Suddenly Mouse seemed taller, stronger. She cleared her throat once, twice, while resting both hands against her lower abdomen. Without appearing to exert much more effort than she had on similar previous occasions, she began to sing.
It was a wordless song, a song of power, and it poured out of her like a torrent in an endless fortissimo. Frank had to put his hands over his ears, and Alicia, too. They listened in awe to the incredible volume of sound issuing from that seemingly frail body. The music was simultaneously calming and exhilarating, reassuring and ennobling, soothing and strength-bestowing.
As they looked over the edge of the plateau, they saw that the rippling movements of the Spinner’s body were becoming more pronounced, like waves traveling across a golden beach. It was starting to move, not in uncertain, hesitant jerks, but smoothly and in time to the rhythm of Mouse’s song.
She sang for a long time, longer than should have been possible, before her lips finally came together again. She wore the strain of the song like a scar on her face as she turned and smiled weakly at Wendy.
"I’ll have another sip, I think." Dumbstruck, the girl handed her the glass.
"Wow — if I only had my tape recorder."
Alicia was taking in the vastness that was the Spinner. "Is that all? I mean it’s over? You fixed it?"
"I do not know."
Frank frowned at her. "Whaddaya mean, you don’t know? After all we’ve been through you mean to say you can’t tell if it’s been worthwhile?"
"I believe I have stabilized it some, but not completely. Did you think this would be so easily done?" She passed the water back to Wendy. "I must continue. It is not finished."
Throwing back her head, she let loose an entirely new and different tsunami of sound. The irresistible musical avalanche swept out from the plateau to wash the place the Spinner lived. This time it seemed to have no effect. The expression Mouse wore when she concluded the song showed she was not pleased.
"Still not there. Something is wrong and I know not what."
"I do."
Surprised, they all turned. Burnfingers Begay regarded them, proud and exhausted. Sweat streaked his face and his black hair lay flat against his skin. In his right hand he held a two-foot-long golden cylinder that glowed with internal fire.
Alicia stared at it in amazement. "Where did you ever find that?"
"Did not find it. Made it. In your bedroom." He grinned at Frank. "With your hobby tools, my friend."
"What the hell is it?"
Burnfingers held it up so the clouds could have a good look at what he had wrought, like a father proffering his newborn son for approval.
"It is a flute. The flute."
"Doesn’t look like any kind of flute I ever saw," Frank replied uncertainly.
"It is not the kind of flute you would find in a symphony orchestra. This is a Native American flute. The best kind of flute. From it comes the music of prairie and grass, of butte and sandstone, of the wind and the waters. This flute will breathe Four Corners music." His eyes glittered; perhaps with his madness, perhaps with something else.
"I made it out of the gold I have saved and collected. Gold of Spanish doubloons and Colombia and the Yucatan. Gold from the Andes and the Sierra Nevada. Gold from the shallows of Brazil’s rivers and from great museums where I have worked and studied."
"You stole it?" Alicia asked him.
"Stole it?" He lowered the unique instrument to regard her intently. "I did not steal it. I liberated it. This is piece and fragment of all the gold the white men have ever stolen from the Amerindian, from the tundra to the plains of Patagonia. I did not know at the time why I liberated it except that it made me feel good to do so." His gaze rose, to settle on Mouse. "Then I met the little singer and learned of her journey, and I knew what I would do with the gold when the time came for it to be of use.
"When I told you that I was crazy you should have guessed I was a musician."
Mouse was nodding knowingly, like one who’d just found the missing piece of the puzzle under her chair. "And I thought you were only a Traveler."
"All musicians are travelers, but not all Travelers are musicians," he replied merrily. The glint in his eyes had become a twinkling. "It takes more than the right song to soothe the Spinner. It takes the proper accompaniment." And putting the gleaming flute to his lips, he began to play.
So Mouse, inspired, sang a third song, and they all knew it was the best yet, better than ever before. But when it was done she declared herself still unsatisfied, and the Spinner, though obviously much improved, still heaved and buckled alarmingly.
"Still something absents itself." She was thinking hard, staring at the ground. "Burnfingers Begay, your music has helped much, but I fear it is not enough." She glanced so sharply at Frank that he twitched, startled. "Frank Sonderberg, can you play an instrument?"
"Who, me? You’ve gotta be kidding. None of us can…"
"Hey, Dad. Dad?"
Father and mother looked at Wendy. Frank readied himself to say something, and then he remembered. Back in the reality that had claimed his son, where each of them had demonstrated a special talent, a unique characteristic, only his daughter had simply sat and stared, displaying nothing. Now here…
"Are you sure, sugar?" He hadn’t called her that in quite a few years. It came back easily and felt good. "I mean, really sure?"
"I can try, Dad."
He nodded, smiled, and indicated the motor home. "Go and get it, then." Eyes shining, she turned and sprinted past Burnfingers Begay.
Frank turned to Mouse unable to vanquish the pride in his voice. "My little girl, when she puts her mind to it, can play the harmonica."
"I don’t know." Begay was doubtful. "It is not a noble instrument."
"The nobility lies in the performer, not the instrument," Mouse informed him. "We must try and hope."
Wendy rejoined them, panting hard. In one hand she held a shiny silver concert harmonica. Next to Burnfingers’s solid-gold flute it didn’t look like much, but Mouse didn’t appear disappointed. She came forward and put both hands on the girl’s shoulders.
"Just listen and try to follow. Let your thoughts flow and be one with the music."
Burnfingers raised the flute to his lips. "Now it is time to let your heart sing."
Wendy nodded. "I’m ready." She put the instrument to her lips.
It was not what Frank normally thought of as music, when he thought of it at all. The golden flute was akin to bubbles in champagne while his daughter’s harmonica sounded more like the foam atop beer. Somehow it all came together, carried forward by the power of Mouse’s song. And enveloping them and adding to it all was the almost palpable projection of maternal affection and warmth that emanated once more from Alicia.
Frank looked on and listened, and much as he was amazed by it all he discovered he was feeling very left out.
A tug at his arm made him look down. Flucca stood there. "Don’t let it get to you, mate. Me, I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket." He winked. It shouldn’t have made Frank feel better, but it did. He straightened as he turned back to the improbable concert.
The Spinner was reacting. Bursts of sun-sized lightning now ran not only along its back but through its entire body. Legs, which had been twisting and jerking against one another, gradually relaxed until they resumed weaving in unison. The alignment commenced near the head and spread slowly toward the unimaginably distant horizon. As he looked on, the gaps and rips in the silvery mats that formed the fabric of innumerable reality lines began to close up. The image that resulted was one of vast beauty and regimentation. Frank felt an overwhelming sense of peace and contentment.
Mouse’s voice was the soothing strength, the cool sound of Burnfingers’s flute was her support, and Wendy — Wendy’s herky-jerky harmonica provided an odd sort of harmonic glue that bound the whole together. The resonance of reason, he thought, marveling that his own daughter could be a contributor to such an endeavor.