My fingers barrel across the keys in a sharp crescendo, and Emeric belts out an angelic falsetto that brings tears to my eyes.
I need to get him on that stage.
I slam into the final chord, and the tones vibrate in my stomach until I release the keys. The walls and ceiling hold on to the sound long after we’ve gone silent, trembling under the weight of his music.
Chapter Six
“Where,” Emeric asks in a voice barely above a whisper, “did you learn to play like that?”
“I taught myself.” I look over my shoulder. He stands mere inches from me, his chest heaving.
“How?”
I point to the rows of music books lining my walls. “Lots of reading. Lots of studying. Lots and lots of practice.”
He makes the sign of the God of Memory by drawing the first two fingers of his right hand from his left temple to his right. “I’ve never heard anything like you.”
“I could say the same about you.” I tear my gaze from his and gather up the music. “Although you do need instruction on breathing techniques and a few other things. Your lower range could use some strengthening, but we’ll fix that up with some practice.” I make my way to the bookshelves to put the music in its place, then scan through some of my more technical books for scales and arpeggio drills. Emeric follows, glancing through the titles with me, though he keeps his hands respectfully in his pockets and off my things this time.
“First off.” I yank down one book to flip through it. “You need to think about breathing more from your diaphragm. I could practically hear your shoulders rising when you inhaled. You’ll get a much fuller, more supported sound if you fill your belly with air and push it out with the muscles in your abdomen.”
I prattle on, telling him to hold his hands on his stomach when he sings to make sure he feels it balloon out with every breath and describing breathing exercises to strengthen the muscles.
“Do you wear all of these?” Emeric interrupts, and I whirl to see him no longer looking at the music books at all but instead staring at an array of masks on my shelf.
“Have you been paying attention to a word I’ve said?” I huff.
“Of course. Breathing and stuff. Do you wear all of these masks?” He points at one and offers me that maddening grin of his. When he catches sight of my glare, he holds up his hands. “You can’t be angry with me. I’m not touching anything.”
Heaving a dramatic sigh, I snap the book I was perusing shut, shove it under my arm with the others I’ve collected, and cross to his side. “Most of those are from when I was younger. They don’t fit very well anymore.” I touch the place where the one I’m wearing curves over my jaw. “This was specially made.”
“Did whoever made it do the decorations, too? The crystals and the wingy things?” He fans his fingers out around his eyes and wiggles them.
I bite down a smile and shake my head. “No, I did the crystals and the...‘wingy things.’ Which, by the way, are called feathers.”
“Feathers.” He smiles so wide his dimples cut halfway up his cheeks. “Look at you, already teaching me stuff.”
“Now are you going to stop snooping about so we can get on with the lesson?”
“Yes, I think I’m done with my snooping.” He pauses, his attention snagging on something behind me. “Oh, wait. I lied. What are those?”
I follow him to the shelf where a multitude of things I’ve collected around the opera house over the years is displayed. Most of them are odds and ends I found in the theater after performances, things the patrons accidentally left behind: pocket watches, cigar lighters, a silk glove, an earring, a sketchbook, an embroidered lace handkerchief. Pieces of the outside world I can hold in my own two hands.
Emeric inspects them all, and my cheeks grow hotter and hotter with each passing second. He must think me a fool, hoarding these useless baubles as though they’re worth something. I find my hand dipping into my neckline to pull out the pendant there, stroking its corners for comfort as I force myself to breathe easy.
He stops on an old brass memory snare—a little orb-shaped trinket superstitious people wear around their necks in hopes of remembering things that having their elixir drained has made them forget. It is certainly not the most ornate or expensive thing on the shelf, but he regards it with warmth. The God of Memory’s symbol of protection—a simple circle within a larger diamond—has been engraved meticulously on one side.
“My mother had a memory snare like this one,” he says softly. “Only hers was silver. She used to kiss it all the time. Several times a day, in fact. I remember once as a child asking her why she kissed it so much, and she told me that she did that whenever she was living in a moment she hoped never to forget.”
I’m not sure what to say to him. Though memory snares are lovely sentiments, they’re utterly useless. The mind has only a finite store of memory elixir—each person is born with seventeen years’ worth of it. Once they come of age at seventeen, their bodies begin to repurpose the elixir used in their earliest memories to create new ones. But if they hit hard times and decide to sell their elixir for extra coin, that memory capacity shrinks.
The only way for people to make sure they never forget anything is to purchase enough memory elixir to last a lifetime. One can never have too much—once a person consumes enough to remember everything, the excess elixir serves to sharpen details, to keep the passage of time from dulling the sensations. The most brilliant minds in the world are the ones belonging to the wealthy—those who can afford millions of vials.
It’s science. And while the memory snares are a beautiful thought, nothing can keep a memory from disappearing if a person runs out of the elixir necessary to hold it there.
