Phoenix Overture (2 page)

MOUNTAINS REACHED IN the distance, cradling the sky in their curves and crests. The volcano spewed smoke into the air, but everyone said it would be ages before it erupted again. Maybe so. Still, the smoke and ash that poured from the crater every day was certainly ominous.

Stef and I trudged into the old city, its ruins heaps of twisted metal and burned rubble. Since the Cataclysm and the volcano eruption a generation past, only shreds of the city were left, but still, every day, people like Fayden went to scavenge for anything that might be useful.

It was well after noon by the time we took to one of the cleared roads, and I began leading him down the familiar path to the concert hall.

“What do you think happened here?” The cracked pavement crunched under Stef’s boots.

Great walls of rubble rose on either side, no doubt carefully sifted through during some early scavenger’s quest for valuable, useful items. Now there were only unidentifiable pieces of plastic, wires, and palm-sized bits of metal with glass screens—though most of the unbroken bits of glass and metal had been torn off and repurposed.

“What do I think happened where?” I couldn’t see the domed peaks of the concert hall yet, not with the crumbling steel towers and collapsed bridges in the way.

“Here.” He gestured around the falling city. “During the Cataclysm.”

I shrugged. “I think the same thing everyone thinks: earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions. It’s not a stretch. Just look around. Buildings shook apart. There’s a seam of volcanic rock running through the lower areas of the city.”

“Right, but what made the Cataclysm?”

“I don’t know. Trolls?” A troll had certainly ended my world.

“And how did humans build all of this if they had to compete with so many large predators?”

“Are you saying there weren’t trolls before the Cataclysm?” Didn’t he ever stop thinking and questioning things? As far as I could tell, our lives were short, brutal, and would never have enough music. Knowing the past wouldn’t change our present, and our time would be better spent surviving our reality.

Stef shrugged. “If there were, humans had a much better way of dealing with them than we do.”

“They had electricity.” Fayden’s voice behind us stopped us both, and I cursed the chatter that had distracted me from hearing his approach. “Dossam, aren’t you supposed to be somewhere?”

I turned to face my brother. “I’m not going.”

“Ah.” My brother glanced toward the Community, hidden beyond the heavy veil of trees. Streaks of dirt ran across his face and throat, staining the collar of his shirt brownish gray. He carried a knife in his belt, and a sling; sometimes, wild animals and worse ventured into the old city. “What brings you here,” he asked, “besides pointless questions about the old world?”

I crossed my arms and did my best to avoid looking in the direction of the concert hall, toward the center of the city. “Our own business.”

Stef glanced between us for only a heartbeat. “Sam is going to help me find something.”

“Sam?” Fayden swiped at a trickle of sweat coursing down his temple. “Who’s Sam?”

“Dossam. He wants to be called Sam.”

“I do not—”

Stef waved away my protest. “Here’s the short version: I almost crushed Sam to death with my troll trap, and then he offered to lead me to some colored glass to help draw trolls toward it.”

Fayden’s jaw went slack and he turned on me. “You know where there’s colored glass?”

I heaved a sigh and glared at the cloudless sky. “Can you just leave us alone?”

“Not until you tell me why you’re not in the Center right now volunteering for Janan’s quest.”

“Why would I want to go on Janan’s quest?”

“Because he’s our leader? Because he trained hundreds of warriors to protect the Community? Because he made this valley safe enough to grow crops and families?”

I let sarcasm flood my snarl. “Great job he’s done, too.” The valley wasn’t
that
safe. Mother and a dozen others were proof of that.

“Janan can’t help the drought, or hunger and plague that come after that. It’s not
his
fault.”

No, it wasn’t. But still. “How many quests has he been on now, with promises that everything would change when he returned? Four? Five? Whatever he’s looking for, it doesn’t exist.”

Fayden threw his hands into the air. “You’re insufferable. Is this what you do all day? Complain about Janan and come up with ways to shirk your duties?”

