To hear the tale of Wandering Ted.
Now, this kind of story usually starts with me saying that young Ted came from humble roots, but that really couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, he was a grown man before anyone ever called him Ted.
His parents named him Theodore Benedict Vanderhoff. Yeah, those Vanderhoffs: big house in the capitol, lots of servants, and so much money that they could afford to hire people to spend it for them. He grew up surrounded by portraits, upholstery, fine food, and private tutors. He had his own nanny when he was a kid, and when he got older, he had a valet.
Of course, as the eldest son of one of the most powerful banking families in all of humankind, it was always understood that he would take over the business when he was ready, so his father sent him off to university to learn all about the agriculture of money: what soil to plant it in, how to tend the crop, and who to trust with it. However, young Theodore wasn’t really interested in making money from money. He wanted to create something beautiful, something that you couldn’t buy. As soon as he was out from under the weight of his family history, he decided that he didn’t want to learn about finance. He wanted to learn about music.
Twice every year, the Vanderhoff family’s head accountant moved money into a fund in Theodore’s name for him to pay for his education, and Theodore turned around and spent that money on music. He bought himself a fine guitar, and he learned from the finest musicians in the capitol. Some of the money went to the school’s record keepers to ensure that when Vanderhoff Senior asked after his son, he heard nothing that he didn’t want to hear. With that precaution in place, Theodore was free to study and practice his craft.
He didn’t just learn about music, either. He learned about the world. The Vanderhoff family lived the way most rich humans did, shut inside their own little bubble, away from everything they thought lesser than them. Their only concession to the way of the world was their dwarf chef, just enough of an outside presence to make them think people wouldn’t think they were racist. Theodore managed to avoid absorbing his family’s views toward the other races, but once he went off to university and actually met a few, he moved from innocent ignorance to outright kinship. He made friends with dwarves, elves, and gnomes alike, driving him further and further from his family’s way of thinking. He had grown up listening politely to speech after speech from his father about the inherent superiority of humankind, but it took him only a few years away from home to realize how empty those rants really were.
One evening, during Theodore’s last year at the university, he and some of his friends went to a local tavern for a night out. Four of them, all told, and a pretty evenly mixed bunch. Janice was the only other human, along with a dwarf girl called Giselle and an elf gent named Peri. They liked to spend their evenings out on the town, and there was a band in from the north that a few other students had been raving over.
That was the idea, anyway. The four of them had been nursing their drinks for nearly an hour waiting for the show to start, but the stage was still empty. A group of three gnome girls in the corner were getting drunker and drunker, shouting incomprehensible jeers at the curtain.
“Any more of this and people are going to start throwing nuts at the stage,” said Peri. “Think we should go?”
“No way,” said Janice. “Not after what Greta said about this group. Come on, Ted, back me up.” His friends never called him Theodore.
“Well, something must have gone wrong,” said Theodore. “I’m going to see what’s up.”
“Yes, go on, then,” said Giselle. “Go and save the day, Teddy boy.” She took another pull from her drink and giggled as she spilled a little of it on the table.
Theodore set his glass down and slipped through a doorway next to the stage. The hallways and back rooms looked like rooms like that always look, cluttered with brooms, crates, and other sorts of things not meant for the eyes of paying customers. One room near the back of the stage was full of ropes and paint, but mostly it was full of an argument. The two young people on one side looked like northerners, with swarthy complexions and sturdy leather clothes, and the portly man standing in front of them with his arms folded across his chest had the word “publican” written on his very soul.
“Well, that’s not my fault, is it?” said the older man. “We agreed on . . . what do you want, mate?”
“If you’re the fellow in charge around here, you might want to appease the crowd out front before they start overturning chairs.”
“Well, that’s up to these two, isn’t it?” He nodded at the performers. The man wore a sash across his chest with a flute sticking out of a pocket on the front, and the woman had a drum slung from her shoulder. Neither quite came up to Theodore’s eye level, but both of them were the same height. There might have been a bit of gnome in their family trees somewhere.
“And we’d have no problem starting the show,” said the gent with the flute, “except that all of a sudden, we’re not getting paid. You owe us fifty marks.”
“The deal was fifty marks for the three of you to play, and I count two.”
“We can still go on without a guitar player,” said the lady. “Don’t blame us just because he got his silly hide shut in the drunk tank.”
“Look, just dock us by a third and we’ll be happy to go on,” said the gent. “But you’re not getting a show for free. We have to eat, too.”
“If the only problem here is a missing guitarist, I can fill in,” said Theodore. “I know my way around a scale.”
“There you are,” said the publican. “There’s your third man. You do a show with him, and thirty-five marks are as good as yours. And I can spot you a drink or two for your trouble, as well,” he said to Theodore.
“You’re joking,” said the gent. “Go on stage with a complete stranger and ask him to play a show completely cold? No offense, friend, but you don’t look like a stage man.”
“Do you need an audition?” said Theodore.
