Strange Sweet Song (12 page)

Connor leans in too close. “What happened? Come on!”

Angelique’s most famous aria …
She closes her eyes, afraid that if he looks into them too deeply, he’ll see everything.
Barbara da Navelli in shimmering white—she wasn’t Angelique, she could never be Angelique, not like that mystery soprano Sing saw when she was five. But she was beautiful. The audience, rapt, made no sound; no one breathed, no one blinked. It was to be a night for the history books—the union of That Voice and That Role. Sing watched Barbara da Navelli’s graceful hands tell her story, heard the voice that never quite sounded like “mother” scattering glittering diamonds of music across the theater, lingering over notes like pearls, round and smooth and expensive. Then, suddenly, the voice was gone. Sing remembers the brief look of quiet puzzlement on her mother’s face before she sank silently to the floor, the white dress deflating as though the woman inside had been nothing but air.

“Hey. Neanderthals,” a clear voice says. A pixie-faced girl with her hands on her hips looks down. “Why don’t you go bother somebody else?”

The two guys protest, but the girl bats at them until they shuffle away in search of something to drink.

“Sorry about them,” she says. “I’m Carrie. Senior violin. Having a good time?”

Sing nods. “I’m Sing. Um, first-year singer.”

“I know.”

Sing feels her face fall just a bit and hopes Carrie doesn’t notice. But she does. “Sorry. Everyone knows who you are.”

“Yeah, I’m used to it.”

Carrie sits next to her on the bed. “I’m sure you are. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck sometimes.” She sips from her own red plastic cup.

No one has ever said this to Sing before. “Yeah.” Then her brain kicks in.
Carrie Stewart. As in the legendary pianist Gloria Stewart?

“I had a famous great-grandmother,” Carrie says. “But you probably knew that.”

“I figured maybe.” Sing holds her cup out. “To famous relatives.”

Carrie laughs, and they toast.

Carrie turns out to be popular, and soon a variety of seniors have settled around them on the bed, including Anita the flute and a chinless young man Sing recognizes as Silvain from
Angelique;
his real name is Charles.

She relaxes, letting Carrie refill her red cup, interacting with other humans in a comfortable way that would make Zhin proud. It’s only after Prince Elbert—Tanner Something-or-other—arrives that the conversation turns awkward.

He apparently doesn’t remember her, which is surprising after all the pinkness they accidentally shared, and says to Charles, “Didn’t Lori sound incredible? Too bad we didn’t get to do the duet. Man, I thought she’d never get there.”

Uncomfortable silence. Then dawning recognition on his wobbly face as he meets Sing’s eyes. She almost enjoys watching him stutter but mercifully cuts him off and puts on her schmooziest professional voice, the mask her family wears so well. “Well, we all get nervous, don’t we?” She is glass inside, smooth and hard, brilliant. “Lori sounded fantastic. She’ll do a great job.”

Tanner looks relieved. And Sing almost pulls it off, face placid, hands steady, eyes calm. The magic party mask.

But then Lori appears, accompanied by the smell of roses—
roses
! Aaron hangs in the doorway as though he’s deciding whether or not coming in is really worth his time, but Lori strides right over to where Carrie is seated and smiles warmly. “Hey!”

Carrie hugs her. “Lori! Glad you made it.”

“Yeah, Ryan and I had some catching up to do.” She giggles.

Catching up? After less than a week?

Sing hates her.

She tries to shrink, but it doesn’t matter. By all appearances, Lori doesn’t even notice she’s there.

Ryan drifts in, fingers in his hair. “What’s shaking? Hey, Sing.”

Sing watches Lori’s eyes flick in her direction, sees her smile quiver for just a second.
So! Lori has a party mask, too.

As if she is aware Sing is on to her, Lori draws herself up, face serene. She sits on the bed next to Tanner, who looks as though he may faint, and then pats the space on her other side. When nothing happens, Lori looks at Ryan, patting the space again. He obeys, lowering himself onto the bed as Lori ruffles his hair.

And there they all are. How cozy.

Sing can’t take it. She rises clumsily, putting her knee down on Tanner’s hand.

“Ow!”

“Sorry,” she says. “I have to go to the bathroom.” Not the suavest of excuses.

To her surprise, Carrie says, “Me too.”