“So I’m guessing you must be the brother.” Stef put on that smirk I was coming to know, and he studied us. “You don’t look alike.”

No, we didn’t. Fayden looked like someone who worked with his hands, trekked through the forest, and braved the most dangerous areas of the old city. I was considerably softer, with untamable curls on top of my head, rather than my brother’s—and my father’s—cropped haircuts. The only thing Fayden and I had in common was our brown complexion, inherited from Mother.

Stef let out a long breath. “Maybe we should go, Sam.”

I didn’t break my glare from Fayden.

“So where’s this glass?” Fayden asked after a moment of uncomfortable silence. He’d kept my gaze. Neither of us could look away.

“We’re not selling it.”

Fayden cocked an eyebrow. “If you knew about that kind of glass, you could sell it and move away from Father.”

“It’s for my trap,” Stef reminded him. “We’re catching—and killing—trolls.”

My brother grew quiet, his features softer. He broke our stare to look at Stef. “Will it work? The trap?”

“Maybe if I get the glass.” Stef motioned down the road. “Can we go?”

Fayden faced me again, his expression a mask of curiosity. “You don’t want the glass for yourself?”

Why couldn’t he understand that I thought stopping trolls from hurting more families was more important than my personal wealth?

Because Fayden was like Father: hard, practical, and he didn’t let sentimentality get in his way.

“We’re not selling it,” I said again, and turned on my heel. If he followed, then he followed.

“So what’s your name?” Stef asked as they started along behind me.

“Fayden.”

“Great. Fay.”

“No. It’s Fayden.”

Amusement colored Stef’s tone. “I suppose we could call you Den.”

“Is Dossam letting you call him Sam?”

“He will.”

“That seems unlikely.” But Fayden chuckled and they began chatting about junk they found on the side of the road. Stef was more than eager to talk about old pieces of technology, water systems, and how people could communicate across the world without delay. “Everything was instantaneous.”

Stef whistled. “Sounds incredible. Maybe one day, we’ll be able to have that back.”

Speaking of unlikely things.

We’d all be dead before that kind of technology came back to the world. There was no time to work on that sort of thing; we were too busy just trying to survive.

“There are enormous piles of mysteries,” Fayden said. “Scavengers keep it in pits around the city, because most of it doesn’t work anymore, and never will again. I’d be happy to show it to you, though.”

“You know what all of it was used for?”

“Some.” Fayden’s tone was all casual superiority. He’d been scavenging for three years now, hearing stories from those who’d been doing it longer. “There are handheld devices with cracked screens, round bulbs that used to emit light, and stoves that cooked using only a metal coil to heat pans.”

The best things didn’t need electricity to power them, though. Musical instruments, tiny boxes that played music when the knob was twisted, and books.

I let their discussion become white noise as we rounded a corner, and instead stretched my hearing to catch the edges of other voices around the city: scavengers working, animals skittering through trash, and buildings creaking in the wind. Soon, maybe they’d just fall into the ground and be swallowed up.

Low growling ahead made me pause. I held up a hand, and the other two fell silent behind me.

Another growl came from across the road, behind a wrecked vehicle, its windows smashed out long ago. Then a third growl.

“Dogs,” Fayden breathed. “There’s a pack of feral dogs around here.”

Three lanky beasts slinked out from behind rusted signs fallen to the earth and from behind that vehicle. They were all big dogs, with patchy black fur that had matted around their legs and scruffs. Ribs stuck out like shelves, and ears had been nipped. One of them limped.

“They’re hungry,” Fayden said. “And there aren’t as many as before.”

They were starving and desperate. They’d never have approached three humans otherwise.

I glanced at Stef, who shook his head. “Don’t look at me. I don’t deal with wild animals. Unless you want to trap one.” He took three long steps backward. “I’ll just be over here if you need me to drag your corpses off the road.”

“I’ve never met anyone
so
brave,” I muttered, and stayed put.

