Odda Quarrel
Session 1: A Dragon at the Fair
Odda was in the Wool Exchange tower checking her grandfather’s bell when the light changed, and she came out on the leads nose to nose with a dragon. Orpiment asked what the bell was for. Odda explained ringing changes, the difference between a peal and a toll, and why the Great Tenor is half a tone flat on purpose. The dragon listened to all of it. Then she asked, very quietly for something her size, whether Odda could make it play a tune. Odda could not. She has been thinking about the question since.
Session 2: The Wax Vaults
In the dark under Sealwright Hall the smirches came in a black tide, and Odda found that a struck hand-bell at the right pitch made them shiver and pull back. She rang Beatrix’s eyes clear twice. Afterwards she sat on a crate and wrote down which note it was, because a trick you cannot repeat is only luck.
Session 3: Under the Sallow Hills
Gammer Tansy Holt sang the barrow-verse at the fireside in Holt End, and Odda had it by the third time through, in harmony. The old woman corrected her third note. At the barrow door the clay chorister sang the first line and waited, and Odda answered with the rest, bells and voice together, while Beatrix sang along a beat behind. The door opened. Inside, when Iveth read the rent aloud, Odda was the only one who laughed, because it was the first time in her life anybody had put a price on the thing she does.