Perilous Travels (The Southern Continent Series Book 2) by Jeffrey Quyle

week,” she chided him.  He could hear the faint sounds of the village discussion about him continuing to drone on out in the circle.
    “Maybe you can show me how to make it myself, so that you won’t have to,” Grange suggested.
    “That’s work for the women,” Lastone spoke for the first time since Grange had entered the hut.
    “If I don’t have anything else to do, I wouldn’t mind preparing my own ointment.  I had to mix some of the potions precursors during my apprenticeship in Palmland,” Grange replied.
    “What’s this?” Shaylee asked, lifting the flute off Grange’s small pile of belongings.
    “It’s a flute,” Grange replied, as he watched her fingers run across the row of holes, while she tilted it up and down.
    “I use it like this,” he gently removed the instrument from her fingers, then raised it to his lips and played the first two bars of a slow ballad.  He raised his eyes as he played, and he saw that Shaylee had tilted back on her haunches and was observing him with a rapt expression on her face.  There was a movement in the corner, and he saw that Lastone was abandoning his work to creep over closer to the source of the music as well.
    Grange paused, then shifted the tune to a jig, one of the dancing songs that had been popular in Fortune.  Shaylee smiled at him, and began to clap her hands softly in time with the tune.  The two of them smiled at one another, as Lastone came and knelt beside his daughter.
    Grange stopped after playing ten bars of music, and Shaylee clapped appreciatively.
    “Thank you!  We haven’t had a decent musician since Kanu and Eomel were in the same canoe that got caught on the reef,” Lastone told him.  “The village was going to have to hire someone to come play for us and teach a new musician for us.”
    “I can teach someone to play,” Grange answered, glad that he had at least found something he could do for the village.
    “I’d like to learn!” Shaylee’s hand and voice both rose.
    It was silent outside, Grange suddenly noticed.  The questions and answers had ended.  He twisted and looked at the door behind him.  The view of the circle was blocked by the number of people who were standing together staring into the room.
    “What are you doing?” Layreen asked.  “Where did you get that?” she nodded towards the flute that was cradled softly in his hand.
    “I was just playing music for Shaylee,” Grange began.
    “No, no, no – he was playing music and Shaylee heard it.  He did not play it for her!” Lastone interrupted and said emphatically.
    Grange turned to look at him, unable to comprehend the reason for the outburst, and saw that Shaylee had both hands covering her mouth and nose, laughing, her crinkled eyes sparkling with delight.
    “No, you were not playing for Shaylee,” Layreen told him sternly, “that is something we talked about, remember?”
    Grange shook his head no.
    “You do not understand this, do you?” the mother asked, after seeing the confusion in his face.
    He shook his head again.
    “Go along everyone, go along.  We’re done for now.  I will talk to you later,” she shooed the crowd away from the entrance to the home.
    “You two go out as well.  I need to explain something to our guest,” she told her own family.
    They immediately stood up and left the room, Shaylee laughing.
    “Teesh, you won’t believe what,” Grange heard her voice fade as she ran to talk to a friend.
    “In our village, a man presents music to a woman when he wants to marry her,” Layreen said.
    “But how?  I thought there weren’t people here who played music,” Grange protested.
    “Precisely,” Layreen said emphatically.  “Without our musician, our couples cannot use our traditional means of entering marriage.”
    “Does just one musician play music for all the women in the village?” Grange asked faintly, his face displaying his confusion.
    Layreen stared at him for a moment, then burst out with hearty