《Magpie People》


 1 - SORROW

    There isn''t a gravestone yet. The earth, overturned, is still damp and new to the feeling of sunlight. Emmeline stands at the side of the grave and tries to work out what she is supposed to be thinking. Everyone is just looking at the box in the ground, the box with the body in it, the body that used to have Adelaide in it. It began raining while they were still in the church, a small, nondescript building with a roof that made it look as though it was part of a playset - the gentle tapping of it landing on the coffin now reminds her of fingertips on a windowpane. The kind of touch that happens instinctually. Like the urge to press piano keys, or push toes into sand. She breathes in and feels the weight of her body, feels it ache to be the one in the grave. She breathes out and lets the desire go with it.


    A magpie lands on the pile of dirt and Emmeline watches as the person nearest to it attempts to scare it away. The blue sheen of the oil-black wings glints as it leaps into the air, rain being cast off of the slick feathers - she thinks that Adelaide probably wouldn''t have minded the magpie''s presence. Maybe she''d have laughed or tried to encourage it into her palms. Maybe the bird could sense that - maybe dying cannot erase the kind of soul-deep warmth that some people possess. Energy is energy; Adelaide has to be somewhere, in some form. Maybe she is here.


    As soon as the possibility awakens she knows it isn''t true. If Adelaide is sentient, even one atom of her, she''ll be taking the vast ocean of death as an excuse to swim across the sky, or see the canyons of the moon, or watch a sunrise on the other side of the planet. She doesn''t know if death works like that, but she hopes so. She hopes Adelaide is scattered across the horizon, not buried here in the earth. It doesn''t have the strength to hold all of her, anyway.


    The drizzle thickens, grows: all of a sudden, they are standing in a downpour. People murmur, or perhaps they scream - all she can hear is the rain. It''s very grand. Emmeline looks up, tilts her face into it and lets the water wash her away. She wants it inside her lungs. The clouds above are elephant grey and low-hanging, weighed down and darkened by their communal grief. You shouldn''t have taken her, she thinks, desperately, pointlessly; I need her more. More than what she doesn''t know, but everything in her is so sad that it hurts, and she wishes her ankles would shatter so that she could look how she feels. She''d have to cry, then, and she''s not been able to yet. She wants to collapse. She wants the black hole in her stomach to swallow more than her hunger; wants to just stop, for a moment. Everything is wrong. These are feelings too dark for poetry. She knows - she has tried, has written for hours onto the pages of her journal, an exercise like letting blood. She wants it out, now, the noise in her heart is becoming unbearable. She misses the ease with which she used to play piano - now each piece is exhausting. She cannot practice without remembering, and remembering is difficult. Worse even than the remembering is the ending of it: when she pushes herself through, re-lives those golden hours in that golden room, the silence that follows is violent.


    When the music stops, the world stops. That was something Adelaide had said once. It was meant as nothing more than some poetic musing, cast out into the universe - there is a stillness that follows music, a space occupied only by breathing and emotion, a stillness like religion. A gap too clean and empty to fill with other noise. Emmeline had loved the phrase and clung to it, sought and found proof in the fragile, charged moments post-performance just before applause; in the way her grandmother rested her hand on top of her record player, eyes closed, for a second before resuming the rest of her life. Now it feels like a kind of warning. Adelaide and all the music in her have stopped, but they have left dead air, none of the promised serenity at all. She wonders if it''s possible to be betrayed by words or a dead woman. Everything is wrong, she thinks again, clenches her fists and tries not to fall apart. Adelaide gone, her grief too loud for writing about and then, from nowhere- a miracle.


    Where before there was one there are, suddenly, impossibly, a dozen magpies, no longer on the earth but in it, leaving tiny footprints on the lid of the coffin. There is no way for them to be here - no reason, no cause, no anything, and yet, here they are. One looks at Emmeline, or at least she thinks it does, and she holds its curious little black gaze until one of the miserable assembly comes to their senses and tries to shoo the crowd away. She doesn''t know the right word for a group of magpies - she knows crows is murder and dolphins is school and (although she can''t think where she''d have learnt this) a group of larks is called an exaltation. Watching them now, she thinks magpies should be something like mourning or poem.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    Too late, she puts up an umbrella. She''d forgotten she was holding it - it is black, and she resents it. There is too much black here. If they are saying goodbye, if this is the send-off, there should be yellow, gold, immeasurable colour and beauty and abundance and ceremony, not sadness behind a church. Adelaide wasn''t even religious - she doesn''t know who organised the funeral but she is angry for a moment until she realises that the magpies aren''t leaving, instead are entirely disregarding the flapping hands and barked shouts meant to spur them on. This is the kind of odd that fascinates her, and she stares and stares and tries to work out how to rationalise them. Then - eye contact, entirely unexpected. The boy must have been standing opposite her the entire time but she equally feels as though he has appeared, just now, this second. His eyes are familiar, arresting, a shade darker brown than his curiously freckled skin, and they are hollow enough that she is reminded of the magpie''s gaze. Their eye contact stretches taut until a thump above her head makes her jolt and she looks up and sees for a fraction of a second that the material of her umbrella has been replaced by blue-black feathers before something lands on her arm and she whirls, dropping it. A magpie. Its clawed feet dig into her hand and she knows that it cannot be real but she also feels that it is. The rest of the funeral guests - are you a guest at a funeral? - are preoccupied, suddenly back to listening to whoever is speaking and Emmeline is so completely overtaken by the notion that she must be invisible because no-one is noting the bird on her hand (lighter than she expected) when it launches from its perch and flies so that it eclipses the sun for a second.


    "Emmeline?"


    The voice is so real that the moments before, even though they have only just passed, are immediately given the surreal quality of a dream, and she turns again, heart beating, to face the boy. He looks at her, just looks, and then she recognises him and memory floods through her. She doesn''t know how it could possibly have taken her this long. "Otho?"


    Adelaide''s son had been introduced to her very early on in their lessons. He''d burst into the room, rambling about something with an intense, concentrated energy that had taken her by surprise. When he''d noticed her, he''d spooked, stopped talking immediately, a reaction that she''d thought was strikingly similar to when her cat caught sight of its own reflection. At that moment she''d felt a buzzing in her fingertips - a dizzying feeling of I know you before she''d even spoken to him. The way he''d frozen was as familiar to her as anything. She''d assumed then that talking to or in front of strangers was a talent that came with adulthood, neatly packaged alongside knowing where to sit and an ability to understand when it was appropriate to laugh.


    ''Emmeline, this is Otho,'' Adelaide had said, holding her hand in one of her own and this boy''s in the other. ''If you know me, then you must know him too. Otho, this is Emmeline. She is a new student of mine. Come in, darling.'' He''d been watching her from the doorway with a kind of hesitant interest. She''d been watching back.


    Now he stands in front of her and she tries not to let her sadness show. He has far more of his own than he can bear, she knows, seeing the way grief pushes his shoulders down, makes his hands fold themselves into knots and steals his breath. She wants to write a poem about the physicality of it. For the first time in months, the words collect on her tongue. She pictures them like gasoline, wants to strike a match.


    "Hello," she says, and it''s like flint on steel. He starts like he''d not been expecting her to speak, flexes his fingers, meets her gaze for a moment and then-


    "Sorry," He says, and stumbles away.


    She stands alone for a second, watches him disappear behind the crowd, frozen. They have started to drop handfuls of earth on top of the coffin, the magpies abruptly not-there. The sombre performance of it makes her mouth taste like iron and dirt. She closes her eyes, feels the rainwater from her hair drip onto her neck, tries not to flinch as the sound of the soil hitting the wood. It sounds far too much like knocking. She makes up her mind.

 2 - LUCK

    Following Otho feels like something she has done before or will do again or has dreamt and then forgotten.


