Seven Orbits Later

A phonograph was never brought to the docks of Myst, and it was no real disappointment—Captain Agatha's chance of stumbling across one had always been a near impossibility. What old man Elis hadn't anticipated was the lengths Mat would go to keep a promise.

It took the better part of a decade, but Mat finally obtained the next best thing, and it was all thanks to an old merchant with a hunched back and a milky eye named Magni, who overheard Mat asking around the traveling market one summer about a phonograph and wax cylinders.

"I'll do you one better," the merchant said, pointing a gnarled finger up at the sky as if accusing the clouds of a secret. "I have a collection of records from the Gone World—lightly used, the music crisp enough to make the songbirds jealous," he said behind his hand like Mat should be so lucky to hear it.

Mat took a weary step back. "Records?" The only records he had ever heard of were the accounts people kept of histories, experiments and casualties.

"Aye, like cylinders but flat and circular," he said waving his hands about in an unhelpful circular motion, "and they last longer!" His wrinkles quivered at Mat's bemused look. "Here, here," the merchant said and shuffled back to his table under which he grabbed parchment, ink and a quill.

Not one to be rude, Mat moseyed over and peered over the man's hunched frame, bent low over the parchment as he scribbled a contraption that looked very much like a phonograph, but in place of all the bits Mat recognized was a flat a box with a circular protrusion.

"See this?" the merchant said, pointing. "This is called a turntable. The flat disk on top, that's a record. You crank the handle and the turntable turns (true to its name!), the stylus drags on the record and voila, sound is made!" He pushed the parchment into Mat's hands.

His eyebrows pinched as he puzzled over the drawing. "Do you have it on hand?"

The man blinked up at Mat.

"The records, this contraption—can I see them?"

"Oh, no no no," he said shaking his head and hands. "I didn't lug them across the sea—"

Mat gave a pained sigh, shoved the parchment back at the man and kept walking.

"Wait!"

For every stride of Mat's the old merchant hobbled three quick steps.

"You have to understand," he said, already huffing and puffing. "I never thought I'd find a buyer for such a thing in a place like this, but now that I know such a lad exists, it's nothing but a quick trip back to Stolle."

Mat had never heard of Stolle, though he supposed that wasn't peculiar; surely, he had never heard of most places.

"What would you want for it?"

The old merchant looked Mat up and down, eyeing every hole and worn crease.

"What's in the bag?" he asked, looking to Mat's satchel.

"Figurines."

A pregnant pause. "Well, let's have a look," he said impatiently.

Mat worked his jaw, not eager to show him when all the Mystians he approached either laughed or crossed their chests as if warding off evil spirits. Every day it was the same, but he hauled them around because Snow wanted to help and he refused to make his telling her he toted them around a lie. So, he flipped the flap on his bag, took out the wooden box and showed the man the animal figurines. Mat awaited the insults as the man took a halting step forward then placed both hands on either side of the box, peering in with a mystified look.

"Where did you get these?" he asked as if they were treasures he had misplaced in a previous life.

"I made them."

"From what?"

Mat very nearly blurted out the truth. "Wood."

The old merchant turned his milky eye on him before it rolled toward the Burnt Forest. He then touched the side of his nose and gave Mat a knowing look.

"I'll take the lot," he said, closing the box without having touched a single one.

"Really?"

"Really. As a down payment, of course."

Mat grabbed the box, stopping the man in his tracks.

"Stolle's a long way!" he said, back in a tizzy.

Mat seethed. Quick trip, my—

"And no self-respecting merchant is coming to a dig like this two Sol Moons in a row. Besides," he said, leaning in close, "magic buys little more than power these days." Mat let go of the box when the merchant used his free hand to wiggle his fingers as one would when joking about witchy voodoo. "No no no, you won't find an innkeeper or bartender willing to trade these for bed or fare.

"Trust me, my boy," he said, turning back to Mat so fast it took everything in him to not take a step back. "You will not be disappointed."

Reeling from the insinuation, Mat beat back all the what-ifs swooping in to clutter his brain. He's a crazed old man, that's all. A conspiracy theorist.

"How much?"

"Thirteen helles—"

"Thirteen? I'll die an old beggar's death before I ever so much as see that much!"

Captain Agatha had shown him the one and only helle he had ever seen, and it was the only one she had ever had—one. Helles were pure gold and not something Mystians thought would reach Myst's shore in their lifetimes.

