by Eric Nylund
That was so typical of Paxington.
There were areas hidden, he guessed, from freshmen, and maybe for good reason. Things probably got rougher for the upperclassmen, which probably would have been lethal for him. That would explain why Eliot only rarely saw older students on campus.
Just how big was this school, anyway?
Eliot walked onto the new path.
The trees grew larger here, oaks with ancient black trunks that twisted upward into the sky.
The forest gave way to lawn with a sculpture of a Dixieland band playing. The path circled about the sculpture, and then descended into an entrance underneath.
Eliot paused a moment to stare at the frozen bronze figures, smiling, with drums and horns-all of them looking like they’d been captured having the time of their lives.
He entered a steep tunnel. Gas lamps flickered along the rock walls, and after twenty paces, Eliot stood before a marble arch three times his height. Set within this arch was a double set of mahogany doors, and upon them carved scenes of a rock concert, a stage magician sawing a girl in half, and acts from Shakespeare’s plays.
Running along the edge of the arch were the following words: MUSES UT RIDEO RISI RISUM, TRIPUDIO, PLORO, INTEREO, QUOD NASCOR DENUO.[49]
Eliot consulted his map. This was the end of the line, literally-with an X marked and a scrawled note: “Grotto of the Muses.”
He took a deep breath and pushed through the doors.
Beyond was a cavern. In the center sat a platform lit by stagelights and additional spotlights above. Four columns-where stalactite and stalagmite had melded together-stood equidistant about this stage. Also ringing the stage were seats of violet crushed velvet with padded armrests.
A dozen students milled near the stage, whispering to one another. They had instrument cases from piccolo-to tuba-sized.
The acoustics were amazing. Hushed murmurs across the room echoed and bounced and sounded as if Eliot stood right next to the others.
As quietly as he could, he approached the stage. . and felt the first stirrings of butterflies in his gut.
Eliot recognized two students from his Mythology 101 class, but no one he had ever actually ever talked with.
He almost tripped when he spotted Sarah Covington.
Great. All he needed were her snide remarks before his audition.
She’d pulled back her hair into a tight bun, wore none of her usual makeup. . and looked as nervous as Eliot felt. She didn’t have an instrument case, though. So what was she doing here?
She saw him, smiled, and walked over. “I was hoping you’d try out,” she said. “It’s good to see a familiar face.”
Eliot blinked and resisted the urge to look over his shoulder-to see if she spoke to someone behind him. That’s what usually happened. But no. . she stared right at him. Audrey and Cee had drilled years of polite responses into him; otherwise, he’d have floundered.
“Thanks,” he said. “Good to see you here, too.”
And it was. If Sarah Covington of the haughty Clan Covington was here and just as nervous as he was, then maybe it was okay to feel like he was going to throw up.
“I’ve admired your playing,” she whispered, and bit her lower lip. “You’re good. I just wanted to say that before we started.”
Eliot waited for the punch line-you’re good. . for an amateur-or good. . for someone with eight thumbs-or for a rhonchial musicaster.[50]
But she said no more, instead turned as the stage lights dimmed and the spotlights brightened.
Eliot and Sarah sank into two adjacent seats.
Why was she being nice after an entire semester of being mean? Girls were so weird.
A curtain rustled stage left, and a flowing silhouette appeared among the shadows. A spotlight snapped on, revealing a deeply tanned woman in a gold dress. She was elegant with diamonds adorning her fingers, wrists, and neck; but wild at the same time, with her dark hair a frenzy of curls. With one graceful step, she was on the stage.
Four more spotlights angled on her, making her sparkle. She smiled at her audience, and it was more dazzling than any gold or diamonds. She had that unassailable confidence that every Immortal had, but more: she had the glamour of a star.
“Welcome, students. I’m Erin DuPreé. In my class, you call me Erin or Air, but never teacher or Ms. DuPreé or ma’am or any of that other nonsense. There’s too much real stuff going in here to mess with such silly formalities.”