    It may just be the oddness of the day, but she watches herself slip away (slip is such a cavernous word, one that speaks of water and accidents) from the mourning assembly and thinks that she cannot remember what it was like to know what to do. He isn''t moving slowly - she saw him turn left, out of the cemetery that sits in the grounds of this estate, but he''s out of sight when she rounds the corner. It''s a bit like hide-and-seek, or tag, or some other game she used to play in the school fields. Those kinds of games scared her a little. The way that people would chase her until she was caught, even if she told them to stop, which she often did. It''d be fun, exhilarating, until the reality of not escaping dawned on her and there''d be a moment of panic, a need to be out of reach.


    Emmeline remembers her grandmother telling her that this manor house, and the gardens (a vast expanse of green too bright not to have been paid for and trees so neatly beautiful that she wonders if they''re real at all) within which the church and graveyard sit, were where Adelaide had won a prestigious award. She should probably remember the name. She''d never really been very curious about Adelaide''s career though, much to the confusion of her parents. They''d been delighted to secure her tutorage with such a successful musician, even more delighted than Emmeline having an interest in something so... respectable. But the truth of it was that Adelaide''s manner had impressed on her; her kindness that seemed to be without end, without cause. Emmeline had felt a desire to know her, not professionally but as a person. She wanted to play the piano with the same fervour, the same delicate, fiery earnestness. Music was honest, and she heard love in everything Adelaide played. It was beautiful. Even the critics agreed.


    She is preoccupied by these thoughts so much so that she almost misses him. Otho is sat on the second of a weather-marred set of steps, the old, stone kind that Cinderella might have lost a slipper on. He looks as though he has fallen and landed there, a glove halfway out of his pocket and his pose not entirely natural. He''s the sort of boy that doesn''t seem as though he is supposed to exist outside of photographs. He had an air of melancholy about him long before the tragedy struck him down. Emmeline pauses, then sits not-quite-beside him, a step above. The two of them look out at the grounds, the maze in front of them. Between two hedges there is a sliver of a view, a glimpse into it. She hopes there is something at the centre.


    Otho exhales sharply, and she cannot tell if he meant to do it or not. Some people breathe in a way that is intended to attract attention - she wrote a poem about it once. It wasn''t a very good one. He''s crying and it''s like he''s never not been; quiet and ceaseless, silver in the light caught between day and dusk. He reminds her of a jigsaw. She shifts a little closer and shakes out the umbrella before holding it over their heads. Perhaps his eyes dart to her, but she isn''t sure, is busy staring out at the darkness of the maze and feeling rain on her cheeks or maybe she''s crying - there is a thick knot at the base of her throat, trapping her tongue in place. Emmeline can''t finish a thought without getting sick of it so she recites an Emily Dickinson poem in her head instead and doesn''t think, doesn''t think, doesn''t think. The act of ''not'' doing a thing is more difficult than it sounds.


    The quiet drapes them both in something sacred. Sound sort of vanishes, the constant drumming on the umbrella, the overflow of the fountain, the rush of blood; all are lost in muteness. A magpie lands in front of them. Of course it does.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    ''One for sorrow.''


    She startles at the voice, the same miserable, beautiful voice as before. She really hadn''t expected him to say anything. Maybe she imagined it? Otho doesn''t look at her, hypnotised by the bird, or maybe he''s not seeing anything. Emmeline scrapes a reply from the back of her mind, although she can''t tell if he''ll hear her. ''Or luck.'' It comes out a whisper, the way things she''s not brave enough to say often do. She, too, watches the magpie, not wanting to meet his eyes. Meet his eyes. She likes that. Do you have to meet every part of a person? That sounds intimate. She really likes that. She wishes someone wanted to meet her eyes, hands, body, mind. She pushes the desire away.


    ''What?''


    These words between them are so small, so absent, but they''re taking visible effort from both of them. Help, she thinks, a prayer. She doesn''t know what to do.


    ''Older versions of the rhyme, the magpie one, they have one for luck. Not sorrow.'' As she says it, she abruptly has no idea where she learnt it. Did she make it up? Did she lie? She can''t tell. Maybe.


    He makes a sound that might be an acknowledgement. She shifts her attention to him. He really is beautiful in his grief. It''s raw, human. Poetry. Tragedy. Awful, magnificent. Something is wrong with her, she knows.


    ''You look so sad,'' she says, completely by accident. Nothing in her works how she wants it to.


    ''I am,'' He says. He presses one finger into the gap between two knuckles on his other hand. ''I don''t feel very lucky.''


    She observes the gesture and wants to copy it. The honesty he has spoken with is not lost on her. She knows, feels in her stomach, that this is a moment that it is important she gets right. That could mean something. She regrets being so... her. This is absurd. What is she doing?


    ''I can''t stand this,'' she hears burst from her, is horrified, cannot stop. ''I can''t- her being gone, I''m so sorry, the funeral was awful and I hate her being dead,''


    He flinches, stares at her.


    ''I don''t know how to grieve properly, I can''t do anything-'' Her breath runs out. She feels like air. ''Otho,'' She says, helplessly, ''Oh God. I''m so sorry. How are you-'' She means to say coping- ''Living?''


    ''I don''t think I am.''


    She snaps to herself, out of the dream she was in where her words don''t have consequences. She said all that. Oxygen in her lungs, rain-soaked hair. When did she stand up?


    He''s looking at her again, hands shaking. Hers are too. She''s crying.


    ''No.'' She agrees with him. ''Or if I am, I''m going about it all wrong.'' Why is she saying this? These are the thoughts she doesn''t give voice to. It''s bitter, tastes like blood on her tongue. Truth.


    At last, inevitably, they face each other properly. He''s so... engaging, in the focused, coincidental way he''s always been, but sorrow dulls his edges. It''s probably wrong to keep admiring the way mourning sits under his skin but she can''t help it. He''s a painting. Seconds that might have been minutes pass, taut overhead in the clouds. Something about extended eye contact with him (so clinical) makes her feel transcendent; a girl in a film, there to be watched, but she can watch in return. A two-way mirror. It occurs to her that he isn''t a stranger, even though she barely knows him. The knife cuts both ways. Bizarrely, she almost smiles. Instead, she picks up the umbrella again and gives it to him. Gifts pass between them: for the first time, she has a poem hanging from her fingertips. He has her umbrella. They both, wholly inexplicably, have a sense of company. At least for a moment, the loneliness wrapped around each of them loosens. Something begins.

 3 - COMFORT

    ''I liked the service.''


    Emmeline''s grandmother is driving the car. Her bracelets (oversized, aggressively so) stack against each other and slide down her arms as she shifts to the next lane. They''d made the beads together one afternoon a couple of months ago. She''s everything Emmeline is not: colourful, flamboyant, radiant. A presence designed to be looked at. Something to be given attention to - something that demands it.


    ''It was nice.'' Emmeline feels vacant. She thinks about how the seats will be wet when they leave the car and whether or not they''ll stain. ''There should''ve been more music, though.''


    ''Hmmm.''


    The sun has decided to come out, though the clouds remain. It refracts inside the water left on the windscreen and turns each drop into a prism. Prism is a good word.


    Her grandmother has always been good at quiet. She looks like a storm but her unpracticed self is a peaceful one, her mind a bit like Emmeline''s in that she could spend hours inside it, but where Emmeline thinks, she dreams. They sit for a while, accepting the company of the other without needing conversation. The cusp of evening splits the sky in two, one half orange and the other a greying blue. After the rain, it''s a bittersweet recompense. Undeniably close to perfect, unusual enough that it tugs on the desire to capture it, to hold it between palms and keep it there, like a firefly. She wishes she could hold the sunset.


    Debussy''s ''Deux Arabesques'' begins to play. It''s a favourite of both of them, though Emmeline has no idea what kind of radio station they''re listening to for it to have come on. Maybe her grandmother made a CD. She does that sometimes. In many ways she''s a Luddite, disregarding technology and claiming its influence to be poisonous, preferring meditation and weekly ballet classes. (Emmeline halfway agrees with her, but would never admit to it. She argues the other side every time, feeling a strange allegiance to her own generation.) The other, disconcerting proportion of the time she knows more about it than Emmeline, up to the end of the 1990s when she apparently stopped paying attention to the rest of the world. Her knowledge of CD players and early versions of Facebook is startling.


