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Show 399 ugly little kid cowered on the floor by the bed drooling onto the back of his hands, which were clasped in front of him, and it took all of Lorin's forbearance not to make an example of the little fellow by flaming up and kicking the shit out of him. Through the window he could see torches carried by the villagers who were gathering in the pump yard below, preparing to burst in and catch him in the act. He smiled indulgently and climbed under the lid of the grand piano in the corner, where they would never find him. The cold wires pressed into his heart. He had always wanted to do this. He reached out of the piano, keeping his head down, and felt for the keys. It took one or two false starts to adapt to the reversal of treble and bass and to accommodate the recession of the black keys, but shortly he had the hang of it and began a spirited if not note-perfect reading of "Wedding Day in Trodhaugen," starting at the end and working forward. The screams of terror from the next room made him burn with pleasure. The light in his own room had changed over the last hour, but he was scarcely conscious of the shadows that wheeled across his ceiling and down his walls, and though he heard people moving around somewhere in the house he heard them as though through a membrane. He was too caught up in maintaining a stable technique to pay attention to pounding in the walls or sirens in the street or the rattle of wind in the palm branches outside his window. He was enjoying himself, preparing to leave the first clear cadence in the second theme and leap to the dominant that preceded it, when a hand reached into the piano and seized him by the hair. He promised to stop if whoever it was would just let go, but the next instant his head was being battered against a mossy stone on either side of which water lapped, and he was coughing uncontrollably. He lay on the bank, trying to push dirt over the disgusting matter he had coughed up |