“Leader? Of the dreambenders?”
I nodded. “It scared me.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to say yes.”
I realized that I was shaking. I couldn’t tell if I was frightened or just cold.
Callie put her arm around me. She touched my lips and kissed me. It was like the dream but different. The kiss felt warm and soft, but it was solid, something I could count on.
After a while, I looked around. Sal and the others were getting ready. I struggled to my feet. “We need to get going.”
Sal set off once again, and we followed. There was no trail, but he seemed to know exactly where he was going. We trudged along all morning. When the sun was overhead, we stopped to eat some food that Deb and Zack had brought, then set off again.
Sometime later, I spotted something in the distance that looked like a wall. As we got closer, I realized that it was a huge stone cliff extending in both directions as far as I could see.
I asked Sal, “Can we go around it?”
“No,” he said.
“Well, we can’t climb over it,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“Then what do we do?”
“You’ll see,” he said.
“‘You’ll see’? You keep saying that. What does it mean? Where are you taking us?”
Sal gazed at me calmly. Maybe if you don’t dream or worry, you can be calm. But I couldn’t.
I said, “Tell us. Please.”
“We’re not going around the cliff or over it,” he said. “We’re going through it.”
21
Callie
The Music Place was real. With all my heart I wanted to believe it. I needed to believe it. But as I approached the cliff with the others, my heart sank. The journey—our journey, Jeremy’s and mine—seemed to have come to an end. It had hit a wall. The wall was immense and impenetrable.
How could we go through it? What did Sal mean? Maybe Sal and his friends were misfits and nothing more after all, living in the moment, confusing stories with reality.
I took Jeremy’s hand. We watched as Sal walked up to the cliff. He inspected its surface, moving along it until he found what he was looking for.
Then he took one step and disappeared.
I looked at Jeremy. He looked back at me. Then he hurried to the place where Sal had stood.
He disappeared too.
Deb grinned. “Isn’t it amazing?”
She led me to the wall and showed me the place where Sal and Jeremy had been standing. There was a tall, vertical crack in the rough stone surface that I could only see close up. I knew I could squeeze into the crack if I approached it at the right angle, and that’s what Deb did. I took a deep breath and followed, with the others right behind.
We sidestepped perhaps fifty yards, and then the crack widened to reveal a narrow trail. We followed it single file up a series of switchbacks. Soon, out of breath, I was standing with Jeremy, next to Sal and his friends at the top of the cliff. The land of Between stretched out beneath us, a solid carpet of treetops. Far off in the distance, I could make out a few tall buildings in the City.
I heard something in the distance, like the hooting of an owl but different. It was higher and sweeter. There were lots of notes, dozens of them, each round and bright and perfect.
“Did you hear that?” I asked Jeremy.
“Hear what?”
“Sounds.”
Or echoes of sounds, memories of sounds, barely loud enough to notice. I stepped away from the cliff and headed toward them.
Jeremy said, “We should stay together.”
I kept walking. “Then come with me.”
The top of the cliff was a forest, like Between but somehow different. There were trees and a path. We picked our way through bushes and vines, stepping over them, going around them, always moving forward. For a while it seemed as if the sounds weren’t getting any louder. Finally I noticed a change. About that same time, Jeremy perked up.
“I hear it!” He turned to me. “What is it?”
“A song,” I said.
I became aware of another sound behind and below the song. It was a stream. Rounding a tree, I saw water flowing down a hill. Beside the stream was a rock, and on the rock sat a woman.
She was tiny but seemed big. She was old but seemed young. Her eyes were closed, but I could swear she saw me.
She wore the plainest of clothes, if you could call them that. They appeared to have been stitched together from bags. Her hair was long and gray. Her feet were bare. Her legs, thin and graceful, were tucked beneath her. Her shoulders were narrow and somehow powerful. Her arms and hands were delicate, but I hardly noticed them. I was more interested in the shiny metal object they held.
It was shaped like a long golden stick, with keys to push and a hole at the end. There was another hole on the side, and she blew into it while pressing the keys with her fingers. Notes came out, but they were more than notes. They seemed to dance above her head, swooping and swirling, then fluttering off.
I watched and listened. Jeremy blinked nervously, reminding me of the way people had responded that day in the City when I sang. Like me, Jeremy came from a place where people were afraid of music. I knew they were wrong but wasn’t sure why. Music was leading me somewhere. Maybe it was here.
The music stopped. The woman lowered the golden stick and opened her eyes. They were green like grass, like emeralds. Like mine. She was looking right at me.
Did you ever have a perfect moment? I had had one in Between when Sal played and I sang. Now, gazing at the woman, I had another one. The world stopped. It slid to a halt and waited. I didn’t move.
A long time after that, I noticed her lips were moving. “Welcome,” she was saying.
“Thank you,” I replied.
Her gaze moved to Jeremy. She studied him and turned to the others.
“Hello, Sal,” she said. “Hello, everyone.”
