The Song of the World (nanowrimo13)

Chapter 18

“But what do we do?” Alto finally said, after she had been regaled by long conspiracy theories by her old comrades. She was still trying to remember their new use-names; they refused to acknowledge any of their old names, saying that it was from an era past, and era best forgotten. 

“We need to confront this fake Song,” Justice said.

“What with? We don’t have any prove. You don’t even have the real Song to confront him with.”

“But we have to do something,” Hands said. “We can’t just let this guy run rampant.”

“Okay - don’t shoot me down, but let me ask you one question - what’s wrong with just letting this fake Song - if he is fake - just continue to run the show? I mean obviously he has been able to prove to the council that he can tap into the Song. So why must we do anything at all?” Kale asked. 

“But if he’s a fake, that means he has the real Song captured somewhere,” Seams pointed out.

“We can’t prove it.”

“What I want to know is how he does it?” Barr said. “I mean, if he were behind all of this, how did all of us lose our talent? If it really is linked to the migraines, as I suspected, how on earth did he manage to induce that in us? In all of us? How did he get us into his clutches? I can’t seem to find any other similarity that ties us to him.”

“I don’t think we should worry about the how right now, Barr,” Cherry said. “We need to focus on what we can do from here. How can all of you break free from him? I think that if all of you can somehow regain your talents, you may be able to weaken his power so that he will not be able to Sing anymore.”

Alto nodded. “That makes sense. But how do you break free?”

No one had any ideas. 

“Come on,” Alto prodded. “You guys came up with so many conspiracy theories but you can’t come up with even one theory on how to break through this thing?”

“You try to,” Barr said a little sullenly. “It’s not as if we haven’t tried.”

“Fine. How about if you - if…” she stopped, thinking. “I don’t know if you operate in the same way that I do. But if I sang something, wouldn’t that trigger your talent to try to, like, harmonise, or to do whatever it is your respective talents were? For you, maybe to harmonise, for you maybe to arrange scores, or to conduct, or… or to sing as well?”

They discussed it. “Okay - Alto, sing something,” Barr finally said. “We’ll see if anything happens.”

Alto searched her mind for a song, picking one at random. Singing the first few phrases, she watched the faces of the men before her. All of them were concentrating hard, as if straining to listen. Nothing changed in their faces for the longest time ever. She was reaching the end of the song and wondering if she should repeat the chorus when Mercy’s face changed. 

“Continue,” he whispered. “Go on.” 

Alto repeated the chorus and slowly, tentatively, Mercy started to tap out the rhythm of the drums on the table. She flowed along with his rhythm, skipping with the syncopation, rolling when he steadied it. And then all too soon, the music stopped.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I had it, for a while, then I lost it. It’s like trying to catch a guppy in a ravine. You’re so far away you can’t really see the fish, and when you finally see it, you can’t catch hold of it because it’s so far down and your arms are not long enough.”

“At least you glimpsed something,” Justice said frustratedly. “I can’t even find an inkling of the stream.”

“Me neither,” Barr and Hands said almost simultaneously.