Keely Harmony's Arc

Chapter 2 of 1

Word spread, just as Cillian said it would. People came to the clearing now, waiting. The festival was three weeks off, and Keely meant to practice at the old tree every day until then. But when Cillian opened his guitar case that morning, she saw the problem. A string hung loose and curled against the wood. The guitar was his, not hers. She had no instrument of her own, and now his sat broken. "I can't afford a new string," Cillian said. He said it light, like a joke. "And I'm not much good with a bare one." He turned the guitar over in his lap. The loose string swung. Three years he had played behind her, and she had never once asked if he could fix it. Keely sat in the roots and tried to think. She could sing without music. But the song needed the guitar under it, the way her mother's hand had needed a melody to carry a frightened child. Without it, the song was only half a thing. A woman stepped into the clearing. Keely knew her by her amber staff and the red streaks in her dark hair. Astrid Soulweaver traveled between the temples, learning magic the priestesses would teach. She stopped at the edge and listened to the quiet. "Your string broke," Astrid said. Not a question. She crouched and looked at the guitar. "I heard you sing. Three nights back, through a wall. It held me still." "We can't play it like this," Keely said. Astrid reached into her robe. She drew out a coil of gut string, thin and pale. "Freyja's trial. I passed it. She gave me more than I needed." She set the string in Cillian's hand. "Take it. A song that stops a war is worth one string." Cillian went quiet the way he did when something mattered. He threaded the string through the bridge and wound it tight at the head. His hands knew the work without his looking. He tuned it low, then high, until the note rang true. "It holds," he said. Keely took a breath. She pinned the bloom ornament into her hair, the one that caught the light and seemed to hum. Then she nodded. Cillian found the first chord. The guitar answered full and clear, no broken note in it. Keely sang the festival song into the clearing, and this time the music held her voice the whole way through. When it ended, Astrid was already walking off toward the dead road. But the guitar was whole, and the song was ready. Keely had her instrument now, and the festival was close. Then she noticed the people at the clearing's edge. More than before. Some wore the marks of one tribe, some another. And this time, one of them was watching another, not her. The old quiet was breaking. In three weeks, she would have to hold a crowd that had already started to look at itself.