A Harp of Fishbones
by Mina Lightstar

Notes: This is based off of the short story of the same name by Joan Aiken.  I’m going to say this is AU-ish, just to cover my butt.  And it is – believe it or not – not shounen-ai or het.  There are no pairings in this fic.  But if you like Hiei, you might find it at least interesting ^_^;;;

*…* emphasis

/…/ thought  

~Best read with any of Hiei’s image songs playing softly in the background~

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            Young Hiei lived in an unusual place.  He lived in a cave in the snowfields far to the north of his world.  Of course, he had not *always* lived in the snowfields.  At one time, when he had been very young, he’d lived high above the fields in the floating city.  He remembered some of it, bits and pieces of memories that would never be complete.  He remembered the blue-tinged white towers – the metals and stones used to build the city looking much like ice.  He remembered the beautiful women who inhabited the city, their warm voices so unlike their cool dispositions.  He remembered his mother, vaguely, though to him, she was little more than a shadowed silhouette in his dreams.  And most of all, he remembered being forbidden, outcast, unwelcome… Left to die at the hands of his own people, thrown from the floating city like a falling star.

            So now Hiei lived in the caverns of the snowfields with the other demons.  Some were bandits who had built bad reputations for themselves and had to live in seclusion, other were simply Snow Women who had no desire to live in their floating city – and thus were deemed odd by their people.  But most were indeed bandits, such as the old demon who had taken charge of Hiei.  His name was Aiken, but Hiei called him “sir” no matter what the occasion.  Aiken was no kin to Hiei, nor was he particularly kind to him.  He made his living from Hiei labor, sending the child deep into the caverns to mine for gold or other precious metals, and then trading them for food such as fish or dried fruit.  This business was what kept Hiei and Aiken fed through the long, eternal winter.

            Hiei learned to cook when he was still very young; he toasted fish on sticks over fire and baked cakes of bread on a flat stone in their cave while Aiken lazed about.  The old demon beat him if he burned the food, but even so it mostly was just the same, because Hiei, trapped and forced to remain in the caves and snow, had a vivid imagination.  He had incredible ideas of what wonders were beyond the snowfields, and often half his mind would be elsewhere instead of on the tasks at hand, trying to envision what a tree looked like or what grass was and other things merchants spoke of when they came to trade.  And as he mined deep in the cave, alone, he usually found himself singing. 

            But soon the cave they inhabited had been divested of all its precious metals, and no riches could therefore be extracted from it.  It was then that Aiken sent Hiei out to work in the mines of others who lived in the snowfields to get a percentage of their minerals to keep food coming.  But Hiei would work for one demon, then another, never being able to keep a job for long.  There were simply things about him that didn’t sit well with other demons of the region.

            Hiei had always known he was different from the others.  Most of the other demons were scaled, with horns or beaks, and many were atrociously ugly.  Sporadic glances in the ice pools had shown him that he looked nothing like them.  He was small and fair-skinned, not a ripple, hint of scale nor horn on his body – making him look much like a human.  His eyes were a dark red, much like the rubies he’d seen embroidered on merchants’ cloaks, and his hair was shaped like the fires he often tended to in Aiken’s cave.  What was he…that made him so unlike everyone else…?  Aiken, however, did not answer his inquiries, and threw something at him each time he asked.  His curiosity and wonderings were often what drove the other cave dwellers to send him back to Aiken.

            “The boy let the bead burn while he ran outside to see the floating city hover by,” said one.

            “When he helped me mine the silver, he asked me so many questions that my ears ached for three days,” complained another.

            “Instead of mining ore he sat there and watched the bats flutter and wasted a day’s work,” grumbled a third.

            No one would keep him for more than a few days, and he gained himself plenty of beatings – especially from Aiken, who had thought he’d be able to purchase a keg of barely wine from the merchants with Hiei’s earnings.  The beatings were often accompanied by attacks on the boy’s self-esteem, claiming he was useless or worthless, and that he could never do anything right.  But all the beatings and verbal abuse could not shatter the boy’s spirit.

