Songs Of Harmony

by Andrew Elgin

  "No. I can't," said Meldren, her good humor gone.

  "Well, in that case, why don't we at least have a practice at singing ourselves somewhere? Nothing big," he added hastily. "I was just thinking that we could try moving to outside this grove onto the ground outside, just past where the water has soaked back in again. What do you think?"

  Meldren judged the distance and then nodded. "Why not? It's better than just sitting here all day. Besides, if we take our mind off it, we might get an idea." She made herself more comfortable, bowed her head and took a deep relaxing breath.

  "I have no clue what we're doing, by the way," Javin said. "But if we both feel it's right, then I suppose we sing it." He, too, relaxed and let his chin drop until it touched his chest.

  Just as they were about to listen, Meldren thought of something. She was about to say that yesterday, when they had tried singing, they had been taken over again. But she was too late, because it happened again.

  At first, there was no sound at all. No songs, just an inability to move. Not frightening, but they were held still. The sprites unwound from their throats and moved in that liquid way of theirs to coil around their heads above their eyes.

  With the sprites in their new resting place, a voice entered them. It was as though it was made of music, not merely musical. Chiming, flowing sounds formed words in their heads and the voice was surely that of a woman.

  "This is now possible. My small creatures have helped me understand you. They have... ," the voice paused as if searching for the right words, the right cadenced and lyrical sounds, to use. "They have seen into you, touched you, so that you may hear me. They link us. This is better than before. Safer. Easier. Clearer." Even the pauses were filled with a gentle, melodious echoing murmur.

  "I have need of you both. Together. You are the two I need now. One is female and one is male. One was birthed and sung here. One was birthed and sung on my sister. The two of you both are now as one. More than that, you can both hear what is real and begin to make realness yourselves."

  They were facing each other and Javin registered with some part of himself that Meldren's eyes had changed color, from blue to black. Even though they were held, they were both able to register surprise on their faces and they both formed thoughts.

  "I can hear you, the small sounds inside you." The sweetly mellifluous voice sounded to them as though it were smiling. "Singing. Yes. You can sing. You are alone. No others are like you." A pause. "Unique. Thank you for that. You are unique." Another pause, filled with polyphonic sounds; perhaps the sound of Harmony thinking.

  "Father sings this has never happened before. You and me. Us. A new song. I am learning it. It is a new realness. He sings that it can become a powerful song." Another musical pause. "I can ask you this now for you have watched realness. Understand it?" The way the musical inflection rose made it a question. "You have seen. Coming here. They come here... Thank you. Ships. They are in ships and they come here. My sister's realness is...wrong. Not pure song. Not like mine. Not like Father's. In the ships are those who carry that impure song." A longer space this time, as though not wanting to say what has to be said. When Her voice came back to them, there was a small discordance in it; a blemish on the pure music. A sign of stress?

  "Are they to make my realness the same as my sister? Will they break up my songs? I must know. This is new. Unknown. I wish to know. I wish to be...true. To be...wisdom. You must help. You must...sing? Communicate...? With each other. This can be done. Listen."

  Suddenly, they were able to move freely. Javin saw that Meldren's eyes were back to being blue again.

  Meldren show her head in disbelief. "You heard that as well?Is She asking what I think She is asking? About the people on the ships?"

  Javin nodded. "About whether they are going to..." he gestured vaguely, trying to find the right words.

  "Hurt Her! That's what She is asking." She looked hard at him. "Well? Will they? I know what I think. But, you came from there."

  Javin's face showed a distress Meldren had not seen before. A face of regret and sorrow. "I am sure they will." His voice was low and he spoke with reluctance. "Oh, they could come to love it as I do, but they will not give themselves the time. The ones in those ships?" He shook his head at the thought. "They're not like me. They are coming because they can. Isn't that enough of a reason?"

  Meldren reached up and stroked the sprite, a sadness upon her. "She is probably hearing this anyway. But, if that's the case, what is to be done? What can be done?"

