All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [191]
He was getting nowhere with these human relationship problems. Like music, they had patterns: attraction, coming together, fighting, breaking up—wash, rinse, and repeat.
Eliot pulled his violin case closer. Maybe he could make some progress on Ms. DuPreé’s assignment. He got Lady Dawn and admired her fiery wood grain that looked like molten gold and amber.
He played slow and strived to define his confused feelings. It swelled from him, roiled and swirled about him in the room, making homework pages flutter and books tremble on the shelves.
But it felt dangerous, too, like he was tapping into emotional waters deep and dark.
As he started thinking about how to express himself, his fingers fell into old habits, and they repeated a phrase, and built upon it.
He stopped.
That was right. That was how the music should be played, but it wasn’t the assignment.
He hissed his frustration.
Why was it that the others in music class never had these problems? They just played. They just did it. Their passion flowed from them effortlessly.
David Kaleb had a silver horn that flashed the reflected spotlights like his own light show. When Sarah Covington sang, she seemed warm and friendly (everything she actually wasn’t). And the older boy who had auditioned, his guitar had been bold and strong and big. Masculine.
Eliot glanced at Lady Dawn. Was he outgrowing her?
When he practiced in front of the others, he’d been embarrassed. Lady Dawn was the instrument a “good little boy” would play.
There was something else. When he had summoned the dead that first time at Groom Lake, she’d snapped a string. He curled his hand, still feeling the pain. It was as if she had done that on purpose because she disapproved . . . like she was alive.
Eliot had to be just imagining that.
He set aside the violin and stared past the gleaming surfaces, trying to feel more.
She was quiet. There wasn’t even that subsonic hum he usually sensed about her. She was sulking.
“It’s time I tried something else . . . ,” Eliot told her. “I mean—”
He couldn’t continue. What if she were really alive? Hadn’t he seen crazier things? It didn’t matter, though—real or imagined, the problem between him and her would still be there.
“It’s not like we’re breaking up or anything,” he continued, fidgeting his hands. “Look, I just need to try out a few other instruments. Something a little more . . .”
Eliot searched for a rational excuse (flimsy or not) to tell her.
“I’m tired of living in my dad’s shadow,” he said. “The violin is his instrument. I need something that belongs entirely to me.”
Lady Dawn just sat there.
Eliot couldn’t stand it. He picked her up, set her in her case, and slammed it shut.
Okay, so he was losing his mind. Maybe. But tomorrow he was going to find a new instrument to play.
He opened the giant tome he’d checked out from the Hall Of Wisdom. It was Volume Twelve of the Copper-Prince edition of The Mahbhrata, tonight’s assigned reading. Miss Westin had jumped ahead in their syllabus and had them working on Eastern Indian mythologies all of a sudden.
He read about battles, and betrayals, and family politics, stuff that usually interested Eliot, but he felt guilty about setting aside his trusted violin.
Eliot pressed his forehead to the page and groaned.
He just needed to clear his head, rest his eyes for a moment, and then he’d read . . . and make a few notes. . . .
________
This was the most moronic dream Eliot had ever had. He dreamed that he slept in his bed. No dragons to slay, no being late for some midterm he’d never studied for . . . just drooling on his pillowcase, snoring gently, books pushed aside.
Did he really look like such a dork when he slept?
The lamp was off to his room, but light streamed in from under his door. Half shadows gave his room a weird underwater feel.
There was a sigh nearby, and Eliot knew he wasn’t alone in his dream.
A person stood by his bed . . . a girl.
Eliot was wide awake now (at least in his dream) as he sat up and saw this girl wore nothing—just a silhouette of skin