“My parents came from Arexis,” Evie explained, her lilting accent bobbing in the humid air.
“Arexis,” Ronja repeated. “Across the sea?”
“That’s the one. Hope I get there one day, if we ever get out of this place.”
“All right, enough,” someone scolded them, emerging from the shadows to nudge Evie in the ribs.
Ronja felt her heart hit the floor. It was Terra.
“We have our work cut out for us,” the blonde said with a deliberate glance at Ronja’s untamed hair.
Terra looked savage. Her face was decorated with a geometric design of black, red, and blue. Bangles clinked hollowly on her wrists as she swiped her hair from her face and offered Ronja a bitter smile.
“Yes,” Iris said excitedly, evidently taking Terra’s words as enthusiastic.
Ronja was sat on an overturned crate. Terra and a girl named Darren, whose dark skin was adorned with strips of white paint, did her hair.
Darren was gentle with her unruly curls, but Terra was vicious. She heaved and yanked her locks as if she were searching for riches in the knots. Evie and Iris dyed her face, arms, and chest varying shades of black, blue, and green. At one point, Iris slipped away and returned some time later, her porcelain skin now embossed with violet and white.
The smell of the paint was biting, but it was cool and refreshing against Ronja’s skin. It dried quickly and crusted on the planes of her face, chest, and arms. As the four girls worked to alter her appearance, she hung in a strange place between tranquility and discomfort. As much as she wanted to be a part of whatever tradition was about to take place, she was highly unused to being labored over.
“Keep still,” Evie snipped, steadying her jaw with a labor-hardened hand.
“Sorry.”
“Didn’t your mother ever do your makeup?” Iris asked.
“No,” Ronja said shortly.
Iris flicked her eyes toward Evie, but neither commented on her sudden harshness.
Lean fingers brushed over her slowly healing wound. The touch seared the forming scar tissue, but Ronja refused to flinch.
“It’s healing well,” Terra commented. The words were benign, but her tone was acrid. “Any dizziness?”
“Not anymore,” Ronja replied, craning her neck so she could look Terra in the eye.
“Lucky you. It took me a month before I could walk straight.”
The girl shoved back a curtain of pale hair to reveal an ugly scar as long and wide as her pointer finger.
Ronja swallowed dryly. She turned back to Iris and Evie, her stomach flopping like a fish on a deck.
Terra did not speak again, and did not soften her technique. Evie and Iris made up for her silence twofold, chattering about things Ronja could not begin to comprehend. Darren chimed in occasionally, but seemed to be relatively introverted, which Ronja could respect.
“That should do it,” Iris said, finally stepping back.
“Nice work,” Evie cooed.
“Do you want to see?” Iris asked.
“Of course, she does,” Terra snapped, shoving Ronja off the upturned crate.
Ronja stumbled, then whipped around, her tongue curling into a nasty insult. Before she could get the first syllable out, Iris was tugging her toward the mirror, bouncing up and down like a child.
“Look,” the surgeon coaxed her.
Ronja allowed her eyes to drift up to her reflection. She could not hold back a quiet gasp when her eyes greeted their twins.
Her hair fell in soft, rich curls to the base of her ribcage. The right half of her crown was braided, the triplet plaits running horizontally across her skull. Black ribbons were woven seamlessly into the braids, clearly displaying her sutures. Ugly as it was, Ronja found she was not particularly self-conscious, not when others shared the mark. Her eyes were luminous against the brilliant hue of the dress.
But what truly shocked her were the patterns painted on her skin.
The meandering designs were mostly black with blue and green shadows highlighting the bold strokes. A string of green dots decorated her left cheekbone, and a bold branch of black swooped down from her hairline, ending in a curling hook above her right eyebrow. Her collarbones were highlighted black and blue, and rings of color ran up and down her bare arms.
Just below her left collarbone was the insignia of the Anthem.
“This is . . . ” her fingertips hovered over the damp, concentric circles.
“Brilliant,” Iris finished for her.
Ronja nodded dumbly.