Eliot liked her. He relaxed into his seat.
Next to him, though, Sarah tensed and gripped her armrests.
“I don’t care about your technical skill,” Ms. DuPreé told them in a lowered voice. “Oh, that’s the easy part, baby. If you came thinking you’re going to learn to play Mozart better-you go take lessons somewhere else and practice your scales.”
She sat on the stage’s edge, leaned closer to them, and whispered, “We’re going to get what’s inside you out into the world. Make real music. Make people feel something.” She rolled her hands in dramatic flourishes. “And do magic that’ll make all that other stuff seem like three-card monte.”
The spotlights on her focused. “I’m talking about the music in your souls, kids.” She made a fist and held it over her heart.
Eliot sat on the edge of his seat. That’s what he wanted. . but then he remembered the permission slip in his backpack, and his excitement cooled.
It read,
I, (FILL IN COMPLETE NAME), hereby relinquish any claims and responsibilities of the Paxington Institute with respect to the class known as THE POWER OF MUSIC for damages to my psyche, soul, and mental state for the duration of the semester, and if I continue to practice the musical arts, in perpetuity. All mental aberrations, diminishment of spirit, lost faith, substance abuses, and other similar conditions are solely the undersigned’s responsibility to avoid and, if possible, correct.
(SIGN FULL LEGAL NAME HERE) / (DATE)
He’d signed it, of course. It wasn’t such a big deal. Eliot knew he was already in over his head with his music. . so much so that his soul burned a little every time he played.
So let it-even if there was nothing left but ashes. He had to know how far he could take it, if his music would eventually save him. . or destroy him.
Ms. DuPreé clapped her hands. “So,” she said, excitement gleaming in her eyes, “you got what it takes to be a great musician? You got real soul?” She stood and waved toward them. “Who’s going to show me first? Someone make me laugh. Someone make me cry.”
A boy stood and walked onto the stage. He was a junior or senior, with a goatee and a long black braid down his back. He carried an electric guitar.
Ms. DuPreé motioned, and stagehands quickly set up amplifiers and speakers. Then with a bow, Ms. DuPreé turned the stage over to him, backing to the shadowy edges.
Eliot couldn’t help but stare-not at the boy, but at his guitar. It was solid black with silver rivets, powerful and masculine, everything dinky Lady Dawn was not.
The boy took a deep breath and then played a rock ’n’ roll riff-tough and rough and shifting keys fast and furious as sound distorted through the speakers, so loud it made the hairs on Eliot’s arms dance and his insides quaver.
The boy’s face contorted with exultation and agony, as if this song caused him joy and pain.
Eliot clenched his hand into a fist. He could relate.
But more fascinating than the music was the guitar: Eliot wished he had something that. . well, wouldn’t embarrass him every time he took it out to play in public.
Lady Dawn was a beautiful instrument. Eliot loved her. She had been his father’s heirloom before given to him, and he respected the music they made together.
He squeezed the never-quite-healed wound in his palm where Lady Dawn had cut him with a snapped string, and remembered there was a price to pay for playing her, too.
The boy onstage finished with a screaming crescendo and slid onto his knees.
Eliot and the others c
lapped. He was great.
How was Eliot going to pass any audition following that act?
The boy grinned and stood, and he held up one hand to the applause in mock modesty.
Ms. DuPreé clapped as well, but slow and without enthusiasm as she walked toward him. “A technically perfect performance,” she purred. “High marks for showmanship, too.” She moved closer and whispered to the boy-but with the perfect acoustics, Eliot still heard: “But you didn’t move me, kid. So go live a little, and then show me something next year.”
The boy’s smile contracted to a grimace, but he nodded, seeming to take her criticism seriously. He gave her a bow, picked up his guitar, and left without looking back.
Ms. DuPreé addressed the remaining students, “Somebody make me feel something,” she told them. “Don’t just perform-move your audience.” She looked at each of them. “So who’s next?”