    ''Did you learn this one yet? I can never remember.'' It''s an innocent enough question but. It makes her trip up against things she doesn''t want to think about. ''Lina?'' A nickname, based on the Spanish variation. Emelina.


    ''No.'' She clears her throat, looks out of the window. ''We were going to. We started to, but.'' She finds that the words stop there.


    ''I''m sorry,'' her grandmother says, soft. The car has been parked. How long has it been parked?


    ''It''s fine.'' It''s not. Why does she always say it is?


    ''Not it''s not.''


    She looks up. She''s not seen her grandmother since Adelaide died until now. It only happened two weeks ago, but that''s still longer than they usually spend apart. Her parents had wanted her at home, had been concerned for her. They didn''t realise that time with her always helped. Her eyes are forgiving when she makes eye contact and Emmeline doesn''t know why this makes it unbearable but she suddenly can''t breathe. Her mind blanks and she tries to hide it. She knows she fails.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    ''Oh, darling-'' Arms go around her, a tightness to match the one compressing her organs, making her skin feel like a cage. She hates this. She lets her knees come to her chest, holds them in place, fingers awkward and painful. Her grandmother rubs one shoulder and tucks her chin over the other. Emmeline tries not to drown. There is far too much to be sad about. She''s been greyed-out, numb for months, swallowed by herself, but this is new. Her sadness - depression, apparently she''s supposed to use the word (though that one makes her think of thumbs in flesh, clay being sculpted - she doesn''t feel like a work of art. This doesn''t feel like something that could revert itself, change back to an unbroken surface. Depression is the dent in a plastic water bottle, not this steady loss of her entire identity. She feels replaced with a ghost.) - began without cause, so to be given one is alien. Now people assume she''s grieving. They don''t seem to understand that she feels like she''s been in mourning for aeons. She can''t remember the last time she woke up and was glad of it.


    Then: ''Tea?''


    ''What?''


    ''Do you want to come in for tea?''


    ''In?''


    Her grandmother smiles. ''Yes. For tea. And I made cake earlier, too. Well. That''s not strictly true. I bought it. From Morrison''s. Are you coming in, darling?''


    Emmeline loosens her chest. This is okay. ''Yes.''


    ''I thought so. Undo your seatbelt and- you know what, it''s too late for the seats. Where did you- I thought you had an umbrella?''


    Oops.


    An eyebrow raises. ''You. Come on, in.''


    There is nothing to do but obey. The click of the seatbelt releasing feels like relief, the pressure alleviated greater than just the fabric against her stomach. Her reflection catches her eyes in the rearview mirror - the grey pea coat hangs off of her like a shroud and combined with the colourless pallor of someone who has only been sleeping when her body has succumbed to exhaustion (no-one told her how heavy death is, she can''t carry it with her without feeling drained). She would make a far better corpse than the one she''s just seen buried. Even two weeks gone, Emmeline thinks of her body as as lovely as ever. She can''t help it. Adelaide''s whole face looks - looked? (Past tense feels disrespectful, somehow)- as though it was designed for curiosity: an always-quirked mouth, eyebrows slightly raised like she was both bewildered and delighted by everything. She was beautiful in a way that existed entirely apart from how she looked. Her body contained her, and it was warm and now Emmeline wishes she still possessed it but- that wasn''t all she was. Maybe this is why she can''t believe she is gone, not really. She''s seen the evidence, has seen the way the loss has soaked into her son (Oh, Otho, she thinks; a prayer)- but she misses her more than she mourns her. Oh. The arrival of this realisation untangles the knot in her line of thought. That was the thing she''d not figured out yet.


    ''Emmeline!'' Her grandmother is holding her newest foster cat in her arms. It doesn''t look particularly happy- it really just looks heavily, heavily pregnant, but it doesn''t attempt to escape. She breathes, in, out, and presses her fingertips to her eyelids briefly. Their weight is like the magpie. The magpie. In focusing more on enduring than processing the funeral, she''d forgotten. This is a strange day. The memory of it landing on her arm fits uncomfortably. Like a dream from years ago, one that feels equally real and imagined.


    ''Em-a-li-na, come and say hello please or I will revoke my offer of cake. I do not say so lightly but you''re making Margaret feel unimportant and that is not the correct way to treat a cat. They''re very prideful creatures, it''s dangerous to disrespect the frightening size of their egos.''


    One more breath: she straightens her shoulders, lifts her head and goes inside.

 4 - HOME

    The unsaid goodbye that usually haunts her lingers in her grandmother''s doorway. It seems unable to reach inside these walls, even more familiar than those of the conservatory at Adelaide''s.


    ''Et voila,'' she''d said, the first person to speak French around Emmeline. She''d made it seem effortless, to slip from one language to another; when Emmeline had gotten older and started to study it herself she''d realised Adelaide hadn''t really been that impressive but... She remembers the feeling nonetheless. ''Ma conservatoire.''


    Conservatoire had sounded so elegant, with its suggestions of grandeur and accomplishment. Conservatoire. The music had washed into her and swept her up in its current, each note like a waterlily and she''d been still coasting on it by the evening, so she''d asked her parents what it meant rather than avoiding conversation. She''d been too awestruck and anxious to ask Adelaide - it had been one of the very first times she''d met her, and they''d spent the day talking over orange juice and muffins. Unlike her grandmother, Adelaide had been a baker; there were neat, repetitive scars on her right hand from knife slips.


    ''I dance to the music while I''m holding it, I can''t help it,'' she''d said, smiling with a light that reassured Emmeline. She''d wondered for a while if they were intentional, more out of habit than choice or concern. Adelaide was the happiest person she knew, but sad enough of the time that it felt genuine.


    Her mother had told her about conservatories and for a while, the dream of such success had overtaken her. Eventually, she''d realised that although playing the piano was like the feeling of waking up to find snow, the strange, inexplicable wonder and the way breathing takes a little less effort than usual - that kind of success wasn''t what she wanted. Success was playing and making her grandmother cry. Success was feeling like she was made for it. Success didn''t need her to suffer for it. Success was joy.


    The cat - Margaret - is on the table when she enters the kitchen. It''s an absurd creature and when it deigns to look at her she feels, ridiculously, uncomfortable. Her grandmother started adopting cats when Emmeline''s grandfather had died, almost ten years ago. She was too young to understand at the time how big of a thing that must''ve been: she was eight years old, sad but not inconsolable. She doesn''t even remember her grandmother''s reaction to it. She wonders if she''d talk about it if she asked. Probably.


    There''s an endless rota of pregnant cats in the house, anyway; the local shelter needs a place for the mothers to be comfortable and her grandmother needs company, something she''d much rather have from animals than people. Emmeline doesn''t mind the cats - she''d spent the summer here, and although it''s only three weeks into September, it feels like the time between now and then has been pulled apart with only threads connecting the two - but she''s not wholly reassured by this one''s proximity to the tea her grandmother is pouring. She takes her cup quickly and feels the cold recede from her fingertips, back towards her heart.


    ''Here. You know, don''t you, that I''m always here for you?''


    This is unexpected. She loves her grandmother and knows that she is loved in return, but they don''t usually get into conversations about it. ''Yes?''


    A smile. ''Good. I should think so, after I let you squat here for months on end -''


    ''Nan!'' (This is intended to be inflammatory. Her grandmother goes only by ''Pip''.) She laughs and Emmeline feels like she''s home.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    ''Oh, that was probably deserved. Okay. What I mean to say is that I have your best interests in mind at all times and as such you shouldn''t write off what I''m about to say before I finish saying it.''


    ''What?'' Her heart does a funny skip, discomforted. She isn''t good with suspense. She isn''t good with a lot of feelings, really.


