Jade Riff's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

The thing under the tavern shifted again, and a crack ran up the floorboards toward the bar. Jade froze on the threshold with the brass box in her arms. Down the street the chorus kept moving, carried by strangers now. Inside, Tsuki was still hunched over the moon drum, one gray paw pressed flat to its pale face to stop it ringing. It rang anyway. The floor rang with it. Whatever they had woken was pulling sound toward itself, and her anthem was sound. "He wants the beat," Tsuki said. "He will take all of it. The song too." "Then we starve him," Jade said. "Stop drumming." "Too late. He is awake. He listens up through the wood." Melody's silver box whined. The low note she had been holding bent downward on its own, dragged toward the floor like water down a drain. Her wings shook. "I can't hold it," she said. "It's pulling." A new drummer pushed through the tavern door behind Jade. Black hair streaked purple, sticks already in one fist. Riley Crash. Jade had seen her play once in a city club two years back, and had not seen her since. Riley looked at the crack in the floor, then at Tsuki, then at Jade. "Your floor's breathing," Riley said. "Something under it is," Jade said. "It eats sound. It's going to eat the song." Riley crouched by the crack. She tapped one stick against the boards. The crack widened a finger. She tapped again, softer. It stayed. "He follows the loudest hit," she said. "Give him one to chase." "Chase where?" "Away from the street." Riley pointed her stick at the back of the tavern, where the cellar hatch sat under a rug. "Old rabbit tunnels run down from every cellar in this valley. Send him back down his own hole." Jade did not ask how she knew. She kicked the rug aside and pulled the hatch. Cold air came up smelling of clay and old fur. The tunnel below was small, shaped by paws, ancestor marks scratched into the walls. "Tsuki. Down there. Drum him deeper." Tsuki shook her head once. "He will follow me and not come back up." "I know." Tsuki looked at her a long second. Then she climbed down with the moon drum under one arm. Riley sat cross-legged at the hatch and started a hard, fast pattern on the top step, driving the beat downward. Melody let her silver box drop its note into the hole. The pull under the floor turned. The crack stopped growing. Jade felt the weight of the thing move sideways and down, chasing the drum into the dark. She shut the hatch. The tavern went quiet in a normal way. Outside, the anthem was three streets off now and still spreading. Tsuki did not come back up.