All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [184]
Sarah stood, trembling. “I’ll go, ma’am, I mean Erin, if you please.”
“Show me what you got, kid.”
Eliot touched her arm lightly and nodded to her.
Sarah nodded back.
It was a simple gesture between them, but genuine: his reassurance and hope . . . her gratitude for the kindness.
Sarah walked to the stage with slow deliberation. Ms. DuPreé offered a hand and helped her up.
Sarah had no instrument, nor did Ms. DuPreé signal for any to be brought out. Instead Sarah clasped her hands in front of her and sang.
Eliot didn’t understand the words, not even the language, Gaelic maybe. But while the words didn’t mean anything to him, the song did.
She sang of marshes and glens and trees and birds. He could almost see the land, and almost smell the heather and the ocean in the distance. He knew how she felt, that her heart was still at home. How she missed it all. How she loved that place.
Sarah finished and looked down.
No one clapped.
Not because it was bad, but because Eliot and the others were in shock. He’d never realized the human voice could be so lyrical and evocative.
Ms. DuPreé came to Sarah, took one of her hands, and petted it. “Very nice.”
Sarah managed a tight smile.
Ms. DuPreé waved her back to her seat and then looked to the rest of them. “That’s what I’m talking about. Who’s next?”
Sarah shakily sank back into her seat. She looked ill.
Eliot understood how music like that could drain you. He wanted to tell her, too, that’s how it was for him when he poured himself into his music.
“No volunteers?” Ms. DuPreé sounded disappointed.
A spotlight snapped on Eliot.
Adrenaline flooded through his body, and he cringed in surprise.
“How about you, then, Mr. Post? Why don’t you show us all what you’re made of?”
Eliot froze as if he were a deer in the headlights of an onrushing truck. Everything he knew about music was suddenly gone from his head.
Sarah whispered to him, “Go show her a thing or two.” There was a bit of her usual sarcasm in her tone, although Eliot didn’t think it was directed at him this time.
It was strange: Eliot’s confidence returned (what little of it there was) because he didn’t want to let Sarah down. He didn’t understand why he should care what she thought, but he did.
Well, he’d come to audition. He’d give it his best shot.
He grabbed Lady Dawn’s case, plodded to the stage, and stepped up without taking Ms. DuPreé’s proffered hand.
Ms. DuPreé gave him a wry look. “Well, Mr. Post, I’ve heard you got a spark in you, but so did the boy up here before you. Do you have soul? Can you make me cry?”
Eliot snorted. He felt irritation prickle at the back of his neck.
She wanted him to make her feel something? He flipped open the violin case and removed Lady Dawn, set her on his shoulder, grabbed the bow . . . then stopped.
He had to play a song that meant something to him, though. It couldn’t just be “Mortal’s Coil” or “The Symphony of Existence” or the “The March of the Suicide Queen.” They were great pieces, but they were other people’s songs.
Even “Julie’s Song” wasn’t Eliot’s. He’d taken what was inside Julie, turned it inside out, and added a melody, that’s all.
This had to be all his. Like Sarah had sung about her home, revealing a part of herself he would never have guessed existed . . . exposed herself in front of all of them.
He swallowed.
There was one nursery rhyme he recalled—or thought he remembered. It was like fog in his memory, shifting—there but ghostly, something he thought his mother might have once sang to him. Maybe the only thing she had ever sung to him.
Eliot set aside his bow. He wouldn’t need it.
He cautiously plunked out the tune.
A girl in the audience snickered. “That’s ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’ ”51
Someone shushed her.
Eliot paid them no attention and kept playing. This song, whatever it was, was his and his family’s. It was the mother he’d had, if only for a moment, before