Chapter Six - Sisa

*this chapter is a flashback 

I lift the bow of my violin, freshly rosined the night before. I'm alone in the library except for a few students studying and the Gobstones Club meeting going on in a corner. Perfect. I'm not shy, not nearly, but my music is something else for me. It calls to mind memories that I can't deal with in front of a lot of people. 
I start to play, tentative at first, like a humming animal. Then, I begin to go faster and faster, picking up speed as I find my rhythm and hit it. The song I play is wild and intense, and though it is unaccompanied, in my head I hear tambourines and guitars, claps and stomping and these wild, primal shouts that I can't quite name.

The music brings me to a picture in my mind, a scene. My mother has tucked me to sleep in the cavern we're currently calling home, but the other Gypsies are reveling and I cannot sleep. I slip from my thin blanket and move towards the entrance, the guttural song drawing me like a mating call. I poke my head out and see a bonfire, sending its sparks to the sky. My father is playing his guitar, and my older cousins are slapping their tambourines. The crone who 'tells fortunes' is playing a gypsy's violin, her eyes closed in concentration. There is clapping and shouting, and then I find my mother.
She is dancing, her red skirts swirling around her bare feet. Her arms are thrown above her head, her bracelets are jingling. Her long hair is swinging around her face. She is not a person, she is the music. For once, my small self does not see her as dirty. I see her as the most beautiful thing that I have ever beheld.

Someone smacks my arm, and my violin bow slips, playing an earsplitting note that breaks me from my reverie. 
"What's the matter, Gypsy?" someone asks, and I see the boys that have been plaguing everyone- Mulciber and Avery. "Playing your gippo music?"
I wince at the insult and put down my violin. "Is there a problem?" I ask loudly, my accent too loud and my hair too dark and my manners too wild to ever fit in. 
"Normally, we'd tell you to crawl back into whatever hole you came from, but you're a Gyp- you don't even have a hole!" One of the boys crows. 
My hands become fists. I wear my weapons as stolen rings, pearls and false emeralds and diamonds, all honed to points that will draw blood if they need to. 

One of them- I think Avery- sees my clenched fists and chortles. "The Gyp thinks she can take us on. She couldn't even touch us."

"No," says a voice with a lilting Irish accent. "But I can."

Behind me is a girl with dark red hair and light skin. She has freckles and deep blue eyes, and I've never seen her before. Her fists are clenched as well, and though she does not wear rings, those fingers are scarred. She has fought before, and won. I know it somehow, in my very bones.
"Try us," Mulciber says, arms crossed. 
Quick as lightning, the girl takes two light, dancing steps forward and socks him sharply on the side of the jaw. I hear the uncomfortable sound of bone snapping, and Mulciber collapses on the ground. The girl grabs my hand, gives me my violin, and pulls me along to run down the corridor, away from the library. We stop in the spot near the bust of Alvar the Awful.

"I'm Saoirse," the girl says, sitting down and letting her skirts flow around her legs. She's shorter than me, but not by much- a feat, since I'm nearly six feet tall. 
"Maria Isabel," I say, my accent rolling the 'r' and stretching the 'i'. "But you may call me Sisa."
"That music was beautiful," she says, fingering the strings of my violin. The strings make a small, delicate sound under her long fingers. 
"I'm glad you liked it. Do you play?" I cock my head at her, mentally analyzing her features.
"Fiddle, though the sound is very different. Are you really a Gypsy?"

I sigh and run my fingers through my hair, tangling on the small tuft of feathers that have been clipped in. "Yes, well sort of. My parents are, haven't seen either of them in ages, and that's how I was raised- however, I am just a person."
Saoirse looks rapt, and sits up with her knees pressed against her chest. "That's neat."
I lift my violin and place it in my lap. "Would you like to play together someday?"
"I would love to. Lovely to meet you, Sisa."

And then she's off, her dress flying around her boots and sending up a faint breeze. I look after her, carefully storing away everything she's said and done, so that I can analyze it later.