A horn, not unlike the blast of a steamer, exploded though the tube.
“It’s time!” Evie crowed. She snagged Iris’s arm and tore back down the tunnel, whooping like a maniac. They were swallowed by the crowd working toward the platform.
Ronja was about to jog after them when Terra shouldered past her roughly, smearing several lines of paint on her arm.
“Watch it, mutt,” Terra growled in her ear.
The girl stalked away, Darren trailing in her wake, seemingly oblivious. Ronja was left with her trembling reflection in the mirror.
23: The Jam
“You look fantastic.”
The voice jolted Ronja from her stupor. Somehow, she had managed to find her way back to the platform, though she did not remember the trip. She looked around, vaguely bemused.
A large space had been cleared on the stone floor, making way for a swelling throng. Everyone was adorned in paint and chattered excitedly.
Roark stood before her in the midst of the gathering crowd. He was barefoot, as were the rest of the Anthemites. His arms and face were streaked with black and gold. The Anthem’s crest was tattooed over his heart, a more perfect rendition of the one wrought beneath her own collarbone.
“Thanks,” Ronja replied absently. “You too.”
“Was that a compliment?”
“I didn’t want to bruise your feelings.”
“Sorry, what was that?” Roark cupped his ear to hear her over the growing cacophony.
“I asked what was going on.”
Roark grinned and gestured widely at the high ceilinged chamber. “This, love, is a jam.”
“Like a traffic jam?” Ronja asked with mock politeness.
“Close. Tell me, in the short time you have been here, have you heard a song?”
“Iris did something with her voice, but I don’t understand it.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t,” Roark replied.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Not you personally, anyone in your situation.”
“My situation?”
“Ah,” Roark held up a finger.
As if in response, a hush settled over the knot of Anthemites. The boy smiled down at her crookedly, his dark eyes gleaming like pools of oil. Ronja felt her heart falter. For once it was not from fear.
Silence reigned. The electric lights clicked off in droves until only the natural light of the fires remained, casting flickering shadows across the soaring walls. Ronja held her breath, though for what she did not know.
A deep, thundering beat began, like patterned footsteps stomping on hollow ground. Ronja felt a shiver scale her spine. The rhythm twined with her heartbeat and filled her lungs. A mountain range of gooseflesh erupted on her arms, though she was not cold.
“Come on,” Roark whispered, grasping her hand.
He began to pull her forward through the crush. The Anthemites grumbled at first, but hushed when their eyes fell upon Ronja.
Roark halted when they reached the lip of the crowd, then reached back and tugged Ronja in front of him. She stood quite still, Roark at her back, and stared.
The quiet mob had formed a ring around one man. His skin was stained black, gold, and green. His eyes were closed, wrinkled in concentration. From a thick leather strap around his neck hung a wooden tub sealed with a swath of taut animal skin. With his palms and fingers, he hammered on the face of the skin, producing the thundering sound that shook Ronja�
�s bones.
“That’s a drum,” Roark breathed in her ear.
Ronja did not know if it was his closeness, or the echo of the drum that made her skin tingle.
She whipped around when a new sound struck up behind her. A cheer went up from the crush, and Ronja grinned despite her lack of comprehension. Evie was moving toward them through a gap, swaying in time with the drum. In her hands was the strangest object Ronja had ever seen. It resembled a golden pipe, and was as long as her arm. Evie’s lips were wrapped around its end, and her fingers flew across a series of valves along its flank. From the basin at the base of the pipe, a fluid sequence of sounds streamed, meshing with the pulse of the drum.
Evie winked at Ronja as she passed, then stepped into the center of the ring.
“That’s a saxophone,” Roark whispered in her ear.
Saxophone. Drum. Saxophone. Drum.
“Trip!”
Ronja turned as a boy about Cosmin’s age appeared at Roark’s elbow. He clutched an oblong black case in his arms nervously, as if it might explode at any moment.
“Thanks, Barty,” Roark said fondly, rumpling the boy’s hair and taking the odd case by its handle.
