Chapter 26
“I’m not afraid to admit that I’m somewhat unsure about what to do with everything, but something should definitely be done with everything,” Maxim said.
“Uh-huh.” Raven lifted one of the tarps.
There were several, both tarps and sheets, a dusty ocean of them covering…
Raven wasn’t even sure how to categorize all the things he was seeing.
It was a lot more than just the odd traveling trunk.
Stuff was piled up and covered, and the path between everything was just about wide enough to allow him and Umeboshi to follow Maxim as he took them deeper into this wilderness of discarded things.
No, not discarded. It looks like he kept everything. But what on Earth is this?
Maxim turned and looked at what Raven had uncovered. “Oh! You found the phonograph. I wasn’t sure where it had gone, to be quite honest with you, but I’m sure you’ll be able to fix that.”
“The phonograph…like in Dracula?”
Maxim nodded. Excitement was blooming in his eyes, an almost childlike glee. “Just so. Oh, this one traveled with us when we first came here, and we had it in the London house. I do believe I have some cylinders of Heath practicing his singing.”
“His singing?”
Maxim went about pulling out an old case from under the phonograph and clicked open the aged mechanism on it.
“Why, yes. It’s part of a well-rounded education.
He didn’t enjoy it, which I believe is also part of getting educated.
” Maxim looked up and into the middle distance, thinking.
“Oh, wait. He learned to draw and paint as well. I instructed the staff at the old house to pack up everything, but it took us ages to move here, and I never got around to hanging his most mediocre pieces.”
Raven frowned. “Why would you want to hang his mediocre pieces?”
Maxim pursed his lips. “He wasn’t very good.
I have a father’s loving eye, but even I will admit that he wasn’t very good.
There were a few he worked on with much vigor though, and they just turned out so…
mediocre. To tell you the truth, I should’ve realized it was because he had a crush on his art instructor. ” Maxim sighed. “I failed him then.”
“Failed him how?”
Raven knew he was prying, but he was…maybe jealous of the relationship Heath and Maxim had, though jealous felt like a very narrow word to describe the oddly stinging emotion he was feeling.
It was simply something Raven had longed for—a parent in his life who really was and acted like a parent, not like someone who wanted to own his mind and thoughts, and his body on top of all that too.
My mom just wants me to think and act like her, and I’m a failure as long as I don’t.
Now that I’m…what I am, I’m a failure one way or the other.
Maxim clicked his tongue. “Oh. You mustn’t tell him I told you, but I took it upon myself, as any parent should, to explain to him about intimacy when he was the proper age.
I gave detailed explanations of the heterosexual variety, which may in part explain why he was always somewhat embarrassed talking about his actual preferences with me later.
I should’ve explained much more broadly, even then. ”
Raven thought this over. And over. Does that mean Maxim’s experience is more broad?
When he kicked me out of his bed… I shouldn’t have done that.
I shouldn’t have snuck into his room in the middle of the night to…
offer myself. I shouldn’t be thinking about what type of people he likes or doesn’t like.
Increasingly nervous, Raven searched his mind for what to say in response. He came up with “My mom took me to a rally for marriage monopoly when I was a kid,” which he realized was quite offensive only after he’d said it.
Maxim gave him a flat look. “Oh.”
Raven looked away. “I didn’t want to—I mean, I didn’t understand. It makes no sense, right? Why should only some people be allowed to marry? It’s illogical.”
And only a man and a woman, at that. Something inside of Raven had always railed against the thought, not even because he’d known what he liked—who he liked—but because it made people into breeding pairs above anything else.
He’d realized that only later though, and the understanding had been freeing.
“It is. Oh! This is it.”
Maxim lifted a cylinder out of the case and pushed the tarp back farther. As he did so, Raven saw the beginnings of more. At his feet, Umeboshi sneezed when the dust hit his nose.
“Is this all—so you lived in London before you moved here?”
Maxim nodded while he did things to the phonograph, cranking a lever and fitting the cylinder into the machine. Raven watched with bewildered fascination.
“We didn’t move to this house, as it hadn’t been built yet. That happened later. It was a much smaller place at first, close to the Forum. There was a very large fae contingent here in the city, and they’d been quick to purchase property for the Forum. There we go, let’s listen.”
The first thing Raven heard over the trumpet-shaped speaker of the phonograph was static, then some clicking, then…Maxim’s voice, distorted by time and frail technology.