If Captain Agatha hadn't grown up here, Mat suspected she would have taken her business elsewhere a long time ago.

"Alright, alright," Magni said irritably, waving his hands at the fuss. "Come closer, listen to me."

Stifling his anger, Mat obeyed.

Again, the old merchant lowered his voice. "Two helles and three vhous—listen," he said when Mat opened his mouth to argue. "The people here," he said, eyes darting around, watching people pass, "they're simple folk, and the simple are always superstitious. You're never gunna sell something like these in a place like this," he added, giving the box with the figurines a little shake, "but sell them to the other merchants—" he said, that gleam back in his good eye. "Trust me."

So far the bargain relied on a whole lot of a trust of a stranger that didn't strike Mat as particularly trustworthy.

"Fine," Mat said. What did it matter to him if the old merchant was pulling his leg? He had given him nothing but a box of ash.

Mat put out his hand to shake on it but Magni had already turned away.

That was three summers ago. It took two to come up with the coin; Magni had been right about the merchants—whatever made Mystians cross their chests made the merchants lean in, eyes wide and Mat's coin purse (which he stitched from deer hide) all the heavier, but Magni didn't come back to collect. Mat asked around but not another merchant knew that name. Probably a nickname, the lying bastard. And not another merchant knew anything about any record players from the Gone World or otherwise.

Mat felt like a fool through the moons. Gran's jibes about a lifetime of servitude to the tinker didn't help. The truth was Mat could quit Elis' shop anytime, the tinker had offered as much, but the younger man appreciated his company. Mat had even offered up the coins he had saved for Magni, but Elis refused.

"Keep it. Buy your Gran some chocolates."

Mat scoffed. "What, a lifetime supply?"

"Smart and abled body man like yourself, surely you're saving up to leave this place." Elis cleared his throat when Mat didn't respond, suddenly introspective. "Though I'm curious to hear how you came by such a fortune."

"Snow—" he blurted and immediately felt his insides catch fire. Maybe he was a bit too comfortable with the tinker. "Sorry," he smiled sheepishly. "Mind's a mess, some of the crops are behind and I worry about another early winter."

His ears burned with the truth as he fished a figurine of a hippopotamus out of his jacket that Snow had snuck into one of its pockets and he had found on his way into town. He handed it to Elis.

"It's a hippopotamus—"

"I know," Elis said, his voice heavy with an emotion Mat couldn't place.

"I carved a few figurines over the orbits, sold them to merchants. Guess they don't have many craftsmen in the cities and have so much coin, they don't know what to do with it."

To his horror, everything he now said sounded like a lie. Real money in exchange for figurines? It was the truth though. How they were made was another thing entirely.

The old man opened his mouth, a question crinkling the skin between his brows before he gave up on it and sighed. "I guess so," he said and handed back the hippo. "Capitalize on it while you can."

By the time Magni returned to Myst, Mat had quit looking. So, when he finally set eyes on the old merchant again, Mat thought him a ghost of his imagination. It took an exchange between the swindler and a customer to convince him the man was very much real. Imagining all the things he had a mind to say, Mat approached the table of oils and spices with a stiff upper lip.

Magni clapped his hands at the sight of him and shimmied a worn box out from under his table, oblivious of the verbal beating he was about to receive. "Viola," he said and ripped off the lid, revealing a stack of circular disks.

Mat tried on his most menacing glare but Magni only blinked up at him with a crooked smile. Mat plucked one up,, squinting at the label in a language he didn't recognize.

"Magni always keeps his word," he said giddily.

Searching for another box big enough to hold the turntable and horn, Mat pulled up the cloth covering the table. "Where's the rest of it?"

"The rest of what?"

The tablecloth fell out of Mat's hand like a dead bird.

Magni cocked his head as Mat's deadened eyes sharpened to slits.

"The turntable. The horn—the rest of it."

"Oh no no, I never had the player."

The air went stale in Mat's lungs. "Sorry?" He moved haltingly around the table toward Magni who started backing away.

"Yes, I never had the record player," he said cheerily.

"Don't you think that's something you ought to have mentioned before—"

"I did."

"Did not."

"Mm, I'm quite sure."

Mat took a wide step toward the man who stumbled backward with a squeal.

They were turning heads now. People were starting to stop and whisper.

"And what am I to do with these records without a player?"

"Now, now, let's speak of this like gentlemen," Magni said in a fit of nervous laughter. "Do you really think I would have sold all these records and a player to a lad in a niche of the world only a sprinkle of souls know about for a box of wooden figurines and a couple of coins?" he said, the quiver in his voice gone.

