Strange Sweet Song

by Rule, Adi

  Twenty-six

  WHAT DOES MUTATION FEEL LIKE? Sing climbs onto a picnic table and swings her leg over the moonlit wooden fence. Is it a tingle? A burn? A sickness? Or just silence? This lonely peak would be just the place to hide a secret toxic waste dump. Or a mad scientist’s lair. What would her father say if she came home contaminated? I know you are trying, carina, but the great sopranos—none of them are glowing green, eh? Do you think the major opera houses want green sopranos? And now you have developed a third eye, of all things! It will not do. Go practice your scales.

  But a wooden fence wouldn’t be any sort of protection against toxic waste. It’s probably the bright, mysterious DANGER signs, straight out of a sci-fi B movie, that are making her think these crazy thoughts.

  The muffled noise of the party carries across the lawn and over the fence, punctuated by sharper, closer sounds—squeaking branches, crackling leaves, the hissing of the wind. Her father’s warning, coupled with Marta’s declaration that the Felix is real, bothers her. Even though the idea of a giant, mythical cat is ridiculous, something itches in her mind. Something that says, This forest is real. The Felix is real. She tries to toss the thought aside.

  Perhaps the danger the signs warn of is simply that the land beyond the fence is wild and cold and tangled, no place for a wayward conservatory student. Sing drops to the crunchy ground, washed in gray light.

  If Lori hadn’t started singing, maybe Sing could have gone back into Carrie’s room. But when she heard those bold, playful snatches of song, the familiar, knotted bitterness came creeping back, and she knew she had to go. Maybe for the night, maybe for just an hour, but she had to get away. No, not away—

  To.

  She had to come to the forest. It has been watching her, waiting for her, since her arrival on campus. Dark, lonely, and quiet. The forest is everything Sing hasn’t known for two years.

  Is she jealous of Lori Pinkerton? Of Ryan’s attraction to her? Of her long blond hair? Her confidence? Her voice? Lori is so much like Barbara da Navelli, and Sing has spent the last two years trying to be like Barbara da Navelli. Could she be jealous of her own mother—her own dead mother?

  Marta and Jenny didn’t even notice her leave the party, and that’s all right with her. She doesn’t want them to see her now, not when she doesn’t know who she is anymore.

  The woods smell of winter, and she is glad she brought her thick school jacket. She starts walking along the fence but gradually moves away from it, keeping it on the edge of her vision. The forest floor crackles like flames even as she shivers. The pine trees cast straight, crisscrossing moon-shadows.

  Quand il se trouvera … She begins to hum Angelique’s most famous aria. At first, she isn’t sure if she is humming only in her head or into the forest air as well. But the hum grows, and eventually the words come with it. Her voice spirals upward and entwines itself around the jagged branches, slipping over and under them and up into the sparkling sky.

  It is the first time she has really sung in years.

  Singing is so effortless here. She calls on the notes and they are there. She calls on the air, and its gentle pressure carries her voice and her whole body through the woods in every direction; the sound is a soft golden bubble.

  Suddenly, the faintest of noises stops her. Her body is jolted back to earth, lungs first. Cold air burns her throat.

  A rustling in the bushes.

  Probably a raccoon or a fox. Or some kind of night bird.

  The bushes are silent now. The sky has darkened with clouds. Sing tries to sense where the fence has gotten to without taking her eyes off the place where the noise came from.

  Was that another rustle, or just the breeze through the leaves?

  She sees again the image of the yellow DANGER signs. What dangers could possibly be out here? Bears? There are probably bears. But shouldn’t they be hibernating?

  She crouches, eyes straining at the dark underbrush. Another rustle, and two blue eyes appear, level with her waist. Frozen, Sing looks into the blue eyes and sees her fear reflected. Yet the eyes keep her in their gaze, wide and terrified but steady.

  Despite her own prickling nerves and thudding heart, her instinct is to comfort this frightened creature. “Hello,” she says softly, a coo, three legato notes. The eyes creep closer. “Who are you?” She keeps her voice clear and gentle. The eyes creep closer still, and the moonlight falls on soft fur, oversize triangular ears, and paws too big for the legs they are attached to.

