Free The Seven Songs by T. A. Barron

about himself with dramatic flair. “I am coming with you.”
    “What?” I exclaimed. “I don’t want you to come.”
    “Too true, too true, too true. Yet I will come all the same.”
    Cairpré’s dark eyes gleamed. “You will regret your choice even sooner than I expected.”

6: T HROUGH THE M ISTS
    Like the sour taste that stays in your mouth long after biting in a piece of rotten fruit, Bumbelwy, his bells jangling, stayed by my side. Only with fruit, you can wash your mouth and get rid of the taste. With Bumbelwy, nothing I said or did would make him leave. Although I walked as briskly as I could, not even pausing to strum the Harp, . . . I could not escape his presence.
    He followed me out of Caer Neithan’s gates, as Cairpré stood watching in silence. He followed me over the rises and dips of the plains, trekking until long after dark, camping with me beneath an old willow, and then continuing through the sweltering sun of the next day. He followed me all the way to the grand, pounding waterway that I knew to be the River Unceasing.
    All the while, he mumbled about the heat, the stones in his boots, and the arduous life of a jester. As we approached the river, he asked me several times whether I would like to hear his famous riddle about his bells, promising it would lift my spirits. Whenever I told him that I had no desire to hear his riddle—or, for that matter, his bells—he simply sulked a bit and then asked me all over again.
    “Oh, but this is a royal, ranting romp of a riddle,” he protested. “A riddler’s regular riddle. No, that’s backward. Curses, I botched the delivery again! It’s a regular riddler’s riddle. There, that’s right. It’s funny. It’s wise.” He paused, looking even more somber than usual. “It’s the only riddle I know.”
    I shook my head, striding toward the River Unceasing. As we feared its steep, stony banks, thundering rapids boiled beneath us. The spray rose high into the air, lifting rainbow bridges that shimmered in the sunlight. The splashing and roaring grew so loud that, for the first time since the Town of the Bards, I could not hear Bumbelwy’s bells. Or his pleas to tell his riddle.
    I turned to him. Above the pounding of the river, I shouted, “I have far to go, all the way to the southernmost shore. Crossing the river will be dangerous. You should go back now.”
    Glumly, he called back, “You don’t want me then?”
    “No!”
    He made a six-layered frown. “Of course you don’t want me. Nobody wants me.” He peered at me for a moment. “But I want you, you lucky lad.”
    I stared at him. “Lucky? That’s one thing I’m certainly not! My life is nothing but a string of disappointments, one loss after another.”
    “I can tell,” he declared. “That’s why you need a jester.” Frowning gravely, he added, “To make you laugh.” He cleared his throat. “By the way, did I ever tell you my riddle about the bells?”
    With a snarl, I swung at his head with my staff. He ducked, stooping lower than usual. The staff skimmed the back of his cloak.
    “You’re no jester,” I shouted. “You’re a curse! A miserable curse.”
    “Too true, too true, too true.” Bumbelwy heaved a moaning sigh. “I’m a failure as a jester. An absolute failure. A jester needs to be only two things, wise and funny. And I am neither.” A fretful tear rolled down his cheek. “Can you imagine how that feels? How it makes me ache from my thumbs down to my toes? My fate is to be a jester who makes everyone sad. Including myself.”
    “Why me?” I protested. “Couldn’t you pick somebody else to follow?”
    “Certainly,” he called above the raging rapids. “But you seem so . . . unhappy. More so than anyone I’ve ever met. You will be my true test as a jester! If I can learn how to make you laugh, then I can make anyone laugh.”
    I groaned. “You will never make anyone laugh. That’s certain!”
    He thrust his chins at me and started to swirl his