    ''I think you should do it.'' She leans down, starts to look through her bag.


    ''Do what? You know I have absolutely no idea-''


    Her grandmother puts a piece of paper down on the table with too much gravitas so it is fanned across to rest right in front of Emmeline. ''That.'' She says, and Emmeline feels herself split into two halves, one hot, one cold. The seam starts in her chest and it burns.


    ''This is-''


    ''I know what it is, darling. What I don''t know is why you didn''t tell me about it. I am, in fact, very offended.''


    She shoots her a glance. ''I didn''t want to do it, is why.''


    The paper is a flyer, for an audition at the private school. She''d picked it up a week ago, having seen the pile in the pigeon hole in the music department. Open to anyone. She didn''t believe the ''anyone'', felt that there was an unspoken rich enough on the end, but hadn''t been able to walk past. Or rather, she had, many times, obsessively, trying to work out whether or not to take one. After a while, she''d given in, justifying it to herself as not meaning anything. It was only a piece of paper, after all. (The excuse sounds weak even to her. She knows the value of the right words on a piece of paper and that is rarely ever preceded by ''only''.)


    ''Hmmm. I might be more inclined to believe you if you hadn''t folded it neatly and kept it in your coat pocket for... a week?''


    Caught. She forgets that her grandmother is so wickedly smart, though she shouldn''t. She has three degrees and was a human rights lawyer for thirteen years before she abandoned it all, moved to the coast and took up painting. Now she runs her own gallery.


    ''I-''


    ''Before you offer any more terrible excuses - you should work on those, really, Emmeline - I mean it. You should do it. In fact, you will do it. I know you, and I know you need pushing to take the opportunities that already belong to you.''


    There''s glass in her chest, she thinks. Transparent and sharp. ''I''m not good enough for them.''


    ''Don''t insult me.''


    ''I-?''


    ''I think you''re more than good enough, and I clearly know far more than you. With age comes wisdom, et cetera. So: don''t insult me. I wouldn''t tell you to do it if I didn''t think you were capable.''


    She is quiet. She realises, quite unexpectedly, that she desperately wants to do it. ''Okay.''


    Her grandmother leans back, her face a mirror of Margaret''s, who has settled in a stretch of golden-hour sunlight. ''You promise?''


    The next inhale feels bigger, realer. ''I promise.''


    Happiness blooms, in her chest and in her grandmother''s smile. It''s light, and the moment they look at each other is infinite. She''s not felt this way in a long time.


    ''Good. Now that''s settled, I believe I promised you cake.''


    ''I think you actually bribed me with cake, but same difference.'' Her voice sounds different. The words float in the air, buoyed on the feeling of possibility. She hardly recognises herself.


    Her grandmother huffs, a half-smile lessening the effect and she ruffles Emmeline''s hair as she swishes past. Emmeline bites her lip and tries to contain herself.


    Cake is placed in front of her. ''Hey.''


    ''Hm?'' She is preoccupied with trying to get rid of the icing.


    ''I''m very proud of you. Really.''


    Her face goes hot. What for? She thinks, but doesn''t say it. ''Thankyou.''


    ''You''re doing okay, Lina. This - '' A vague gesture that she guesses is supposed to mean Adelaide and depression and the summer spent away from her parents or maybe it means the whole universe, (with her grandmother, either is plausible) - ''Is okay. It''s going to work out. And if you need help, or space, the room upstairs is technically Margaret''s now but I''m sure we could find you a sofa or something. You''re welcome here.''


    Suddenly her throat is thick, tight. ''Thankyou.'' She means it. The word doesn''t feel enough.


    Her grandmother catches her gaze; smiles gently. ''You''re welcome.''

 5 - ART

    September is undeniably beautiful. It''s strange - Emmeline has always felt some kind of affinity to autumn, an unsourced sort of twin-ness. It''s a transition, but entirely unlike what precedes and follows it. She loves waking up to amber skies, the first hints of sunrises. Orange feels like the colour of her soul. She often thinks she was supposed to be a fox rather than a human.


    It''s a Tuesday. The Tuesday following the funeral, which was a Wednesday. The term has only just begun but she''s so far she''s missed two of the three weeks, choosing instead to do her work in her room, usually starting it after four P.M. Something about the knowledge that the school day is over offers a kind of freedom, and suddenly the constricting ribs around her heart loosen. School never used to be such a big deal. She was an excellent student. Has been her entire life, even last year. She''d noticed that if she told her parents she was working or studying, they didn''t bother her or ask her many questions, and the same went for her teachers, no matter how visibly exhausted and ... unwell she''d looked. Looks. It doesn''t matter. Excuses always wash.


    The audition is today, so an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday has turned into a looming creature that is now upon her. She hardly slept last night, although that''s not particularly unusual. Her fingers are bitten, cold, altogether worse for wear. Pip is arriving to take her to the - what''s the phrase? - red brick private college in too-few minutes. The waiting is probably worse than the doing will be, she knows, but the jittering in her knees and pulse means logic isn''t at the forefront of her mind. It''s been a while since she''s been so nervous.


    For reasons she can''t quite fully put into words, she hadn''t told her parents about the audition. It''s for a place in a not-quite orchestra: it''s somewhere between that and a band; an elite group that the school will endorse and write references for. The ''school'' is a monstrous thing. A disarmingly lovely building, with one-too-many wealthy, over-privileged boys entirely unaware of the size of their egos inside it. Girls are technically able to enroll, she thinks, but there are as few of them as there are black students. Since Emmeline falls under both of those categories, she''s either going to get in entirely on face value and tokenism, or she won''t stand a chance. Maybe she''s being cynical. (Maybe not.)


    Her muscles jolt as the doorbell rings, leaving her with a fizzy, post-adrenaline surge rush. She can hardly feel her feet as she opens the door, revealing her grandmother in all her furiously colourful glory. She''s managed to combine blue and orange in a way that hurts to look at. Emmeline loves her. Her heartbeat calms a little.


    ''Ready to go?'' She never just says Hello.


    ''Hmm.''


    ''The enthusiasm is bowling me over. Get in the car, you''re going to be wonderful. You might have to move Margaret.''


    She''s too close to being sick with anticipation that she doesn''t manage to process this, so she is entirely unprepared for there to be a cat in the passenger seat. ''Why is there a cat in the passenger seat?''


    ''She didn''t want to sit in the back.''


    Emmeline does not have the capacity to respond to that with as much sarcasm as it deserves, so she just scoops up the almost balloon-shaped cat and puts her on her lap. The heat and weight give a misleading sense of safety. Comfort, she thinks. That''s the word. She strokes - Margaret (no use pretending she doesn''t know the name by now) - and Margaret purrs at a volume she didn''t realise was possible.


    Her grandmother laughs, climbing into the driver''s seat. ''She likes you.''


    Despite herself, she''s pleased. No matter what happens today, at least she''s earned the favour of an intensely pregnant cat.


    The drive isn''t long - only twenty minutes in weekday traffic, and they make it there with not enough/ too much time to spare. Just as Emmeline is about to say she''s changed her mind, the radio is turned on and she''s hit with a terrible pop song. She likes pop, generally, but this song gives her the urge to clap her hands to her ears, which she''d probably do if she wasn''t currently occupied with smoothing the fur on Margaret''s head.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    ''Oh my-''


    Pip cackles and grins at her. ''Worked, didn''t it?''


    ''In what way did that work?''


    ''You didn''t say whatever foolish thing you were thinking.''


    Emmeline feels abruptly known far too well for comfort. ''No.''


    ''Or, alternatively, yes. Talk to me, don''t just sit there driving yourself insane.''


    ''What if I''d prefer the second one?''


    Her grandmother snorts and shakes her head. ''Suit yourself. But I''m putting that god-awful song back on.''


