by Jodi Meadows
Page 2
Author: Jodi Meadows
His hands trembled as he pulled up the latches, and the box was soundless as he turned up the lid.
Light glimmered across two lengths of silver, catching on a row of keys and delicate swirls engraved into the metal.
It was a flute, one I’d never seen before.
A rush of wind stirred the trees and stole my quiet “Oh” as Sam pulled the flute from its case and pieced it together. His eyes were dark, wide with anticipation and something else as he offered the instrument with both hands. “It’s beautiful,” I whispered.
“I hoped you would like it. ” The flute nearly vanished in his hands, though it seemed normal-sized when I rested my fingertips on the cool metal. “Take it,” he urged. “It’s yours. ”
“Why?” My question didn’t stop my fingers from wrapping around the flute, from pulling it to my lips. My breath hissed over the mouthpiece as my fingers found their places on the keys.
The heat of his body warmed me as he leaned closer. “Here. ” He nudged my right thumb farther down the tube. “And your chin. ” He tilted my face up slightly, his fingers lingering over my skin.
Our eyes met, both of us suddenly aware of his other hand flat on my ribs, unconsciously adjusting my posture. “Better?” I breathed.
He watched my mouth and nodded. “Play for me. ”
Play what? He hadn’t brought out music. But as sunlight began to fade, making the indigo roses turn ink-dark and early snow glow on the mountaintops, I played a long, low note that filled the cottage clearing with a haunting reverberation.
The note created a bubble of warmth around us. It tangled around vines, caught in rosebushes, and pushed out toward the mountains that rose like distant walls. I found a breath, and my fingers climbed a half step up.
The flute stretched its sound. It fit me as precisely as though it had once been part of my body and now we were reunited. My hands and mouth and lungs knew this flute, and I knew this flute would do anything I could ask of it, and more.
I climbed notes until a pattern emerged, as sweet and haunting as the flute’s sound. The melody took shape and flew on sure, steady wings. Music filled me until it seemed I might burst.
When I lowered the flute, Sam leaned toward me, a satisfied smile on his lips. “It suits you. ”
“It’s perfect. ” I caressed the silver, engravings sharp and new beneath my fingertips. They looked like ivy, or something delicate and twisty. “Did you make it?”
“Some. I had a friend do a lot of the work. How was I going to hide it from you otherwise?”
The metal was warm from my playing, and I couldn’t stop staring at the way it looked in my hands. It was perfect. “I want to play it all the time. ”
“Good. ” Sam grinned widely. “Because you will. ” His tone turned conspiring. “I wrote some duets for us. ”
My heart stumbled over itself. “Really?”
“I want to keep this moment forever, the way you’re smiling right now. ”
“You may. ” I placed the flute in my lap and brushed my hands over my mouth, pretending to grab my smile as though it were bits of wool or clouds. “Here. ” I pressed my imaginary smile into his hands. “This is for you. ”
He held his fists against his heart and laughed. “It’s just what I always wanted. ”
“I have more whenever you want them. ”
“All I have to do is give you new instruments?”
I shrugged. “We might be able to find other things worthy of smiles. ”
He cupped my cheek and kissed me. “Ana, I…” The way his voice had softened, deepening with emotion, made me shiver. He pulled back. “I’ll get you a jacket. ”
Whatever he’d been ready to say before faded into the cool night. “No, you know what would help me warm up? If you got the other flute and music. ”
“You’re ready to start now?” He lifted an eyebrow.
“You can’t give me a pretty new flute and expect me just to put it away. ” I clutched the instrument to my chest.
“Then I’ll be right back. ” He kissed me again, then got up and vanished into the cottage, turning on the front light as the door shut behind him. Good idea, if we were to read music.
Alone but for the trees and roses and a few birds settling in, I lifted my flute and found a simple melody. Somewhere in the woods, a bird repeated a few notes. I smiled and played again, and the bird sang back.
Strange, but I couldn’t identify the bird. It didn’t sound like a shrike or mockingbird. A thrush? No, the voice was too otherworldly.
Peering into the darkness, I played a few measures of my minuet—the one I’d written not long before Templedark—and the bird…something…sang it back. It wasn’t a bird.
“What are you doing?” Sam came outside again, his arms filled with a stand, a book of music, and his flute.
“There’s something out there. ” I couldn’t see. The front light stretched and vanished only halfway down the path, and the trees huddled beyond its reach. Rosebushes shivered in a cool breeze, and in the woods, someone moaned long and mournful.
My stomach dropped. I knew that sound.
“Sylph. ” The light made harsh shadows across Sam’s face. “Is that a sylph? Here?”
“It didn’t sound like a sylph before. I thought it was a bird. It was mimicking my playing. ”
Shock flickered in Sam’s expression as he squinted into the dark. “Surely they wouldn’t be this far into Range. Or—mimic you. ”
I licked my lips and played four notes, and the repeat came from closer. Just beyond the light, a shadow writhed. Then another, to the left, and a third still in the forest. There were so many, maybe as many as there’d been the night they chased me off a cliff, into Rangedge Lake.
Sylph burned, reeked of ash and fire, and they were without substance. The lore was complicated and contradictory. Some said they were shadows brought to a terrible half-life, thanks to fumes and heat from the caldera beneath Range. Skeptics maintained sylph were simply another of the planet’s dominant species, like dragons or centaurs or trolls; people should be cautious, but not assign them any special history or powers.
