Novel Shmovel
This is chapter 2 of a high fantasy novel I'm working on right now. Well, it's not a term paper so it must be a novel.
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Waldorf Wox was not a typical Mroothian boy. He looked like one -- tall and lanky with bronze skin, black hair and sullen eyes -- and even talked and walked like one, but deep within himself he knew he was different. For one, he was deathly allergic to prunes. And just how many other Mroothians were allergic to prunes? Zero, as far as he knew. Everyone ate prunes for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and if there was enough they ate it for midnight snack. Waldorf Wox could never do that. His lungs began to constrict at the mere thought of prunes. So he ate coconut meat instead, and cheese, if his best friend Corzhak Ollie was able to smuggle some from the dairy store where he worked nights as a floor sweeper. There was not much food variety in Mrooth, you see, because of the trade embargo that has been in effect for the last forty-seven years.
But it was Waldorf Wox's second trait that was much more fascinating.
Time and again, scientific studies abroad have proven that something in the genes of the Mroothian people made them an incurably tone-deaf race. They were born tone-deaf, they died tone-deaf and they never played or sang a single correct note for all those years in between. There was not much that the Mroothians could do about it especially since they were too poor and technologically regressed to conduct studies of their own, much less launch a genetic-code-altering program. Resigned to their fate, they can only lead their lives in dreary tuneless-ness, forever cursing their genes and, ultimately, their being Mroothians.
But Waldorf Wox wasn't like that. Because whatever Mroothian gene anomaly it was, Waldorf Wox didn't have it. He had Perfect Pitch.
With the exception of Corzhak Ollie, he never told anyone. Who would take him seriously after all? His drunkard of a father who only came home every three moons? Sure, if he wanted a healthy beating. His school teachers? They thought him a menace at best. The Government? Please. Their instruments were much more out of tune than their staff. They'd only ship him off to Hwoog's Hospital for the Hopelessly Demented.
(Corzhak Ollie -- now there was a typical Mroothian -- believed Waldorf Wox when he told him he had Perfect Pitch. Then again, Corzhak Ollie would believe anything you tell him.)
So Waldorf Wox thought it best to just keep it to himself. He went about his daily business just as a typical Mroothian boy might do -- he went to the Conk County School, mucked around with his classmates, worked odd jobs whenever he could, and at the end of the day went home to his dilapidated shack in Frooper Colony. And sometimes, if he was lucky, he would even have something to eat for dinner.
The Frooper Colony, as the locals fondly called it, was made up of roughly three hundred tightly-huddled shacks perched precariously on the steep hillside by the river Froop. The walls of the shacks were so thin (they were made from plywood scraps and cardboard) and so close to each other that there was no hiding anything from your neighbors, not even a burp. But Waldorf Wox had learned early on that despite his peculiarity he didn't have to hide anything.
After all, no one knew -- and could possibly know -- that the beat-up acoustic guitar he played around with in his shack was perfectly in tune. No one knew that every night, before going to sleep, he would lay on his cot and listen to the music inside his head, the music he desperately wished others can hear too. And no one knew that he dreamed of worlds beyond, of concert halls in Locq and guitar universities in Vandrixton and all the magical places he had only read about in books. His neighbors might catch him smiling in his sleep but they will never guess why.
With allergies and Perfect Pitch, Waldorf Wox was indeed not a typical Mroothian. But unbeknownst to him, he possessed one more thing that no Mroothian has known for over a thousand years -- hope.
**********
Waldorf Wox was not a typical Mroothian boy. He looked like one -- tall and lanky with bronze skin, black hair and sullen eyes -- and even talked and walked like one, but deep within himself he knew he was different. For one, he was deathly allergic to prunes. And just how many other Mroothians were allergic to prunes? Zero, as far as he knew. Everyone ate prunes for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and if there was enough they ate it for midnight snack. Waldorf Wox could never do that. His lungs began to constrict at the mere thought of prunes. So he ate coconut meat instead, and cheese, if his best friend Corzhak Ollie was able to smuggle some from the dairy store where he worked nights as a floor sweeper. There was not much food variety in Mrooth, you see, because of the trade embargo that has been in effect for the last forty-seven years.
But it was Waldorf Wox's second trait that was much more fascinating.
Time and again, scientific studies abroad have proven that something in the genes of the Mroothian people made them an incurably tone-deaf race. They were born tone-deaf, they died tone-deaf and they never played or sang a single correct note for all those years in between. There was not much that the Mroothians could do about it especially since they were too poor and technologically regressed to conduct studies of their own, much less launch a genetic-code-altering program. Resigned to their fate, they can only lead their lives in dreary tuneless-ness, forever cursing their genes and, ultimately, their being Mroothians.
But Waldorf Wox wasn't like that. Because whatever Mroothian gene anomaly it was, Waldorf Wox didn't have it. He had Perfect Pitch.
With the exception of Corzhak Ollie, he never told anyone. Who would take him seriously after all? His drunkard of a father who only came home every three moons? Sure, if he wanted a healthy beating. His school teachers? They thought him a menace at best. The Government? Please. Their instruments were much more out of tune than their staff. They'd only ship him off to Hwoog's Hospital for the Hopelessly Demented.
(Corzhak Ollie -- now there was a typical Mroothian -- believed Waldorf Wox when he told him he had Perfect Pitch. Then again, Corzhak Ollie would believe anything you tell him.)
So Waldorf Wox thought it best to just keep it to himself. He went about his daily business just as a typical Mroothian boy might do -- he went to the Conk County School, mucked around with his classmates, worked odd jobs whenever he could, and at the end of the day went home to his dilapidated shack in Frooper Colony. And sometimes, if he was lucky, he would even have something to eat for dinner.
The Frooper Colony, as the locals fondly called it, was made up of roughly three hundred tightly-huddled shacks perched precariously on the steep hillside by the river Froop. The walls of the shacks were so thin (they were made from plywood scraps and cardboard) and so close to each other that there was no hiding anything from your neighbors, not even a burp. But Waldorf Wox had learned early on that despite his peculiarity he didn't have to hide anything.
After all, no one knew -- and could possibly know -- that the beat-up acoustic guitar he played around with in his shack was perfectly in tune. No one knew that every night, before going to sleep, he would lay on his cot and listen to the music inside his head, the music he desperately wished others can hear too. And no one knew that he dreamed of worlds beyond, of concert halls in Locq and guitar universities in Vandrixton and all the magical places he had only read about in books. His neighbors might catch him smiling in his sleep but they will never guess why.
With allergies and Perfect Pitch, Waldorf Wox was indeed not a typical Mroothian. But unbeknownst to him, he possessed one more thing that no Mroothian has known for over a thousand years -- hope.
posted by loffy at
4:24 AM