Sal had met her before, and so had his friends. After all my doubts and worries, he had known exactly where he was headed.
“Are you going to show them?” Deb asked her.
“Oh yes,” the woman said.
She turned to Jeremy and me. Rising from the rock, she said, “Follow me, both of you.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
She smiled. “To my home.”
“We’ll stay here and keep watch,” Sal told us.
The woman strode off beside the stream, carrying the golden stick. Not knowing what else to do, I followed and Jeremy came along behind me. I tried to imagine the place where she lived—small and cozy, warm and inviting. I thought I would like it.
She hummed as she walked, as naturally as breathing. Her stride was firm. Her body was thin but strong. Her long gray hair swished as she moved. It reminded me of Eleesha’s paintbrush.
We were climbing a hill. As we rose, the trees thinned out. The sound of the stream changed from a gurgle to a low roar. The farther we walked, the louder it got. Soon I saw why.
At the top of the hill was a waterfall, tumbling to a pile of boulders beneath. As impressive as it was, I barely noticed.
Beyond the waterfall, surging to the sun, was a stack of silver shapes. They were immense, like game pieces tossed by giants. They had points and edges and smooth sloping sides.
I stopped and stared. The woman turned around and watched me.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” she said.
“What is it?” asked Jeremy.
“My home.”
“It’s more than that,” I said. “It’s the Music Place.”
Part Four
The Song
22
Callie
The Music Place rose up before us, spread out across the sky. It looked real, but I had the fee
ling that if I reached out to touch it, my hand would pass straight through.
The woman led us beside the waterfall and up to the shapes that seemed like a building. I touched one and my hand didn’t pass through. The surface was warm. It was solid and shiny. In it, I could see my reflection. My hair was a mess. My clothes were too. Behind me stood Jeremy, staring upward.
The silvery shapes, like Jeremy and me, showed flaws when you got up close. There were dents. Vines and branches had grown over and between.
The woman led us up some steps that were cleverly hidden among the shapes. We went almost to the top. I looked behind me. Trees stretched as far as I could see.
When I turned back around, a dark figure was blocking my way, silhouetted against the clouds. His shoulders were broad, and his hair stuck out in clumps. His hands grabbed for me.
“Aaugh!” he bellowed.
I stumbled back, nearly falling. Jeremy caught me and turned to the figure. “Who are you?” he demanded.
The woman chuckled. “That’s Booker. Don’t mind him.”
The sun went behind a cloud, and Booker’s face emerged. He had dark skin and freckles, with brown eyes that searched me. His arms were still extended, but now they seemed to be reaching out, not grabbing.
The woman said, “I met Booker years ago in Between. He wandered by one day, lost and confused. I liked him, and we became friends. He’s been with me ever since. He doesn’t talk, but he understands.”
The woman reached the top of the steps, gently guided Booker to one side, and gestured to us. “Come in, won’t you?”
She opened a door. I moved past Booker, who smiled.
Inside, it was like a different building, a different world. The shapes and reflections were gone. So was the brightness. Instead there was wood—warm, dark, comforting. We were high up in an immense room, like Sal’s cave but a hundred times larger, surrounded by seats. In the ceiling was a huge window with light streaming to the floor. Far below us, a platform shone like a jewel.
The woman followed my gaze. “That’s the stage,” she said. “It’s where I play music. The sound is wonderful.”
A figure stepped onto the platform. Squinting to see it, I realized it was Booker. I wondered how he had gone so quickly from the steps to the stage.
He clicked his tongue and laughed softly. I heard the sounds clearly, as if he were standing beside me. Then he wandered off, blending into the dark-brown walls.
The woman smiled. “This place is remarkable, isn’t it? It’s always been this way, like a beautiful instrument.”
“What’s an instrument?” asked Jeremy. I was startled to see him standing beside me. For a moment there, it had seemed like just the woman and me.
The woman held up her golden stick. “This is an instrument. I use it to play music. Would you like to hear more?”
She knelt on the stage, at the center of that vast, empty space, and filled it with music. She breathed into the golden stick, moving the keys, changing the tones, lifting us up to where the light came from. Each note was separate and distinct, and yet they blended together to create long, looping melodies, songs you wanted to chase and explore.
We might have listened five minutes or five hours; I couldn’t say which. Then the woman stopped and moved to the edge of the stage, where she sat down and dangled her feet off the side, gazing fondly at us.
“Long ago, before the Warming,” she said, “music belonged to the people. They gathered in groups called orchestras, with a hundred members or more, and made music together.”
I thought of Deb’s story and Pam’s drawing of the Music Place. They had made it into a myth, but the woman’s words seemed different, like something in the real world.
“Each person played an instrument,” the woman continued. “One of the instruments was this one, the flute.”
She lifted the golden stick and held it up for us to see. So, it was called a flute. I liked my name better.
