Guy--Part Twenty-Eight

Splog # 116

Twenty-Eight

   "Eu-phonious?" Guy repeated slowly, in an effort to buy himself a moment in which to come up with a diplomatic answer. He had some idea of the meaning of the word, partly from the question itself and partly from the tone in which it had been asked, though he probably couldn't have defined it exactly.

   "Lovely word," said the voice while Guy was thinking. "A word that describes itself, if you take my meaning. But you haven't answered my question."

   Guy took a deep breath, fully intending to launch into a panegyric on the grandeur of Borias Ufondo Whatever Whatever when his lips pronounced the words,

   "It is Guy, isn't it?"

   Brief pause. "Yes, sir." With this response, it occurred to Guy that his name was rather short and abrupt-sounding compared to Borias, never mind the rest of the voice's "moniker". And so when he finally did respond to the voice's other question, it happened quite naturally.

   "I liked hearing you say your name, sir. Would you kindly repeat it?"

   The voice paused for a moment longer than it usually did (when it paused at all) and when it finally spoke the tone seemed somehow different.

   "Guy (if you will allow me to be so familiar), I will gladly and proudly rehearse my name to you wherever, whenever and however many times you would take pleasure in the recitation." A pause. A breath. And then, in the tone of a butler announcing the arrivals at a grand reception: "Borias - Ufondo - Grudastin - Spatula."

   And then Guy laughed. Not so much at the comical nature of the separate components of the name and not even at the somewhat fantastic effect they had in combination with each other. Guy didn't exactly laugh at anything. Guy laughed with joy. Joy in the harmony of the sounds that had emanated from his mouth in a clear ringing tone and a voice that for a moment had sounded deeper and stronger than his seven-year-old vocal chords had as yet produced. Joy in the water and the air that he was inhabiting, not completely alone, but with a versifying and very talkative companion inside his own head, one who had indeed a "euphonious moniker". And joy also, though he may not have been conscious of it, in simply being a seven-year-old boy, because, at that age, magical adventures are not only possible, but highly probable, occurrences..

   And Guy's joy and laughter were echoed by the character sharing his vocal apparatus, so that for a moment it almost seemed as if two different qualities of laughter were emerging at one and the same time from Guy's mouth.

   As the laughter wound down, the following statement was made:

   "Borias Udolfo Grudastin Spatula and Guy will now set forth on an errand. There are attempts to be made. They'll learn as they go. They are companions whose purpose is the aid of others. They will never cease to strive towards that goal."

   And then Guy slowly sank from the surface of the water.

   The words had come from Guy's mouth and in Guy's voice. And there had been an undertone to them somewhat deeper than Guy's. But neither Guy nor the voice had chosen the words or formulated the sentences.