    She does, and the one that follows is equally terrible, as is the one after that. Emmeline is so distracted by the cacophony (are her ears bleeding?) that she hardly notices the journey pass until they take an unexpected left turn and she realises they''re only moments away. Her chest immediately fills with sand and she has to concentrate quite hard on not spiralling into panic. Why had she let Pip convince her? This is not a thing that she wants to be doing. This is not a reality she is prepared for.


    ''What if I''m sick?''


    ''You''re not.''


    ''No - I mean, what if I throw up? Halfway through?''


    ''That would be hilarious.''


    ''Pip.''


    ''Emmeline. You''re not going to throw up. You''re going to go in and do the thing that you know you''re good at and that you love and have spent at least three hours practising each day since you agreed to do this. You''re going to be fine.''


    ''Okay, but what if -''


    ''Then apologise, clean it up, come back here and I''ll drive you to go and get doughnuts. You won''t be any worse off. You''ll just have gained doughnuts.''


    She thinks it might not be so simple; that maybe if this goes badly she''ll dissolve into a cloud of moths and disappear through the floorboards. But she nods, fixes her hair in the mirror and folds down her soft blazer collar. Prepared or not, she hasn''t come this far not to go in and bare her soul.


    She focuses on her footsteps on the stone floor (this school is bleeding wealth, the kind where comfort isn''t a priority - the luxury is in the height of the ceilings and the sharp echo of every sound and the air that feels too precious to breathe). To think ahead would be to persuade herself not to go in. She has to go in - she promised, to her grandmother and herself. So one footstep, then another. She breathes; feels wings against her ribs.


    The space between her arrival and being called into the vastly oversized music room is huge, then over. She misplaces it: it is gone, and she is walking to the piano, putting the sheet music (though she knows the piece by heart, mind and soul) in front of her with out-of-focus hands. The edges of her blur and she sits.


    Pleasant enough introductions are probably made, she thinks. She is vaguely aware of her voice saying something, and other voices responding - likely the voices of the four adults in a neat row to the piano''s (her) right. Thunder sounds, but it isn''t raining. Maybe it''s her heartbeat. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees something black move suddenly out in the courtyard.


    ''Emmeline?''


    Her name is a shock, palms to toes to mind. ''Yes?'' She realises she''s turned to stare out of the window. Don''t be crazy, she thinks. Or at least, don''t let them see.


    ''You can begin whenever you''re ready.''


    Never, she thinks. I am never ready for this.


    And yet her hands - those battered hands - start to move. She watches them, hears the music swell and scream and fall out of her. She doesn''t quite know if she is sitting there on the chair or if she''s in the piano; if it''s using her lungs or if she''s using its. Something opens - a channel? A cave? A chasm - and it spans all the hours spent laughing and crying in frustration and talking with Adelaide; spans all the endless hours since she was cut loose from her, spans all the moments she''s wanted to be wherever Adelaide now is, spans all the moments she wanted not to be anything at all. All of it, a flock of feeling; a cathartic poem of sound. It tears out of her, bigger than she could''ve imagined. She sees - no, imagines - no, sees it take the form of a beak and claws and wings and then she blinks and there''s a magpie on the edge of the piano and then she blinks again and the music calls her back to it and she gets the final crescendo exactly right and it feels like sunlight, a burst of it inside her.


    Then it ends, and she gasps, and all the emotion floods back into her and it feels like surfacing from underwater. Her eyes stay closed (when did they stop being open?) for a second, two, ten. She breathes. Her blood rushes through her veins. She is alive.


    This has been a day of poetry, she thinks.


    She is right.

 6 - MOTION

    When Emmeline gets the letter saying she''s in, she realises she''s out of practice being happy.


    The feeling is so very big, but not in the uncomfortable way of grief. Grief is a black hole and happiness is - a supernova. It expands outwards, filling her to every edge, then pushing on out and lightening the sky. Everything she touches is precious, important. She wants to thank each surface for keeping her up. Mostly she laughs, half in disbelief, and hugs her knees to her chest. She''s in her bedroom, the window open to let in the cool, real, gentle air. Its breath - the earth''s - on her face is a celebration. She feels it. She''s aware of her body on the floor, the slight discomfort in her wrist from holding the envelope so tightly. Her smile is unstoppable.


    Probably she should''ve waited until she was with her grandmother to open the letter, but now that she has it in her hands, the ''We would like to accept,'' beaming at her from the paper, its tiny, neat font so unassuming - now she just wants to keep the moment for herself. For a little while, she thinks. Only a little while. Just until I believe it. Just until she''s absorbed it, let the fleeting, impossible pride that flickers in her abdomen burn into her so she won''t forget it. Good things are rare and delicate and she knows that if she moves she might disrupt it. She doesn''t want to get into an argument with her parents about it - they''d be pleased, but they''d also be frustrated that she hadn''t told them and would turn it into a personal slight, so she avoids going downstairs until they''re both at work.


    Her parents are nice people. Really, they are - there''s just no understanding between them. She is a quiet, changeable thing with dreams of being a poet and living alone by the sea, and they are well-mannered, self-satisfied (though not in a way that speaks of arrogance, it''s more just a kind of confidence that Emmeline cannot emulate) consistent individuals who have created the life they want and now live it, day after day. Their contentment intimidates and unnerves her.


    On cue, at 7:50 am, as every morning, her mother calls a goodbye up the stairs and she takes a second to make her voice sound normal before doing the same. Usually, she''d stay in bed as long as (longer than) she can get away with, but her dad had dropped the post on her bed and she''s been curled on her rug since. It''s old, and she feels new.


    Eyes closed, she breathes in the day. Not in a long time has she been so awake. Something stirs in her core and she stands, spins around and tugs her absurdly long scarf off of the hook on her door, then flies down the stairs. When she pulls the door open, sunlight floods in, too bright to be looked at. She forgets that the sun rises on this side of the sky. The quality of the air is golden and seeps into her as she runs down the garden path, begins the walk to her grandmother''s house. It''s half an hour usually, but time seems to be absent today, or at least she hardly notices its presence.


    She turns onto the road and sees the shape of her grandmother in her front garden, sat on the swinging bench they''d put up in one of the flowerbeds. Nothing about the house or garden is usual or expected, but nothing is outrageous either. It''s perfectly strange. More details come into focus the closer she gets, involuntarily running - now she sees the mug of tea, now the cat basking in the morning-warmed grass, now the note of recognition on her grandmother''s face. Pip stands, dusts down her purple skirt and puts her hands to her face as her eyes catch on the letter in Emmeline''s hand. Seeing her care about this for her makes Emmeline smile, set the one free that has been pushing at her, so grown with the waiting that it blooms and twists in the air and then she''s being hugged like a precious thing.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    ''You got in?''


    ''I got in.''


    They both laugh, hold each other tighter. Pip cups her cheeks, kisses her forehead. She is overcome.


    ''Rightly so.'' Her grandmother says, grins. ''I''m proud of you. Celebratory tea and biscuits?''


    ''If they''re going spare.''


    ''Darling, you deserve much more than spares. I''ll go and get your well-earned tea, back in a tick.''


    She likes that phrase. Back in a tick. Of a clock, presumably. There''s an old-fashioned, worn charm to it; a saying passed down through generations and eroded by each a little more.


    Sitting on the swing in her grandmother''s place, Emmeline closes her eyes. She does this a lot lately. It helps to focus her mind; by temporarily being unable to, she sees more clearly when her eyes are open. It''s like a full stop in her mind - a brief pause, space to take a breath rather than let life run on past her, as it tends to do.


    As she rests, melts into the light, a sadness claims her breath. Adelaide would be really happy about this. (Sadness is too slow a word- the feeling is sudden, unprompted, painful.) Her lungs ache, not from the running. She can imagine the delight they''d have shared, though the edges of the picture are hazy. This scares her, a lot. Knowing every detail of how she might''ve reacted isn''t possible - Adelaide wasn''t predictable in that way, but it still feels like her memory''s failure; like she didn''t pay enough attention when she wasn''t how she is now. When she wasn''t dead, underground, with the weight of the earth on top of her.


