Behind the Song

by K. M. Walton

  Melodic yet dissonant, intricate and surprising, those are some of the many notes in October’s song.

  Author photo

  by Whitney Thomas

  observer. igniter. enigmatic. singer songwriter. label owner. producer. clarifier. peruser. witster. sister. muse to the mister. ma+daughter. tall drink o’ water. That is innovator DONN T. She originally hails from Philadelphia and comes from a storied musical lineage. The quintessential independent artist and do-it-yourselfer added label owner to her list of accomplishments, when she launched Dtone Victorious in 2014. Her debut album, 2010’s Kaleidoscopic, received international acclaim. On her follow up, 2015’s Flight of the Donn T album, she shares co-production credit with her husband Jake Morelli, a guitarist/producer. The buzz around that album got the attention of CBS and the Grammys, who, in 2016, highlighted Donn T as an Artist of Tomorrow. Her next release will debut in 2017 and is titled 100 4 Characters. Visit Donn-T.com and follow her on Twitter @Donn_T.

  CITY GIRL

  A SHORT STORY INSPIRED BY KEANE’S “SOMEWHERE ONLY WE KNOW”

  By E. C. Myers

  I discovered Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know” through its first U.S. music video years ago and became slightly obsessed with it. The music and images are intertwined in my mind, as the band walks through and performs in a lush forest. When I considered the song for this anthology, it suddenly clicked perfectly with a story idea I’ve had for a long time and helped me figure out how to write it. Strangely enough, this song’s alternate U.S. music video, which I only saw for the first time recently, is an even better fit for the story.

  —E. C. Myers

  Anara trudged through the monotonous trees, regretting the life choices that had brought her here. They were so far off the beaten path, the terrain was beating them—with low, whiplike branches and loose pebbles and crusty mud patches that were deeper than they looked. Deep enough to slurp down one of your favorite shoes.

  Anara and Trace weren’t supposed to be wandering in this wildlife sanctuary, so she had only herself to blame. She swallowed her frustration. Like the mud had swallowed her left sneaker clean off her damn foot.

  Clean?

  “Good point. Nothing about this expedition’s clean,” she muttered.

  “What?” A few feet ahead of her Trace stopped and turned around.

  “Nothing. Just talking to myself,” she said.

  “I do that too!” He hesitated. “Dad and I never stay in one place long enough for me to make friends.”

  “I’ve lived in Burlington all my life, but I still don’t have friends.”

  Oh, really?

  ((Hush,)) she thought. Not that the voices in her head ever listened to her. She had to hear them—their unwanted advice, snide commentary, naughty suggestions, and the off-tune singing!—but it was all too easy for them to ignore her.

  She didn’t think of them as friends. More like…nosy, noisy roommates? And some were unfriendly, as if they resented the fact that they were in her mind. She had the impression they only helped her to help themselves, whoever or whatever they were. She was only part of the package.

  She was the package.

  That’s what this trek was all about.

  Trace pushed his long, silver bangs out of his eyes and looked at her.

  “Hey. We’re friends now,” he said.

  The blush crept down her neck and spread over her chest. Trace grinned.

  Why do you trust this boy? You don’t know anything about him.

  ((We have a lot in common…)) Anara touched the scarf covering her bare head, missing her hair for the first time. To follow the map, they needed to see all of it at once—which included the lines on her scalp. She had thought she’d feel worse about shaving off all her hair, but it had felt right.

  Appearances are deceiving.

  You two are not alike, no matter how much you want to believe it.

  Why won’t you listen?

  ((I’ve always listened to you. But Trace is the first person to tell me what I want to know.)) Anara crossed her arms.

  “—take a break?” Trace said.

  “Huh?” Anara straightened and concentrated her focus on him instead of the voices. “No, I can keep going.”

  Trace sat heavily on a flat rock beneath a sprawling camphor tree. “I could use a breather, if that’s okay.”

  Anara rubbed the back of her neck. It was sticky with sweat and bug spray, which seemed to be attracting mosquitoes rather than repelling them. Unless they were attacking out of spite.

  “It’s like the forest doesn’t want us here.” Anara sat beside Trace, scratching at a bump on the inside of her forearm. The red welt made the silvery, almost invisible map lines on her skin stand out clearly. The bump added a topographical quality to its contours, a mountain where there was none.

  “It doesn’t.” Trace slapped at the back of his hand.

  “I thought it would be different because we have the map. If this is where I—we came from…” She flung up a hand. A startled mosquito buzzed past her right ear. “I imagined the trees parting before us or something.”

  “That wouldn’t be good magic.”

  What does he know about good magic?

  Anara snorted.

  “What? Why’s that funny?” Trace’s hurt expression showed he was really offended. So Anara wasn’t alone in worrying about saying the wrong thing. Another thing they shared.

  “It isn’t… Just, how much magic have you seen?” she asked.

  Trace gazed out into the trees. “That’s the thing. You know good magic when you don’t see it.”

  • • •

  Students had been talking all day about the strange new boy at John Dee High School, but she didn’t see him herself until fourth session global studies.

