Jade Riff's Arc

Chapter 5 of 6

The chorus rolled down the street, but the thin place rolled faster. Jade felt it on her skin before she saw it, a pressure that flattened the sound in her ears. Above the tavern roof the air bent like heat off a stove. The song was spreading. The quiet was spreading quicker. She had minutes, not hours, before it hit the door. She ducked back inside. The room was still singing, but the far corner had gone soft, voices thinning as if wrapped in wool. A miner opened his mouth and no sound came out. He touched his throat and sat down hard. "It's eating them from the back wall," Luna said. "We need to slow it," Jade said. "Right now. Long enough for the song to get out of this room." Tsuki stood on the bar. The rabbit spirit was small and gray, moon-marks pale on her face. She had come down from the moon paths to find one living ear. She had already given up her tribal drum to the brass box on the ridge. She had nothing left to strike. "The old ones under the ground hear low sounds," Tsuki said. "Wake them. They push back on quiet." "With what drum?" Jade said. "Yours is bound to the ridge." Tsuki pointed at the wall behind the bar. A round drum hung there, dust on its pale face, small moons painted around the rim. A tavern trophy. Nobody had played it in years. "That one," Tsuki said. "It will do." Melody was already climbing onto a stool by the record player. The sound fairy was thin and dark-winged, and she had not spoken since they entered. She lifted a strange silver box from her pack, two antennae rising from its top. Runes glowed faintly on its face. She turned a dial. "I can hold the low note," Melody said. "Under the song. Steady." Jade lifted the moon drum off the wall and pushed it into Tsuki's paws. "Beat it into the floor. Hard as you can." Tsuki did not answer. She sat cross-legged on the boards and struck the drum flat against the wood. The thump went through Jade's boots. Melody's antennae hummed and the note dropped, deeper than any voice in the room. The two sounds locked. The floor buzzed. Outside the pressure eased. The bent air above the roof settled. In the corner the miner coughed and found his voice again and picked up the chorus late. Jade felt the crowd surge back into the song. She grabbed the brass box and pushed through the door with Luna behind her. The chorus poured down the street, buying ground the quiet had almost taken. But under her feet the drum kept hammering, and something far below the tavern answered. A long, low shift, like a shoulder turning in sleep. Tsuki's eyes went wide. "He heard," Tsuki said. "He knows we are here."