  "Before we do anything, suggest anything, I want to be quite clear about what's going on here." Javin's face was drawn. He looked both tired and determined. There was sadness there as well. "I have had strange things happen to me, to my mind. I want to make really sure that we both heard the same thing and that this is not some sort of dream, or some leftover from when they messed with my head. I need to know this. I need to know that I am really not going mad and that a whole planet, this whole planet has been talking to me, to us. I want to know, first, if who I'm looking at right now really is you, Meldren. And then I want to know what it was you heard." There was now a defiance in his look, a challenge asking to be proved wrong.

  Meldren moved to be closer to him and gently turned his head so that she could look directly into his eyes. "Feel my hand on your face. Then look into my eyes and tell me what color they are."

  "Blue. They're blue."

  She nodded but did not let go of his face. "And yours are now dark brown again."

  "What do you mean 'again'?"

  "Yours changed color as well. They were very, very pale. Not sure what color they were, but very pale. And now they're back to being dark brown again." Her quick, reassuring smile dimpled her cheeks. "So we both could see each other and the change that happened." She let go of his face, but remained close. "And I heard Harmony's voice." She closed her eyes to refresh her memory of it. "It is like listening to a river and the wind together playing with a mountain and the most beautiful song there has ever been sung, all wrapped into one voice." She breathed deeply, basking in the recollection. She opened her eyes to look once more directly at Javin. "Does that sound like your memory? I really am me and you really are you. But only if you agree. I mean, you could still be someone else if you wanted to." She cocked her head and raised her eyebrows as she teased him.

  Javin could not but help to smile at her. Grabbing her hand, he nodded as he looked around. "I just wanted to be sure. In case there was a chance that this wasn't happening."

  "I know. Me, too."

  The sprites both began to sway from side to side and utter a surprisingly low-pitched hum.

  Javin and Meldren looked at each other warningly. "Sounds like She's here again." Javin gave Meldren's hand a firm squeeze. "Ready?" And, as Meldren was nodding, so Harmony came to them again.

  "You are... safe?" The immaculate voice poured like liquid sunshine into them; warming, friendly, caring. "Good. Now you have seen each real you, what is your answer? How to be?"

  The silence that was not silence filled them as they each tried to answer, to think, to help. They formed their thoughts for Her.

  "I cannot, will not, stop their songs. That is not my... realness? My... duty? That is for our father." Another listening silence. "Father is the loudest, clearest song of all. He sings that this is not the realness for him. This is for me, now. My sister. We must choose what songs to sing about this. Father sings us. We sing with Him. But this is a song between sisters."

  Silence and thinking.

  "Hide? Be unseen? Hide them? They will break my songs? Hide them? That would break their songs. That is not my... not as I am. It is not how I sing songs."

  Silence, but with the same undercurrent of unseen movement and unheard sound.

  "I hide? I am not seen?" The mellifluous voice purred into the beautiful not-quite-silence, as if thinking. "I am my father's song. I am singing with him. But, I can sing with him but a beat apart. And still be in his song, not b
reak it. He will still hear me. I will still hear him. Hide? That is the name of this song? Be sung but not be seen? I can sing this. He can hear me. He will still hear me." There was a longer pause this time. Finally, the voice flowed again. "Father... smiles. This unseeing, hiding... a new realness. We must sing together to make the new realness. This is a good song, a new singing. My sister will listen and learn. Her choice of song will come."

  Javin and Meldren both felt Her presence withdraw a little. Just before leaving them, She spoke one last time. "This is new. A new song. Here. This place. Father sung it so. I heard and sang also. You heard me. You are with me now. Tiny songs, but with me. I will always hear you. Always. And you will hear all my songs. Be safe with my small ones. They will be with you. I go to sing the new realness with father. Safe now. Safe." And then they were themselves again.

  They shook themselves as if for reassurance that they again had control over their bodies. As they did so, both sprites slid from their foreheads and resumed their previous positions, around their necks, crooning gently as they did so.

