on the pulley system snag,

And on your body strap it round.

Why had he chosen such short second and fourth lines? If his audience weren’t lost by now then there was no way they understood the purpose of the device his father had invented. It was a cooling device, some packs of ice strapped to a frame of pliable wood that could be wrapped loosely around a person’s body. It kept them cool no matter the weather.

And yet this man he never told,

How worked his cooling frame.

The ice had no right to stay cold,

And yet this chill it stayed the same.

That was something that had been lost the same day as his father, his secret. Others had worked with him on the project over the years, but when it came time to ensure the ice stayed frozen, he was said to have always banished his workers from the room.

Now down South this man found luck,

Someone bought his system.

For in the heat the South was stuck.

And made many tasks hard for them.

On the extended second syllable of ‘system’ he made sure to pronounce it so it would rhyme with ‘them’, and remembered why he usually spent longer than ten minutes writing a song.

It was the Duchess who from him bought.

She’d had a clever notion.

There was an island that she sought,

Far out in the ocean.

Buck’s own eyebrows raised in the acid in his tone. He wasn’t that angry at Pires, was he? She made a mistake, and she’d taken him in. He couldn’t hold one mistake against her forever, not even this one.

Further south than she’d ever gone,

She could not go alone.

For long hard days the hot sun shone,

And made heavy their bones.

But the device it functioned perfectly,

To enable exploration.

So out he sailed south down the sea,

In a ship of his proud nation.

There was a slight titter, where there should have been a cheer, at the word ‘nation’. Buck risked a glance up from his lute and took in the various groups before him. Most of the folks at the big long table either had tankards frozen halfway to their mouths, or their faces furrowed deep in frowns. One or two had their arms folded and were leaning back, as if testing him to see how long he could keep this sappy stuff up for. Although, Buck supposed he hadn’t really got to the sappy part yet. They were probably just confused.

But so far he had just one frame,

So he sailed out solo.

Soon the sun was like a naked flame.

And so his experiment was go.

He wrapped the frame around himself.

His temperature dropped.

One day I swear I’ll know myself,

But here is where my knowledge stops.

It had taken Buck a while to decide to include first person pronouns. He always sang songs about zany characters on their adventures, or he sang about the city as a whole. But it had come out that way on the page, and he supposed he shouldn’t question the artistic flow.

The next I know he was on the land,

And walking sunstroke free.

He strolled all day along the sand,

And made camp just up from the sea.

When morning rose he roamed around,

Spied treasures across the place.

The piles and piles of what he found,

Spread a grin across his face.

Buck’s tone veered towards cutting again and he nearly broke a string as he strummed. There were two idiots in this story, after all.

After a week he took his prize,

And went back on his boat.

Under frying sun and dazzling skies,

And then back home began to float.

On his return he loud was hailed,

The Duchess bought his haul.

All men around knew where he sailed,

And how he loved to lap up it all.

Buck could feel his nostrils flaring now. He didn’t even look up. For all he knew the barman was edging on at stage left to come and wrest the lute from him.

For ten long years a team and he,

They worked as a group.

Extended it would have to be,

To work for all the troupe.

Technically it had only been nine years, but ten sounded better as a line to Buck. Even in an angry writing frenzy he had enough sense to switch that around.

The next trip was much larger planned,

The cool must circle round

All of the expedition’s band,

To further inspect what he had found.

Perhaps one day I shall know more,

About my dad’s machine.

But as they headed to explore,

Its secret was not seen.

Well, now he’d really gone for it. The song was what it said it was.

Equipped all were with icy rope.

They landed on the shore.

Their hearts were high with dreams and hope,

Of finding treasures more.

But not for long did their dreams last,

For soon they were attacked.

Startled were they by a cannon blast.

The odds were clearly stacked.

Surrounded they were on every side,

These men sent them away.

On open beach you cannot hide.

So the group did end their day.

Buck took a deep breath and wished he could stop the song there, that the story stopped there. But he had to keep going. He had to get this out once and for all. He shut off his brain, and continued.

But nothing was could stop this man,

Who’d packed his frame of old.

He took it from his bag and ran,

Happy, free and cold.

There’s none that know what he saw then.

He was not gone for long.

On board the ship waited the men,

Peering overboard at the throng.

He blamed his bladder when he got back,

And told the ship to sail.

But with treasure hidden in his pack,

His escape was doomed to fail.

The ship did soon catch up to them,

The prow slid through the water.

The man knew where the trouble stemmed.

His brow was getting hotter.

They were caught up after moments.

Aboard their pursuers came.

They barked orders and were incensed.

The crew obeyed the same.

His attention was drawn back to the moment by that meaningless last line of the stanza. It ought to have been ‘all the same’, but he hadn’t been able to find the syllables. Nowhere near the biggest mistake in this song, though.

They brought them back to Resador,

The man locked in the hold.

An audience was called for,

And soon the Duchess told.

When she arrived they had demands,

Their captive to retain.

It seemed these men had claimed the lands,

And would not leave again.

The Duchess thought on what they said.

They wanted his clever mind.

Finally she her pronouncement read,

That she would trade in kind.

She offered this mind for one of theirs,

But they declined the trade.

The Duchess saw the crew’s frightened stares,

And knew the game was played.

And so to them she gave the man,

And then away they sailed.

On and on time and years ran,

And very soon the matter paled.

There it rested for many a moon.

The family found a way.

It started all to change soon.

Only the son was able to stay.

Buck’s voice cracked a little. He couldn’t break down though, not while his metre was breaking down for him. He’d started to get really late for meeting Misene and Rydone towards the end of writing.

The mother North to family fled,

And taken in was the son.

It was a charity act the Duchess said,

But the son he was a special one.

Before so long he’d earned his place.

The Duchess something saw.

With brilliant voice and smiling face,

His talent was wild and raw.

He tried to smile, to go along with the line. It didn’t particularly work, but he thought he’d maybe managed to unknit the frown slightly from his forehead.

She trained him well at her own court,

To wear paint coloured bright.

Performances soon became a sport,

And every song a fight.

The boy sang everything in the book,

Wrote word and tune brand new.

Every other day he changed his look.

Nothing he could not do.

But one song deep inside he kept.

It could not hurt locked away.

At the bottom of his heart it slept,

Until one fateful day.

Buck took one last deep breath to get the rest of it out.

As the plan was formed his stomach dropped,

To the bottom of his heart.

It felt like time around him stopped,

As he felt hope restart.

And now he spends each hour in fear,

Holding hope in his palm.

His vision’s now painfully clear,

But clarity brings no calm.

***

Buck wasn’t certain if that was the end of the song, but as he cleared his throat and looked up to hand the lute back, he knew he was done with singing for the night. He fidgeted with some calluses on his fingers, not thrilled at the thought of looking out toward the crowd.

“We love you, Bucket!” shouted a voice from the back.

Before he could stop himself, Buck looked up. Rydone was on her feet, dragging Misene up. Misene squirmed awkwardly as everyone looked around at him, but he pursed his lips and smiled towards Buck. The three of them – Rydone, Misene and Misene’s little brother – were waving and clapping. Maybe they’d missed the point of the song, but Buck would take it.