The Seven Gifts (2 page)

Custer's Last
Band

FAR BEYOND the mountains that encircled the
kingdom of the Snow Queen, deep within the swirling high altitude
mists forever present in those regions, there lived, in a small
cave cleft between two rocks, a retired rock 'n' roll singer called
Coalhole Custer. He was a strange man, as befits his calling, with
a wild beard and long, flowing yellow hair. His music had been way
ahead of its time and so he had retired (not entirely voluntarily),
penniless and unappreciated at the age of thirty three, to live
alone in the mountains with only the company of a small cat and his
thirteen string guitar.

But Coalhole Custer was content. He had room
to breathe that clean, rarefied air that sparkled forever round the
mountaintops, and he had time for his thoughts. The solitude of
those mountains freed his mind and let it fly to all manner of
strange places, in a way that musicians' drugs had never been able
to. He was happy simply to dream his dreams and sing his songs, and
allow his restless mind to wander whither it would. And his cat was
all the companionship he needed. Those crowds of weirdos that used
to surround him at the court of the Snow Queen held no attraction
anymore. They had never understood his music and he had never
understood them. In truth, he had never even liked them. Trivial
was the word that sprang to mind whenever his memories recalled
them. He was missing nothing.

On calm summer evenings he would sit quietly
outside the cave, puffing on his pipe and gently stroking the cat.
He would watch the glowing red ball of the sun slowly sink beyond
the twinkling, distant lights of the Snow Queen's city. At times he
fancied he could hear music, drifting up on the thermals and
attenuating in the thin, clear air far from that city.

Rubbish, he would think to himself; utter
rubbish. No idea at all, any of them. Same old emotive diatonic
junk: froth for filling meringues - or the minds of citizens. And
his cat would purr in agreement, feline disdain twitching its
whiskers.

He wrote his music for the mountains now,
and for the heavens that seemed so close around him. This was real
music, dragged up from the depths of his soul: music that soared
above the minds of mortal citizens; that suffused the earth,
enveloping it, enjoining it, and drawing it up, rejoicing, to meet
the gods that truly made it. For Coalhole Custer knew that he no
longer stood alone in the forming of his music.

And in between times he would walk the
foothills with his cat, the old thirteen string guitar slung over
his shoulder. In his mouth would be the special thirteen-note Pipes
of Pan, built for him by an old radical sculptor who had been
banished from the kingdom for carving images of truth. For the
Queen's people desired only illusion - shadows behind which they
could hide. Even the soil of the Earth was hidden by concrete. The
brothels were garnished with fairy lights and the people's faces
painted with ochre, their clothes tailored to deceive. Their smiles
belied the material machinations constantly occupying their
meringue-like minds. Truth was a dream, metamorphosing only in the
clean air of the mountains.

Coalhole Custer breathed it in deeply. Down
into his lungs and around his heart it flowed, to be formed finally
into music and expelled through the pipes, forever in his mouth.
And the music of the gods, set free by this man, took wing and
ranged all around the mountains, reaching into every crevice and
every creeping thing. It filled the plants and diffused into the
Earth; it formed into the songs of birds and the whirring of
insects, it shaped the clouds. It brought the winds and softened
the rain, and reached out for the sun. But it never reached the
city.

At that time the city was in something of a
turmoil, owing to the impending Coming-of-Age of the Queen's
daughter, the beautiful Ice Princess. The trouble was caused by the
Princess's nature, which was as cold as her name. Nothing was good
enough in the preparations for the Grand Ball. The decorations -
holly plucked from a thousand trees throughout the Queen's domain;
castles sculpted from ice; fountains and rare flowers; her name
picked out in the lights from ten thousand glow-worms - were
tawdry. The specially-made gown - designed by the greatest
couturier in the kingdom, assembled by a hundred hand-picked
seamstresses from the finest silk of faraway lands - was cheap. The
Queen's coach - fashioned from ice of the deepest blue and drawn by
twelve golden reindeer, bred for this purpose alone - was
uncomfortable. And the band was abysmal.