    ''Tea! Emmeline?''


    She can''t quite open her eyes to a world where Adelaide isn''t. Otho comes to mind, the hollowed-out boy, and she feels selfish, ridiculously, like her grief takes away from the size of his. Her grandmother takes her hand, holds it tight, presses it to her heart so she can feel the pulse. It helps.


    ''Thank you.''


    ''Shh. Digestives. Adelaide?''


    She nods.


    ''She''d be so proud of you. I didn''t know her well, but I know that. Anyone with sense would be, really.''


    Emmeline smiles, a small thing. ''I hope so.''


    ''You know so. Give her credit. And drink this, please. I may be a useless cook but I''ve got tea down to a fine art, and I''d like your validation.''


    She drinks the tea; the seat swings in the breeze. It''s bright for autumn, but it''s not summer anymore and her skin raises in the mildness of it, adrenaline wearing off. The moment settles, as if finding a more comfortable way to exist, settles back down on its haunches. Something is restored. The uneasy equilibrium of bad and good.


    The tea is hot on her tongue, made more so by the cinnamon. There''s apple in it, sweet and warm, and it tastes altogether like winter, a flavour of the days that will come. Thinking of days that haven''t happened yet makes her throat close up a little, maybe metaphorically, but then - so does thinking of the days that are already long gone. So Emmeline resolves to be here, instead, the only comfortable place. She leans her head on her grandmother''s shoulder and watches a bird flit from one hedgerow to another. With each of Pip''s breaths, her own feel a bit easier, more fluid. They become a synchronous creature, watching the garden, taking turns to blink and find solace in the presence of their oneness. It''s a mirror of magnets, the strong kind - two come together, lined up perfectly so that their edges disappear. One old, one young. One happy, one sad. Two heartbeats, two hands, holding each other.

 7 - ABSENCE

    Days pass in between the letter and the first practice.


    The aftermath of sorrow and luck in such quick succession leave Emmeline in a state of confusion, unable to distinguish aspects of one from aspects of the other. Both were entirely unexpected on arrival and having now had them sit in her chest for a week, she is heavy with emotion. She is tired, perpetually, but cannot sleep.


    The ceiling of her bedroom looks different in the dark. She has a skylight; her room is an old attic, a choice she made when they moved in. Her parents obliged her with its conversion and she only regrets it when climbing the stairs seems an infinite task (recently this is every time). Otherwise, the solitude and sense of distance are welcome. At night, now, the window looks like a canvas, blue-black as an oil spill or a wing with far, far away specks of light that could easily be white paint. It used to scare her, sleeping under it; she had convinced herself somehow that robbers or gun-wielding murderers or doctors with syringes and face masks would climb onto the roof and drop down into her bed as she slept. An illogical solution to this was to sleep, for years and years, with all of her curled under the duvet, corners held tight in her fists, only the smallest of gaps for air. Every day feels a bit like this now - like if she loosened her grip at all she''d fall apart, or like she''s already fallen apart under the covers and if they were to be lifted, there''d be nothing holding her together.


    It''s the night before she is supposed to meet the other members of the group (which according to the admissions letter is called BCMS, or ''Beaufort College Musical Society''. It lives up to her preconception that all rich things must sound like they cost money, not satisfied with the truth of their own expense.) and Emmeline thinks she should probably be nervous but having slept for a grand total of seven hours this week in total - it''s now Thursday, or maybe Friday, she doesn''t know how late it is - she doesn''t have the energy left to muster the feeling. Her heart seems to roll over in her chest with a hollow thud when she lingers on the thought of it, but she''s disconnected from that. From herself. She becomes a stranger, sometimes.


    As she lies awake, she tries to count the stars. It''s impossible, of course - but she''s always thought that if she could just look hard enough, for long enough, at this one small, vast expanse of sky, she might be able to do it. Impossible things are like that. People believe that as much as they cannot be done, there must be some way to get halfway there. Maybe there will come a day when no things are impossible anymore. Is impossible subjective? Space travel would''ve seemed impossible once. Talking to someone on the other side of the world. Making light. Emmeline doesn''t know, which she thinks is the point. Life would be boring if knowledge was easy to gain.


    She''s very philosophical in these black hours. All the things she''s supposed to be are stripped away by the emptiness of the air and she is left with only her core - poetry, exhaustion, and a lot of unanswerable questions.


    Maybe she sleeps. Either way - she blinks and it is dawn and her alarm is harsh in her ears. Her head is loud and numb with fatigue but she pushes herself up and through the early morning. Breakfast is a bit unthinkable, but she butters a slice of bread and tries to convince herself to eat it. As much stress as this day is bound to bring, she doesn''t want to throw up or have her hands shake or be even more devoid of energy. Devoid: of the void? Her French is rudimentary, although she loves the language, but she thinks that it''s a good word regardless. She wants to store it away somewhere for later use, like burying acorns for winter. An idea to revisit. Not even all of an idea, really - a fraction of one.


    It stays with her, echoes in her mind, useless, until she has to leave for school. This week the vague anxiety about losing her grades had caught up with her, and her parents had been pushing her to go back so she gave in to both forces. Emmeline doesn''t really like school. It can be exceptionally lonely sometimes, even for one such as her who isn''t particularly interested in company. Watching everyone else talk, though - it infects her with a need to have a conversation: she can''t remember the last time she actually spoke to anyone other than Pip in full sentences, definitely not of her own accord. Sitting at the dinner table with her parents is a very quiet affair lately. They might be trying to give her space and time to... mourn, she supposes, or maybe they just don''t have anything to say to her. She hasn''t been very active or present in her body and life so she can understand if it''s this. She wouldn''t have anything to say to herself either. She just thinks in circles and falls into rabbit holes to pass the time, then takes a breath and suddenly the day has fled. It''s alarming, but it also means she doesn''t have to really put a lot of effort in. Dragging around the weight of death and exams and depression and fatigue is enough to handle.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    Today, though. Concentrate. Everything is work, recently. Paying attention to anything is work, let alone retaining it. She sleeps through the day, moving on cue with bells and picking at a sandwich around noon. Nothing feels real so it''s very difficult to believe that any of it matters. God, she needs to close her eyes. She wants to be in the ocean. She wants to be asleep.


    The school day ends without fanfare, and then it''s time for her to go. She crosses the car park and field in a slight haze, although the fog is lifting or parting a bit the closer she gets to Beaufort. It''s a place she''s walked past hundreds of times and admired for its charm, the charm all old tangible things have, like they retain some knowledge or connection to the time they were made. Objects aren''t people, she thinks, but sometimes they feel like they have minds and memories. At the gates, she isn''t sure what to do. She realises, awfully, that she doesn''t know her way around this huge, hulking thing of a building and she has no idea where the music society - whatever this is that she''s signed up for - is going to be. Her hand touches the iron; she lets the radiating cold of the metal centre her. All her focus is in her palm, the fingertips tight around the railing. Emmeline is unprepared, then, for someone to brush past her. She jumps, like sparks.


    A boy with a multi-coloured backpack and shiny purple headphones turns to look at her sudden movement.


    ''Sorry,'' she says, nonsensically.


    He takes off his headphones. ''What?'' He has ridiculous hair, silver and curly. It looks recently dyed.


    ''Sorry,'' she repeats, flustered a little. She''d sort of forgotten she was visible and him looking at her is disconcerting.


    ''No, I heard you, I was just confused.'' After this bafflingly genuine response, he grins. Full on, just... smiles at her, in a cartoon way, disproportionate to the mildness of the day and the nothingness of their encounter so far.


    ''What?''


    ''You''re my echo! Who are you, anyway?''


    This boy does not make sense. ''Echo?''


    ''Ha!''


    Something folds over inside her. ''I''m Emmeline.''


    ''I''m Felix. Hi, Emmeline.''


    ''Hi, Felix.'' Now she hears it, the way she''s only giving his own words back to him. Why do people make her feel so useless?