  Of course, she noticed his silver hair first.

  So that’s what it’s like on the other side, she thought to herself. People always fixated on her looks when she met them—all the things that made her different from them. Bark-brown skin and ash-white hair didn’t exactly blend in with the majority population of Burlington, Vermont, including her white parents and brother.

  Now here she was doing that to someone else. Only in this case, she was paying attention because of their similarities. Anara had never seen anyone younger than forty with silver hair, except in a mirror. His hair was shoulder-length, frizzy, uncombed, like he couldn’t control it or didn’t care to try.

  He slouched in his seat like he didn’t want to be noticed, but he was tall, basketball-team tall. His skin was dark, like the rich loam in her mother’s garden.

  The voices murmured. Anara squeezed her eyes shut, feeling a migraine coming on.

  ((Keep it down!)) she thought.

  She kept sneaking glances at him through class, often enough to see that he was noticing her too. No one could miss Anara’s dark skin and pale hair, but she somehow existed in people’s blind spots; usually no one really saw her unless she wanted them to. If the new boy was looking at her, she must want him to.

  She started blushing.

  Stay away from him.

  ((Why?)) she asked.

  No answer.

  ((I’m going to talk to him. I have to,)) Anara said.

  When class ended, the boy sprung up. With his long legs, he quickly covered the distance to her desk near the back of the room while the rest of the class exited.

  “Hey! What’s your name? How long have you been living here?” he asked.

  She stared at him, dumbstruck. His eyes were amber, like hers.

  This couldn’t be a coincidence. They must be linked in some way. Maybe he could give her a clue about her birth family. Maybe he was even related to her!

  She recovered, tilting her chin up. And up. “I’ll ask the questions. Who the hell are you?”

  He gr
inned. “Trace Alabaster.” He extended a hand.

  Anara left him hanging. “I’m Anara Mackaw.”

  “You don’t look like a Mackaw.”

  She frowned.

  Stop talking to him. He’s rude.

  “Shut up,” she said, realizing too late she hadn’t used her “inside voice.”

  Trace jerked his head up in surprise. She could have fumbled the same excuse she always did when she accidentally spoke aloud, but she decided to let it lie.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Then who do I look like?”

  “Like me.” He reached for her ponytail and then dropped his hand. “Except for your hair. Why’d you dye it?”

  At the moment her hair was purple-black, but her lighter roots were showing.

  People dyed their hair to stand out, to make a statement. “Just trying to fit in,” she said.

  “I get that.”

  He sat on the desk in front of hers, facing her with his feet on the chair. She almost laughed. He was so thin, his knees sticking way up, his elbows out. Slouching, head bent like a turtle’s. Cute but not sexy, somewhat awkward. Charmingly so.

  Yikes. She hoped they weren’t related.

  A word popped into Anara’s head, a confusing jumble of syllables that demanded to be spoken. Many other voices rushed to silence it, but it was too late. She repeated it aloud, trying out the unusual sounds on her tongue.

  “L——?” she said slowly.

  Oh hells.

  Trace’s eyes widened. “What did you say?” He was shocked. Afraid.

  “I don’t know.”

  Much of her life was an act. Don’t let people know you hear voices. Don’t let on that you know things you shouldn’t.

  She had talked about the voices all the time when she was little, until Mother grew concerned that the stories her precocious, imaginative daughter told about hearing voices weren’t so harmless.

  After three meetings with a man Anara called Dr. Garlic—she still didn’t recall his real name, only the way he smelled—she was convinced that the voices meant she was sick. He said he could make them go away.

  But Anara would have to go away too, until she was better.

  The voices told her what to say and how to behave to make them believe she was only playing a game. As long as she pretended they weren’t there anymore, everything was fine; no one wanted to believe she needed help. No one would ever believe the voices were real.

  Anara had grown up terrified of slipping up, being found out, and having to talk to more doctors. She never wanted her mother, or anyone else, to look at her again like she was crazy. The way Trace was looking at her now.

  He stood, started to back away. Dammit! The voices had ruined things for her again. He was spooked.

  She was spooked too.

  She blinked back tears and jumped up from her seat. “Wait! I…I don’t even know what it means.”

  ((What does it mean? Tell me!))

  “L—— is my birth name. Only my dad knows it. We never say it. Never.”

  Get away from him. Now. The voice was panicked.

  ((Why? Who is he?)) Anara thought.

  The voices stilled, but her mind weighed heavily with their shock and disapproval.

  Trace’s forehead crinkled. “You okay? Your eyes kind of went all…” He waved his hand in front of his face. “Woogly.”

  “I’m fine.” She took a deep breath.

  “You won’t believe this, but I’ve been looking for you,” he said.

  “You have.” She crossed her arms. “All your life?”

  “Yeah.” He tilted his head quickly a couple of times to consider her from different angles, reminding her of a bird. “Not for you in particular, but another survivor.”

  Trace’s eyes, so similar to hers, shone.

  “Survivor? Of what?” Anara leaned away from him. “What are you talking about?”