I suppose this is one thing I have to be grateful for. Neither fendoirs nor gravoirs can have memory elixir extracted. I’ll remember every moment of my life until the day I die.
“What is that?” Emeric points at my hand.
I glance down at the pendant in my fist. “Just something I found in a dressing room once.”
“May I?” he asks, holding out a hand.
I pause, considering. I hardly know him, and I’ve exposed so much to him already. What might he do to me with the information he knows, the things he’s seen tonight?
I look up into his face, searching for the promise of violence, the hatred Cyril’s always told me the world harbors for creatures like me, the disgust I’ve been taught runs thick in their veins. But all I see is curiosity. And kindness.
With shaking hands and trembling heart, I lift the necklace over my head and drop it into his outstretched palm.
He brings the pendant close to his face, studying the little gold piece of jewelry with care. His gaze traces over its whimsical box shape, the lovely carvings around the outer edge, the scalloped top, the glass window on the front revealing a tiny, exquisitely rendered ballerina poised midtwirl within. He pauses on the dancer, angling the charm back and forth in the light.
“I found it at the end of our performance season the year I turned five,” I babble, feeling terribly exposed as he inspects it. This is the first time I’ve taken it off in years. “As a child, I used to look through that window and imagine myself as that little ballerina and the box around her as the opera house. I’d dream about what it would be like if I had a face like that, if I’d learned to dance. She has a pretty smile, doesn’t she?”
I hate how my voice quavers, like the battering of a hummingbird’s wings against the wires of a cage.
Emeric nods. “She is pretty. Then again, I’ve always had a thing for redheads.” He catches my gaze and winks.
I step back, my whole body suddenly so hot I feel I might pass out. I adjust my mask, pushing the stray hairs that frame it behind my ears.
“It looks like there are hinges here,” he muses. “Does it open?”
“Open?” I fro
wn. “I don’t think so.”
“Don’t these look like little hinges? They’re small, but I’m almost certain that’s what they are.” He holds out the pendant for me to look.
I squint and shake my head. “Those look like part of the decorative engraving work.”
He slides a nail along an invisible seam, pinning his tongue between his teeth. With a grunt, he grips either end of the pendant and pulls.
I lunge for it. “If you break that, I swear to Memory I’ll murder—”
The pendant pops open. The little dancer’s platform rises a few centimeters and twirls. A faint, tinkling melody plays as she spins.
I gape. “How did you—”
“Shhh.” He presses a finger to his lips and closes his eyes.
The bell-like music trickles around the room, barely louder than an exhale, and yet its lovely song melts away the shaking in my hands, the fear in my heart. My own eyes fall shut, and I listen.
Emeric hums softly along, a countermelody that weaves among the notes.
“Do you know it?” I ask.
“It’s an old southern Vaureillean lullaby,” he says. “My mother used to sing it to me when I was small.” He clears his throat and, when the melody repeats itself, begins to sing:
Meet me in the darkness,
Meet me in the night.
Meet me where the star-touched breeze
Whisks away the light.
For there under the canopy
Of a tall and silent tree
Midnight comes to life, my darling,
To guard our memories.
The shadows of yesteryear
Where dawn and afternoon fade
Keep our moments quiet waiting
In a whisper-worn glade.
As they rest in moonlight,
Angels sing them all to sleep.
So meet me in the darkness, darling,
Where past and present meet.
I hold my breath as his voice slides from word to word and keep the images of his past at bay, determined to hear every note. When the melody comes around again, I open my mouth and join in.
My perfect gravoir memory means I already know the lyrics by heart, so as I sing with him, I break off into a high soprano obbligato.
The cold, underground air around us shifts as our music intertwines on its breath. With my eyes closed, nothing exists but our voices and the chime of tiny bells.
We crescendo together, our duet rising until it fills the earth, until it bursts right through the mountains, taking wing on the breeze and swirling into the sky to shake the stars.
And for the first time, I feel free.
Emeric’s voice slips its hold around mine, twining through me, threading its fingers in my countermelody, caressing its way through my vibrato, fitting in all the open places. Vowels entangle. Consonants undulate against each other.
I cannot breathe, cannot think. Everything is stars and colors and light. Sparks trail up and down my arms, and flickers dance under my skin.
We reach the last line as one, a final crash against a rocky shore dusted in moonlight.
My eyes fly open. We stare at each other, chests heaving. He’s inches away, so close I can see every fleck of amber in his dark, dark eyes. Every shudder of those black lashes. Every quiver of his lower lip when he inhales.
I’m drunk on his burnt sugar scent, intoxicated by the heat billowing between us.
The pendant’s tiny melody slows to a stop, and we are left in silence but for the rush of heavy breathing and the galloping roar of blood in my ears.
One of my clocks chimes the hour, and the sound sends a jolt through my limbs.
