Strange Sweet Song (29 page)

Then, over Griss’s shoulder, she catches sight of coal-black hair and even blacker eyes. Daysmoor, across the lobby, with Maestro Keppler nowhere in sight. She stares. He doesn’t look away.

If only she could tell him her silence is protecting them both, that the Maestro lied. But how?

Griss and her father are making small talk, but they are including her. She nods and smiles, willing Daysmoor to stay where he is with quick, furtive glances. His face disappears intermittently as the crowd between them shifts and swirls, but he keeps looking in her direction.

She nods at Griss again, laughing at a witty remark. Her hands begin to shake.

Intermission is nearly over and Daysmoor will join the Maestro again. Who knows what other lies Keppler will tell him?

If she were Barbara da Navelli, she would excuse herself, march up to Daysmoor, and tell him in a clear voice that she—that she didn’t hate him, and the Maestro could go to hell.

But I am not Barbara da Navelli,
she thinks, remembering the index card from her first day in Mr. Bernard’s class. But now, rather than the sinking feeling that usually accompanies this thought, she feels just a bit of exhilaration.

Mind churning, she says, “Mr. Griss, I’m so happy you’re coming to the performance tomorrow. Would you like to hear a sneak preview?”

Her father raises his eyebrows, but Griss seems amused. “Right now?”

“Of course.” Sing’s heart is thudding. She can’t possibly do this. But Daysmoor is looking at her with uncertainty, not yet dislike, and she refuses to let this chance slip away.

Griss watches her with interest, hands in his pockets. Her father crosses his arms but remains quiet. Sing knows he has decided to trust her judgment. She doesn’t yet know if he is right to.

“It would be bad luck to do something from
Angelique,
so here’s a little
Magic Flute,
” she says. And starts to sing.

The first note, in the middle part of Sing’s range, cuts through the low chatter of the lobby like a bell. She doesn’t need to think about plot or character; she is Mozart’s princess, grieving from misunderstood silence. By the time she reaches the first high note, everyone is watching her. Most people smile, some seem annoyed at having their conversations cut off, and some—mostly other sopranos, Lori Pinkerton among them—are plainly hostile. Her father, taking his cue from Griss, seems pleased.

But she doesn’t care about any of them. She watches Daysmoor for a reaction, some kind of understanding. He wears his mask, but she sees through it now—it’s astonishing that everyone can’t see him for what he really is. The man who should have been playing Brahms tonight. The man who should be playing for the world.

From across the crowd, he watches her for the entire duration of the aria.

The aria ends not with wailing despair, but with low resignation. For Sing, tonight, it becomes a last entreatment. Across the lobby, Daysmoor’s face is as impassive as ever. Amid warm applause from the spectators, he turns back to the doors to the theater and leaves.

The spell over her breaks. Blood rushes to her face as she realizes what she has done. She can’t bear to look at her father.

“Brava!” Harland Griss says cheerfully. “Well done, Miss da Navelli. You would make a charming Pamina.” Sing nods appreciatively before a woman steals Griss away with busy compliments and important questions.

People come up to her now with small words of praise, and she responds gratefully. A voice hisses in her ear, “It’s always about
you,
isn’t it?” but Lori Pinkerton is a yard away, leaving only the scent of roses, by the time Sing turns around.

A heavy arm corrals her shoulders and guides her out the front doors and onto the cold steps. She looks up and says, “I’m sorry, Papà. That was rude, wasn’t it?”

Her father squeezes her shoulders. “They are lucky to hear you sing. I am—amazed at the progress you have made here. I am very pleased. Harland is interested. But your Angelique can speak for herself. You did not need special tricks to draw his attention.”

She looks away. “It was a stupid thing to do.”

“Never!” He takes her face in his hands. “Why do we sing if we do not love to sing? I’m very happy you’re free with your gifts.” He lets his hands drop and looks out at the snowy quad. Lights on posts and from windows illuminate the campus. People Sing doesn’t know stroll the grounds in their winter coats. Her father sighs. “Sometimes you remind me so much of your mother.”

Sing stretches and curls her fingers. It wasn’t a compliment. Barbara da Navelli sought the spotlight with elegant ferocity. But Sing can’t explain her real motives to her father; she can hardly explain them to herself. “I’ll do better, Papà,” she says.