    ''What are you doing here?'' He''s still talking to her. She doesn''t understand. Do people stop and talk to strangers? What is happening?


    ''I''m here for - '' She can''t make herself say it. She adjusts her bag on her shoulder and clutches the acceptance letter. He notices.


    ''Oh! The fancy society thing! Cool! My best friend is in that, too. He''s very talented, so you must be to have gotten in. Well done.''


    ''Yes, um.'' Her mind is empty. Devoid, she thinks.


    ''Do you know where you''re going? I could show you the way, if you want.'' He''s smiling, again, not meanly. Who is this?


    ''No - I mean, yes. Please.'' Her brow crumples, her words catch up to her. ''No, I don''t know where I''m going. Um. Could you show me? Please.'' An exhale. Talking is more energy than it should be.


    This seems to be the answer he wanted. The smile turns to a beam - beam, like light, like sunbeam - and she almost looks away. Then she does look away, sees her hand still gripping the gate, sees it let go. Emmeline turns to him, this stranger who fits the word exactly. She cannot imagine anyone more strange. Not outside fiction and abstract.


    ''Right then,'' he says. His voice is both soft and loud at once, bright. ''Follow me, stranger.''


    The echo (ha) of her own thoughts startles her, but he''s walking away and she does need to get to where she''s supposed to be, so she goes. Only as he''s opening the door to PR6 for her and wishing her good luck does she realise she''s forgotten to be nervous.


    Then she looks up and sees Otho.

 8 - COINCIDENCE

    Otho looks up and sees her. They mirror each other, again. Again? She wonders where it came from. Why does it feel like this has happened before?


    Emmeline is struck by the sense that her life is overtaking her. She feels like she''s chasing after it. Things used to happen so incredibly slowly: one day after the other, an infinite week, a month that spanned millennia - now she''s clutching the fleeting moments that exist in the present, going hours in a haze until another one comes around. Why do things keep happening?


    The session begins and their gaze breaks and her anxiety returns full force. Introductions are made and immediately forgotten. There are only six other students in the room. An octave, she thinks. There''s a symmetry to it. Their teacher - guide? Emmeline doesn''t know what role he''s supposed to play. Conductor? This isn''t an orchestra - says something about pairing off, words that make her gut hollow with dread. The only person here with a name her mind has retained is Otho. Inevitably, she looks to him.


    He looks back at her with those dark, sad eyes. Poems talk about eyes a lot and she hasn''t always understood: you can see smiles in them, yes, but all of the emotions and traits that artists describe, the whole windows-to-the-soul thing - it''s lost on her. If she were to try, to put into words what she feels when she looks at them, at him, she''d get stuck on some metaphor about cats. He has the same detached intellect, something hidden and kept back, knowledge withheld. Really though, she doesn''t think it''s his eyes at all. Understanding Otho is a skill she hasn''t mastered, but the way he walks towards her with his head slightly bowed, his fingers pushing into his palms, the ragged seam on his right shoulder, the ill-fitting coat - all of these things are more useful than his eyes. Emmeline thinks that it''s the way people wear themselves that gives them away. Otho wears himself reluctantly; uncomfortably. He''s still elegant though, which she doesn''t think is fair. Envy tweaks her stomach when she looks at his beautiful hands. Is it strange to think so much about a boy she hardly knows? Is it strange that they''ve not said anything yet? Yes, she decides. But she refuses to break their silent mutual examination. (Heat flushes through her as she notices he''s studying her back. He seems abashed, shy.) She spoke first at the - oh, god. The last time she saw him was at his mother''s funeral. Nothing makes sense.


    ''Why are you here?'' He says, though it sounds like an accident. Immediately, he shuts his eyes for a second then: ''Sorry.''


    She smiles. His discomfort puts her at ease. Is she a terrible person? ''Hello.''


    ''Hello,'' he replies, meets her eyes. He looks so tired and so awake. ''Emmeline.''


    ''Otho.''


    Their names create a bridge between them. She''d half thought he hadn''t recognised her. Well - no. That''s not true; she''d half thought he hadn''t wanted to recognise her. The connection between them was Adelaide (she hates that past tense doesn''t take effort anymore) and even then, tenuous. She doesn''t even know if they''ve ever had a whole conversation. (Why, then, does she feel like she knows this boy? Why does she feel like he knows her?)


    Neither of them seems to know what to say. That purple-haired boy surfaces in her mind, the easy way words seemed to flow out of him. Some people take when they speak, but he gave - made room for her in the conversation. Emmeline wishes she could do this for Otho. But it''s always been the way of things that language only belongs to her when she''s writing it down. Poetry suits her: the sparseness of the ink on the paper, all that white space in between like breathing in dialogue. Once again, the feeling that the fates have dropped the string of her destiny into her hands dawns. Subconsciously, they flex, tighten into fists. My life is mine, she thinks. I can choose. So she steadies herself, then decides to be brave.


    ''Will you be my partner?''


    Otho''s shoulders loosen, surprise and - perhaps relief? She can''t tell. She hopes that he''d wanted her to ask. She believes he feels the same weight as her - the inability to interact with the world and people and real things, the pressure from inside that suffocates when forced to act, the need for something, something indescribable and huge and important.


    This is all very heavy. Maybe she''s just... projecting.


    Regardless, he straightens up. ''Yes.''


    For a boy who appears so afraid to take a step - he walks like the clouds are going to part under his feet and he''ll plummet - Otho goes to ask for a room key with relative confidence. The school is so big, so unreasonably big, bigger even than it feels (and sometimes school feels overwhelmingly big, as though it is something huge and indomitable and not just a building and a collection of hours spent in classrooms)that the music department, though funded less than science or sport, as always, has a corridor lined with smaller rooms, practice rooms. The walls are stone and echo with the ghosts of footsteps, but the rooms themselves are soundproofed and lockable. I could die in here and no-one would know, her mind observes. I could die anywhere, she thinks back at it, though she''s not sure that''s a helpful retort.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    Emmeline sits down on the stool next to the piano, sort of a habit more than a choice. This isn''t what she''d anticipated - the room is small. Oh. She''d asked him to be her partner and now they''re alone in a room with less than two metres between them and this is intimate. How dreadfully romantic. Her heart wants to laugh or leave; either way, it''s beating. Suddenly, impossibly, she realises she doesn''t even know what instrument Otho plays. She''s sat on the only stool - what if he plays the piano, too? He has to, surely - Adelaide wouldn''t have abided by him not doing - will they - is this big enough for two? Talking of intimate. She''d offer to go and find another but the idea of facing the other students, the ones clothed in money and sharp lines and knee-high boots, glues her feet to the ground. Her heart leans heavily towards the ''leave'' option.


    Closeness is not a thing she is used to. She has been carefully distancing herself from everything for months, admittedly by accident, or at least thoughtlessly at first. Her own emotions and parents and eyes are strangers to her. Now there is a boy in a very small room with her, a boy she used to dream about. That sounds far more... something than it is. The dreams weren''t whimsical. They were strange; flooded with light. Once, the two of them had been lying in a field under an oak tree that Emmeline thinks she remembers being in the garden of the house she used to live in. She''d blinked and he''d been on a swing, and she''d laughed but then the swing had snapped and instead of falling to the soft earth, he''d vanished. In the haze of the odd golden sky, she had searched and searched for him, hadn''t been able to find him anywhere at all. She''d dug in the earth and found bones and been sure they were his. Then it had started raining (it always rained in her dreams), even while the sky was still molten with sunlight and she''d looked up to see him flying far away from her, so far above that all she could see were wings. Wings and the shape of him, though not a physical kind of shape.


    It had been unnerving. The next time she''d been to Adelaide''s and seen him silhouetted against the yellow wallpaper and bathed in golden-hour glow, she''d startled, played a dissonant note. Lightly, she presses a D flat now, trails her fingertips across black keys. They''re quieter than she expects. Reality is often quieter than her thoughts lately.