“It won’t come to corpse-dragging.” Fayden moved forward, making one dog bare a set of broken, yellowed teeth. My brother pulled out his sling and snatched up a fragment of shattered pavement. “These guys are supper. Ours, or someone else’s.”

My stomach turned over, and I stopped just short of touching my brother’s arm. “Don’t kill them.”

“They’re going to die anyway.” He loaded the sling and gave it a few turns as he stepped closer to the dogs. The one with broken teeth prowled forward, deepening its growl.

“But we don’t have to kill them. There’s nothing on them anyway. You couldn’t sell their bodies.” My heart pounded as I watched the other two dogs shift behind their leader. Dust coated their fur, and they were all so painfully skinny. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for them. “Just scare them away and let’s go.”

“They’d bite you if they had the chance.” Fayden’s eyes flashed toward me. “They’d tear open your throat and eat you.”

I said nothing.

Fayden swore. “Fine.” He loosed the pavement shard and aimed just before the lead dog.

The beast barked and lurched toward us, but the other two dogs crouched and ducked their tails between their legs as my brother grabbed a handful of rocks and pebbles.

“Get!” He released a spray of pebbles at the first dog. “Get out!” When he stomped and waved his hands, all three dogs scampered off.

I exhaled relief. “Thank you.”

“Don’t.” Fayden put away his sling. “The dogs hadn’t been
that
hungry, or a few rocks and some waving wouldn’t have scared them.”

“They looked plenty hungry to me.” Stef frowned in the direction the dogs had fled.

“They are hungry,” said Fayden. “But you saw the scratches. The mangy looks. And I told you: the pack is smaller now. I’ll give you one guess as to why.”

I wanted to be sick as we continued to the concert hall. Maybe they’d find something else to eat. Then again, maybe it would have been kinder to kill them quickly, like Fayden had wanted. They wouldn’t bring much meat or money, but they wouldn’t suffer any longer, either.

I didn’t know anymore. There were too many things I just didn’t know.

MY CHEST FELT weird and heavy as we continued through the old city. I couldn’t stop thinking of those dogs, that sad hunger in their eyes, and what Fayden had said about the pack growing smaller. And why.

I guided the others through the wreckage of the old city, down the only paths of this place that were familiar to me. This part of the old city had been devastated during the Cataclysm. Buildings toppled over. Vehicles had piled atop one another, creating walls of crumpled metal and shattered glass. Shredded rubber dripped from the wheels of overturned vehicles.

“How did I never know this was here?” Fayden said as we rounded a corner, and a white edge of the building shone in the sunlight.

I gestured at all the rubble surrounding the building. “So much of this part of the city is gone. It’s a miracle this place survived. There’s no reason it should have.”

Not only that, but there was a park next to the concert hall, which had mostly overgrown and concealed the building from outside view. The trees and brush were brown with summer and drought now, but I had sharp memories of coming here as a child, when everything had been covered in a hundred shades of green.

Though I knew that nature was simply reclaiming the land, it had seemed to me, when I was very young, that even the trees and earth wanted to protect this sanctuary of music.

“This way.” I guided Stef and Fayden through the maze of junk. Metal poles with busted lightbulbs watched like blind sentinels. A dry fountain crumbled beneath the onslaught of nature and heat. Ancient sculptures of men riding winged horses rested on the ground, vines creeping around legs and outstretched arms.

Once, this place had been loved. Honored. Now, it was a decaying secret, one I was going to expose to people I wasn’t sure I could trust. My injured shoulder throbbed as I heaved open one of the doors, its hinges shrieking, and we stepped into the cool darkness of the lobby.

“What is this?” Fayden asked.

“It’s where Mother took me every time she said we were going foraging.”

I hadn’t come here since she died, and it felt like betrayal, bringing a stranger and my brother here now. The concert hall had meant so much to me over the years.

But I took them through the entry hall, past the collection of art and statues, which Mother and I hadn’t dared touch, lest we break something. Somehow, the portraits and murals and crystal lamps always looked clean, as though someone else came here for reflection or learning, and cared for the artifacts during their stay. Like Mother had taught me to care for the instruments, as well as play them.