The lady gave a smirk, reached over to where a weathered guitar leaned against a wall, and tossed it to Theodore. “You know The Tammany Rounder?”
Theodore caught the instrument by the neck, slipped the strap over his back, tucked it under his arm, and began to play. It was a popular folk dance in the southern prairie lands, near the border between human and dwarf country, in a fast three-step. His fingers tipped along the strings, and his eyes slowly closed as he fell into the music.
The two performers looked at each other, eyebrows raised. The publican just looked impatient, because there are always people who can hear a faint sonata in the distance and wonder what the noise is.
When Theodore reached the end of a phrase, he opened his eyes again. “Well? Do I pass?”
“He hit more of the notes than Bran ever does,” said the gent to the lady. They turned to face Theodore.
“We can’t deny your talent,” said the lady, “but I won’t bank on your stage presence. Stay to the back, try not to show off, and follow our lead.” As the three of them stepped out onto the stage, the publican raised the curtain.
Theodore stood before an audience for the first time, not entirely sure what to do with himself. His friends cheered his name and waved their arms in the air, but it was hard to hear them over the rest of the crowd, happy to be seeing the night’s entertainment at last. Theodore looked around the room, slightly unsure of himself, but when the lady with the drum began tapping out a beat and the gent with the flute started in with a melody, Theodore followed along with a few chords, and the show began.
They played fast songs. They played slow songs. A few people got up from their seats and started dancing and singing along to the music. Wenches and swains wove between the tables, clearing empty glasses and tankards and replacing them with fresh drinks. Throughout the show, Theodore surveyed the audience for signs of displeasure or jeering, but all he saw was a crowd of people wrapped in the embrace of music, and he was the happiest man in the whole world.
Once the show was finally over and the curtain had fallen, Theodore and the two performers stepped into the wings, breathing heavily and weak at the knees.
“Oh my goodness,” said the lady. “That was the best show we’ve ever done.”
“That was amazing,” said the gent. “I’ve never seen a crowd chime in like that before.”
“Well done, all,” said the publican as he approached, a cloth pouch in hand. “You’ve certainly earned your keep tonight. Here’s your pay, thirty-five marks as agreed.”
“Are you serious?” said the gent. “For a show like that, thirty-five marks?”
“As agreed. Do you really want to get into this again?”
“No, he’s right,” said Theodore. “I’ve been to shows here before that charged for admission at the door, and the crowd didn’t get half as excited as this one. This was at least a sixty-mark performance, by my reckoning.”
“Oh ho ho!” said the publican. “And who are you to be such an expert?”
“Of course, you might say I’m biased about the quality of the music tonight,” said Theodore, “and you wouldn’t be wrong to say so, but I wasn’t just watching the crowd. Your servers kept themselves busy, too.”
“What are you saying, boy?” said the publican.
“Those people out there bought a lot of your booze. I wasn’t keeping an exact count, but by the end there, I’d figure no more than half of the drinkers were waving beer mugs. Most of them were buying the nice stuff. I’d wager you coined at least three hundred marks tonight during the show alone.”
“You got an offer for me, then?” said the publican. He had enjoyed the show himself, but now he was wearing his negotiating face.
“Eighty marks,” said Theodore.
“Seventy-five.”
Theodore smiled. “Done.”
The publican reached into a pocket of his grubby apron and took out a leather wallet. He counted out eight tarnished coins, added them to the pouch, and handed it over.
“Good work tonight,” he said, turning his back and returning to the bar to supervise the cleanup.
The performers stared at Theodore. “What do you do, anyway?” said the gent.
“I’m studying music at the university.”
“Sounds like you’re done studying, friend.”
“Well, I still haven’t done my exam.”
“Forget exams,” said the lady. “What do any professors know about music? Anyone who can play like you did out there tonight and haggle for better pay at the end of it has nothing to learn from any schoolroom. I’m not saying you don’t still have anything to learn, but there’s no better learning than what you get on the road.”
“You’re not offering me a job, are you?” said Theodore.
“As enjoyable as that might be,” said the gent, “we can’t just leave Bran to rot. We’ll fetch him in the morning and be on our way, and you should give some serious thought to a tour. What’s your name, by the way?”
“Theodore. My friends call me Ted.”
“Jago,” said the gent, “and this is Mina.” Jago fished five coins out of the pouch and handed them over. “Twenty-five marks. Your first show purse.”
“I wouldn’t think of it,” said Ted, waving him off. “Dangle it in Bran’s face for me. That’ll teach him to get drunk and leave his guitar for some newcomer.”
“A thousand thanks to you, then, Ted,” said Mina, giving Ted a kiss on the cheek. “We’ll keep an eye out for you.” Ted and Jago shook hands, and then Jago and Mina loaded up their sparse belongings and left the tavern. Ted watched them go, an inspired light burning in his mind.
Whatever else happened, he decided, he wouldn’t let anyone call him Theodore again.