Ronja eyed it curiously, but Roark offered no explanation.
Cheers ballooned as another man joined the two performers. He carried a small wooden apparatus lined with a circle of tiny metal plates. Roark called it a tambourine. The sound was jarring, but electrifying.
The crowd opposite them split. Ronja raised her eyebrows as a man wheeled an oak machine into the clearing. It was roughly the size of a table, and possessed two rows of interlocking black-and-white levers. He left it at the center of the ring, then filtered back into the throng. A girl with auburn hair and rice-paper skin took his place. Her eyes were milky white. She was blind, Ronja realized with a jolt.
“Her name is Delilah, and that”—Roark pointed at the bizarre apparatus—“is a piano.”
Delilah’s disability did not seem to hinder her as she took her place before the piano and touched her svelte fingers to the plain of levers. Ronja looked on in unbridled fascination as the girl rolled the kinks from her neck, waved at the audience (much to their jubilation), and began to pound out patterns on the black and white levers.
Ronja inhaled sharply.
The clear sound released from the piano was more beautiful than the bells that tolled from the clock tower in the core.
Ronja felt tears prick the corners of her eyes. She brushed them away, checking around to see if anyone had noticed her, but it appeared that all were entranced by the performance.
“Excuse me.”
Roark brushed past her gently, carrying the strange box with him. He crouched on the edge of the clearing and flipped the clasps on the lid. Ronja craned her neck to see what was inside, but his shoulders obstructed her view.
Roark rose swiftly, something roughly the shape of the case and the length of his arm in his left hand, and a thin rod in his right. He shot Ronja a grin over his shoulder. “And this is a violin.”
The boy stepped into the clearing. A roar flared in the mob. The drum sped up and the piano, saxophone, and tambourine followed. Roark placed the wooden instrument on his shoulder, pressed the finely carved rod to the bundle of metal cords on its face and . . .
It was as if the voice of the violin sparked the wicks of each individual soul, jolting them from sleep.
As Roark’s hand, continuous with the rod, flew across the strings, Ronja began to move. It could have been her emotions that ignited her muscles, or the way the other bodies moved around her. Stamping their feet, slapping their hands against their thighs, against their chests, friend swinging around friend and lover around lover like moons orbiting planets. Ronja could not know for sure.
All she knew was that she was moving, she was grinning, she was crying, she was breathing, and it was not because anyone was tugging at her ear telling her to do so.
She was moving because it felt right. She was grinning because there was no other way to be. She was crying because she had never heard anything so beautiful, or felt something so profound. And she was breathing, because for the first time in her life, she wanted to.
When it ended, Ronja was not prepared.
It seemed both a lifetime and a fraction of a second had passed since the jam began, and she did not want it to end.
Ronja still rocked on her heels long after the violin had released its last breath.
“Easy there,” laughed a familiar voice. A slim hand touched her back. Iris stood next to her, her hair frazzled, her eyes bright. Her paint was flaking away, corroded by her salt sweat. “How was your first jam? Wasn’t Evie fantastic? And Delilah? Roark was okay too, that pitcher.”
“I . . . I . . . ”
“Give her some space, Iris,” Roark called from behind her.
Ronja spun to find him crouching on the floor before them, packing the violin away in its snug case.
She bent down, paint-smudged fingers outstretched. The rich wooden face of the violin gleamed in the firelight. The strings were dusted with white, as if a soft snow had fallen on them while he played.
“Oi, don’t touch her,” Roark snapped.
“Her?” Ronja asked, drawing her hand back warily.
Iris snorted when Roark failed to answer. “He’s very particular about Sigrun,” she said, hiding a mischievous smile behind her fingers.
“I don’t understand,” Ronja admitted, looking from Iris, to Roark, to the instrument.
“It doesn’t matter,” Roark said hastily, shutting and locking the lid. He got to his feet, his wicked grin firmly in place. “What matters is, what did you think?”