“Some of this stuff could be useful,” muttered Stef. He turned his eyes up to the old lamps and faces carved into the marble.

“Or sold.” Fayden shook his head. “I can’t believe how well preserved everything is.”

“Leave it.” I shoved my hands into my pockets. “That isn’t why I brought you here.”

Fayden and Stef exchanged wry smiles. “Testy,” Stef said.

“You should have seen him as a child. He wouldn’t eat meat for a whole year because he realized it was animals.”

Great. Now
they
were friends and could spend all their time coming up with new ways to mock me.

My footfalls were silent as we moved through the lobby.
Unconscious reverence,
Mother had said when she noticed it, and now I stepped quietly for her memory, and all the things about her that I missed. Her warmth, understanding, and love: I missed those the most.

Now I was going to assist in the destruction of something we both loved: the glass curtain that stood on the back of the stage, miraculously spared from the violent earthquakes and rivers of flowing lava.

The auditorium looked as it always did, quiet and sagging, and heavy with the weight of centuries. And there on the stage, covered against dust and moisture, stood the piano before the glass curtain.

“I need you to promise me something.” I kept my voice low as I faced my brother, my back to the stage. “If you have any love for Mother, don’t scavenge this place. Don’t gut it like you do other buildings.”

Fayden just stared beyond me, his eyes filled with the glass.

“She kept it secret for a reason,” I said. “She’d want us to use the glass to save lives, but the rest of it needs to stay.”

“You don’t get to say what Mother would have wanted.” Fayden tore his gaze from the glass, and focused on me. His growl was low and menacing. “Not now.”

“You two can fight later.” Stef pushed his way through the hall, awe filling his voice as he approached the immense glass wall. “How did this survive?”

“I don’t know. Mother’s mother brought her here to teach her about music. Grandmother was a pianist before the Cataclysm. It happened during a performance, I guess.” I turned from my brother to face the shimmering brown-and-blue-and-green landscape depicted by the curtain. It showed the volcano south of here, though it was pre-Cataclysm and the crater looked different now. “It folds up, but I have no idea how.” I couldn’t imagine how heavy it was. “Grandmother and her friends must have left it for future generations.”

“Will it work for what you need?” Fayden asked.

“Yes, but it seems wrong to destroy it now.” Stef glanced at me. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

It wasn’t my curtain. I had no right to make that decision. But what did I want more? The glass curtain and the continued sanctity of the only safe place I’d ever known, or to protect others from my mother’s fate?

If sacrificing a piece of something I loved so much would help save lives . . . “Let’s do it.”

“It won’t be easy getting the glass out.” Stef climbed onto the stage and walked by the covered piano without even noticing it. “The glass is in there really well.”

“I might be able to help,” said Fayden. “If
Sam
doesn’t mind.”

It wasn’t as though he’d listen to anything I said anyway. “Do you need my help for anything?” I asked Stef. “I’m not sure if there are tools for that, but you might be able to find something if you look around and don’t mind improvising.” The only tools I knew about were the ones for repairing and tuning instruments.

My eyes strayed toward the piano.

“No,” Stef said. “I don’t need you right now. Fayden and I can figure this out.”

I winced—still useless—but let myself be secretly relieved. I didn’t know how to dismantle the curtain, nor did I want to know.

When Stef and Fayden left the room in search of tools, I pulled off the piano cover, leaving it in a puddle of gray cloth on the stage, and sat on the piano bench. I dragged my fingers over the keys, not pressing any just yet. With my eyes closed and the heavy silence around me, I could almost pretend nothing had changed since the last time I’d been here.

This room was refreshingly quiet, as though the outside world didn’t exist. No mangy dogs roaming the streets. No drought slowly killing the land. No plague sweeping through the Community.

No trolls. No Janan with impossible quests. No Father.

When I sat on this bench, it was just Mother and me. With music.