            At last, Hiei was sent to work for an old woman who lived in an old hut a couple of miles or so from his cave.  Her name was Luka, and she was apparently one of the Snow Women who preferred to stay away from the floating city.  She was withered and wrinkled, so old that most others who lived in the snowfields believed her to be a witch.  How else would she have managed to build a hut and not live in a cave?  Luka was so old now that, despite her stubborn nature, she herself admitted that she needed help around her house.  But as Hiei moved around her home, going about the tasks he was set, the old woman’s eyes followed him wherever he walked, eyeing him like a mother wolf with cubs watching a possible predator approach her den.  But after a few hours, Hiei fell into a rhythm, and soon he began to sing, of whistles calling him away from his isolation.

            On the fourth day, Luka said blandly, “You’re singing, boy.”

            Hiei lowered his eyes at her tone.  “I’m sorry,” he uttered.  “I didn’t mean to.  I didn’t realize.”  He held himself firm, steeling himself for a beating.

            The old demon grunted, but she did not strike him.  And the next day, as she watched him cook, she huffed in mild annoyance.  “You’re not singing, boy.”

            Hiei jumped.  He sometimes forgot that Luka was never far from him.  “I…” He cocked his head.  “I thought you didn’t like me to,” he managed.

            Luka frowned at him like he was an idiot.  “I didn’t say so, did I?”

            Hiei was speechless.  But before he would answer, the woman stomped away, grumbling under her breath.  “As if I should care,” she grumped, “whether the brat sings or not!”

            But the day after that, she sat in the kitchen chair and stared hard at him.  “Sing, boy!”

            Hiei looked at her, doubtful and timid, to see if she was serious.  Luka nodded energetically, her gray curls bouncing onto her shoulders.  “Sing!” she repeated.

            So, Hiei’s song began again.  He sang of the summoning whistles, of the winds he hoped would one day fly him away from the life he was living.  And at the end of the week, Luka did not dismiss him, as others had done, but paid him far less.  Aiken was not happy with the low pay – though he did wonder where she had gotten real gold without mining – and grumbled that at this rate it would take him twenty years to earn his keg of barely wine.  But he was happy that Hiei had managed to keep a job for once, and eagerly sent him back.  Luka didn’t appear overly upset with him anymore, though she never looked overly welcome to see him, either.

            One day she said, “Your father used to sing.”

            It was the first time anyone had ever mentioned his father.  “Oh?” he asked eagerly, forgetting his unease towards the woman.  “Will you tell me about him?”

            “Why should I?” Luka grumbled sourly.  “He never did anything for me.”  And then she hobbled off to fetch some water.

            Hiei watched her go, feeling his shoulders slump in disappointment, and continued cleaning the fish he had caught in the ice pools.  But not five minutes later, a gnarled hand on his shoulder turned him gently around.  His breath caught when he realized that Luka was standing right in front of him.  They were rarely so close to each other, and they had never touched before.  He flinched a little when he felt the grip on his shoulder tightening and loosening in quick spasms, as though the woman could not control the strength of her hold.  He eyed her warily as her other hand crept up to touch his hair, playing with the ebony strands.

            “He had hair very much like yours, and you look very much like him.  And he carried a harp.”

            Hiei blinked, the new word making him forget that the supposed witch was touching him.  “A harp?  What is a harp?”

            As quickly as she had shown interest in the conversation, she seemed to close up again.  She let go of him and gave him a little shove back toward the fish.  “Oh, don’t pester me, boy.  I’m busy.”

            But another day she said, “A harp is a thing to make music.  His was a gold one, but it was broken.”

            “Broken?” Hiei echoed, feeling strangely disappointed.  “What happened?”

            “It became this,” she said, and she pulled out a small thin disc that she wore around her neck.

            “You have one, too!” Hiei exclaimed, suddenly remembering that he’d seen similar things worn by the other inhabitants of the snowfields.  “Everyone else has them except Sir Aiken and I.  No one ever told me where they had gotten them…”

            “When your father went off and left you and the harp with Aiken, the old demon ground up the harp between stones, and melted down the powder, made those little circles and then sold them to everyone to pay for a keg of barely wine when the merchants came.”

            “Where did my father go?” Hiei asked fervently, more interested in the whereabouts of possible kin than of jewelry.

            “Into the fields to travel out of them,” the old demon snapped.  “I could have told him he was in for nothing but trouble.  I could have warned him, but he never asked my advice.”

            She sniffed, and then set a pot of herbs boiling on the fire, and Hiei could get no more out of her that day.  But little by little, as time passed, more was revealed.

            “Your father came from beyond the snowfields.”

