Page 56 of Into the Heartless Wood
I fit the horn into the phonograph, then carefully slide a hollow, wax-covered cylinder onto the mandrel, a cylindrical component of the phonograph that’s made of solid metal. I turn the crank on the side of the box, winding the device up, then set the stylus onto the wax cylinder. Music blooms from the phonograph’s horn.
Seren leaps back in shock, and I straighten up, pleased with myself. It’s a partial recording of a symphony Mother brought with her from her university days. Violins and cellos swell into the night, chased by a lone clarinet and the kettledrums’ pulsing heartbeat.
Seren is transfixed. “Magic,” she whispers at last. “Thisis magic.”
I glance at the screen of trees around us, and shake my head. “Not magic. It’s music and science.”
“It’s beautiful.”
I smile, forcibly ignoring my jittering nerves. I hold out my hand. “Will you dance with me, Seren of the wood?”
She tilts her head. “I do not understand.”
“I’ll show you.”
She takes my hand, her skin rough-smooth-sharp against mine. I pull her near me, gingerly resting my other hand on her waist. Leaves whisper over my fingers, soft as rose petals, soft as Awela’s ruined hair ribbon. Beneath, smooth silver skin. I hardly dare speak. “To the time of the music, see?” It’s a waltz, the lilting rhythm easy to feel, a weighty downbeat, two lighter upbeats, again and again.
She seems almost instinctually to understand. She moves as easily as the wind coiling round us, a part of the wood, a part of the waltz. The hand not folded in mine finds my chest, her knobby fingers splayed out, tiny leaves sprouting up from her knuckles.
“Your heart beats,” she says. “Just as mine does.”
I take my hand from her waist and brush my fingertips over her heart. I feel her pulse, erratic, quick.
Her eyes search mine as we dance on the hilltop, and I wonder what questions burn inside of her, in the hollow of the soul she claims she does not have. I move my hand back to the safer residence of her shoulder, but my eyes never leave her face.
The phonograph scratches and screeches as it comes to the end of the cylinder—it’s only able to play for four minutes. For a moment more we keep dancing, to the music of the wood, the grass, the sky. We stop abruptly, mid-stride. We break apart. I feel strange and small, less than myself. Does she feel this way, too?
Mutely, I kneel beside the phonograph, move the stylus back to the beginning of the cylinder, turn the crank. The symphony starts over, crackly and beautiful in the summer night.
I rejoin Seren, and this time it’s her who reaches out her hand to me, her asking if I want to dance.
We do, again and again. I restart the symphony five times, six, and then it doesn’t matter anymore, and we don’t need music to dance.
We’re still dancing when dawn comes, and the rosy flush of it is reflected in her silver face.
Chapter Twenty-Six
SEREN
HIS HEART BEATS
beneath my fingers
as the music spins into the night
like spider silk
and I
never
want
it
to
stop.
