Alex Ryan's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Alex held the low string and let it ring. The elk stood at the edge of the yard, watching Hozier the way weather watches a house. The note traveled out from the bass and lay flat across the grass. It reached the elk's chest and stopped there. Alex felt it stop. His string could carry the sound to the trunks of the yew grove, but not down. The taint was under the ground now. The roots needed a note that could drink from below, and his bass alone could not send one that deep. He played the note again anyway. The moss at Hozier's boots lifted a little. Florence held her banjo against her knee and did not touch the strings. Hozier said, "It's not enough." "I know," Alex said. "The roots are drying from underneath." Hozier looked at the elk. The elk did not move. A sound cut across the yard. Not a bird. A single piano chord, heavy, rolled in from the path. A woman came around the hedge pushing a cart of brass pipes and rune-cut wood. Florence sat up. "Isa." Isa Machine did not look at Florence yet. She looked at Alex's bass, then at the elk, then at the ground between them. She set the brake on the cart. "You're short a register," she said. "I heard it from the road." She was Florence's anchor, the one who kept Florence's magic from flying apart. Alex had never played with her. He did not know if she would follow him or run him off the note. Isa opened a panel on the cart and set her hands on the low keys. "Give me your floor," she said. "I'll take it lower." Alex pulled the string. Isa caught the pitch and dropped it an octave through the pipes. The cart hummed. The sound went into the ground, not across it. Alex felt his hands warm on the yew. He held the note steady. The elk lifted its throat. The elk sang. One note, so low it moved inside their ribs. Florence pressed her hand to her chest. Hozier closed his eyes. The note ran down through the soil and found the roots. Alex felt it reach. It was the sound that had first pushed order into chaos. Awe held him still. The black under the grove pulled back. The moss went green again at the edges. The elk stopped singing. It looked at Alex once and stepped back into nothing between the two hazels. Isa lifted her hands from the keys. "That wasn't me," she said. "That was the animal." "I know," Alex said. His hands were shaking. The grove was drinking. He could feel it through the bench. Then Florence stood. She was looking past the arbor, toward the path Isa had come down. "Isa," she said. "Who did you leave with the cart?" Isa turned. Her face went flat. "No one," she said. "I came alone." Something on the path was already moving toward them.