All the bands were abysmal. The Princess had
listened to thirty seven of them, each one worse than the last.
“Can no-one write decent music in this God-forsaken land?" she
raged. Everyone around her was incompetent. Would anything ever go
right in her life? Did she have to do everything herself?

She had the holly burned and a thousand more
trees cut down; the castles melted and rebuilt to her own design;
the fountains destroyed and the flowers dug into cesspits, along
with the glow-worms and the designers. She took a carving knife and
hacked the gown to shreds then burnt it, along with the couturier.
She drove the coach - with the reindeer - over the highest cliff in
the kingdom, to be dashed to pieces on the rocks at the edge of the
ocean; then demanded of her mother that a new one be built. And she
banished all thirty seven of the bands into the icy wastes of the
glacier region, where Snowman fought with polar bear over the flesh
of anything that moved.

Finally, on the very eve of the ball, she
had the decorations to her taste. The gown at long last fitted
properly; and a brand-new coach stood at her door with twelve blue
reindeer specially captured by the Queen's Hunters after a fierce
and bloody battle with the Warriors of the Tundra.

But still she had not found a band.

The palace was in consternation. The Queen
was in floods of tears, and the King had long since gone to visit
his brother on the far side of the ocean. The courtiers gathered to
hold council.

The Chief Minister presided. “I know of no
band left in the kingdom," he said simply. He was ready to resign
himself to his fate. He looked around with faint hope at all the
courtiers gathered in the Meeting Room but they were all reluctant
to catch his eye. For a long while there was uneasy silence; then a
young courtier at the back stood up. “I know of one," he said.

The effect was electric.

“Who? Where?" The Minister almost screamed
with relief at the prospect of maybe seeing the morrow. “It must be
brought here immediately," he demanded. “At once! I will send a
battalion of the Queen's Escort to fetch them. Where is that band?"
He pointed almost accusingly at the young courtier, as though the
whole business were his fault.

“We..el," stammered the young man, now
wishing he had kept quiet. It was probably only the Chief Minister
who would have had the chop anyway. “Er, it's not quite as simple
as that," he said. He explained: “Some years ago I used to play the
psychological synthesizer in a band called ‘Half a Ton of Nutty
Slack', run by Coalhole Custer ...." He paused, brought up by the
sudden tension he felt in the room.

The Minister of Technology whistled:
“Coalhole Custer! You played with him? That lunatic troublemaker?
He's not a musician." The minister felt himself begin to perspire
at the very thought of the man. He wiped his brow and calmed
himself before continuing: “You must be joking. I can just see the
face of the Princess if he appears in the ballroom and strikes up
that cacophonous rubbish of his. We'd all be boiled in oil."

There was a strange silence in the room. The
young courtier who had confessed to having played with Coalhole
Custer quietly sat down, now regretting having opened his mouth.
The others stared at him, as though he were a strange being from
some foreign land.

“Just a minute," came the testy voice of the
Chief Minister. “I don't know much about this Custer fellow, but as
far as I'm concerned the Princess wants a band and if he's got one
he'll do."

The room erupted in raucous cries of
dissent, but the Chief stood his ground. He held his hand up for
silence. “If there is no band here tomorrow," he said firmly, “our
heads will be impaled on the palace gate. If there is a band, they
might not be. So unless any of you know of another band in the
country that has not been banished to the Snowmen, we will just
have to take our chances with this Coalhole Custer." He looked
around for dissent, but the logic of his argument was irrefutable.
Only the young fellow who had played with Coalhole Custer
spoke.

“Er, he might not come," the young man
muttered diffidently. “He lives alone up in the mountains now, and
never has anything to do with the city. He was thrown out if you
remember, and I don't think he likes it down here very much."

The Chief Minister smiled unpleasantly. “He
will come," he said, in a deceptively quiet voice. There was no
mistaking the meaning.

