Jade Riff's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

The last chord hung in the tavern and died at the door. Jade heard it die. The anthem was whole now, but the walls ate the sound before it could reach the road. Beyond the road was the valley. Beyond the valley were the towns the Silence had not swallowed yet. If no one out there heard the song, the song did not matter. "We need to be louder," Jade said. "Not a little. A lot." Riley pointed at her bass amp. The cone was split. Tsuki set her sticks on the drumhead and shook her head once. "Wood and skin only go so far," she said. "The valley is too wide." Melody had been at the window. She turned. Her torn wings caught the lamplight. "I heard a box on the mountain," she said. "Brass. It threw sound a mile. A man carried it down." "Where is it now?" Jade said. "Traded. Or lost. But the maker lives." Melody looked at the floor. "There is a hut past the pines. Mushroom roof. He builds things that carry voices under the ground and over it." Jade grabbed her guitar. "Then we go." They found the hut before dusk. The cap sagged red and purple over a low door carved with knots. The man inside was old and thin and did not look up. He was winding copper around a small silver box with two antennae. Runes crawled on its face. "I need it loud enough for the valley," Jade said. He kept winding. "This one bends the air. It will carry any note you feed it. But it takes a price at the door." "Name it." He pointed at Tsuki. "Her drum. Not to keep. To key the box. Once bound, the drum only sounds through this. Never on its own again." Tsuki's ears flattened. The pale face of her drum caught the lamp. It was the last thing that still remembered her tribe's heartbeat. Jade opened her mouth to refuse for her. "Do it," Tsuki said. Flat. Final. She set the drum on the bench. "A drum no one hears is already dead." The old man pressed the antennae to the drumskin. The runes flared. The moon face on the drum brightened once, then cooled. He handed the box to Jade. "Play," he said. "It will find the rest." On the ridge above the tavern they set up in a half-circle. Jade struck the opening chord. The little box swallowed it and threw it out across the valley floor. She heard the note come back off the far hills a breath later. Luna's voice rode on top of it. Tsuki's beat carried through the box, huge and clean, no longer hers alone. The valley heard. So did the Silence. On the far ridge, the thin place in the air widened and began to move toward the sound.