            “He did?” Hiei gasped.  So it was true – what he had believed was true.  If you traveled far enough, you could escape the land of eternal winter. 

            “He did.  He had come from a land to the south, away from the snowfields, in a kingdom of Fire Elementals.  There, he said, was a grand city with houses and palaces and temples and mountains, and as many rich folk as there are snowflakes here.  Best of all, he said, was that there was always music playing in the streets, or in the temples, to appease their Goddess of Flame.  But then the goddess became angry, and fire – much hotter than their own – burst from the mountains.  Then a great cold came, so that the people froze where they stood.  Your father said he only just managed to escape.”

            “So he got away?”

            “He did, and sought refuge up here.  He went to the floating city to ask for help from the ice maidens to rid his home of the frost, but the Snow Women refused, and he was told to leave.  But he met your mother then, and soon they…”

            Hiei was able to wait for a full thirty seconds before the silence began to drive him insane.  “They what?  They what?”

            “Bah,” Luka spat.  “You’re too young to hear that, boy.  Especially about your own parents.  But your mother and father fell in love, and then they had you.”

            “So what happened?  Why don’t we live together?”  He bit his lip.  “Why did they throw me away?  Didn’t…didn’t they want me?”

            “Boy, if you made as much noise then as you do now, I’d have thrown you away, too.”  Hiei must have had some sort of memorable expression on his face, because the old woman cackled.  “Don’t look so disheartened – that’s not why you were gotten rid of, believe it or not.  They couldn’t keep you because males are forbidden in the floating city.  So, your father and you were outcast.”

            “And Mother?  What happened to Mother?”

            “Ah, her name was Hina, I believe, if memories of your father’s ramblings serve me right.  And apparently she couldn’t bear being apart from her husband and you.  She killed herself.”  Luka snorted disdainfully.  “Fool woman.”

            Hiei stared at his hands.  His mother was dead.  /Killed herself…/ “…So why am I alone?  Father took me with him, did he not?”

            “Bah.  You know nothing, boy.  Your father could not remain here forever.  He still had to go for help for his own people.  He had to go and find help.”

            “What sort of help?” Hiei asked.

            “Don’t ask me,” Luka grumbled.  “You’d think any man with sense would have settled down and concentrated on the things he still had, like his music and his son.  Boy, when you grow up, you be sure to become a man with sense, you hear?”  Hiei nodded, silently willing her to go on with the tale.  “But sadly, your father had no sense – especially when it came to duty and obligation.  So he left you behind so that he could travel faster.  He’d said he’d fetch you once he’d returned.  But of course he never returned.  One day I found his bones under a pile of snow.  The rocs must have killed him.”

            “How did you know they were my father’s bones?”

            “Because of the medallion he carried.  They had his name on them: Yukiei the Harper.”

            Yukiei… Yukiei and Hina… His mother and father…both dead.  “I wish one of them would have left me something of theirs,” he mumbled, half to himself.  It would have been nice, to have a memento of his parents…

            “Fool boy,” Luka sniffed.  “There you go, not thinking again.  You have something of both of them.”

            “I do?” Hiei asked, looking up at the gnarled old demon.

            She nodded, making her gray curls bounce.  “Stupid boy… What is your name?”

            “Hiei,” he replied, wondering if she had forgotten it.  He wouldn’t have been surprised if she had – she never called by name, after all.  He spent so much time with her now that he was beginning to think “boy” *was* his name.

            “Say it again.”

            “Hiei.”

            “Again.”

            “Hiei.”

            “*Again*, boy.  And, gods, *think* when you say each syllable.”

            “…Hiei.”  He paused.  “Hiei…Hiei… Hi-ei…

            “Hi--”

            Hina.

            “--ei”

            Yukiei.

            Luka snorted and rapped him sharply on the head with her knuckles.  “See, boy?”

            Hiei rubbed his head.  “Tell me more about the harp?” he asked.

            “Ah, the harp,” Luka sighed happily, and seized his arm, tugging him almost roughly out the door into the swirling snow.  She knelt down and dragged him with her.  “It was shaped like this,” she continued, drawing with her finger in the snow.  “Like this, and it had golden strings across, just like so.  All but one of the strings had melted in the fires, but still, even on just one string he could play very beautiful music that would force you to stop whatever you were doing and listen.”  She sighed sadly.  “It is a pity he had to leave the harp behind.  Aiken wanted it as payment for looking after you.  If your father had taken the harp with him, perhaps he would have been able to reach the ends of the snowfields.”