The bathroom is old, with flickering fluorescent lights. When they are both washing their hands at the row of cold sinks, Carrie says, “I guess Lori’s found her mark for this semester. Sickening, isn’t it? She always gets the best ones.”

Sing focuses on rinsing. “You mean Ryan?”

“Yeah.” Carrie rips a paper towel. “You know him, huh?”

“No. Not really.”

Carrie leans against the tiled wall. “You like him?” Sing is silent, and Carrie says, “Sorry. None of my business.”

Sing shrugs. “No, that’s okay. I just … I thought Lori would set her sights a little higher. I mean, she seems like the big fish around here.”

“Are you kidding? What’s better than a gorgeous rehearsal pianist?” Carrie pushes the door and they step into the hall. The harsh light from the bathroom briefly illuminates knots of people, dancing, speaking, watching.

Sing stays close to Carrie. “I don’t know. I thought she’d be the type to date an apprentice.”
Or a professor,
she thinks.

Carrie snorts. “Have you
seen
our apprentices this year?”

“There must be a few decent ones,” Sing says. “And I don’t think Lori would be picky as long as she got to wear someone with power.”
Do I mean Lori?
she thinks.
Or my mother?

“Students and apprentices don’t mix,” Carrie says. “Not ever. School policy. Got to keep things in their proper place, right?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Sing says. “That charming Apprentice Daysmoor—I’m sure the ladies have to try extra hard to keep away from him.”

Carrie laughs now, and Sing likes the sound. She says, “What’s the deal with him, anyway? Why is everyone so creeped out by him?”

“You don’t think he’s weird?”

“I don’t know what to think. Is he an egomaniac or what?”

Carrie crosses the hall, three steps, and gazes out a black window. “Come here,” she says. “Look at this.”

Sing peers across the dark quad. Carrie points. “You see Archer?”

Archer sits opposite Hud, the dormitory in which they are standing, and like Hud, it is as square and drab as it can be—except for a strange round tower that rises inexplicably from one end. Sing looks at Carrie. “That must be the original tower. From when the first St. Augustine’s was built.”

“It’s old as hell, yeah,” Carrie says. “So besides the practice rooms, Archer’s got the apprentice quarters. That tower is where Daysmoor lives.”

Sing frowns, squinting at the shadowy shape; it looks like a huge, crusty barnacle latched on to the hull of a ship. “Now
that
is creepy.”

“Put that crumbling old thing together with Daysmoor’s perpetual scowl and murky past, and you’ve got the stuff of legend.” Carrie leans against the wall.

“Murky past?” Sing isn’t ready to go back into the room across the hall. “What, like a criminal record?”

Carrie laughs. “Not exactly. But how old would you say he was?”

Sing shrugs. “The same as the other apprentices. A bit older than you, maybe. Twenty? Twenty-one?”

“Yes. Well, that’s the other fun thing about him. He’s been an apprentice here for three years. It’s true, you can look it up in the administration office.”

Sing leans against the window. The glass is cold on her forehead. “Okay, so that works out.”

“Yes, it does.” Carrie smiles. “And it worked out three years ago, too, when my brother was a senior here, and Daysmoor had been here for three years.”

“What?”

Carrie glances out the window and shrugs, putting her hands in her pockets. “Oh, you can’t prove it. Most of the students don’t seem to notice, somehow. The faculty look at you as though you’re crazy if you suggest it. And sometimes I think we are crazy, those of us who know about him, like maybe my brother and I are closet conspiracy theorist crackpots and we’re not even aware of it. Who knows? Maybe there’s been a whole series of Apprentice Daysmoors, each as unpleasant as the last. I enjoy him, honestly. Apprentice Plays-poor—our eccentric little oddity.”

Something in Sing twinges. “You talk like he’s a novelty,” she says. “I imagine there’s
something
special about him, or he wouldn’t be here.”

Carrie turns back to her room. “You can imagine anything you want. And that’s all you’ll do, because no one ever hears him play. Come on.” And she is through the doorway.

Sing hesitates, glancing at the cluster of bodies on the bed, red light shining on long blond hair next to copper. Lori leans close to Ryan and says something. He turns his head to speak to her, and their glowing faces are suddenly so close together; his eyes dart to her lips as she speaks again. Sing remembers those pink-glossed lips protruding with Lori’s exaggerated vowels in St. Augustine’s hall. She isn’t particularly religious, but there was something
wrong
with those lips in what used to be a church. In what is still, for some, a holy place.