  Sing feels warm blood running through her body again as her own fear vanishes. “You’re a kitten!” she says. “You’re a big kitten, my love.”

  The big kitten studies her, eyes wide, ears swiveled in her direction. She feels him trying to connect, to ask, to communicate, but all he can do is look. And listen.

  “Did you … did you hear me singing?” she asks, and his ears twitch. I’m talking to a wild animal, she thinks. A big wild animal. With big teeth.

  But he’s so adorable.

  The big kitten blinks. Sing begins to hum again, and he closes his eyes—once, twice—in a cat-smile. She can’t help a laugh that briefly interrupts the song.

  The ashy smell of winter is weaker here by the shivering brush, and she is soothed by the black, silent trees that surround her. The conservatory’s lights and movement are a thousand miles away; she is at the bottom of a giant lake of calm shadows and rippling starlight.

  But something prickles her mind. Here next to her, in the legendary haunting grounds of Durand’s great beast itself, is a cat. A big cat.

  All around her is shadow and silver moonlight, vague shapes and colorless night. But the cat is vivid. He is solid, of that she is certain, but he seems to exist both here in the forest and elsewhere: a different space, a different part of her mind. She can see him so clearly.

  But for his coloring, she would swear he is a large mountain lion cub. His clean, soft fur is an unusual light orange at his head and over his front legs, which deepens to downright unnatural shades of lavender and then deep purple around his midsection, continuing over his back legs. Tiny, silvery tufts are dotted here and there, particularly around his hindquarters and along his tail, which is nearly black at the very tip. He looks like dusk.

  She allows herself to think the word, for the first time entertaining it as something true. Something real. Felix.

  Could this be a—a baby Felix, then? She stops humming, and the big kitten opens his large, questioning eyes. She can’t imagine being held by the malevolence of his gaze the way the Felix’s victims surely would be. But there is something supernatural about him, a faint blurriness around his edges, the smallest suggestion of a glow from within the glistening blue.

  “Felix?” she whispers.

  He doesn’t indicate the word means anything to him, and she feels a relief she knows is unjustified. After all, why should a mythical creature know or care what humans call it?

  But as the light breeze surrounds her with the comfortable fragrance of dead leaves, she knows she doesn’t want him to be Felix. “I’ll call you Tamino,” she says, “after Mozart’s hero of The Magic Flute, who had to pass many tests to win the princess Pamina. I see from the ice in your eyes that you’ve been through the trial of water, and from the flames in your fur that you’ve done the trial of fire.”

  This suggestion seems to agree with Tamino; he sits, awkwardly lowering his back end and wrapping his long tail lightly around his legs. Sing exhales.

  Tamino is waiting for something. A song.

  Twenty-seven

  WHEN THE BREEZE TURNS from fresh to chilly, when her body and voice begin to complain subtly of the lateness of the hour, Sing leaves Tamino and makes her way back to the fence. He does not follow, at least not where she can see him, although she thinks she feels his presence as she moves through the bony, clattery brush.

  She finds a dead tree lying next to the fence and gets herself up; it will be enough to allow her to clamber back over. As she stands on the tr
ee trunk, grasping the fence posts, it takes her a moment to get oriented. The strange stone tower sits enigmatically at the other end of a neat lawn, and she realizes she’s all the way across campus, behind Archer.

  Just as she shifts her weight to throw a leg over the fence, a voice crackles through the still darkness, causing her to gasp. “Playing in the woods, are we?”

  She peers back into the forest. There is no one around. Her body tingles. She tries to remain completely still, but the cold and her nerves are making her hands shake.

  The voice says, “Singing to the trees? Do you work in the choreography, too?”

  Now she knows that grating, ugly sound. “Apprentice Daysmoor?” Her ears ring with their straining into the silence.

  “Up here,” is the response, and she raises her eyes to find the pale face of a ghost staring back at her from a high branch. She covers her mouth.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake.” Daysmoor hops down to another thick branch and starts to lower himself to the ground. “I’m not going to eat you, you know. Although I can’t speak for everything that lives in this forest. Crossing that fence was profoundly stupid of you.”