“Here we go, darling. We’re all set up. Now, just like you practiced.”
“Do I have to, Papa? You’re going to play it to other people.”
Heath’s voice was that of a child in the recording, maybe a teen. Raven couldn’t imagine it, and he was not so much startled by the youthfulness of the voice but by both voices’ accents. They sounded entirely the kind of British you’d get in old historical movies—stiff, tight.
“Whoa.”
“Heath, darling, you have sung to bring others joy before, and you have been working so diligently. Will you not do your papa a favor, please? I might even get the cook to make you extra rice pudding for supper.”
Maxim, in the here and now, smiled serenely. “He did love rice pudding with compote.”
“I’ll have only rice pudding, and no more parsnips. For a week!”
“Oh, darling, a week is such a long time. Maybe—”
“For a week, Papa! I’m not singing for anything less than a week of rice pudding.”
Maxim chuckled nervously. “This sounds terrible, but he wasn’t actually that spoiled.”
“All right, darling. One week of rice pudding it is,” said Maxim on the recording.
Over the crackling, young Heath started singing. With the quality being so poor, Raven couldn’t make out the words. Then, he realized it wasn’t the quality, but that Heath was singing in another language.
“Is that French?”
Maxim nodded. “Oh, yes. ‘Au Clair de la Lune.’ He practiced so much for this.”
Maxim looked dreamy, lost in memory. The song went on for a while.
“That was wonderful. Thank you so much, darling. Now, let’s go find you that rice pudding.”
With that, the recording ended.
“Such a treasure, as you can clearly see. Or rather, hear.” Maxim indicated the room, the entirety of the floor.
“It’s all like this, and Heath would love nothing better than to have it all cleared out and turned into an office space.
He’s very fond of his office, you know. Anyway, Raven, we must not let this happen.
” Maxim put the cylinder back in the case that held several others, and clutched that case to his chest. “Everything here is precious. You do see that, don’t you? ”
“It’s…it’s something else.”
“You will help me protect it. Become the guardian of treasured things alongside me.”
At Raven’s feet, Ume was yawning. “I’m not sure…I’m not sure what to do with everything here. Or what you want me to do with it.”
Maxim held up his index finger. “Let’s see.
The first rule of the secret floor shall be that you must not tell Heath what exactly you’re doing or what you’ve seen.
” He patted the case. “Or heard. There was an accident on our journey here, and I have long suspected it wasn’t an accident at all.
As a result, Heath believes these recordings to have been lost at sea, but they weren’t.
He must never know he didn’t succeed in tossing them overboard. ”
“Oh? Okay.”
“They went into the water, but I managed to get to them at the last moment.”
Raven couldn’t quite imagine that. He also couldn’t imagine what help he was going to be in Maxim’s quest to…
do something with all of the stuff he had accumulated.
Raven hadn’t had much experience with old technology, and even with all the time he’d spent in the library, he had no archival training, but he’d seen really old books before.
He could understand why they were loved and cherished.
“Shouldn’t you get everything digitized?” He looked at the phonograph. “And maybe donate stuff like this to a museum?”
“Now, Raven, this is just the kind of initiative I think a guardian of this place needs. This is going to work out perfectly.”
“Huh?”
Maxim handed Raven the case. “To you I give these precious memories. Protect them well. And digitize them.”
“I…I don’t know how to do that. I mean, I could just record it on my phone, I guess, and then get the recordings to you.”
“Off you go recording, then.”
Raven pointed at the phonograph. “I’m not touching that thing though. You do it. I’ll just set up my phone and press the button.”
“Hmm. It’s good to delegate your duties, I suppose.” He looked around. “Just let me look for the other cases before we get started.”
“There’s more?”
Maxim pulled back a few of the sheets in impressive flourishes, filling the air between them with clouds of dust.
“There certainly is. Oh, look! Our old slide projector. And the tube radio. I wonder where the slides went. Raven, gently put down the cylinders and help me look. The Kodak Brownie must be here somewhere too.”
A feeling of foreboding marched right up to Raven when he took another look at the sea of sheets. What on earth have I signed up for?
Carefully, he set down the cylinder box of Maxim’s memories and prepared to help him unearth more of the same from under decades of dust. Behind him, Ume was having a sneezing fit, clearly not made for this sort of thing. I wonder if I am.
He was going to have to find out.