“Some instruments were made of wood, such as bassoons, oboes, and clarinets. The trumpets, trombones, French horns, and tubas were made of brass. Some things you would hit, like the drums, tympani, and xylophones. Some, like violins, violas, cellos, and basses, had strings that you plucked and bowed.”
Her face lit up when she recited the names, as if they were old friends. Then she looked over at me and cocked her head. “I think you play an instrument.”
I thought of my voice. I didn’t hit it, pluck it, or blow into it, but it made music. Surely it was an instrument too.
Jeremy studied the woman. “How did you know about the instruments?”
“An old man told me.”
“Was he in an orchestra?” asked Jeremy.
She looked at him thoughtfully. “No, but he carried on their tradition. The orchestras died out during the Warming, and those beautiful musicians dropped away, one by one. Their instruments were lost, except for a few, like this one. The man taught me to play it, as he had been taught, along with others stretching back through time. The orchestras are gone. Now I’m the orchestra.”
The woman smiled, then closed her eyes, brought the golden stick to her lips, and blew. The notes formed a picture in my mind, as lovely as anything Eleesha had ever painted.
When she finished, Jeremy said, “Who was the old man? How did you meet him?”
The woman looked past Jeremy to another time and place. “It happened on Freedom Day. I was thirteen years old. That day, my parents let me roam the City. I was exploring an alley and heard something. It was music, the forbidden sound, but it was like nothing I’d ever heard. It seemed to be solid—tall, wide, deep, with every color of the rainbow.
“I followed it and came to an open window. Peering inside, I saw an old man sitting at a table that had a machine on top of it. The machine was a wooden box with a round, flat platform on top and a flared horn sticking up from the back. On the side was a handle, and when the old man cranked it, the platform spun around. There was a plastic disk on the platform, and on top of that was a metal arm with a needle at one end. As the disk spun, music poured from the horn.
“I don’t know how long I stood there, listening. The man put on disk after disk, each with a different kind of music. I went inside, and he showed me more disks, which he called records. He had boxes of them. The machine was a phonograph. The sound was an orchestra.
“The man had never heard an orchestra in person, but he had learned to play an instrument. It was the trumpet, a brass horn that he blew to create melodies. When I asked if I could try it, he gave me this flute. From the moment I touched it, it was like part of my body. The old man taught me to play melodies on it.”
Jeremy looked at me. I could tell what he was thinking, so I said it for him.
“Music is forbidden. Didn’t someone try to stop you? You know, the catchers or…”
“The dreambenders? Oh yes, I know all about them.” She studied Jeremy. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? But you seem different.”
“How do you know about the dreambenders?” he asked.
“That’s a different story for a different time. As for your first question, I held on to music by avoiding the catchers and following directions.”
“Directions?” I said.
“On the phonograph. Taped to the bottom and handed down through the generations. The directions explained that sometimes, suddenly, we would lose interest in music for a while.”
“Dreambenders,” said Jeremy.
“That’s right, though the early musicians didn’t know the word. The directions said that whenever we lost interest, we should keep playing the phonograph, and our love of music would return. And it did, for musician after musician—for the old man and for me.”
“He let you play it?”
She nodded. “He had reinforced one of his rooms so it was soundproof. That’s where we played the phonogra
ph. It’s where he gave me music lessons.”
Music lessons. What an idea—that you didn’t just hear music or play it. You worked at it. You studied it to get better.
“That day when you met him,” I said, “why wasn’t he in the soundproof room? Why was the window open?”
“Freedom Day,” said Jeremy.
The woman smiled. “That’s right. It was the one day of the year when he risked bringing the phonograph out into the open, one small gesture of defiance.”
I looked around at the Music Place, with its warm-brown walls and vaulted ceiling. “How did you get here?”
“Years later, after I’d grown up, the old man realized his health was failing and said he had something to show me. He brought me to the Music Place. The minute I saw it, I knew I had come home.
“When the old man died, he left me the phonograph and records. I brought them to the Music Place. I’ve lived here ever since.”
Jeremy said, “The dreambenders haven’t found you? Can’t they follow your dreams?”
“We didn’t have to,” someone said. “We followed you. Or rather, I followed you.”
I turned around. There, grinning, was Leif.
23
Jeremy
I gaped at Leif. “How did you find us?”
He flashed a tight grin. “I’m a fixer. That’s my job.”
“But we were so careful,” said Callie.
Leif shrugged. “To me it was obvious where the two of you went. Between would be a good place to hide. So I got a team of fixers and went there.”
I said, “That day in the woods, you walked right past us. We were in the trees.”
He said, “You think I didn’t know? I waited off to the side, and when you came down, I followed you. That’s how I got here.”
I thought of the girl with the skinny dog. Somehow she had missed him. All of us had. Leif knew about the Music Place, and now so would the dreambenders.
“I’m sorry,” I told the woman.
“Who are you?” Leif asked her. “Why are you here?”
“This is my home,” she said. “Music is my gift.”
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