The Harp and the Ravenvine

by Ted Sanders

  Derek said, “Pill, what were you even doing out there this time of night?”

  “The barking. It woke me up.”

  “You sure got out there fast.”

  “I’m a light sleeper,” April said, tugging her hair over the tip of the vine. “You know that.”

  “Only when there’s something on your mind.”

  April had to resist rubbing her aching forehead. There was plenty on her mind. The shadow. The stench. The searing pain and the blinding light that came whenever she tried to push the broken vine beyond its limits—what she’d come to think of as a whiteout. It was the missing piece, of course. She was only trying to do what the vine wanted to do, what it was supposed to do, but she couldn’t. Not without the missing piece.

  The vine was calm now, no longer white-hot with agony, but the pain of the missing piece remained. It would never go away. Sometimes she imagined that missing piece, distant and adrift, like a fallen leaf that had been blown far from its tree. Sometimes a sensation came to her through dreams, as if someone had cried out in a voice only she could hear, and the vine seemed to cry out in response. But it never came to more than that. And maybe she was better off assuming that it never would. Not everything that was lost could be found.

  “I do have a lot on my mind,” she told Derek. “But I never understood that expression. Shouldn’t it be ‘in my mind’?”

  Derek sighed. Wind rattled his window. The first few drops of rain began to chatter against the glass and onto the sill. Outside, Baron noticed the rain but didn’t bother to take shelter, still determined to stand guard. Derek closed the window and then crossed the room, opening his door.

  “Back to bed,” he said. “Whatever’s in your mind, try to get it out.”

  “You don’t seem that concerned about what I saw,” April said.

  “I’m more concerned about you falling off the roof.”

  April stepped past him into the hallway, lowering her voice so as not to wake Uncle Harrison. “What I saw was so tall it could have dragged me off the roof,” she whispered, trying in some strange way to be funny. But once the words were out, she realized they weren’t funny at all.

  Derek just stared at her for a moment, one hand on his door. “Shut your window, and stay inside,” he said. “There’s a storm coming.”

  AT BREAKFAST THE next day, a Tuesday, April softened three frozen waffles in the microwave before crisping them up in the noisy toaster oven. Derek, who was working construction with Uncle Harrison this summer, came clomping down the stairs in his work boots. April’s head rang faintly, still tender from the whiteout the night before.

  “Morning,” Derek said.

  “Morning.”

  “Bacon?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Derek threw half a slab of bacon into a skillet. “I heard you go outside earlier. Did you go looking for footprints?”

  April hid her frown. Sometimes it wasn’t so great having a brother who knew you so well. April had gone looking, taking Baron with her to search the rain-soaked patch of woods for traces of the tall man. Last night’s storm had knocked a few new limbs down. Baron had sniffed around intently and growled to himself once or twice, picking up faint remnants of the terrible stink, but there’d been nothing to see.

  “I did,” April said, skewering a slice of waffle on her fork and letting the syrup dribble off. “No luck.”

  Derek poked at the bacon with a spatula. “So the tall man . . . tall thing. Just your imagination?”

  April pictured the shadow she’d seen. “No. Baron saw it too. And we—he—smelled it.” She tipped her head forward, making sure her hair still covered the vine. She wasn’t going to pretend she hadn’t seen what she’d seen, but the vine had to remain a secret. “Anyway,” she said, “I think I’ll tell Doc Durbin about it.”

  Derek laughed and stabbed at the bacon. It sputtered and hissed. “It was probably Doc you saw in the first place. She’s always stomping around out there.”

  April didn’t bother to inform him that the figure she’d seen in the woods was at least twice as tall as Doc Durbin, and not nearly so round. He’d only tease her more. “Well, if it was her, then I guess she’d be the best person to ask, wouldn’t she?” she said lightly.

  “Or the worst,” Derek intoned, trying to sound sinister.

