Folio Two, Page Thirty-Seven (svegra mos bietkron tal-pyes)

Akarsi led me to Sukua, the servant in tow. I don’t even remember the halls we passed through or the stairs because the most insignificant things completely overloaded my senses — the fabric brushing over my legs, hushed voices behind large wooden doors, even the thud of Akarsi’s feet on the ground.

We passed from the corridor into a wide, open space filled with light. I thought it came from outside, but the sky was pregnant with rain. The room’s designer had incorporated full-spectrum lights into the windows.

Sukua stood in that fresh light, clutching the mallets for a large wooden xylophone. A robotic music stand shifted pages of smart paper for him while he played a complex sequence of arpeggios. Each scale transition made my head feel like it was cracking open, and I couldn’t help but bring my hands to my head and cry out. Music poured out of my ears and burned through the floor.

The servant stopped Sukua and handed him a cold vial. I don’t know what passed between them or if it had happened before, his Matriarch bringing girls up to see him and drugging them both to make connections happen. Maybe they did it all the time. He was a bit young.

Akarsi remained sober. She waited for the servant to arrange cushions for her on the floor while he drank, and when she sank down she hardly moved.

I knelt on the floor and took my ksibja from its nest. The moment I touched the strings, I felt the potentiality of the notes. My mind vaguely recalled another time when this had happened — in the distant past, perhaps, when I was almost too young to remember — but this time I knew that I could reach out and touch the music. I could make the air tremble. My fingers touched the strings — the light on them danced; — I knew that I had seen notes slam through the air before.

The experience terrified me, but the mood drugs contained something to prevent any bad trips. Before the emotion lessened, I wished that someone could be there to stop me. I was too young to be left alone.

Somewhere in the room, hesitant fingers struck a xylophone. They were timed less than a thirty-second note at 128 beats per minute after my note changes, off enough to jar me back into some self-control.

In the canyon dark, there is nobody to save you. That’s what I meant, Nishet, when I said you were lucky to have a family who pulled you back, even though you tried to run. And that’s all right, too. I hope you found what you were looking for in the end.

Sometimes when I think about that day, the room filled with light is dark and the sky outside is bright as our sun, and my mother shrieks in the shadows. She tears at me as I play, tearing at my arms with her ghostly claws — half god, half nightmare — and cries out, but the darkness has sucked the air from her lungs. It is true that the melody I played that day was more melancholy than anything I have attempted since, rolling like tears down a boy’s cheeks.

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