Whatever they were, I’d had more than enough experience with them for one lifetime.
“Sam. ” I hardly recognized my voice, so opposite the storm of fear building inside me. “Get all the traps you can find. ”
Several more sylph picked up the notes, singing as though it were a short round of music. The sound grew, pressing closer, and abruptly stopped.
A sense of waiting grew heavy in the air. A heartbeat later, a sylph whistled a scale.
Sam touched my elbow. “You need to get inside. The walls are protected. ”
“Protected. Not sylph-proof. ” I lifted my flute. “I think—” My breath hissed across the mouthpiece and made all the sylph tense, push closer. I retreated until my skirt caught in a rosebush; thorns pricked through the cloth. “I think my playing keeps them distracted. Get the eggs. Set the traps. If the sylph attack, I’ll go inside. ”
And hope I was fast enough to reach the door before they burned me alive.
“I’ll hurry. ” Sam vanished into the cottage.
Heat billowed from all sides as the sylph swarmed closer. Heart pounding, I began to play.
2
SHADOWS
DARK TENDRILS FLICKERED in and out of the light. The moaning grew softer as I played a major scale—and they sang it back.
Every scale I played, every arpeggio and trill, the sylph echoed it and hummed closer. Heat brushed against my skin like breath as the shadows drew ever nearer, but did not attack. The scent of ozone filled the clearing, though, and the front light seemed to grow dimmer.
“Good Janan!” A boy’s voice came from the bottom of the path.
Every sylph went rigid and shrieked, and a wave of heat rolled toward the cottage. I gagged on the taste o
f ash, and sweat prickled over my skin.
“Stop!” The word was out before I could consider the wisdom of shouting, but the sylph froze. Adrenaline surged through me, making my head buzz with terror and my voice too high and pinched. “Stay where you are,” I called to the newcomer. “Stay out of their way. ”
Silence. Either he had run, or he was doing as I said.
I couldn’t breathe through the heat. Too easily, I could recall the sensation of a sylph burning my hands. The blaze, the lightning pain, and then nothing.
These hadn’t burned me—yet—and if music would keep them from trying, I’d give them music. Sam would be out soon with the sylph eggs. I hoped.
Sweat pooled between my chin and the flute as the heat intensified, but I could feel their attention shifting back to me as I drew a breath, struggled to focus, and blew a stream of air across the mouthpiece. Haltingly, I played one of the first sonatas I’d learned. It was a sweet, unassuming thing called “Honey,” which Sam had named for Sarit and her apiary five or six lifetimes ago.
My hands and jaw shook, but after a few moments, the sylph heat faded. One or two tried to sing along, and more caught on as I kept playing.
The sylph danced, black knotting with black. Ropes of darkness reached toward the stars, twisting with one another until they melted into one writhing shape.
They seemed to…enjoy the music. A little more confident, I stepped closer and they moved back—as though I were a light they couldn’t stand to be near. But they kept singing, kept twisting. They kept dancing, even as we moved away from the cottage.
Sylph had always been terrifying shadow predators, but these were behaving unlike any sylph I’d ever met. Not like the ones that had chased me on my eighteenth birthday, or the one that had burned my hands the day after. They weren’t even like the ones that had been at Templedark, though those had behaved strangely as well, fleeing from my father.
But this. Dancing. This was not sylphlike behavior at all.
The sonata came to an end. I smothered a moment of panic—would they be angry?—but the sylph hmmed and murmured the melody here and there, like echoes or making sure they hit the right notes.
One at a time, sylph drifted down the path, humming as they went.
Brush rustled, and a flashlight beam bounced across the yard as the newcomer hurried out of their path. When they were gone, the boy climbed the hill, sagging under the weight of his enormous backpack. “What did you do?” he asked.
I clutched my flute to my chest, waiting for my heartbeat to slow to a normal speed. I had no idea what I’d done. They heard the music, sang along, and went away. It was very odd behavior.
The boy didn’t wait for an answer. He pulled his backpack off and dropped it to the ground beside him, glancing over his shoulder like he thought the sylph might change their minds. Did they have minds? They were incorporeal shadows, affecting the world only with their heat. My hands prickled with memory of sylph burns and my phoenix feeling from months ago. The pain had been excrutiating, but when it was over, my scars had been burned away.
“Were they after you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I was walking here and heard your playing. I thought you might be—” He shrugged the words off. “Then I saw the sylph as I approached the path. That’s it. ”
“Hmm. ” I looked beyond him into the forest, but nighttime hid everything, especially sylph.
“I’m sorry,” he said, offering his hand. “I’ve been rude. I don’t think we’ve met in this life. Cris. ”
“Cris. ” I glanced at the cottage as Sam’s rushed footfalls came toward the front door. “Purple rose Cris. ”
He made a smile that might have been a grimace. “Yes. ”
“Sorry, I meant blue. ” According to everyone, Cris had bet he could grow the perfect blue rose, supposedly a genetic impossibility. Four lifetimes of rose breeding later, everyone said the results were purple, and Cris left his cottage. This cottage, which people called Purple Rose Cottage to mock his attempt.