  This was too much. She had been excited when she saw someone else who looked like her, right here in her home town, her own school. But the voices were confusing her, and now he was suggesting they were dead?

  “Where are you from?” she whispered. Her heart beat faster. Blood pounded loud in her ears. She felt a spike of fear, she didn’t know why. She had been searching for information about where she was born ever since she had found out she was adopted.

  “A place called The City,” he said.

  “That’s…generic.” She let out a puff of air. “What, is that with a capital ‘The’? Like The New York Times?”

  “I know. That’s just a rough translation. Its full name was ∫——. It basically means ‘The City of the World.’ That generic name was part of its protection from discovery, but I think the founders were just arrogant.”

  ((Is this true? Am I from The City? Are you?)) she asked.

  She felt them clench up inside her, more unified in their silence than they had ever been. Against her. Against him.

  “So where is it?” Anara asked. “Can you take me there?”

  His face fell. “It’s gone, Anara. All of it. As if it never existed.”

  “How? There has to be something left…”

  Leave this, Anara.

  “Dad and I looked for it for a long time. He hopes The City only moved and hid somewhere else. The Elders had been working on some kind of plan when we left. Big magic.”

  “Magic?” she said. “Come on.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Wait. You don’t believe in magic?”

  “If you don’t want to tell me the truth—”

  “This is all true. We’ve been keeping an eye out for anyone else who was left behind. Our people came and went across the borders all the time, so some may not have made it back before…” Trace studied Anara. “Is that what happened to your family?”

  “I’m adopted.”

  Trace furrowed his brow, confused. “But you’re the same age as me? Sixteen?”

  She nodded.

  “That sounds about right.”

  “Where was this city?” Anara asked.

  “Up north, in Quebec. It’s hard to explain. Sometimes I don’t even believe it myself because I don’t remember it. But The City sort of overlapped with land in what people in the mundane world know as Anara National—” His jaw dropped. “Anara?”

  She gripped the sides of her desk, its cool, fake wood surface slick under her sweaty palms.

  “I was named for that park!” She felt dazed. Could everything he was saying be true after all? “My parents always said she’d they found me there on a camping trip. I thought they were joking. Mom comes up with the worst pranks. And my papers say I was adopted here in Burlington.”

  “If you were a baby, what were you doing outside The City when it disappeared? You and your parents must have been cut off from each other.”

  Anara bit her lip. She had been convinced she would never fit in anywhere—or with anyone. Now she knew where she belonged, even if it didn’t exist anymore or couldn’t be found.

  “This is magic,” Trace said. “That the two of us randomly found each other. Pa’s going to be so excited to meet you.”

  NO!

  Anara flinched. She squeezed her eyes against a skull-splitting migraine that crashed down on her like a tidal wave. That had been more than one voice all at once.

  “Anara?” Trace stretched a hand toward her.

  Don’t touch him!

  Anara jerked away from Trace. He looked surprised. He held his hands up, away from her.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She concentrated on breathing, blinking against the sudden, pressing pain behind her eyes. “Um. Don’t tell your father about me?”

  ((Is that what you want? Why?))

  “But we can help each other. We can look for The City together!”


  “Can we keep this to ourselves for now?” You, me, and the voices in my head. “I need time to think about all this.”

  Good girl.

  ((We’re talking about this soon. You obviously know something about him.))

  “But—” he began.

  “Please,” she said.

  “Okay.” Trace offered his hand.

  Anara, don’t.

  Why didn’t the voices want them to touch?

  Anara smiled. She took Trace’s hand.

  Fireworks.

  His hand was cool, rough.

  Suddenly she was tipping one way as the room went the other. Trace caught her and lowered her gently to the floor.

  “You’re burning up.” He pressed a hand to her forehead, his face twisted with concern.

  She felt a tiny flame spark just under her palm, something scratching to get out. It spread like dry paper lit with a match. Her flesh was cracking, smoldering. Every inch of skin itched and ached. She was going to throw up.

  She held up her hand and turned it around wonderingly. Shimmery lines appeared, as if an artist were drawing on her skin with golden ink.

  “Look…” she said.

  Then Anara passed out.

  • • •

  She was too young to remember The City, but she had vague memories of a place her parents told her the family had never visited. A sprawling cobblestone plaza. A sparkling fountain with a two-headed unicorn. A wooden cart under an oak tree, like this one, selling sticky buns for a half-coin, whatever that was. Mother said she must have seen it a cartoon or something.

  “I’ve seen that tree before,” Anara pointed at one with a diagonal gash in its trunk, like an angry old scar. “Does that mean we’re on the right track?”

  “I recognize it too,” Trace said. “I saw it thirty minutes ago. We’re walking in a damn circle. Or the trees are moving around.” He kicked a rock into the underbrush.

  “How does this work? If The City overlaps our world, how do we make that shift into it once we reach it?” Anara asked.

  “I don’t know! But The City is supposed to admit its own, no matter what.” Trace looked around wildly. “We, um, need to get our bearings. Sorry.”