Sarah stood, trembling. “I’ll go, ma’am, I mean Erin, if you please.”
“Show me what you got, kid.”
Eliot touched her arm lightly and nodded to her.
Sarah nodded back.
It was a simple gesture between them, but genuine: his reassurance and hope. . her gratitude for the kindness.
Sarah walked to the stage with slow deliberation. Ms. DuPreé offered a hand and helped her up.
Sarah had no instrument, nor did Ms. DuPreé signal for any to be brought out. Instead Sarah clasped her hands in front of her and sang.
Eliot didn’t understand the words, not even the language, Gaelic maybe. But while the words didn’t mean anything to him, the song did.
She sang of marshes and glens and trees and birds. He could almost see the land, and almost smell the heather and the ocean in the distance. He knew how she felt, that her heart was still at home. How she missed it all. How she loved that place.
Sarah finished and looked down.
No one clapped.
Not because it was bad, but because Eliot and the others were in shock. He’d never realized the human voice could be so lyrical and evocative.
Ms. DuPreé came to Sarah, took one of her hands, and petted it. “Very nice.”
Sarah managed a tight smile.
Ms. DuPreé waved her back to her seat and then looked to the rest of them. “That’s what I’m talking about. Who’s next?”
Sarah shakily sank back into her seat. She looked ill.
Eliot understood how music like that could drain you. He wanted to tell her, too, that’s how it was for him when he poured himself into his music.
“No volunteers?” Ms. DuPreé sounded disappointed.
A spotlight snapped on Eliot.
Adrenaline flooded through his body, and he cringed in surprise.
“How about you, then, Mr. Post? Why don’t you show us all what you’re made of?”
Eliot froze as if he were a deer in the headlights of an onrushing truck. Everything he knew about music was suddenly gone from his head.
Sarah whispered to him, “Go show her a thing or two.” There was a bit of her usual sarcasm in her tone, although Eliot didn’t think it was directed at him this time.
It was strange: Eliot’s confidence returned (what little of it there was) because he didn’t want to let Sarah down. He didn’t understand why he should care what she thought, but he did.
Well, he’d come to audition. He’d give it his best shot.
He grabbed Lady Dawn’s case, plodded to the stage, and stepped up without taking Ms. DuPreé’s proffered hand.
Ms. DuPreé gave him a wry look. “Well, Mr. Post, I’ve heard you got a spark in you, but so did the boy up here before you. Do you have soul? Can you make me cry?”
Eliot snorted. He felt irritation prickle at the back of his neck.
She wanted him to make her feel something? He flipped open the violin case and removed Lady Dawn, set her on his shoulder, grabbed the bow. . then stopped.
He had to play a song that meant something to him, though. It couldn’t just be “Mortal’s Coil” or “The Symphony of Existence” or the “The March of the Suicide Queen.” They were great pieces, but they were other people’s songs.
Even “Julie’s Song” wasn’t Eliot’s. He’d taken what was inside Julie, turned it inside out, and added a melody, that’s all.
This had to be all his. Like Sarah had sung about her home, revealing a part of herself he would never have guessed existed. . exposed herself in front of all of them.
He swallowed.
There was one nursery rhyme he recalled-or thought he remembered. It was like fog in his memory, shifting-there but ghostly, something he thought his mother might have once sang to him. Maybe the only thing she had ever sung to him.
Eliot set aside his bow. He wouldn’t need it.
He cautiously plunked out the tune.
A girl in the audience snickered. “That’s ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’ ”[51]
Someone shushed her.
Eliot paid them no attention and kept playing. This song, whatever it was, was his and his family’s. It was the mother he’d had, if only for a moment, before Louis left and everything changed-before Audrey severed her connection to him and Fiona. A connection he’d never get back. . that he mourned over.
The song was simple, slow, and full of that loss. Each note was leaden and painful in the still air. He felt completely alone up on the stage.