  April ignored him. Derek liked to make fun of their quirky neighbor, but Doc Durbin was a sensible person who always treated April seriously. Doc was a veterinarian, a job April imagined having herself one day. April frequently stopped by Doc’s for a visit in the late afternoon, as much to see the hodgepodge of wild animals Doc rescued as to see Doc herself. April always learned something new with each visit—especially now, with the vine.

  April’s current favorite rescue was a young raven with a broken wing, a survivor of an apparent cat attack. He was due to be released back into the wild any day now. Arthur—that was the name Doc had taken to calling him—was rather remarkable. His intelligence burned more brightly than any animal April had encountered, before or after she found the vine. Unlike Baron, who saw the world as a simple landscape of friends and foes and food, Arthur seemed to view his environment as a series of problems to be solved. He had figured out how to unlock two different cage doors with his beak before Doc rigged up a third with a steel latch too heavy for him to open. He played with toys—sticks, twisty ties, balls of aluminum foil—with a distinct sense of mischief and experimentation.

  Arthur was also extremely talkative. In addition to his throaty crowlike call, he was able to make several other sounds, from a froggy croak to a gentle cluck—tok tok tok—to a passable imitation of his own name, as if he were a parrot. April had taken to feeding Arthur by hand, which was not strictly encouraged, but she liked the way he took the meat or baby carrots or chunks of dry dog food—his favorite—delicately into his thick beak. She admired the way he measured her intent, and his surprising patience with the process. It wasn’t at all like Baron’s desperate, gluttonous joy at dinnertime.

  Thanks to the vine, April also knew that Arthur’s wing had been fully healed and without pain for the last few days. He was desperately ready to be set free. There was no way she could share this info with Doc, of course, and besides—somewhat selfishly—April wasn’t quite ready to say good-bye to the bird yet. But soon she would have to. Doc had promised her she could be there for his release, probably tomorrow.

  “It makes me nervous when you’re on that roof,” Derek said suddenly.

  “What?” April asked, lost in her thoughts.

  “The roof. I wish you would stay off of there.”

  “Okay, Mom.” She bit her lip as soon as the words left her.

  Derek started flipping the bacon, two slices at a time. Dots of grease leapt from the pan. “Don’t call me that,” he said quietly.

  A few minutes later Uncle Harrison came down, the stairs creaking under his enormous bulk, and the three of them ate in silence. Afterward, Derek and Uncle Harrison left for work. April’s headache faded at last, and she cleaned up the dishes, feeling that strange mix of happy and sad she always felt when she was left alone in the house. But after last night, there was an extra thread in her mood. She tried to tell herself it wasn’t fear.

  Dishes done, she wandered out onto the back steps. She didn’t need to scan the sunlit trees to know that nothing unusual was there; Baron’s relaxed state of mind told her so. The dog slouched across the yard and lay down beside her, looking much older than he had last night. And he was old. April and Baron had been alive the same number of years—thirteen—but while that was young for a human, it was mighty old for a big dog like Baron.

  April rubbed the dog’s thick yellow head and wondered, not for the first time, if Baron himself felt old, if he even had a concept of what “old” meant. It was the sort of thing April had spent her whole life wondering, and now, thanks to the vine, she was maddeningly close to knowing the answer. Animals didn’t really have language the way humans did—th
e vine made that very clear. But the vine also suggested something beyond language, a connection she couldn’t quite wrap her brain around, a kinship just beyond her reach. She rubbed the severed stem of the vine with her thumb. The missing piece again. Always the missing piece.

  Sometimes April imagined that if she sat quietly enough and focused hard enough, she could think the vine into repairing itself. She tried it now, pretending that whatever tendril had been snapped off could somehow regrow itself, that the vine could become whole again—that she could become whole. Her thoughts wound through the coils of the vine and streamed out the broken end, pouring into the air. She kept at it even as her headache began to return, followed by a sick swimming sensation in her gut, as if she were waiting for a roller coaster car to drop.

  A voice cut through the air. “You’ll want to stop that.”