            And that was all she would say that day.  Hiei thought about the story a great deal.  For the next few weeks he did even less work than usual, and was mostly to be found sitting in the snow with his chin on his fists.  Luka beat him, but not very hard.  And then one day Hiei said, “I shall make a harp.”

            “Hah!” barked the old demon.  “You?  What do you know of such things, boy?”

            But after a few minutes she asked, “What will you make it from?”

            There was no gold at his disposal anymore, and he doubted any other would let him take theirs to make a musical instrument.  What else…?  Then his eyes fell on the hole cut in the ice lake for fishing.  “I shall make it of fishbones,” Hiei stated.  “Some of the fish I’ve caught near Sir Aiken’s have bones as thick as my wrist, and they are very strong.”

            The old woman snorted.  “Aiken will never allow it.”

            “I shall wait until he is asleep, then.”

            So Hiei waited till night, and armed with a bottle of glow-bugs from his cave, he made his way to the hole in the ice lake by Aiken’s territory.  He stuck the glowing bottle into the water, waiting for a large fish to come and investigate.  He waited, and waited, keeping his hand in the freezing liquid as long as he could bear, and at last was rewarded with a great barrel-shaped monster nudging right up against his skin.  Quick as lightning, he wrapped his arms around the slippery sides and pulled it out to the surface.

            Much to his surprise, Luka was there, waiting in the dark near the entrance to Aiken’s cave.  He nearly lost his grip on his prize at the sight, but the old demon only grunted and said, “You’d best bring that to my hut.  After all, you want no more than the bones, and it would be a waste of all that good meat.  I can live on it for a week.”

            So Hiei cut the meat off the bones, which were coal-black but had a mother-of-pearl sheen to them.  Hiei dried them by the fire, and then joined together the three biggest, notching them to fit, and cementing them with glue he had made by boiling some of the smaller bones together.  He used long, thin bones for strings, joining them to the frame in the same manner.

            The whole time Luka watched him closely.  Though she appeared not to be particularly interested, her voice would often break the silence.

            “That was not the way of it, your father’s harp was wider.”

            “You are putting the strings too far apart, boy.  There should be more of them, and they should be tighter.”

            “Not yet, boy.  Let the glue set first, or you’ll ruin the whole thing.”

            When it was done at last, she instructed him to let the finished product dry by the fire.  For three days it did so, and on the fourth day she said, “Now play, boy!”

            Hiei rubbed his fingers across the strings, and they gave out a liquid murmur, like that of a stream running under a bridge.  He plucked a string, and the noise was that like a drop of water makes, falling in a hollow place.

            “That will be music,” Luka said, nodding her head, satisfied.  “Not quite the same as your father’s harp, but it is music.  Now you will play me tunes every day, and I will sit and listen.”

            “No,” Hiei said.  “If Sir Aiken hears me playing he will take the harp from me and break it, or sell it.  I shall go to my father’s city and see if I can find any of his kin there.”

            At this Luka was angry.  “Ungrateful boy!  Here I have gone through all these pains to help you, and what reward do I get for it?  How much pleasure do you think I have, living among the fools of these fields?  I was not born here, any more than you were.  You could at least play for me at night, when Aiken is asleep.”

            “Well then, I will play for you for seven nights.”

            Each night old Luka would try to persuade him not to go, and she tried harder as Hiei became more skillful in playing, and drew from the fishbone harp a curious watery music.  But Hiei could not be persuaded to stay, and when Luka saw this on the seventh night, she sighed.

            “I suppose I shall have to tell you how to get through the snowfields.  Otherwise you will surely die like your father.  When you hike through the deep snows, you will find that the white dust slows your movements and seems to try to keep you from leaving.  As you go further, the rocs soar overhead.  If you stand still for too long – say, while untangling yourself from the snow – they will drop down and be the death of you.”

            “How do you know all this?” Hiei asked.

            “I have tried many times to escape this place, but it is too far and I am too old.  The rocs take no notice of me – I am too old – but a tender young thing like you would be just their fancy.”

            “Then how will I make it?”

            “You must play music on your harp until they fall asleep, then, while they sleep, you run through the snow as quickly as you can.”