“It was . . . ” Ronja riffled through her vocabulary, trying to find a word that suited the jam. “I don’t think I have the words for it,” she finally said. “It felt strange, sort of like . . . like a dream I had once.”
Ronja let slip the confession before her lips could block it. A blush peeked between the strokes of paint adorning her cheeks. To her surprise, neither Roark nor Iris was laughing.
“What happened in the dream?” Iris probed.
“I was running through a field,” Ronja said. Her eyes trailed something far away, just out of her line of sight. “I was running, and it was quiet. My Singer was broken, or gone. I couldn’t hear The Music, but I could hear everything else.”
“I wouldn’t describe a jam as quiet,” Iris said with a chuckle.
Roark was silent, searching her face.
“I don’t get it though,” Ronja said, her voice twisted with frustration and wonderment. “What was that?”
“Music,” Roark replied. He spoke the word the way a child might cradle an injured bird. His eyes were as soft as feathers. “That was real music.”
24: Skin Deep
The Anthemites filtered back to their homes, yawning and stretching the night from their muscles. A sleepy sort of comfort settled over the Belly. Voices were muted, fond goodbyes shared. Everything was bathed in the soft glow of the oil lamps, cook fires, and candles.
Ronja sat before one such fire next to Iris and Evie. Darren, two older boys named James and Elliot, and a younger girl called Kala sat across from them, sharing a quiet joke. A bottle of whisky was passed from hand to hand, the brown liquid steadily disappearing into their stomachs and heating their veins. Evie warned her it was strong, but evidently Ronja had inherited Layla’s tolerance. She scarcely felt flushed.
Following the jam, Ronja had been introduced to a whirlwind of Anthemites. Everyone wanted to touch her forehead, and no one asked her probing questions about her origins. One boy barely higher than her hip asked her what The Quiet Song felt like, but he was swatted on the back of his curly head.
No one stared at her wound. No one turned their nose up at her. They wanted to know her, to hear her speak, to hear her laugh. It was both exhilarating and exhausting.
Her dark memories did not puncture the euphoric bubble.
“You were re
ally good, Evie,” Ronja now said, glancing up at the techi and away from the hypnotic flames.
Evie looked down at her fondly through her curtain of black hair. Iris was now snoring softly in her lap.
“Thanks, mate,” Evie said, taking a swig of the liquor, then offering it to Ronja. “My mum taught me how to play.”
“Play?” Ronja asked, grasping the dusty bottle and taking a gulp. She winced as it scorched her throat, then took another sip.
“Play the saxophone. She was really good. Better than me, but not by much.”
“Is she here?”
“Nah, she died a few years back. Flu. Ridiculous, huh? Survived The Music, survived the riots, got taken down by a glorified cold.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No worries. Besides, I’ve got this one,” Evie glanced down at her girlfriend, who was mumbling something in her sleep. Even with her jaw dangling and her hair crusted with sweat and paint, she was beautiful.
“You haven’t said anything,” Evie said suddenly.
Ronja shifted to better view her face. The shadows splayed across her features by the fire were severe, but her eyes were warm.
“About?” Ronja inquired.
“Me and Iris.”
Evie snapped her gaze to the ceiling, and Ronja followed it. Beyond only a few meters of stone, Revinia was churning like the gears of a massive timepiece. Ronja thought she could hear the click of its gears through the shielding rock.
“I hadn’t thought about it much,” Ronja replied honestly. She cocked her head to the side, considering. “I’ve never met a girl who was in love with another girl, but I don’t see why it would be a problem.”
Evie contemplated this. Iris shifted in her lap. “It’s more common than you’d think,” Evie said. She brushed a wayward curl from Iris’s forehead. It fell back into place stubbornly. “But you’ve never met anyone like us because The Music shuts down that part of them.”
“You mean—?”
“The Music is just a mirror of The Conductor’s preferences,” Evie cut in, rolling a kink out of her neck. “If he doesn’t like something, all he needs to do is plant the notion, and people turn against it.”
Vinyl: Book One of the Vinyl Trilogy Page 14