“What is that?” Stef asked from a doorway on the side of the stage. He carried a small toolbox as he approached.

“A piano.”

“Is it useful?” He dropped the toolbox with a
thunk
, scratching the stage and ignoring my flinch.

“It isn’t.” Fayden came in from the other side of the stage. “It just makes noise. I’ve seen others in the city.”

Stef glanced at me and raised an eyebrow, but I just shook my head. Fayden wasn’t wrong. What use had music been against a troll? Or hunger? Or Father’s blows?

“Show us,” Stef said. “I want to hear.”

Play something? For them? They didn’t know anything about music. They didn’t care. And they wouldn’t understand why I did—why it meant everything to me. I didn’t know Stef well enough to predict his reaction, but Fayden would just mock me. Or worse: he’d tell Father and I’d somehow end up on Janan’s quest in spite of my absence today.

“Go on.” Fayden knelt and searched through the toolbox. “If you’re not going to help us figure out how to take this apart, you might as well give us something to listen to.”

I couldn’t come all the way here and not play. Even if it was just a little while. For people who couldn’t understand.

“Fine.” I opened the lid, then warmed up with a few scales. Fayden rolled his eyes at their simplicity, but I ignored that, and a few notes that sounded off. There wasn’t much I could do about it; though Mother and I—and her mother before her—had been caring for and tuning the piano as best we could over the years, the fluctuating temperature and humidity had taken a toll.

It was better than nothing, though.

While I ran through scales, Stef wandered over to watch the hammers and levers inside. “Interesting,” he muttered as I found the music I’d been working to learn the last time I came here.

First I played a simple phrase, a slow and thoughtful sound. A few measures later, a rolling chord joined the melody, lifting it. The music inhaled, exhaled, and the deeper chords shivered into my bones. With no more hesitation, the sound poured across the stage, rolled up the glass curtain, and fell in glorious showers along the marble walls and balconies. Music filled the theater like smoke, like water, like a mysterious force that held me in its thrall. I lost myself, swaying to the beat, hardly aware of the pages of music in front of me. The keys were extensions of my fingers, the piano another part of my body, and I was soaring.

I felt weightless, relieved of all my burdens. I felt right. Whole. Like I’d been starving ever since Mother—

My hands fell still on the keys, dead things.

“What happened?” Stef jerked up from where he’d been inspecting the piano’s inner workings. Fayden hadn’t moved from his place by the curtain, and he looked . . . surprised.

I slipped off the bench and stepped away. “Nothing.” Everything.

Fayden’s mouth pressed in a line as he studied me, studied the piano. “That was good,” he said after a moment. “I don’t know anything about music, but—I liked it.”

He liked it? Really?

My voice abandoned me.

“How long have you been practicing?” Stef asked.

“Years.” I glanced at the piano. “It’s not enough. I feel like I’ve improved enough to start seeing just how much work I need. But the piano needs repairs, I couldn’t always get here, and Mother was afraid someone would follow us and find it.”

“Did she teach you?” Fayden asked. She’d been his mother longer than she’d been mine, and there were things he was just now learning about her. “Did she know how to play, too?”

I nodded. “She knew. Her mother taught her. She had learned before the Cataclysm. Grandmother knew just enough about other instruments to pass that knowledge along, too, but what she really knew was the piano.”

Since the Cataclysm had happened during a performance, instruments that wouldn’t normally be here had been abandoned by their owners. Flutes. Clarinets. Violins. I wanted nothing more than to live long enough to learn to play them all, though it seemed unlikely they’d work anymore.

“So the piano was what Mother knew, too.” Fayden stared at the piano for a few long moments, while Stef hung back with his arms crossed. Wind howled outside, and sunlight slanted through the skylight. My brother shifted his weight to one hip. “I won’t tell Father about this. And I won’t tell other scavengers about the building. Your secret goes no further than the three of us.”

My heart pounded with relief. “Thank you.”

He shrugged away my gratitude. “You can thank me by playing something else.”