Coalhole Custer sat huddled by his campfire.
He poked gently at the embers, stirring up sparks and crackles in
the slowly dying fire as he did. His eyes focused quietly on the
red flickering in its depths as he hummed a few bars of his new
song, as though seeking a reaction in the flames. For a long time
he sat there, intermittently humming as he played around with the
music, gradually drawing around it some sort of structure. Finally
he picked up his guitar and struck a few chords to adjust the
tuning; then he began to sing softly to the glow of his camp
fire:

Look into my eyes, Prince of Darkness,

tell me what it is you see.

Is the Lord of Light in me

or is my soul reserved for thee?

Will you fight the Lord of Light,

Prince of Darkness,

for the soul that lies in me?

Is it worth your while, my Prince,

to save my soul from being free?

My life, O Prince of Darkness,

is it rooted in the Earth?

Will my sanity in whispers sound

around this barren land in which

not even you, my Prince, have cause for
mirth?

Can I walk upon the emptiness

within the nestling void of death

that follows me from birth?

I must delve into your darkness,

look towards the Lord of Light,

and leave the twilight to the Earth.

My life, O Prince of Darkness,

does it lie within the Moon?

Will I bask in silken starlight

as I sway, seduced in sorrow by

the piper's haunting tune?

Can I withstand the sirens

and their symphonies of darkness

that would draw me to the devil spider's
loom?

Have I any hope of holding out?

O Lord of Light,

please make the Sun come soon.

My life, O Prince of Darkness,

will it take me to the Sun?

Can I survive the solitude

in all the seas of loneliness

around this race I know that I must run?

Lord of Light, help me survive

the race; it seems each time

I've won I've just begun.

Hold up for me the hope,

O Lord of Light,

thy will be done.

Look into my eyes, Prince of Darkness,

tell me what it is you see.

Is the Lord of Light in me

or is my soul reserved for thee?

Will you fight the Lord of Light,

Prince of Darkness,

for the soul that lies in me?

Do you think you have the power,

Prince of Darkness,

to prevent me being free?

Lord of Light, I see the night -

please rescue me.

Lord of Light, I see the night ....

Please .... rescue me.

The haunting notes lingered on the still
night air, as though addressing themselves to the darkness. The cat
lay close to the fire purring quietly, and Coalhole Custer remained
quite still, his fingers holding, as though reluctant to leave, the
closing chord of his new song.

“I like it," came a familiar voice from
close behind his shoulder. The musician whirled round, to face his
one-time psychological synthesizer player, now a junior courtier in
the Snow Queen's city. They had been close friends in the old
playing days, before things had become too hot for the band and
Coalhole had been hounded, not altogether unwillingly at the time,
to the hills.

“Well, well!" A welcoming grin lit up the
guitarist's face. “Psycho! What a surprise. Come and get warm." He
grabbed his friend's arm and steered him to the fire, where he
rattled up the smouldering ashes and piled on some more logs, along
with the kettle.

“Kicked you out as well, have they?" he
enquired, when they had settled themselves by the fire.

“No, Coalhole," said the courtier, “but I'm
in big trouble, and only you can help. It's the Ice Princess's
Twenty-First birthday tomorrow and we haven't got a band. She
rejected the lot of them; sent them to the Snowmen. The only band
left in the entire kingdom is the old ‘Half a Ton of Nutty Slack',
and the Chief Minister will personally emasculate me if we don't
get it together for the ball tomorrow night. I've found all the
others, but we need you. Will you come?" The young man was
pleading.

Coalhole Custer grinned. That was original -
him being asked to play at an official function. Then he laughed.
The only band left in the land, eh? Whatever his feelings about the
Ice Princess and life in the city, he was a musician, and there
were interesting possibilities here. He scratched his long yellow
beard thoughtfully.

“Does the Princess know that we are supposed
to be the band?" he asked.

“No," said his friend nervously. “She might
have us all shot when she finds out; but if there is no band,
she'll shoot us anyway. So we've nothing to lose." He looked hard
at the unkempt figure of the guitarist and crossed his fingers
surreptitiously. “I won't blame you if you don't want to do it," he
went on. “It's your life and your decision, and anything could
happen down there when she finds out, although we've bribed as many
of the guards as we can".