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the strings or the tuning knobs, he couldn't create the right melodies. It wasn't the delicate instrument,
either, but something else. He still hadn't discovered how to tune it properly.
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It was late afternoon when Talea edged closer to him, listening a while longer to the almost music he was
making before inquiring, with none of her usual bitterness or sarcasm, "Jon-Tom, are you a spellsinger?"
"Hmmm?" He looked up at her. "A what?"
"A spellsinger." She nodded toward the otter, who was walking a few yards ahead of them. "Mudge
says that the wizard Clothahump brought you into our world because he thought you were a wizard who
could help him in sorceral matters."
"That's right. Unfortunately, I'm in prelaw."
She looked doubtful. "Wizards don't make those kinds of mistakes."
"Well, this one sure did."
"Then you're not..." She eyed him strangely. "A spellsinger is a wizard who can only make magic through
music."
"That's a nice thought." He plucked at the lower strings and al-most-notes danced with dust motes in the
fading daylight. "I wish it were true of me." He grinned, slightly embarrassed. "I've had a few people tell
me that despite my less than mesmerizing tenor, I can make a little music-magic. But not the kind you're
thinking of."
"How do you know you can't? Maybe Clothahump was right all along."
"This is silly, Talea. I'm no more a magician than I am any other kind of success. Hell, I'm having a hard
enough time trying to play this thing and walk at the same time, what with that long staff strapped to my
back. It keeps trying to slide free and trip me.
"Besides," he ran his fingers indifferently along the upper strings "I can't even get this to sound right. I
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can't play something I can't even tune."
"Have you used all the dutips?" When he looked blank, she indicated the tuning knobs. He nodded.
"And what about the dudeeps?" Again the blank gaze, and this time he had a surprise.
Set into a recess in the bottom of the instrument were two knobs. He hadn't noticed them before, having
been preoccupied with the strings and the "dutips," as she'd called them. He fiddled with the pair. Each
somehow contracted tiny metal and wood slats inside the resonator. One adjusted crude treble, the other
lowered everything a couple of octaves and corresponded very roughly to a bass modulator. He looked
closely at them and then looked again. Instead of the usual "treble" and "bass," they read "tremble" and
"mass."
But they definitely improved the quality of the duar's sound.
"Now you should try," she urged him.
"Try what? What kind of song would you like to hear? I've been through this with Mudge, so if you want
to take the risk of listening to me...."
"I'm not afraid," she replied, misunderstanding him. "Try not for the sound. Try for the magic. It's not like
a wizard as great as Clothahump, even if his powers are failing, to make such a mistake."
Try for the magic, he thought. Huh... try for the sound. That's what the lead bass player for a very
famous group had once told him. The guy had been higher than the Pope when Jon-Tom had accidentally
run into him in a hall before a concert playing to twenty thousand. Stuttering, hardly able to talk to so
admired a musician, he'd barely been able to mumble the usual fatuous request for "advice to a struggling
young guitarist."
"Hey, man... you got to try for the sound. Hear? Try for the sound."
That hastily uttered parable had been sufficiently unspecific to stick in his mind. Jon-Tom had been trying
for the sound for years, but he hadn't come close to finding it. Most would-be musicians never did.
Maybe finding the sound was the difference between the pro and the amateur. Or maybe it was only a
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matter of getting too stoked to notice the difference.
Whatthehell.
He fiddled a little longer with the pseudo-treble/bass controls. They certainly improved the music. Why
not play something difficult? Stretch yourself, Jon-Tom. You've nothing to lose. These two critics can't
change your career one way or t'other. There was only one sound he'd ever hoped to reach for, so he
reached.
"Purple haze..." he began, and thereafter, as always, he lost himself in the music, forgetting the watching
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