It took everything in Mat to not lay his hands on Magni who gave a tittering laugh and bustled past him.

"No, my dear boy, but I'm happy to sketch a design...for a price," he added, mouth stretched so wide that a golden tooth Mat had never seen gleamed.

Feeling very much like a stupid, country bumpkin, Mat agreed to give up another helle. He dug for his coin purse, wondering if this was all worth it for something he had never seen and wouldn't know how to piece together. As the merchant drew, Mat turned the coin over in his fingers, eyeing the effigy on one side of a bald man with a fierce brow and pointed beard who Captain Agatha told him was an inventive rendering of Gerrick, and on the other, an Episteme; the good ol' founding father and his fleet of champion steeds.

"There," Magni said, putting down his quill.

Mat reached out with the coin but Magni had to give it a tug to pull it from his pinched fingers. He threw the other helles and bronze vhous onto the table, snatched up the parchment, decided it looked like something that might have actually once existed, and left Magni without so much as a backward glance. He took the drawing straight to Walt who spent a good while rubbing the scruff on his chin in what appeared to be consternation. Feeling so black-hearted by the time the woodsmith finally spoke up, Mat was surprised to hear him say: "Aye, it's doable. I'll work with Captain Aggy to put feelers out in the cities for all the shiny bits."

"And what'll it cost me?" Mat asked, already weighing the pros and cons of signing up for another apprenticeship.

"One of your Gran's peach cobblers." He laughed at Mat's gaping mouth. "If you'd ever had one of my pies, you'd understand. Besides, can't help myself when something new's in the mix. Never heard music from a box," he added, tapping the drawing. "So. We got ourselves a deal?"

They shook on it.

A few dozen moons, splinters and curses later and they finally had a record player. It was surely its own brand of magic that Captain Agatha was able to come up with all the shiny doodads and thingamajigs that held it together. Mat had never had much of an itch to see the cities until that day, when he set eyes on that contraption gleaming in all its otherworldly glory.

When Mat rolled it into Elis' shop, a slow grin burned across the tinker's face. He whooped, wrapped Mat in a bone-crunching hug and once he finally let go, mussed his unruly curls despite the younger man being inches taller.

"Kept your word, did you?"

"Halvsies. It's not a phonograph."

Elis barked a laugh, studying the design of the machine with an expert eye. "This is much nicer than the piece of junk I gave you."

"Had to have something new crafted. No pirates."

He gripped Mat's shoulder. "You spent your coins, didn't you, boy?"

He nodded and Elis' grip tightened.

"A deal's a deal and Gran needs me here. I'm not going anywhere anytime soon."

The tinker put it where the phonograph once sat and gave the crank a turn. He gave a boisterous laugh as a zippy tune burst into the shop. "Music in the shop again. Never thought I'd see the day!"

Mat resisted at first, but Elis cajoled him to dance. They locked arms, swung around, clapped and stomped their feet until Mat was out of breath and left wondering about the old smoker's stamina.

They kept it playing throughout the day. Both were delighted to find the single side of a record had many more songs than that of a wax cylinder.

The work day was nearly over when to Mat's horror, Elis remembered the second part of their bargain and asked about his mysterious cousin. Mat dropped and quickly recovered the piece of a wooden puzzle box he had been polishing. It had been so long, he assumed the old man had forgotten her.

"She didn't stay long after we struck up that deal."

"Father returned from the mountains, eh?" Elis asked without skipping a beat.

Trying to remember the entire lie, Mat pushed a noise of acknowledgment through the phlegm in his throat. "Gran was hoping we'd get the additional pair of hands every once in a summer, but her mother reckons the girl's old enough to work their own fields."

"What a shame." Elis never did look up from his workbench where he was gluing resin eyeballs into the sockets of dolls. "It would have been something to meet the only child that ever got to make an impression on your childhood."

The silence arched its back before Mat remembered to grunt in acknowledgment.

At the end of Mat's shift, Elis walked him to the door.

"Well, since you've denied me the second part of our deal and it now seems nigh impossible to uphold, I suppose I must now relinquish you from my service."

"Thank you, kind sir," Mat said, giving a tiny bow. "But it's been fun and I can't quit cold now. Think you can tolerate me stopping by every once in awhile?"

Elis smiled. "Yes, I think I can manage that."