  Ignoring the creatures, they looked at each other in disbelief. Javin saw that the sun was again low in the sky. A whole day had passed. As Meldren looked up in response to his pointing this out, they both saw a flicker, a wave almost, cross the sky, as if it was a huge cloth being shaken. It hurtled away into the far distance. The merest echo of that movement was felt by them both in the smallest of tremors beneath them. If they had not seen the first movement above them, they would not have registered the second beneath them.

  "Whooooo." Meldren breathed out the sound in one long note. "Now that was an entirely new type of strange."

  "That's not even close to what it was. Not. Even. Close," said Javin, a bemused look on his face.

  "And what was that about at the end? 'You will hear all my songs'?" She brushed at her sprite with her forefinger. "And are these the 'small ones' she meant? And when She said 'safe', did she mean She was safe or we are safe from now on because he have these around our necks?"

  "Beats me," said Javin, and then, seeing her startled expression, hurried on to explain. "It's a saying from where I grew up. It means, I do not understand any of this."

  "Beats me...," said Meldren, trying out the phrase quietly to herself before giving a grudging nod of acceptance and understanding. There was so much that was new to think about. Where to start? She made an attempt. "If we can hear all Her songs," she said, thinking it out as she spoke, "does that mean we can sing them as well? Which would mean that we would be able to do... anything at all!" Her surprise at what she had said she felt was evident on her face. "Whooooo," she breathed again.

  Javin had a sudden thought. "Can you still see colors around everything?"

  Meldren looked puzzled for a space and then turned her attention to the trees around them. She focused her eyes and tilted her head from side to side before nodding. "Yes. I can. Why ask?"

  "Oh, I don't know. I think I was thinking that, if we could do all those things you said, then perhaps we had lost something else we could do. You know, sort of swap one thing for another. For you, maybe it was seeing the colors. For me... I don't know. Yes. That's true, I don't know. I have no idea what to think."

  "I think," said Meldren decisively, "I think that we are not going to understand it all in one go. I think, we should decide what it is we want to do from now on." She gave an exasperated sigh at Javin's slowness. "Harmony is done with us. There's no reason at all She is going to come back again. She as good as told us that. And nobody was hurt by it. Nobody on those ships. Nobody here. She sang a new song, or something like it, and that was it. Over! Which means...," she said with emphasis, "we can live how we want. The other stuff, the songs and everything, that will become clear later. Or, maybe, it will never come clear." She shrugged. "So what? The point is, we have our lives back, Javin. We can choose what we want to do, where we want to go. Just like we said we wanted." She shook his leg, hoping to animate him a little, see what she could see. "You remember? We wanted to choose how to live? Well, we can. Don't you see that?"

  He remained sitting slumped, his head bowed and arms folded. Meldren's face showed a spasm of fear at his inertia. But then, he lifted his head and looked at her, eyes bright with laughter. He planted a quick but thorough kiss on her lips. "Ah! Meldren, Meldren, Meldren! I love you because you are so sensible! You make everything clear and obvious. I would be still confused, lost, half out of my mind if it wasn't for you. You are amazing!"

  "So, I'm amazing because I'm sensible? Is that what you're saying? I can't be amazing for any other reason? Just sensible?" Her disdain for the word was obvious. "I'll have you remember just exactly what it is that I have done which is amazing and none of which was sensible. I went to meet you, a perfect stranger living in a cave and decided I liked you a lot." She pressed on against Javin's evident wish to explore that sentence a little more. "Then I waited and waited and waited for you, left money to help you, gave up my livelihood, sold everything I had, traveled with you when I had no idea where we were going and all you can say is that I'm amazing because I'm so sensible?" Her glare quelled any response Javin might have thought of making.

  There was a tense silence for a moment, before Meldren poked Javin hard in the ribs and gave a short bark of a laugh. "Ha! Got you! Don't you ever make me wonder if you are suffering, about anything, ever again." Then, seeing the confusion and the dawning of understanding that he had, in turn, been duped, she gave way to her laughter completely and utterly.

