Sometimes I write poetry as poetry. Sometimes I write it to fill story needs. This folksong was written for Valley of the Menhir to give Tidac and Cinnabar a romantic moment early in their courtship.

She showed him how to hold the thyril and how to strike the bass strings with his thumb while his fingers touched the trebles. His left hand stopped the trebles; the bass strings rang free. He tried manfully – which is to say, clumsily – to coordinate his two hands and was becoming frustrated when she stopped him with a giggle.

“You try too hard,” she said. “You aren’t trying to overcome an armed opponent; you are trying to coax the music out.”

Next he tried to pick out the simple lullaby which she sang over and over for him. He had not heard her sing before; her voice was small but sweet. After a time the tune came, and still later it came freely. Cinnabar kissed him noisily and congratulated him.

Then Cinnabar picked up the thyril and began to play. The melody was sad, but it brightened slowly. She raised his eyes to his and they were full of promise. She began to croon very softly:

*****

I reach for her, lying in her linen bed;

My fingers draw her forth into my arms.

Her rounded hip against my belly —

Her slender neck is in my hand.

My fingers touch and stroke her strings

     evoking music

          the thrumming that fills my loins

               the dry treble that excites the night.

Sometimes she is cold within my arms

And I must coax her voice to life.

Tonight she is fire,

Yielding to the motion of my hands.

My fingers touch and stroke her strings

     evoking magic

          the crying bittersweetness of the night

               wraps its hands around my heart.

*****

An ambiguous song, equally applicable to the thyril or the woman who held it. Whatever I am, or have been, or wish to be, Tidac thought, is now wound up with her.

Cinnabar smiled up at him and laid aside the thyril.

*****

I wrote that scene about 1978, and it remained in every revision until about 2010 when it was cut as a part of a major push to tighten up the pacing of the early part of the story. Too bad; I always liked it.