Weird Al Alcordion's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Weird Al Alcordion squeezed his accordion and heard the truth: it wasn't enough. He wanted one song to reach every Air Island and pull them into a single tune. But the notes he pushed out now sounded flat and small. He had traveled from island to island collecting sounds, and every island demanded a color his instrument could not make. High wind-chimes. Deep drum-thunder. His accordion gave him neither. He sat on the edge of a floating island and played the opening bars again. The melody drifted out and died in the air. No neighboring island answered it back. Al pressed the keys harder, as if force could stretch the sound. It only wheezed. He stopped and stared at his hands. Thin melodies would never bind anything. He needed more range, and he had no idea where to find it. Then he saw the bloom. It grew from a crack in the island's stone, taller than his knee. Its petals layered in blue and purple, and a soft light pulsed inside them, like something alive was breathing there. Al had never seen a flower glow. He leaned close. The light brightened when he hummed, and dimmed when he stopped. The bloom was answering him. Al held his accordion beside the flower and played a single low note. The petals trembled. The glow spread up the stem and spilled into the reeds of his instrument. He felt the accordion grow warm in his arms. He played the note again. This time it came out doubled, one deep and one high, a sound he had never made before. His heart pounded. He tore a wide chord across the keys. The accordion answered with wind-chimes and drum-thunder at once, the exact tones each island had demanded. The bloom's light had woven itself into the reeds. Every color he had chased now lived inside his instrument. Al laughed and played faster, testing the top and bottom of the range. The sound carried far past the island's edge. And this time, faint but real, a distant island hummed the note back to him. He lowered the accordion, breathing hard. He had the range now. He could finally write the song that reached them all. But the bloom that gave it to him had gone dark and gray, its petals curling shut. He touched a petal, and it crumbled to dust in his fingers. Al looked at his glowing instrument, then at the ruined flower. The power was inside him now, but he did not know how long a single bloom's gift would last. He had one flower's worth of range, and a song that would take far more than one flower to finish.