It was a stupid little baby thing. . but it was his.
He put himself into the song, all the love and happiness of his perfectly imagined family that had never been: growing up with a real father and mother. . having Audrey’s tenderness, Louis’s guidance-not 106 rules.
But that was a lie. The notes soured under his fingers, and he shifted to a minor key.
About him, the spotlight flickered and dimmed.
He’d never had real parents. Nothing about his family was normal. He cast aside his dream and faced the fact that he was the son of the Eldest Fate, Atropos, and of Lucifer, the Great Deceiver. Maybe that made Eliot a freak, or a nerd, but something in him had to be part divine and part darkness.
The simple song under his fingertips now spoke of the heavens wheeling overhead, and among them a boy. . ascending to stars-or falling like his father, crashing and forever burning.
One day he would be very much more than simple Eliot Post.
He finished, the last notes echoing throughout the grotto like the beating of his heart.
There was no clapping.
Eliot couldn’t see any faces in the dark.
He trembled from the exertion and from the humiliation that he’d put everything he was out there for strangers to see.
Ms. DuPreé set one hand on his shoulder. “That was good,” she whispered. “Real good, kid.” She smiled and her eyes sparkled. “Stick with me, and one day I’ll make you a star.”
53 CHALLENGE
Fiona followed her stupid map to the far side of the Ludus Magnus. She was irritated they thought she needed a map when she’d been wandering around here for a half a year already. . more irritated that she had needed the map.
Although she had seen the far side of the Ludus Magnus before, had even had a bird’s-eye view from the top of the obstacle course, she’d never noticed this tiny sister coliseum.
Instead of columns, giant statues stood along curve of its outer wall: an armored knight, a one-breasted Amazon, and a gladiator with trident and net.
She passed through the wide entrance. The inside training grounds were the size of a softball field, with sand and mud and grass and concrete surfaces, dotted with wooden practice dummies; steam-powered, multi-armed robots; barricades of spikes and razor wire, racks of swords and shields and spears-and lots of open space to fight.
In the center stood Mr. Ma. About him in a loose circle were ten boys in their Paxington school uniforms (not gym sweats).
Fiona’s heart skipped a beat. Of course Mr. Ma would be the combat instructor. Who else but sadistic, by-the-book Mr. Ma?
The boys in the class were bigger and more serious than the ones she usually saw on campus. Upperclassmen. Two of them she recognized from that first-day demonstration of the obstacle course; one had had a broken arm, but he looked no worse for the injury today.
Fiona worried that she might be late-despite having made sure that she had an early start this morning. It was one of those things that just seemed to happen to her: misreading the grandfather clock at home, class getting moved up. . Eliot doing something to mess them up, like start a small war.
She checked her phone. No, she still had ten minutes.
As Fiona walked toward them, however, she noticed one more thing different with this picture.
Robert Farmington.
He stood with the other boys (just as tall but not quite so filled out), and he looked completely at ease-as he always did. He had a black eye, but nonetheless laughed along with Mr. Ma, and grinned-until he saw her.
His smile dried up. The others turned.
Mr. Ma’s smile similarly vanished, and he was once again the same stern figure who made her life miserable in gym.
“Good morning, Miss Post,” he said.
The way he said it, though, was laced with disapproval-as if what he meant to really say was: Good morning, Miss Post, and notice that while you’re on time, you’re not early. . indicating that you don’t have the dedication to the martial arts that these other fine young men do, so why don’t you go back to bed and get your beauty sleep and not worry your not-so-pretty-little head about such things?
Imagined or not, irritation made her neck flush with heat.
“I’ve come to learn how to fight,” she told him as confidently as she could (which sounded more like a squeak to her).
“I’m sure you have,” Mr. Ma replied. He nodded to Robert. “But as you can see, I’ve already had one freshman who has contested the prerequisites for this course. I have no desire to babysit two such fledglings. It would not be fair to the others.”