Sing doesn’t go back into Carrie’s room. She surveys the crowded hallway with little interest before making her way back to the stairs.

If I sang like Lori, maybe Ryan would be whispering to me on Carrie’s bed right now.
It’s childish. But now, for the first time in her life, she wonders whether she will ever
really
sing. For the past two years, she has felt on the cusp of greatness—just one more lesson, one more soiree, one more vocalise, and she would be there. She has felt it bubbling, one note away from breaking through. One intangible element lacking.

But she doesn’t feel like that now. Not with
Angelique
and Ryan and her small, past successes slipping away from her. Maybe it was her mother’s greatness she felt, not her own, and now it is fading. New, vibrant stars are skyrocketing, old ones growing still and silent, a lovely, painted backdrop.

She pauses at the top of the landing and turns her face to a window. The great, black forest betrays no sign of life, no indication of a magical, wish-granting beast. Sing wonders what she would wish for given the opportunity.

Twenty-five

T
HERE HAD BEEN ANOTHER CAT,
for a short time. The Cat could still sense him—
cat
—but the Sky, when it remembered, recalled him as a kindred spirit of the cosmos, tied to earth rather than space, but as its master, not its prisoner.

Still, most of the time, it was the Cat who was most awake. The Felix rubbed her neck against a tree, sniffed a patch of leaves, swiveled her ears toward the forest. That he was gone was certain, but that he had been
here
was just as certain, but fuzzy in her memory.

And now, in her cave on the summit, there was yet another cat. Like herself, but small. Easily torn apart, easily digested. But for some reason, she hadn’t done this yet.

She had been bringing it food.

She had been curling her body around it at night to keep it warm.

She had been licking the soft fur between its ears.

Sometimes, something pricked her mind. Others like her, elsewhere. A time before rage and guilt and despair. But this feeling was always fleeting.

Twenty-six

W
HAT DOES MUTATION FEEL LIKE?
Sing climbs onto a picnic table and swings her leg over the moonlit wooden fence. Is it a tingle? A burn? A sickness? Or just silence? This lonely peak would be just the place to hide a secret toxic waste dump. Or a mad scientist’s lair. What would her father say if she came home contaminated?
I know you are trying,
carina,
but the great sopranos—none of them are glowing green, eh? Do you think the major opera houses want green sopranos? And now you have developed a third eye, of all things! It will not do. Go practice your scales.

But a wooden fence wouldn’t be any sort of protection against toxic waste. It’s probably the bright, mysterious
DANGER
signs, straight out of a sci-fi B movie, that are making her think these crazy thoughts.

The muffled noise of the party carries across the lawn and over the fence, punctuated by sharper, closer sounds—squeaking branches, crackling leaves, the hissing of the wind. Her father’s warning, coupled with Marta’s declaration that the Felix is real, bothers her. Even though the idea of a giant, mythical cat is ridiculous, something itches in her mind. Something that says,
This forest is real. The Felix is real.
She tries to toss the thought aside.

Perhaps the danger the signs warn of is simply that the land beyond the fence is wild and cold and tangled, no place for a wayward conservatory student. Sing drops to the crunchy ground, washed in gray light.

If Lori hadn’t started singing, maybe Sing could have gone back into Carrie’s room. But when she heard those bold, playful snatches of song, the familiar, knotted bitterness came creeping back, and she knew she had to go. Maybe for the night, maybe for just an hour, but she had to get away. No, not away—

To.

She had to come to the forest. It has been watching her, waiting for her, since her arrival on campus. Dark, lonely, and quiet. The forest is everything Sing hasn’t known for two years.

Is she jealous of Lori Pinkerton? Of Ryan’s attraction to her? Of her long blond hair? Her confidence? Her voice? Lori is so much like Barbara da Navelli, and Sing has spent the last two years trying to be like Barbara da Navelli. Could she be jealous of her own mother—her own
dead
mother?

Marta and Jenny didn’t even notice her leave the party, and that’s all right with her. She doesn’t want them to see her now, not when she doesn’t know who she is anymore.