  April startled, wrenching her thoughts away from the vine. Baron lurched sleepily to his feet, coughing out a single gruff bark. The red-haired stranger from the other day stood at the bottom of the porch steps, gazing up at them with a smile. Her bushy, apple-colored hair shone in the sun. A large pendant hung from her neck, a brown wicker sphere the size of a tennis ball.

  “Stop what?” April asked calmly, trying to ignore her racing heart.

  The woman cocked her head, a wild glint in her dark eyes. Her gaze slid to April’s left ear, where the vine lay hidden. “Don’t poke at the wound. You’re like an injured fish, bloodying the water. We don’t want that.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the woods. “Sharks have been circling.”

  Immediately April understood—this woman knew about the vine. Whoever she was, she knew. And not just about the vine, but apparently about last night’s shadow too. Sharks have been circling. April reached out and laid a hand on Baron’s neck. He was calm, untroubled, snuffling at the stranger amiably. April said, “I saw you the other day, watching the house.”

  “Yes. And I saw you. You’re the reason I came.”

  “But you’re not a . . . shark?”

  “No,” the woman said with a laugh. “I’m a Keeper. Just like you.” The woman didn’t bother explaining the word, but instead held out her wicker pendant. April watched in wonder as the tangled sphere swelled ever so slightly, creaking softly as it expanded and shrank like a balloon. “Not exactly like you, of course,” the woman said. “Everyone’s talents are different.”

  Breathless, April eyed the pendant, an absurd surge of hope blooming in her now. Here, it seemed—out of the blue morning sunshine—was someone like her. Here, perhaps, was someone who might be able to help. That broken bit of the vine ached at the thought, but April willed herself to stay steady. People, like all animals, were best when you treated them with quiet patience. You couldn’t go throwing around your own hopes, your own worries, your own confusion. It was better not to push, not to grab, not to run. It wasn’t that you had to bottle yourself up, exactly, but you did have to keep . . . still.

  April eyed the pendant. “I see,” she said evenly. “And what are your talents?”

  The pendant swelled again. “For starters, I can see things most others can’t. That’s how I found you—I felt you bleeding.” Her brow furrowed with uncertainty. “Tell me, is the wound very bad? May I see it?”

  Be steady. Be true. Slowly, April drew back her long hair, exposing the vine. It was the first time she’d shown it to anyone, and her heart rose again in her chest. The woman gasped and leaned in for a closer look. April forced herself to stay still as a deer. The wicker pendant dangled just a foot away. The woman clasped it with her right hand, where she wore a wooden ring on her pinkie. The wicker sphere pulsed in her palm, and April swore she saw a faint shimmer of light inside.

  When at last the woman leaned back, her eyes seemed to trace an invisible line in the air between April and Baron. “It suits you,” she said.

  April let her hair fall back over the vine, blushing. “Thank you.”

  “I’m Isabel,” the woman said.

  “I’m April. April Simon.”

  “April the empath.”

  “Empath?”

  Isabel gestured toward Baron. “That’s your talent—you can listen to animals. My own talent lets me see that plain enough. I can also see why I felt you from five miles away. You’re strong for an empath, and your instrument is badly broken.”

  Her instrument. The vine. “How badly?” April managed.

  “I can only guess. The true answer has to come from you.”

  “A piece is missing.”

  “Amputated, yes,” said Isabel curtly, not a trace of sympathy in her voice. “And you don’t have the piece, do you?”

  “No. The vine was like this when I found it.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “No. I don’t even know if . . .” April hesitated, swallowing. “No. I don’t.”

  Isabel tugged thoughtfully on a curl of her fiery red hair. Her face seemed alight, as if some delicious thought had just occurred to her. “You haven’t had the vine for long, I think. How did you find it? Who introduced you to it?”

  “I found it on my own,” April explained firmly, puzzled by the strange phrasing. “No one introduced me.”

  “No one’s told you anything about your instrument, then. About who you are and what it is.”