            Hiei glanced at the golden disc around her neck.  “Would… If…if I were to catch you more fish…would you give me your little gold circle?  Or my father’s medallion?”

            But this, Luka would not do.  She did, however, fetch another treasure from her closet and handed it to him.  When Hiei removed the cloth it was swathed in, he blinked at the gift.  It was a katana, encased in a plain leather sheathe, but with his father’s name on the hilt.

            Hiei was about to thank her, but she snorted before he could.  “But don’t blame me,” she said sourly, “if you find the city all burnt and frozen, with not a living soul walking its streets.”

            “Oh, it will all have been rebuilt by now,” Hiei said, assuring himself as much as her.  “I shall find my father’s people and I shall come back for you, riding a white nitemare and leading another.”

            “Fairy tales!” Luka said angrily.  “Be off with you, then.  If you don’t wish to stay, then I’m sure I don’t want you idling around.  All the work you’ve done this week I could have done better myself in half an hour.”  She waved him away.  “Off with you, boy!  Go on!  Go!”

            So Hiei gathered some supplies – not too many, as he did not have much – and started his journey.  He made sure not to pass by Sir Aiken’s cave on the way.  He ran for as long as he could, until the sheer volume of snow forced him to slow down.  He continued on, moving much slower, using his father’s katana as a kind of shovel, sweeping snow out of his path.  More than once he heard croaking and flapping above him.  A glance up revealed the rocs that were following him.  They had wings twice the size of an average demon’s arm, long, leathery necks and glowing yellow eyes.  First there were two, then four, then eight, then twenty, all circling him, keeping him in their sights.  Remembering Luka’s instructions, he pulled his harp from his back and began to play.  He played until they drooped to the ground and fell fast asleep.  Then, Hiei made haste to cut at the snow and move himself forward.  He was several hundred yards away when the birds were circling him again.  And again he lulled them to sleep with his music and then went back to hacking through the snow, as fast as he could.  It was a long, tiring way.  Soon, he grew so weary that it was hard to put one foot in front of the other, and even harder to keep awake.  Once he had roused just in time when a roc swooped for him with its beak, so that it missed his head and instead struck the harp on his back with a loud strange twang that echoed through the fields.

            At last the swirling snows subsided and he could see what must have been trees in the distance.  Excited, he ran toward them with a new rush of strength.  The rocs croaked angrily at him and flew away, annoyed that their prey had escaped them.

            As soon as Hiei reached the ends of the snowfields and the beginnings of a forest, he lay down in a deep tussock of moss and fell asleep.  He was so tired he slept almost till nightfall, but then the cold woke him.  Though the snows had been left behind, the temperature remained.  He rose and made his way up the mountains, where it was bitter; the ground was crisp with white frost, and Hiei told himself that if he did not keep moving, he would die of cold.  So he climbed on, higher and higher; the stars came out, showing more frost-covered slopes ahead and all around.  He climbed through the night and by sunrise he had reached the foot of a steep slope of ice-covered boulders.  When he tried to climb over them he only slipped back again.

            /What shall I do now?/ Hiei wondered, blowing his warm breath on his frozen fingers.  /I have to go on…or I’ll die./  He reached over his shoulder and unslung his harp.  /I’ll play,/ he told himself, /just as I always do when I want to feel better./

            It was hard to play, for his fingers were almost numb and at first would not obey him.  But he had a stubborn streak in him, and played the tune he had often thought would go with his song of whistles, and soon the lively melody echoed across the mountains.  He joined the music with his lyrics, and played and sang the song – once, twice, and the stones on the slope began to roll and shift.  He played a third time, and with a thunderous roar, the whole pile went sliding down the mountainside.  Hiei was only just able to dart aside out of the way with speed he didn’t know he possessed.

            Trembling a little, he went up the hill and soon came to a gate in a great wall set about with towers.  The gate stood open, and he walked through.  /This must be my father’s city,/ he thought.

            But when he arrived inside the town, his heart sank, and he remembered old Luka’s words.  The city that must have once been bright with gold-colored stone and alive with music was burnt and blackened by fire, and covered by thick frost.  And what was more frightening, when Hiei looked through the doorways into the houses, was that he could see people standing, sitting, or lying, frozen like statues, as the cold had caught them while they worked, slept, or ate.

