Melody Resonance's Arc

Chapter 8 of 9

Melody stepped past the warm bend with the drum full of their own smothered voice and the iron box heavy under one arm. The tall rabbit went ahead three paces, then stopped. The tunnel split into four mouths. Each one breathed a different air. One warm and glassy. One cold and wet. One dry with old dust. One that smelled of nothing at all. The tall rabbit flattened his ears. "I have never gone past this ring," he said. "The elder pulls his maps back here." Melody looked at the four dark mouths and felt the clock behind their ribs. One night. One collector on the way. Pick wrong and the night burned out in the wrong tunnel. Melody set the drum down and lifted the theremin. The needle spun, then settled halfway between the warm mouth and the dry one. Not enough. Both held sound. Only one held the hoard. The Burrow Elder stepped from the cold mouth without a sound. Ivy trailed from his robe. His yellow eyes found the four passages, then Melody. "The digger died in the dry one," he said. "The jar that took him is still there. The hoard is deeper. Warm mouth or dry mouth. I cannot tell which from here. The roots do not reach past the ring." He waited. He did not offer more. Melody thought of the red-haired singer in the stone hall. Luna Meridian had told a boy once, when the drums broke mid-song, to hit the floor and listen for what hit back. Loud finds hollow. Melody pulled the small record from their pack, the blue one etched with waves, the one the drummer rabbit had pressed into their hand for emergencies. They set it on the arcane turntable at their hip and dropped the needle. A low tide sound rolled out, soft, then swelled. Melody aimed the turntable's horn at the warm mouth. The sound went in and came back thin, cut short, as if it hit glass a few paces down. Melody turned the horn to the dry mouth. The tide sound went in and kept going. It rolled and rolled and did not come back for a long count. When it did, it carried a hum under it. Many voices. Layered. Stolen. "Dry mouth," Melody said. "The hoard is down there." The tall rabbit's nose worked. The Burrow Elder gave one short nod. "Then the jar that killed my digger sits between you and it," he said. "Do not breathe near it." He stepped back into the cold mouth and was gone. The tall rabbit moved to the dry mouth and waited. Melody lifted the box and the drum. The night was not burned. The path was chosen. Ahead, past a killing jar, the tyrant's whole stolen forest hummed in the dark, and Melody walked toward it with a debt still ticking and one collector on the road behind them.