Broken (23 page)

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Excerpt from Kiki Howell's The Sorcerer's Songs

Chapter 1

“The Road”

If I knew then what I know now

I’d like to think I’d choose a different way to
go

But my mistakes have paved the way

Down this dark and lonely dead-end road

Poised on a stool in the corner of yet another bar, in front of
a crowd of maybe fifty, he played the harmonies that reached out to
those around him. For a man of magic, a sorcerer with powers he had
never asked for, his musical talents were sung spells.  He
serenaded the world either to cure another’s damaged heart
or, at times, to place a temporary band-aid on his own.  Yet,
for the most part, he let his music haunt the deeper needs of those
who listened—letting musical phrasings stir wants unnamed or
purposely forgotten.  Although he felt but a living and
breathing jukebox for the most part, these strangers who came to
see him play were the only lives he could touch.  He reached
out to them with his songs.

Letting his fingers rise off the strings, he gave a different
voicing to what was once a tired, old combination of notes.
 In this song, he had chosen to add tension and to provide
dissonance with open tuning, achieving a chord without fretting.
Thus, the languishing melody, even the basic chord progression,
allowed the music to go someplace different and evoke emotions
probably best left alone.  He didn’t care.  
Power and control were not this sorcerer’s chosen
highs.  Instead, the ability to rouse emotions, to enchant
those who came to listen with their own chocked desires, was his
quest.  These were
his
chosen addictions wrought by
musical magic.  Breaking down the barriers of fear and
bashfulness, destroying caution, was his one obsessive
bent. 

His occasional vice was personal use.  A missionary,
forsaken by life, some nights he chose to quell his lonely
existence by calling a woman to himself.  If one showed him
interest beyond his talents, he sang to break down her inhibitions,
so she could come to him if she chose to.  Free will he was
very careful never to tamper with, barriers and insecurities,
however, he obliterated.  The songs were his weapons of
defense against loneliness. 

He had taken offense on occasion when a jealous stranger would
refer to him as a male version of a siren and a playboy pied piper
as he left with a girl on his arm. This was because of the negative
connotations of both characters.  He was nothing like them at
all. But, as he was continually reminded, there were idiots lurking
everywhere.  To prove the point of his train of thought, one
arrogant ass, who he had barely been able to sing over all night,
drunkenly misjudged his ability to sit back down on his chair.
Metal clanged and a glass broke. Adam tried to hide what he
couldn’t stifle of his own laughter, but the words of the
next line he sang vibrated.

My compass has betrayed me

Pointing arrows where I didn’t want to go

But I must claim my share of blame

‘Cause I’m the one that chose the road

He concentrated on the words he sang to center himself
again.   Their meanings he tried to ponder, not fully
aware yet of the crucial point he was at in the song. 
Therefore, the personal reason he had written those words wiggled
its way into his mind like a snake offering him an apple off the
tree of knowledge.  The rhythms in his head stirred his
heart.  Despite his own self-imposed barriers, old memories,
reasons he had chosen this road, flooded his brain. He had
misstepped at the wrong time and let the song open him. 
Thoughts, reflections best left alone were freed.  Seeing
himself at fifteen, a simple farm boy and small town jock,
he’d thought he had the world on a string.  Remembering
the stolen kisses of that time from his girlfriend, Stacey, while
they hid out in the barn, brought about the hint of a smile while
he closed his eyelids over his watering eyes.  Those moments,
at that time, had been the height of his existence. Now, they
buried him under a bittersweet pain. 

It always amazed him, the thoughts that raced through his brain
while the words of a song came from his mouth as flawlessly as if
he were a dual entity. For a moment, he forgot which verse he had
just finished.  A replay of the last stanza of notes let him
recoup and play on without bringing notice to his fumbling.

And, if I knew love like I dreamed of

I might not be the man that I’ve become

But neon lights and these barroom nights

Have never brought me close to anyone

Regret burned like a hot poker stabbing into his heart. 
Then, the floodgate burst wide open.  He searched for someone
else to bear the weight of blame for his life.  An image of
himself at sixteen loomed, when the powers his father had warned
him about only one week prior had taken over his body.  The
man had taught him to use his powers only enough to deny them, to
begrudge something that raged inside of him like a caged lion
stalking his barriers. His head throbbed and his body ached to
practice, to wield his magic.  The irony of stifling what many
should feel a gift became too much for a boy of his age to make
sense of.