  She finds her voice. “What are you doing out here?”

  “None of your business,” he says, jumping down. “What are you doing out here, besides trying to get yourself killed? Communing with … nature?”

  What does he mean by that? Did he see the big kitten? He is close to her now, the warmth from his body making her realize just how cold she is.

  “Just sprawling around the forest like I own the place,” she says. That clearly catches him off guard. He tilts his head, his dark eyes fixed on her, and for a few long seconds, she isn’t sure if he’s going to scold or laugh.

  But he does neither. Instead, he hops onto the dead tree and vaults a little awkwardly over the fence. “Don’t come into this forest again. You should be in bed. Or at Carrie Stewart’s party, hoping no one finds out you’ve got wine coolers.”

  “How did you—”

  But he cuts her off with a violent gesture. “Get down.”

  “What?”

  “Get down!” he hisses. “Behind the fence!”

  A robed figure is striding across the lawn toward the fence. She can’t be sure, but it looks as though he is wearing black faculty robes. Daysmoor goes to meet him, a distance from Sing’s hiding place.

  The black-robed figure says something Sing can’t make out; his tone is low and calm. Daysmoor answers. They continue like this for a few minutes, voices getting louder as the conversation progresses. Finally, Sing hears Daysmoor shout, “What are you going to do? Lock me up? You can’t stop me.”

  The black-robed figure continues speaking. He puts an arm around the apprentice, who throws it off violently. Then the figure raises his voice, and Daysmoor is silent. He allows himself to be led back toward Archer, and their path takes them closer to where Sing is hiding. As they pass through a pool of moonlight, she sees the face of the black-robed figure—the Maestro.

  When they have gone a safe distance, Sing scrambles over the fence to head for the quad and her bed. But something catches her eye—a flicker by the fence where the two men stood. There in the cold, dark grass, her fingers find a small stone. It rests on the leaves as though it has been dropped, and when she holds it up to the moon, it glitters. She puts it in her pocket, and its strangely cold surface makes her leg tingle.

  Sing turns again to the two men and watches them recede into the shadows. The Maestro’s arm never leaves Daysmoor’s hunched shoulders.

  Twenty-eight

  GLORIA STEWART WOULD HAVE APPROVED of the venue for the first competition in her name. Carnegie Hall was one of her favorite places to perform.

  “I’m very proud of you, Nathan,” George said, brushing a speck of lint off the young man’s deep black tuxedo. The garish lighting in the small, decrepit room in which they waited deepened the shadows on Nathan’s face.

  The other pianists in the room chatted nervously and drank glasses of water. George watched them out of the corner of his eye. “Well, my friend,” he said, “it’s time for me to go.”

  Nathan looked at his watch. “Now? You’re sure you can’t take a later flight?”

  “I’d stay the night if I could,” George said. “You know that. But I’ve got exams to give in the morning.” It used to be hard to lie to such a beautiful face. It was getting easier.

  “I’m so grateful to you, George,” Nathan said, embracing him. “For everything.”

  “Yes, yes.” George pulled away. “Just remember—whatever happens, it’s for the best.” He adjusted Nathan’s boutonniere, a white rose.

  “Of course,” Nathan said.

  There were no real elevators, designed for people rather than pianos, in the recesses of Carnegie Hall, so by the time George had hurried down six flights of echoey stairs, he was a little out of breath. Even so, when he saw the taxi across the street, he ran.

  He checked his watch six times on the way to the airport. It would be fine. Last minute, but fine. The important thing was that he be as far away as possible when Nathan began to play.

  He did feel a pang when he pictured Nathan striding onto the stage, gilt behind him and polished wood beneath him. For a moment, everyone in the hall would know in their hearts he belonged there. If only George could see it just once.

  He patted his pocket. The crystal was ice and getting colder as the taxi sped away.

  It was for the best.

  Twenty-nine

  SING IS ALWAYS MUTE in her dreams.

  Except tonight.

  Tonight, she awakens euphoric. She sang in her dream. It was so easy. The missing piece was there—if only she could remember how to do it.