            “Where shall I go now?” he asked himself.  “It would have been better to stay with Luka and Sir Aiken in the snow fields.  When night falls…I’ll die of cold.”

            But still he went on, almost tiptoeing through the frosty city, until he came to a large building – larger than any other – built with a high roof and many pillars of marble.  “This must be the temple,” he said, remembering the tale Luka had told.  He walked inside, where he saw a vast hall filled with people.  They were frozen as they had been praying for deliverance, and had offerings with them.  The people at the hack of the hall were dressed in rough clothes, but further along Hiei saw the beautiful clothes of silk and satin, trimmed with fur and sparkling stones.  And up in the very front, kneeling at the steps of the altar, was a demon finer than all the others.  Hiei decided he must have been the king himself.  His hair and long beard were black with streaks of white running down their centers, his cloak was purple, and on his head were three crowns, one gold, one silver and one ivory.  Entranced, Hiei reached up to touch the fingers that held a gold staff, but they were frozen, ice-still as marble, like all the rest.

            Hiei’s heart ached for them.  “What use to them are their fine robes now?” he asked himself.  “Why did the goddess punish them?  What did they do wrong?”

            But there was no one to answer his question.

            “I had better leave before I am frozen as well,” he decided, saddened by both the fact that the city was dead and that he had come all this way for naught.  “The goddess may be angry with me for coming here…” But as he looked at the people armed with gifts, he glanced back at the altar.  “But first I will play for Her, since I have nothing to offer…”

            So he played all the tunes he had sung.  He played and sang of winds, whistles, the seasons, anything that he had ever made lyrics to during his hard-worked childhood.  And at the noise of his playing, the frost began to fall in white showers from the roof of the temple, and from the rafters and pillars and the clothes of the motionless people.  Then the king sneezed, and someone laughed – a loud, clear laugh.  Hiei kept playing – for some reason, he could not make himself stop.  He played as the ice and snow melted from the people and structures inside and out, and played as the people began to recognize one another.  He played as the hugging and kissing commenced, and played as they began to dance.

            The dancing spread, out of the temple and through the city.  People fetched brooms and began cleaning off their houses and the streets.  Others dug out their wooden instruments that had escaped the fires and began to play themselves, so that when Hiei stopped his song, tired out at last, the music went on.

            Hiei watched them celebrate, not quite understanding what had happened, and then felt a hand close on his shoulder.  He looked up at the man he had decided was the king.  The old demon had a grandfatherly air about him, and led Hiei to the steps of the altar and sat him down.  Hiei watched – not quite suspicious, not quite at ease – as the monarch took a seat beside him and reached out to touch his harp.

            “My child,” he said gently, and his voice washed over Hiei like a warm blanket, “where did you get this harp?”

            Hiei stared at him for a moment, and then answered honestly.  “Sir,” he began, never having been in the presence of one so elevated and using the title he’d been conditioned to use, “I made it out of fishbones…after a picture of my father’s harp that an old woman drew for me…” He finished weakly, for the old demon was giving him a strange look, and Hiei wondered if he had angered the king.

            “And what is your father’s name, child?  Where is he now?”

            “He is dead, Sir.”  Hiei was surprised that the words came so easily to him.  “Dead and buried in the snows of the north.”  He unsheathed the sword Luka had given him and held it out to the monarch.  “But this has his name on it, Sir.”

            The king looked at the weapon for a long time, his expression unreadable.  Then, when Hiei was about to ask if everything was all right, tears began to leak from the old demon’s eyes.  At first they only trickled, one by one…but soon he was openly weeping.  He cast the sword aside and swept the unsuspecting Hiei into a warm embrace, nestling him against the soft beard. 

            Hiei struggled to free himself enough to look up at the old demon, but did not disengage from the hug.  As far as he could remember, no one had ever held him before.  It felt nice, but still…the tears troubled him.

            “Sir,” he began hesitantly, “why are you crying?  What is wrong?”

            And then the old monarch laughed as he cried, and pulled Hiei tight against him.  “Oh, child,” he chuckled even as he wept, “my precious, precious child… I weep in both joy and sadness.  I weep with sadness because my son is gone…and I weep for joy because a grandson has been returned to me.”