  He had no option but to smile and nod in appreciation.

  When the laughter subsided, they felt a release from the tension of the earlier events. They were better able to think more clearly about their future.

  "We have no idea where we are, do we?" Javin asked.

  "As I said, I've not heard of this place, never been here or seen it before, and it seems to go on forever."

  "Therefore, it would seem we have two options." He held up his fingers as he spoke. "One. We decide to keep traveling to see how far it and what is on the other side. Or, two. We decide to go somewhere else, by singing ourselves there." He looked from his fingers to Meldren. "Is there an option three that I've missed?"

  "I don't think so." She gave it some thought. "Remember we said about going to those cliffs and I was worried about falling or ending up inside them? Well, I don't think that's going to be a problem anymore. Harmony said we were safe, At least, that's how I heard it. And she also said that we could hear her songs. So, why not pick a place to go and then hear the song for it? It should lead us there, shouldn't it?"

  Javin reached to his sprite to stroke it's head. "Remember, as well, these little guys. I don't think we would come to harm if they were with us, would we?"

  Meldren smiled at Javin's facial contortions as he squinted to try and see his sprite. "All that's left is to decide, to choose, where we are going."

  Javin gave up trying to see the creature. Instead, he sat up straighter and hugged his knees to him. "Didn't we talk about this. About what we wanted to see, before going into Arlen? You said something about some strange trees."

  "Mmmhmm. And you said something about, what was the word? Like a mountain, but it had fire?"

  "Volcano. But I don't think that would be much fun, actually. Lots of smoke and fire and probably no shelter at all."

  Meldren gazed off into the distance. "The one place I've always wanted to see is the ocean."

  "I remember you saying that, now."

  She turned with a pleading look on her face. "Could we? Could we go there? Really?"

  "Of course we can. We can do anything! And it's got to be a whole lot better than a volcano."

  Meldren clapped her hands in glee, a huge grin on her face. "So, how do we do it?"

  "Beats me!" said Javin.

  "Stop using strange languages on me. And, besides, you said that meant you didn't understand. But don't you mean that you don't know how?"

  "It can mean that, too."
He grinned.

  "You're just making that up!" She lunged at him, but he ducked and fell on his back, still grinning. She made a 'You just wait' face at him, but ended up breaking into a warm smile.

  "I know one thing, though," said Javin, still on his back and watching the bits of the sky that were visible. "I'm tired and I'm hungry and I think everything will seem a lot easier in the morning." As if to prove his point, he gave a jaw-cracking yawn and rubbed at his suddenly watering eyes. "Really tired. Aren't you?"

  Meldren yawned. "I was fine until you yawned. Now I'm tired, too."

  "Could this be Harmony playing with us again?"

  "I doubt it. We've had a very strange day indeed and nothing to eat for hours." Meldren hauled her satchel toward her. "One day, I swear, I am going to cook and eat fresh food for a change. But right now, I'm too tired to do anything else except eat what we have left. How about you?"

  "Whatever you've got is fine with me."

  Munching their way through the remains of their food, they had no energy left for conversation. Finishing up with a drink from the still bubbling spring, they were swiftly asleep.

  Notes From Haven

  The Results Of The Invasion

  The following was discovered on the ship, The New Lander, in 1186, which had been built specifically to take an invasion force to Harmony. It was supplied only for that leg of the journey and for some minor provisioning once the invasion had occurred. The crew and all aboard were undoubtedly already dead by the time it returned to Haven. With failing life support systems and little or no food left, they must have succumbed within a relatively short time. Probably the autopilot program was responsible for the return to orbit around Haven.

  The crewman who wrote this remains unknown and what follows is a series of extracts designed to give the reader an overview of this tragic event.

  "...We had no idea what we were going to face. So many rumors going around. There were supermen who could control our minds. Some of them had super powers and could fight us without weapons. Some strange and some more believable. But in a ship full of people geared for a fight, anything was possible...