I can’t be singing like this—feeling like this—with anyone. I’m a gravoir, a shadow in the underground world of the dead. I seize the pendant from Emeric’s palm, ignoring the way the calluses on his fingers leave trails of lightning on my skin, and yank the necklace back over my head.
“You’d better go.” I jam the music books I’d nearly forgotten I’d been holding against his chest.
“But—”
“Take these. Do the breathing techniques. Practice going into your lower registers.”
“Wait.”
“You remember the way out?” I all but sprint to the crypt’s door to heave it open for him, fumbling in my pocket to retrieve the cigar lighter.
“Yes, but—”
“Fantastic.” I shove him out into the catacombs and throw the lighter after him. “See you tomorrow night. Same time.”
“Isda—”
I slide the door shut so hard dust poofs in the air. Pressing my back to the cold stone, I yank my mask off and wipe the sweat from my brow. My knees quake and then give way, and I crumple to the floor.
Before yesterday, the only life I’d ever lived was the one I stole in glimpses through the memories of the opera performers’ songs. The only feelings I’d ever experienced were ones of longing and loneliness.
In just a few short hours, because of one heart-wrenching, soul-splitting, star-shaking voice, I’m unraveling, every piece of my symphony rearranging, rewriting itself in new, thunderous ways.
I take a slow, shaky breath, trying to remember how Cyril has always taught me to keep my sentiments under control. Inhale. Exhale. Focus on my center. Let the silence and stillness fill me.
But nothing is still or silent. The tiny music box necklace, which I stuffed back into my neckline, rests against my skin. The metal is warm, as though his hand is there pressing gently against the thud-thud-thud of my heart.
Chapter Seven
The following night, I knock on Cyril’s door for our after-performance meeting, surprisingly calm considering the fact that less than two hours remain until I’ll see Emeric again for our second voice lesson.
Instead of shouting for me to enter, Cyril pulls the door open a crack. “I’ll be just a moment,” he calls back into the room before moving into the hallway with me and easing the door shut.
“Who’s in there?” My voice quavers. Did Emeric tell someone about me? Is a member of the King’s Council of Channe waiting in there to cart me away? I press my hands against my stomach and try to breathe through the iron fist that has clamped itself around my lungs.
“An experiment.” Cyril’s eyes sparkle.
I chew on the inside of my cheek and wait for him to continue. Cyril wouldn’t be grinning giddily like that if we were in any danger.
“I’ve brought someone in to test a theory I have about your powers.”
“What theory is that?”
“You told me you erased the moment when the tenor’s voice cracked from people’s minds, correct?”
“Oui.”
He grips my shoulders and tilts his head closer to mine. “My theory is that if you are able to manipulate the emotions in a memory, and you are also able to erase things from the past, then it would stand to reason that perhaps you could create images of your own, as well.”
I gape. “Making part of a memory disappear is completely different from conjuring something out of nothing.”
“You can do this, Izzy,” Cyril says warmly, straightening and dropping his hands from my arms. “You need only apply yourself.”
“But—”
“You are so much more powerful than you think you are. And whether or not you can do this will determine whether or not you’ll be able to help me in a little task.”
“What kind of task?”
His eyes glimmer. “A task outside the opera house.”
I blink several times. My mouth goes bone-dry.
He settles a hand on my shoulder. “I’m not certain yet if it’s even a possibility, and I’m still working the kinks out, but I think you’re ready for big things, Izzy. I just need to make sure before I take any unnecessary risks.”
I swallow the knot of fear in my throat and nod.
Outside. Under the great, big, star-studded sky. Like any other normal girl. “I’ll try,” I say, my voice thick.
“Good girl.” He smiles. “Now, there’s a young boy in my office. His name is Amadou. I need you to go into his memories to find the one in which we met. It occurred only a few hours ago, so it shouldn’t be too hard. Once you locate that memory, I’d like you to change it. I’ve been going over and over in my mind how we’ll be able to tell if you’ve really succeeded, and the only thing I can think of is if you give the boy a reason to fear me. Something that will cause him to react to me in the present.”
I force myself to nod though my whole body seems to have gone stiff with panic. I’ve never tried anything like this before. What if I fail? What if Cyril decides I’m not powerful enough for whatever task he’s planning?
“Perfect.” Cyril almost bounces as he twirls back to the door and turns the knob. “Amadou, I’ve brought someone to meet you!”
I pause with my hand braced against the doorframe, trying to breathe in and out slowly the way Cyril taught me. He has never asked me to do anything with my power that I was incapable of doing. I think of those long afternoons back when I was nine or ten, all those hours I spent trying to manipulate the emotions in his clients’ memories. It had seemed such an impossible task then, and now it comes effortlessly. Like I’ve always known how to do it.
Perhaps this will be like that. A challenge. Cyril thinks I can do it, so I must be able to.
Imagining the satisfaction and pride that will fill his eyes when I succeed, I step into the office behind him and close the door.
Sing Me Forgotten Page 5