Holly Harvey Apple had not spoken in one year, and tonight she needed her voice to catch a cursed man. She stood at the edge of the haunted lake in her green silk nightgown and red platform heels. The oldest bloodline in Scary Applesville carried a hex, and its heir only came to women who sang his family's name. She had chosen the silence herself. Now she wanted it back, and her throat had closed like a door. She opened her mouth. Nothing came. A year of letters addressed to no one had kept her hand moving, but her voice had gone stiff and strange. She tried a single note. It cracked and died on the still water. The lake held her reflection and gave back no sound. A shape surfaced near the broken planks. A large fish, scaled in violet and gold, marked with glowing runes. It watched her with too-human eyes. Beside the lake a willow drooped, its bark cut with sorrowful faces that wept dark sap. Holly understood these were not ordinary things. This place listened. "You're pushing it like a box up a hill." The voice came from behind her. A bearded man in a battered pirate hat stood by the willow. Captain Beefheart. He led a band, and he hated everything schools taught about music. "Training built that wall in your throat. A year of quiet poured the cement." A woman stepped from his shadow. Dark wild hair, a deep red top, a black skirt that moved in the dead air. Charlotte Bushapple. Holly knew her by reputation. Every label had called her sound too strange. She built songs from things that should not fit. She refused to let her chords resolve. "Don't sing a word," Charlotte said. "Words want to be right. That's the trap." She crouched and dragged one nail across a wet plank. The scrape rang out. "Make the ugly sound first. The voice follows." "Stop guarding it," Beefheart said. "The fish is singing under the water. Join the wrong note. Don't fix it." Holly listened. Beneath the lake she heard the fish's low hum, bent and off. The willow creaked over it. Charlotte scraped again, and the clash hurt her ears. She stopped trying to be right. She let the cement crack. The sound that left her was not a song. It was a rough, broken scrape of breath, matched to the fish's wrong note. Ugly. Alive. Her throat tore open around it. She coughed, gasped, and did it again, louder. Her voice came back. Raw, unpolished, hers. The lake answered. Ripples spread outward in rings, though nothing touched the water. Far across the orchards, something old and cursed turned toward the sound. Holly felt it hear her. She had a voice now. The heir had noticed, and he was no longer the only one listening.