  A tingling feeling spreads across her body. She puts a hand to her chest and finds the little crystal that was lying in the dark grass. It hangs around her neck now in place of the teardrop pearl, fitted into the same grasping, gold tentacles. Why did she replace her mother’s pearl with this strange little object?

  And who does it belong to?

  * * *

  Be professional. Ryan is just another accompanist.

  Archer’s glossy white walls and square windows make Sing think of an elementary school, but Apprentice Daysmoor’s strange stone tower rising from one side looks more like some kind of mountain stronghold. She tries not to look at it as she crosses the quad.

  The campus seems so small this morning. Sing feels the sprawling forest pushing up against the fence on all sides. But what did she find there? Escape? Yes, but only temporarily. The forest is not a refuge. She thinks of the big kitten, standing as tall as her waist. She must have imagined his weighty expressions, his attention to her singing. He must have been a curious mountain lion, and she’s lucky he didn’t bite her. She thinks for the first time of the wayward hikers with their throats torn out, and she shivers.

  She pushes open one of Archer’s metal doors, set with windows whose glass is crisscrossed with wire. To her left are the student practice rooms; to her right, a hallway with two doors marked REHEARSAL ROOM 1: INDIVIDUALS and REHEARSAL ROOM 2: SMALL GROUPS. She takes a deep breath, adjusts the bag over her shoulder, and knocks on the first door.

  “Come in.” It is Ryan’s voice, much more chipper than Sing feels.

  He sits on a folding chair, looking at the brand-new issue of The Trumpeter. His uniform is crisp and clean; she detects the pleasant scent of laundry detergent. Without looking up, he says, “Sunshine isn’t here yet.”

  Her eyebrows gather in confusion, but then she realizes he must be referring to Apprentice Daysmoor. His impertinence shocks her just a bit.

  “I’m surprised they’ve cranked one of these out already.” He rustles the student newspaper, then reads aloud, “‘Sing da Navelli: Second-Generation Superstar?’”

  Sing turns red. “Oh, no!”

  Ryan peers theatrically at the article. “A-ha! Look at all these secrets! Oh, you’re going to have a hard time living
this down!”

  “Let me see it!” Sing says.

  He laughs and hands over the paper. She reads and exhales. It isn’t a big deal, really. Just a little paragraph nestled amid a few other student profiles. Jenny’s first article.

  “You’re quite the celebrity!” Ryan says.

  She pulls out her score and places it on a music stand. “Hey, I’m sorry I couldn’t go with you guys last night.” She hopes her voice sounds normal and not as nervous as she feels around him.

  “Don’t you worry about it,” he says. “The place closed early, anyway. Some other time, huh? You and me.” He sits at the piano and flips open a score.

  “Okay.” You and me. Did he just ask her out? Sing rolls her shoulders and pretends to be interested in the wall. Ryan begins to play something fast and flashy, and when she glances at him, he makes a face. She laughs. He is fooling around, but he’s also showing off—and she realizes just how highly skilled a musician he is.

  “Nine oh two,” he says after a moment. “Shall we start without him?” It’s a challenge—no, not a challenge: a dare. Now she catches his eye, and he smiles, shoulders relaxed. He is not angry with her after all.

  “I don’t care,” she says. “I don’t care what he thinks, anyway.” She is immediately embarrassed, but exhilarated, too. Why did she say that?

  Ryan laughs in a high voice, a real laugh, and keeps playing the fast, flashy music. “Well, good for you. I don’t either. I’m only interested in the Gloria Stewart competition, to be honest. Opera Workshop is such a pain in the ass—except for the lovely company, of course.” Sing blushes. “And I don’t much care for apprentices, anyway. They’re just mistakes the administration wants to keep close to home. Keep them from spoiling DC’s reputation in the real world.”

  Sing frowns. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, everybody knows,” Ryan says, still playing. “If a student is less than competent, they don’t want him out playing for other people, do they? Other people who’ll say, ‘Sheesh, DC gave that guy a certificate? Looks like things are going downhill.’ So they let ’em cook a little longer if they’re not quite done yet. That’s all.”