With a burst of light, one of the Woolly’s massive front doors opens and someone leans out, looking around.

“Can I help you, my dear?” Ernesto da Navelli says.

“Oh, Maestro da Navelli! I’m so sorry, I was looking for—oh, Sing, there you are.” Marta emerges, silhouetted.

“
Bene, carina,
I will see you later, eh? Don’t catch cold.” Her father gives a little bow to Marta before heading inside.

Sing feels a rush of warmth that starts from her stomach and spreads to her shoulders. “Hi!” She grins. “I didn’t think—”

“I’m sorry to interrupt you and your dad.” Marta sounds sincere, but her voice has a flatness to it that pulls the grin from Sing’s face.

“Oh. That’s okay,” Sing says. “Intermission is probably just about over, anyway. Though I think I’m just going to head back to Hud. You … you want to join me?”

“No,” Marta says, but adds, “I, um, really want to hear the rest of this round.”

“Oh.”

“I just came to give you this.” She holds out a glossy, printed page.

Sing takes it. “What—?”

“Bye, Sing.” Marta heads for the doors. “Um. Have a good show tomorrow.”

Sing’s face falls. It isn’t a plea for sympathy, just a natural reaction. But Marta notices. She bites her bottom lip and says softly, “I do mean it. You sound really good. You’re going to get everything you want. I’m happy for you.”

The door shuts behind her with a leathery thud.

Sing leans against one of the Woolly’s fat pillars. Everything is so strange now. Only a few weeks ago, she and Jenny and Marta made shy conversation at the Welcome Gathering.
Angelique
was a lifetime away.

She looks at the folded paper, a page torn from tonight’s program. She unfolds it to reveal a few words scribbled in pen over the print.

If you have something to say, meet me tonight at St. Augustine’s. I will leave the door unlocked. —Nathan

Fifty-seven

T
HE FELIX AWAKENS WITH A ROAR
that shakes granules of dirt and snow from the rocks around her. She turns her gaze upward. The sky is black with night clouds.

It was a dream. Stars moaning, distorted, burning themselves out in spectacular, horrific displays of vivid golds and blues and purples. The whole of the night sky smeared with glittering, galactic death.

The Cat part of her mind has no time for this. It has already sensed what the Sky part is too distracted to notice—the child is gone.

This time, however, the Felix knows where he has gone. She feels the same inexplicable pull, toward the human place, that must have woken him.

An old wish is about to die.

Fifty-eight

S
ING IS CERTAIN SOMEONE
will see her, that someone already sees her. Maybe Maestro Keppler, peering out from his dark office, scowling, or her father from his luxurious room in Hector Hall. Maybe Ryan, his head turned briefly toward the window of whoever’s room he is in right now.

She inhales deeply, the frigid air stinging her lungs.

St. Augustine’s looms in the darkness. It looms enough in the daylight, or when the windows are warm and bright for an evening rehearsal, but now, in the bleak, whispering cold, it seems to tower over the rest of the conservatory. Sing reminds herself she’s not superstitious. Yet she thinks of Tamino—sweet Tamino—proof of either magic or madness, neither one of which is nice company in the middle of the night.

She finds the massive door unlocked, as Daysmoor said it would be. The door scrapes, but to Sing’s relief its two-hundred-year-old voice is too tired for squeaks or squeals. She pulls it shut behind her.

Her footsteps do not echo; they are too small to affect the high walls or distant ceiling. Someone is playing the grand piano. It sings from the concert hall, vibrating the bones of the old building.

The music feels too loud, too noticeable. Surely the Maestro or the president will come striding in any moment.
No,
she tells herself. Hector Hall is all the way across the quad. No one will hear. No one will know.

Outside the hall, the reality of what she is doing—what she is doing
again
—hits her in the chest, and she stops. Daysmoor—
Nathan,
as he called himself in his note—is in there. His fluid, passionate notes are as distinctive as his own voice.

She pushes open the door. He is sitting at the piano on the other side of the hall, but he rises quickly when he hears her. She looks at the shiny old floor as she crosses the room. The golden light from the piano lamp leaves most of the hall in shadows, illuminating only a small, safe haven around the piano.