  April shook her head. “Actually, this is the first conversation I’ve ever had about it.” Isabel turned away, muttering to herself. April thought she heard her say “Duck town,” which didn’t make any sense, but then she very clearly heard a name: “Warren.” Who was Warren?

  Abruptly Isabel spun back. “Listen,” she said. “Most new Keepers aren’t given the information I’m about to share, but I need to explain. When I said I can see things that others can’t, I was talking about something called the Medium.”

  “Okay,” April said slowly, baffled.

  “The Medium flows all around us, unseen. It powers our instruments—yours and mine alike. The veins of the Medium are invisible to you, but not me. I can feel those veins, and I can pinch them and pull them too. That’s my talent.” She grasped her wicker ball again. “And when I looked at your instrument just now, I . . . learned something. Something you might not know.” She leaned in again, her gaze deep and fierce. “Are you aware that your missing piece . . . survives?”

  April swallowed the word, blinking back the sudden water that rose in her eyes. She had believed that the missing piece survived, yes—she had to believe it—but she didn’t actually know.

  “Your missing piece exists,” Isabel insisted. “It lives on.”

  April clutched at Baron’s fur. He turned his head and licked her hand, worry and discomfort bubbling softly. “Where?” she asked thickly.

  “Again, I can’t answer that. I can only see so much. It’s up to you to find it again.”

  “Me? But I wouldn’t have the first idea where to look.”

  “You’re a Keeper. Surely you recognize the call of your own instrument.”

  “I can sense the vine when I take it off, even through walls and things. I’m sort of pulled toward it, like . . . like a flower toward the sun. Is that what you mean?”

  Isabel nodded, fussing with her wooden ring. “Yes. We’re all bound to our instruments. The vine is a part of you, and the missing piece is a part of the vine. Reach out for now. Try to feel it. The call won’t be quite the same, but it’ll be there, faint and far—like a star you can barely see.”

  April stood and took a deep breath, hesitating. She thought of the phantom late-night cries she sometimes imagined, and realized she was scared. If she failed to feel the missing piece now, what would that mean? Wasn’t it true that certain answers were worse than no answer at all? Not everything that was lost could be found.

  “What’s the matter?” Isabel said.

  “Nothing, I . . .”

  Isabel studied her face. “You’re afraid to try,” she said gently. “You’re afraid you won’t feel it.”

  “Yes.”
<
br />   Leaning back, Isabel crossed her arms knowingly. “Maybe that’s why you haven’t felt it yet.”

  That had the undeniable jolt of truth. April, who prided herself on not ignoring wisdom when she heard it, nodded and took another deep breath. She closed her eyes. She probed questingly at the presence of the vine. She was a Keeper, a word that made no sense to her and yet made all the sense in the world. The vine was her instrument. It was her. A gentle river of power flowed from the vine to her and back again, a current pulsing in time to her own heartbeat. She opened herself to the possibility that another strand of that current might be out there, faint and far—the missing piece. She wouldn’t be afraid. She would approach this encounter like any other. Truth, patience, stillness. Morning cicadas pulsed buzzily in the summer trees. The sun warmed the back of her head. “What will it feel like?” she asked softly.

  “I can’t describe that,” Isabel said. “No more than I can describe the smell of rain.”

  April was just thinking what a lovely notion that was—how would you describe the smell of rain?—when abruptly, dimly, she felt something. Something both far away and immediately present. A quiet plea, a faint magnetic pull, a tiny distant beacon of hurt and absence and need.

  “Oh!” she cried. The missing piece—it was out there, broken and alone and taken from her. Taken. The thought filled her with a startling, breathtaking surge of rage.

  She turned toward it, toward the sun, anticipation growing. She could barely feel it, just a trickle, but it was unmistakable. “It’s there,” she said, brimming with wonder and anger. “I feel it.”

  She opened her eyes. She found Isabel standing very close, her face savagely intense, the wicker ball clasped firmly in her hand. April took a step back, and on the instant the call of the missing piece vanished.

  “Which way?” Isabel demanded.