    Resurfacing from the memory of a dream she''d forgotten (and that feels like a paradox inside a paradox), she turns. Otho is sitting, cross-legged, on the floor, the grey of the stone next to his brown skin making it look both warmer and colder. He''s unzipping a violin case that he has to have been carrying but Emmeline believes with certainty appeared in his hands as her back was turned. This is definitely not the instrument she expected so she hears herself ask: ''Violin?''


    It''s not even a question, just a word tilted upwards and he looks at her and why can''t she believe that he''s real? and says ''Yes. And piano. And clarinet.'' And now she understands. Of course. A boy raised on music instead of air; one would never have been enough to sustain him. It almost makes her smile.


    ''What do you want to play?''


    ''This?''


    He puts sheet music in front of her, proximity found and lost in a second. The pages are all immaculately kept, having been kept bound in a folder that says something she can''t quite read on the front.


    She keeps hers in piles around her keyboard. (Her parents own a piano but it''s downstairs and so grand and sometimes she can''t face it. She prefers her grandmother''s, but as much as she doesn''t let herself long for it, she doesn''t live there. So. The piles by her keyboard, corners torn and edges soft with use.)


    Emmeline finds herself exceptionally grateful that the handwriting in the margins is his and not Adelaide''s. She doesn''t think she could bear it. Although probably, she supposes, nor could he. God. There''s so much of her here in this room.


    Outside the windows, she half-sees a flock rise into the air, focused more on warming up. She plays something without thinking about it and begins to examine the piece while her hands move, dance. She moves to ask Otho to translate his annotations - they aren''t messy, just incredibly tiny, and use abbreviations she doesn''t recognise - but he''s sitting with his eyes closed looking like someone punched the breath out of him. She stops and he opens his eyes and she feels the aching.


    ''I think my - I think she wrote that,'' He whispers. Her stomach lurches. The melody is one Adelaide taught her, as they all are, every one of them, but this one so long ago that it has become muscle memory. It was one of her compositions, a light one, just for fun. Relatively simple, good for teaching. A warm-up exercise. Nothing more. (So much more, now. Grief is like Alice in Wonderland. Big things are rendered so... meaningless, while the little flashes of memory or the sound of a certain laugh or a piano melody become unspeakably huge.)


    ''Oh,'' she manages. For all the power and majesty of words, not one of them is enough to hold this feeling. Instead, quiet swells.


    Somewhere beyond the four padded walls, magpies to call to one another.

 9 - HARMONY

    When time makes enough space for them to breathe again, Emmeline finds that an unanticipated calm has joined them in the room. She thinks Otho can probably feel it, too - he looks as though he''s existing slightly more easily. It''s a paper-thin, gentle thing, a veneer, really - but a welcome one. The air''s a little clearer, each sound audible like rain into still water. In this moment, life shifts into a film sequence, everything shot in close-up: the soft corner of his mouth, the crush of sheet music kissing the stand where it lies, her pulse in her wrists and neck. Velveteen.


    That piece he suggested: it pulls at her. There''s a specific allure to unheard music, a power that comes with being the one to give it voice, to give it form. And he''d handed it to her - his fingertips, his tight, rounded handwriting. It''s... something. An offering? A bridge; a connection. The string between two cups.


    She looks at him and he doesn''t smile but she believes he might be thinking of doing so, and she nods and so they begin. They play the song (she knows this isn''t the right word but it is, it is) that he put so carefully in front of her and that feels a lot like a metaphor for something she can''t quite grasp; she can''t help but close her eyes as she improvises over the main melody and she thinks Otho might have closed his, too, but she wants very much to imagine that he plays with his eyes open. He is a person who spends so much time hiding and looking away from things - even at his own house, he used to avoid eye contact with her - anxiety and invisibility cloaking him, cutting him off. So Emmeline wants him to see, unafraid; she doesn''t even mind if it''s her. She thinks that to be seen by Otho might not be a bad thing. It might, in fact, be the opposite.


    Playing this piece (this song, this epiphany - it''s beautiful, lighter than she''d have guessed) is baring her soul - playing anything is baring her soul - and her heart. Time doesn''t pass while music is played by those who breathe it. It stops and waits, respectfully, perhaps sways, loses itself in the lyricism. (Music can be lyrical without lyrics.)


    Logically, she knows that the sound they''re making here is just (just!) her piano and his violin, but she is flooded by the notion that they are the instruments - her and him, him and her. What if they''re the ones being played by the notes? The bow is sliding, gliding over not strings but his ribs and she isn''t playing the keys but her arteries - there is blood in this music, there is love and anger, it rushes hot-red through them. She knows she''s never played the piece before but it''s indescribably familiar, like everything about this boy. Why? She cannot for the life and death of all of her selves work it out. Maybe there is nothing to work out. People aren''t puzzles, they''re mysteries. There''s no solving them, only unravelling. ''Mystery'' is right, she thinks, likes the way it feels like a cavern barred from the outside. Unknowable without risk to both sides, but oh, the ache to find out is so strong. Temptation is an extraordinarily powerful force.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    A modulation and yes- they climb higher, higher, higher until the roof breaks and the ceiling crumbles and the two of them stand amongst clouds - is it still called standing if their feet aren''t touching the ground? - and the tremolo is an earthquake, and she knows the crash back down (so very far) to earth is inevitable but she clings to the skyline and feels the piano twist itself to fit her hands, wraps around them like bandages - the hills of her knuckles press all the right notes and she has not felt alive. This is alive, the sound, the human-ness, the church-like volume of the whispering hearts. Something rises in and out of her; her body stops being her limit. She is happy? No. But she is living and glad of it.


    Then, a tragedy: they don''t reach the end. All the glorious tension spilling into the room; no cadence to resolve it.


    A knock on the door splits the music in two and gravity answers it. They collide with the world, the real one - Otho looks at her and she sees the clouds in his face. She sees that he just tasted the same sunlight that she did and she wonders if she might be in love with it and him. She knows she can''t be, but that doesn''t stop the wondering. He spares - no, gives - her a glance and she is sure that he wants to say something to her as much as she wants to say something to him and what a miracle that balance is. But she hears him swallow the words on his tongue as he opens the door to a ghost. Adelaide swans into the room on feather-light feet and feather-filled wings and Emmeline gasps and hurts and grieves all at once and then she comes to and it''s a student, not Adelaide at all. It''s one of the ones she''d feel intimidated by (all straight lines and neat folds) if she wasn''t already cut out of herself and raw. There isn''t room for any more feelings in this poor young body of hers.


    Vaguely, she hears the person who is not Adelaide tell them to return to the classroom. She doesn''t want to, can''t. Too much has just happened and to fill the space her thoughts need with other people will overcrowd her. The world is so noisy, so much, such a lot of the time that sometimes she can''t properly cope. There is a vast, uncrossable difference between noise and volume - music has volume: dynamics, breadth. Traffic has noise. Traffic makes noise, and noise makes thought-traffic in turn. It''s quite a fitting image, she thinks. She''s stumbled across it, as she often does with ideas (the best ones are accidents or mistakes) but it does feel as though her thoughts stack up and pile into each other and beep horns, start conflicts of their own. The question is where they''re all trying so determinedly to go.


    Otho shuts the door behind the student as they leave and she starts. He looks at her, stops, looks at her again.


    ''You play beautifully.'' He says, and the compliment falls awkwardly, perfectly. She smiles, glows, fully, a blush warming her face. Blush is too pretty a word.


    ''Thankyou,'' she says, and it sounds overly fervent, religious. But it''s okay, unexpectedly so. Neither of them quite abide by ''usual'' as a concept and their strangeness creates a harmony between them. So it''s okay that she then says: ''You play sadly.''


    He meets her eyes. ''I try to play honestly.''


    ''You play sadly.'' (She meets them back.)


    He ducks his head, smiles (sadly), and nods. ''Yeah.''