All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [125]
Eliot felt poison drawn from the air, water, and the earth. Rivers of the stuff flowed into the freshly created fissures, steaming and hissing and dissolving soil as it went.
He pushed the notes deeper and darker, pulled the material down—past surface layers and bedrock—he bowed faster, and the heat and subterranean pressure rose—burning and decomposing what it could, oxidizing the remaining toxic metals.
The music wanted Eliot to keep playing . . . to the very end . . . like a swimmer caught in a river rushing toward a waterfall.
He resisted, though, and deftly transitioned to a major key.
Lady Dawn heated under his fingers. He felt tiny crackles along her length.
The notes sweetened as he wove in strands of “Julie’s Song.”
The land had to be cleaned, but it also needed more. It had to be nurtured. “Julie’s Song” was the only thing he knew that so sounded full of love and light and hope.
He’d composed that song, however, when he was a different person. A boy in love.
He tried to be that again and gave his heart to the land, felt its suffering, and soothed its wounds.
It started to rain, pelting dust and sand, washing away debris, and extinguished distant jungle fires.
Eliot’s thoughts drifted from the land . . . to Julie . . . and then to what she had become . . . Jezebel.
The music shifted, a subtle dissent into a minor key, something that spoke of wild growth and decay, jungle loam and running creepers and opening blossoms—a cycle of life and death.
Eliot smelled fresh vegetation, rich turned earth, and honeysuckle.
He pulled the song back . . . sensing something diabolical in the mix.
He was angry. Eliot didn’t want to depend on trivial musical phrases, silly love songs, and music others had written. He wanted his own grand music—sonatas where air and light and birds mixed in fantastical aerobatics, symphonies that touched the stars and spoke of love and loss and the redemption of gods and angels.
He played with fury—the notes nothing he’d ever dreamed of before.
He put his soul into his music.
Live, he urged the land.
And the lands that had once been beautiful called back to him: the phantom songs of a hundred birds and a million insect chirps and whines, the breeze and every rustling leaf that had once lived beckoned, wanting to be once more.
Eliot mourned it all, and he knew then that he had to bring it back.
Somehow. No matter what it took.
He felt a part of himself slip into the land . . . and made a connection.
He lost himself, played until he turned everything he was inside out—cast it forth—gave it all.
And then he slowed . . . and plunked out the last notes . . . and stopped.
Eliot fell to his knees.
Sweat dripped from him, tears streamed from his eyes . . . and all mingled with the blood that ran freely from his fingers.
Eliot barely felt Henry’s hand on his shoulder.
The earth was black, and mangrove trees sprouted and grew as he watched, vines wrapped around trunk and branch. There was a rich scent of cut grass. Orchids bloomed. Beetles buzzed. With a rainbow of fluttering feathers, flocks of birds alighted in the treetops, twittering with excitement. Shadow and sunlight angled under the rising jungle.
The factory had changed as well. Rust and corruption had become gleaming stainless steel and green plastic.
Workers ran out and looked with fascination, many making the sign of the cross.
“That . . . should . . . do,” Eliot breathed, barely able to get out the words, he was so exhausted.
He fell and Henry caught him.
“Do?” Henry’s voice was full of wonder. “Indeed that shall.”
Eliot tried to laugh, but ended up coughing.
He had done something the entire League had been unable—or more likely, unwilling—to do. They were all too selfish to act beyond their personal interests.
And Eliot, at that very moment, realized he would never be one of them.
33. “Ordered to slay Master