I’d been so lost in my own ragged emotions, I hadn’t even noticed their sadness. They’d missed the music, too.
I wouldn’t ignore them again.
The sylph led me through the woods, melting snow where they thought I might have trouble finding traction. We crept through the forest for hours, strains of melody fluttering around like butterflies or leaves in autumn. Though exhausted, I felt oddly peaceful, considering I was in a dark and unfamiliar forest with a dozen burning shadows.
Only as morning light bled through the forest did I realize I’d been walking all night. My muscles ached, and my stomach felt hollow. I gathered up a handful of fresh snow and ate it, but it only helped a little.
One of the sylph flew off to find something for me to eat, and a few minutes later I was picking scorched feathers off a pigeon. It wasn’t ideal, but a few bites too hot to taste, along with snow, helped immensely.
I was just about to sit and rest when morning reflected off white stone just through the trees.
A broken section of the wall.
I’d arrived.
18 RINGING
YESTERDAY THE DRAGONS had come in the morning. If I wanted to attract their attention, I needed to time everything perfectly.
Preferably after they’d found something to eat.
I tightened my backpack straps and tucked my flute case into my coat. A pile of rubble made a sort of stair; I scrambled up the steep incline, careful of slick spots and snow. When I reached a gap with too many loose rocks, I stretched for a low-hanging branch and climbed a spruce tree until I reached another decent section of the wall.
It took forever, and sylph kept stopping me so they could dry my way, but at last I reached the top of the wall.
Snow made the sky misty gray, but from up here, I could see everything. Trees encroached on the prison, pushing through piles of weather-smoothed stone broken off the wall. I stood above them, the pines and spruces and maples, for a moment feeling like the tallest person in the world.
There was the cliff I’d found yesterday. It seemed awfully far away now, though it was probably only an hour’s walk. I’d had to take the long way around, coming down the mountain in the dark.
Sam and the others would be waking soon, if they weren’t already. I tried not to imagine their reaction to my letter.
Cold wind streaked across the wall, but sylph huddled around me, warming the air and absorbing the force of the wind to keep it from hitting so hard. The wall was plenty wide, but I couldn’t risk falling. There were a few holes here and there; this wall—and the tower inside—didn’t have Janan keeping it intact. The stone was ice cold and crumbling, with no heartbeat inside.
When I had a clear view of the frost-crusted forest, I drew my flute from its case and blew hot air into the mouthpiece to warm the metal. I wanted to remove the case and my backpack, since they were heavy and awkward, but I couldn’t risk losing them. It seemed like if I put them down, they’d be gone. The sylph weren’t corporeal; they were useless for carrying things.
I hadn’t heard dragon thunder yet, but the gray clouds spat snow. A dragon could be hiding up there, easily.
My heart thudded against my ribs. What if they didn’t come? What if they did?
“I don’t know, Cris.” My voice shook as I lifted my flute. “This is seeming too big again.”
Cris hummed comfortingly, and shadows touched my hands, my cheeks.
Sylph formed a horseshoe around me, leaving everything ahead of me visible. I needed to be able to see and listen.
Wing beats cracked in the east, and I shivered.
Clouds rippled with serpentine bodies pushing closer. I breathed hot air into my flute, keeping the metal warm, getting my lungs used to the effort. I wouldn’t have time to warm up like normal. Not unless dragons were impressed by scales and rhythm exercises.
I knelt and held as still as I could, waiting as the dragon thunder grew closer. Talons scraped the bottoms of clouds, shredding the vapor into ribbons. Immense wings scooped air, swirling snow in flurries across the sky.
A trio of dragons swept toward the forest, silent as they slithered over white treetops. Only the wind of their passing and the occasional clap of their wings gave auditory evidence of their presence.
From my perch, surrounded by sylph whose chief desire was to protect me, I could almost appreciate the beauty of these dragons. Sam once told me that the first time they’d seen dragons, everyone had stopped what they were doing and looked up. They’d been entranced.
Until the attack came.
I waited, heart pounding in my ears. What if they hated music? What if that was why they always attacked Sam?
Part of me wished he were here, because even though we’d been fighting, the way I missed him was an ache in my soul.
But most of me was glad I’d come alone, because I needed to prove to everyone—myself included—that I was right and I could do this on my own, and because I couldn’t put Sam in this kind of danger. I almost had. It had nearly broken him.
“I can do this,” I whispered as a dragon swooped into the forest. Trees splintered as it surged through, a streak of gold in snow-covered evergreens. The dragon came up with what looked like a small bear, and then swallowed it whole. The other two dragons dove into the same area, each emerging with another bear. They didn’t even have a chance to roar before the dragons tossed them up and caught them, as though playing or showing off.
Was that it? Was that all they would eat? Dragons were huge. Surely they needed more. But they began moving eastward again, toward other hunting ground or home, I couldn’t be sure. I needed to start now.
As I stood, sylph coiled around me, so hot that sweat trickled down my spine.
“I can do this.” My breath wafted over the flute mouthpiece, making small hissing sounds. Sylph fluttered and began a deep, resonant hum. A chord, as though they were my accompaniment.
A high-pitched, terrified giggle escaped me. Then I set my mouth, pulled in a breath, and began to play.
Four notes. One, two, three climbing lower. Four jumped above, long and high and bittersweet. The first notes I’d ever played on a piano. The notes that began my waltz.
As one, the dragons veered off their course, turning back. Thunder cracked as they flapped their wings, but they made no other sound, gave no indication how they’d communicated.
Instincts urged me to run, hide. My backpack weighed me down, making my shoulders ache as I tried to hold my flute up at a right angle; Sam always made fun of the way I let my flute sag, reminding me I’d get a better sound if I held it up.
I moved away from playing the waltz, choosing something simpler instead: my minuet. It was the first thing I’d ever composed, a haunting little melody of my fears.
Music poured from my flute like silver silk, and the shadows around me caught on quickly, adjusting their voices to become the bass and countermelody. They lifted my flute’s sound high above the treetops, carrying it eastward. My shadow orchestra. They listened to me, watched how I moved and where I sped and slowed, adjusting their songs to mine.
Thunder cracked again as the dragons grew nearer. Their wings seemed to dominate the sky, blocking the mountains and forest as they glided toward me. Their eyes were huge and bright and blue, and suddenly I felt very, very small. Like prey. Soon they would be upon me, able to gulp me down like one of those bears, or that deer yesterday.
When the minuet came to an end, I didn’t stop playing. I repeated it, and the sylph continued their songs, though now they stretched out around me, wide and tall and just as terrifying as they’d been the night of my eighteenth birthday. As we spiraled through the music again, the sylph’s voices grew louder, more intense.