A moment of irreversible fate, one in which his father claimed
the blame for his mother’s death, had doomed them all. The
old man had been clear on only one point—his powers could
hurt anyone he dared to love.  Any solitary experimentation
with his magic had yielded him unpleasant results left unguided,
and thus the fear of hurting someone grew. The seed his father had
planted and sown blossomed.   

He went off on his own, fled the farm he had grown up on at just
seventeen years of age, four months short of finishing high school,
no longer able to bear life in that rural, southern Ohio 
town.  Everything he felt went into his songs.  He
watched life.  He watched people.  He called to women
from time to time for a bit of companionship, a warm body to hold
and a bit of conversation.  However, the tonal quality of his
music had changed over time.  The rock beat of his youth,
which had been more determined, steadfast, a combination of rock
and country, now took on softer tones, a more alternative
angst.  Now, the country twang of his voice blended in
elements of folk and alternative blues. 

The progressions directed him as he felt the frictional burn of
the nylon against his calluses built of continuous hours of
play.  His fingers on the strings made a primal sound, taking
this wanderer to a place of balance and stability for a time. 
The muggy night air of Key West, Florida, made those cold winters
on the farm he grew up on a distant, almost surreal
memory.  

And my passions all betray me

Left me standing here with nothing warm to hold

But I must claim my share of blame

Cause I’m the one that chose the road

As he played through the notes of the interlude, the higher
pitched tones sounded like bells which rang out into the midnight
sky from atop a church.  For a moment, he mourned the end of
another day with this song.  He closed with it each
night.  Tonight he would use the sympathies it awoke in him,
along with the telepathic powers of his sorcery, to call a woman to
him from the audience of this open-air barroom. The brief,
unexpected trip down memory lane made the thought of spending
another night alone torture.

Tonight’s lady of choice was going to be the dirty blond
who had been staring at him most of the evening.  Her foot
clad in a strappy red heel had pumped almost in time with the music
when he played.  So, for a time he had sung only for her, to
her.  Her wine-shaded lips looked wet from several
re-applications of lipstick, and he longed to feel them on him.

He let the notes carry his own afflictions to burden her with
obvious needs, utilizing the effect of the rhythmic dimensions to
induce empathy as well.  Over the years, he had perfected this
potent mix to gain him better results with the women who showed him
interest.   The man he had transformed himself into was a
dark, haunted musician with a touch of an arrogant chip on his
shoulder.  Mystery caught and held their attention, then the
gut-wrenching words of his songs lured them to him.  
They were a plentiful lot, always falling easily for the man with
the guitar, the one who appeared hardened and dangerous despite the
soft poetry of his lyrics and thus his ability to explain life on a
deeper level.  The juxtaposition of it all made the women
swoon, and he used this fact of life to his advantage. 

He had found early on that the more intellectually stimulating
the words and the more he played off of his own desires, he would
at the least find himself in the company of a female for a
time.  Enhanced by the magnitude of his powers under the
current fullness of the moon, he was good-to-go tonight.  The
lady would give in to her longings for him as he built them to a
fevered pitch. It would soon be an ache she would no longer want to
deny.

She could have been a bit more his type, but of all the women in
the open bar by the rush of the ocean, she was the least strung out
on a heady combination of humidity and tequila.  He only had
to step down from his chair and place his instrument safely in its
case to find her standing beside him praising his voice and his
words and his expertise with a guitar.

“Wherever did you learn yourself to play like that?”
she said with a southern accent she probably falsely intensified,
but which could not cover her hillbilly drawl.  He was sure
she would be horrified to know his own true roots.  She was
obviously trying to go beyond hers which, for some unknown reason,
immediately set him on edge around her.  “And your
words, ahhh, to have a man say such things to me.”  Her
long painted fingernails, she laid upon her exposed cleavage.