He watches her uncertainly. She suddenly wishes it were not so late and lonely and that he were wearing his voluminous, stodgy robes instead of,
of all things,
the gray T-shirt—the one he grabbed out of the laundry basket in his bedroom that night. She doesn’t want to see the outline of his shoulders so clearly, remembering what they looked like without the T-shirt covering them. She wishes he were scowling, slouching; but that was Apprentice Daysmoor, and he has cast off that persona. This young man standing before her, his black eyes deepened by the shadows around him, is Nathan.

And she has no idea who he is.

“Um,” she says, taking off her coat and draping it over a chair, “I got your note.”

He puts his hands in his pockets. “This would be quite a coincidence otherwise.”

She stifles her annoyance. He has a right to be huffy with her. She inhales. “You’ve really … helped me. I—still need you. I need your help, I mean. I just couldn’t tell you that in front of the Maestro … I’m sorry.”

The corners of his mouth turn up just a little, and her insides feel strange. “Well, it’s nice to be wanted,” he says, “even in the middle of the night.”

Do not think about wanting him in the middle of the night,
she tells herself, and says, “I’m nervous about tomorrow. I was really disappointed we didn’t get our last coaching session.”

“You’ll do fine.” He clears his throat. “But I’m glad you want my advice. I mean—I guess what I mean is that I’m glad you came back.” His eyes glint. “And I liked your secret code.”

Sing is glad for the shadowy room as she feels a blush creep into her cheeks. “I didn’t come back. I didn’t leave in the first place. The Maestro made all that up. He knew I went to the tower. He gave me a censure and said he would kick us both out if I talked to you again.”

Nathan’s face darkens. “He would say that. But he’s not going to kick me out anytime soon.”

“
The Magic Flute
was the only way I could think of to explain.” Sing realizes how easily she is speaking to him, with the familiarity of a—a what? A peer? A friend? And that he seems to be speaking to her the same way. Nathan is so different from Apprentice Daysmoor.

“I should have known,” he says, and sighs. “I’m sorry.”

Relief tingles her chest. “What were you playing just now?” she asks. “Are you going to play for me?” Why did her voice sound like that—perky and amused?

Oh, my God,
she thinks.
I’m flirting. Stop flirting.

“Well, I have been practicing.” He sits at the piano.

She is all politeness. “I don’t think you could play the Brahms any better.”

A hint of color rises in his face, and she wonders how often he receives compliments. “I haven’t been practicing Brahms,” he says.

“What have you been practicing?”

He raises his eyebrows mischievously. “Liszt.”

Liszt.
Why does the word embarrass her? “Oh,” she says.

“I hope you’ll indulge me.” He moves his hands to the keys with a flourish, and before Sing has even lowered herself into one of the folding chairs, the concert has begun.

He plays nothing like Ryan. Ryan played Liszt with a wink, with conceit. With “fast little notes,” Sing remembers Nathan saying. But Nathan plays Liszt as he does Brahms—with exhilaration and precision. This piece, the
Totentanz,
which Sing remembers her father playing, begins with low, dark, angry shouts. But it has more to say. Sounds flash and zip and cavort as Daysmoor’s long hands rush along the keyboard like water. Then it becomes pensive. Sing hears the famous eight-note
Dies Irae
repeated, over and over, but there is no wrath in Daysmoor’s performance. Only life.

He plays magnificently. She’s cascading through space.

At last he stops, and she can hardly believe it when she looks at her watch to find he has played for only fifteen minutes. They both laugh, though Sing doesn’t quite know why. His eyes, which she once thought so hard and arrogant, are now vibrant.

“There, I’ve given you another private concert. Be careful what you wish for,” he says. “But you wanted to sing. Isn’t that what this is about?”

What is this about?
she wonders.

He opens an
Angelique
score. “Where shall we start?”

The question gives her pause. She doesn’t know where to start. What will it be like tomorrow, in front of the whole conservatory, her professors, her father? Is she ready for this?

“Are you all right?” he says after a moment, and she realizes she’s been standing there, staring at nothing. She looks at him.

“Look,” he says. “You have something to prove. I get that. I … I’m sorry I haven’t been understanding about it. I’m not always very understanding. Let’s just sing this through first, okay? This first aria.” He begins to play, and she rolls her shoulders.