            And so the king took Hiei with him to the palace and clothed him in robes of fur and velvet.  There was much feasting and great happiness.  And the king told Hiei of how, many years ago, the Goddess of Flame was angered because the people had grown so greedy for gold from her mountain that they spent their lives digging and mining, day and night, and forgot to honor her with the music she loved so dearly.  They made tools and plates and dishes and musical instruments; everything that could be made was made of gold.  So at last the goddess has appeared among them, terrible with rage, and put a curse on them, of burning and freezing.  The goddess had forsaken their golden instruments, claiming she would not longer come among them until she was summoned by a harp that was not made of any precious metal – a harp that had never touched the earth but came from deep water, a harp that no demon had ever played.  And then the fires had come, destroying houses and killing many.  The king had ordered his son, Crown Prince Yukiei, to go for help.  But then the frost had come, and the king had known no more after that.

            “But now,” the old king said, “you have come to me in my son’s place.  If you desire it, you shall remain here with me, and we shall take care to worship the goddess every day with music in the temple and in the streets.  And everything made of gold shall be cast away, so that no one else would be tempted to worship gold before the goddess.”

            So this was done, and the king was the first to throw away his golden crown and staff.  And the city was soon rebuilt, still with all its grandeur, but without the help of gold.  And the kingdom of the Fire Elementals flourished once again.

            And long after this, when Hiei was much older and wiser – with a good deal of sense, he made sure – he traveled back to the snowfields astride a white nitemare, his sword at his belt and harp on his back.  Tied to the bridle of his saddle were the long reins that belonged to the second nitemare walking behind his.  He was on his way to fetch Luka and take her with him, just as he had promised all those years ago.  He passed through the fields safely, playing his harp while his steed walked easily through the snow.  Nobody near the cave areas recognized him, so finely was he dressed now in scarlet fur-lined silk, his temperament now that of a wise adult and no longer possessing the naïveté he’d had as a child.

            But when he came to where Luka’s hut had stood, there was nothing but snow, nor was there any trace that a dwelling had ever been there.  And when he asked around about Luka, nobody knew the name, and the bandits and Snow Women alike declared that such a person had never been there.

            Amazed and sorrowful, Hiei returned to his grandfather.  Had he waited too long to return?  Had Luka passed away and no one remembered her because it had been so long?  He traveled back to the city with a heavy heart, and an extra mount with no rider.

            But one day, not long after, when he was alone praying in the temple to the goddess…

            “Sing, boy!”

            And Hiei was greatly astonished.  He could not quite recall where, but he had a feeling he had heard that voice somewhere before.  And while he looked about the empty temple, wondering, the command came again.

            “Sing, boy!”

            And then Hiei understood.  He chuckled, and he took his harp from his back.  Now he knew… Now he knew who had helped him to make his harp of fishbones.  And he played for her, singing of winds and whistles, and of sanctuaries where even falling stars could find their solitude.

Owari

December 23^rd, 2001

Author’s Notes:

~My YYH fic I had planned for Christmas didn’t quite make the deadline.  It’s still only about a quarter of the way done ^^; So, I wrote this up instead, since it’s been nagging at me to be written.

~“Rocs” and “Nitemares” are demons from mythology, though I see rocs more often than nitemares.  I took some liberty with the rocs.  The last I heard of them was when I was in grade five Mythology class, so I don’t remember if they can actually survive cold temperatures, but since they are demons, I’m willing to bet they can.  Nitemares I don’t see as often, but are typically depicted as demon horses with horns.  I think they’re cool ^_^

~Point worth noting… “Yukiei” is my typical name for Hiei’s father.  I use it in White Blindness, too, though most of you haven’t seen that part yet ^_~ I think it’s neat – Yukiei + Hina = Yukina and Hiei.  Half of their names for each child.  Am I clever or what?  No, don’t answer that ^_~

~The original “Harp of Fishbones” was about a girl named Nerryn working for a miller and had her crossing forest.  I changed quite a bit of this storyline.

~Yes, Hiei is definitely my favorite character (Nah, I’m not biased ^_^)  

~A note about the last passage... Since some people have said the wording was a bit confusing (which I agree) I figured I'd explain.  I am using "solitude" as a way of conveying that since Hiei has spent his life around people who cared little for him and worked him day and night, his finding his father's city and being able to enjoy some time alone in the temple is a kind of sanctuary for him.  Or something of the sorts -- it made sense when I wrote it, it really did ^_~

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