Strange Sweet Song (37 page)

She slides open a dresser drawer. There is no way she’s wearing her uniform. Her pajamas’ green stripes move with her in the dresser mirror, and she thinks of the green-striped cabana that her parents used to set up on the sand in front of the beach house in St. John. Maybe she’ll invite Zhin to come with her and her father over break.

She remembers Barbara da Navelli on the beach. Perfect makeup. A string bikini that looked fantastic but never went near the actual water. Eyes searching for cameras and celebrities, not interesting shells or disgruntled crabs.

Maybe she’ll invite Jenny and Marta instead.

Knock, knock. “Hello? Sing?” It’s a voice she doesn’t recognize.

She glances at her pajamas. “Who is it?”

“Apprentice Keppler,” the voice calls from behind the door. Chipper.

Apprentice Keppler.
Her voice coach. She puts a hand to the dresser and lets it support some of her weight. She can’t picture him. Everything else in this strange new
now
has settled into a kind of reality, but not him. Not this person who has taken Nathan’s shape—coaching Opera Workshop, turning Ryan’s pages, playing Brahms. He is still a stranger.

“Miss da Navelli?” he says, his voice muffled. “I just wanted to say good-bye.”

“Oh.” She flexes her fingers. “Good-bye.”

A pause. “I’ve got some engagements. And Yvette Cordaro wants to introduce me to a few people. You know, because of Gloria Stewart International.” Another pause. “I’m getting representation.”

Sing looks at the closed door. She forces a smile he can’t see. “Oh. Great!”

Another knock. “Sing?” It’s Jenny. “Are you in there?”

Keppler says something Sing can’t make out. Then Jenny’s voice, lower. “Through the door? Is she sick?” Now louder. “Are you sick?”

“No,” Sing calls.

“Naked?”

“No!”

The door opens and Jenny steps into the room, hands on hips. “What is with you? You’re a hermit now or something? Doing something illegal in here?”

But Sing doesn’t answer her. She stares at Apprentice Keppler, who is still standing in the doorway. His shirtsleeves are rolled up, as they were last night, revealing tattoo-free forearms. His hair is cut neatly, his shoulders narrower than they should be. But he has the blackest eyes she’s ever seen.

Jenny looks at Sing, then at Apprentice Keppler. “Well. Well, Sing, you have a very strange look on your face. I will … see you around.” She backs out of the room. Sing hears the door across the hall open and close, and after a moment, she can hear Jenny and Marta laughing. But she doesn’t take her eyes from Apprentice Keppler’s face.

It
is
him, isn’t it?

Or is it?

“Nathan?” she says at last.

“Yes?” Politeness.

“You look … different.”

He tilts his head. “Different?”

She pushes off the dresser and lets herself be propelled to her desk. Gravity presses her into the chair.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“I’m tired of people asking if I’m okay.”

“Sorry.” He leans on the doorframe. “How am I different?”

She pushes her hair back from her forehead. “You’re just … you look like … Never mind.”

He studies her. She looks back, trying to see Nathan Daysmoor. Nathan Keppler’s eyes are dark and lovely, but they stare with courtesy. She remembers the arresting, almost intrusive gaze that caught her breath at her placement audition.

Sing can’t stand this new Nathan looking at her. She lowers her eyes.

He puts his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I traded in my robes for people clothes. Maybe that’s what’s different.”

“Maybe.” She wishes he would leave.

But he just stands there with his hands in his pockets. She looks out the window at the bright gray sky, then back to his face. The straight nose, the angular contours. The black hair cut too short to curve into his jaw the way she knows it would.

After a moment, he says, “I look like Nathan Daysmoor.”

She looks up sharply. “What? How do you—”

“Sing,” he says quietly, “don’t you recognize me?” He starts to continue, but his words sound like “Unghf” because of the force with which Sing throws her arms around his neck. He wraps his arms around her, kisses her cheek, her eyes, her lips. Then he laughs.

Eventually, she asks, “What happened?”

He steps back, his arms still around her waist. “I have a place now. Tamino found me a place.”

“Who are you?” she asks. “Are you Daysmoor or Keppler?”

“I’m Nathan Keppler,” he says. “Just as my great-grandfather was.”

“But what
happened
? How are you here?”

He shuts the door. “The strangest thing. You see, my great-grandfather almost drowned when he was just a boy. But the story that’s been handed down in my family is that he was saved by a great orange cat who dragged him from the river.”

She hugs him. She can’t stop hugging him. It occurs to her to ask, “Do you remember everything?”

He rests his cheek on the top of her head. “I remember too much everything. I remember Daysmoor. And every moment that passes, I remember more of this new life. I
feel
as though I have—well, a life, and a home. I remember piano lessons with a woman who wore sweatshirts with puppies on them. I remember my human parents. It’s strange. I imagine I’ll see them soon.” He laughs. “I imagine they’re proud of me.”

Sing looks up at him. “But … but you’re leaving. That’s what you said.”

He hesitates. “It’s better that I do.”

“It’s not better for
me
.”

“Well,” he says, “you’ll just have to come hear me play. I might even get you a backstage pass. Ha ha! I’m kidding. No violence! Anyway, you’ve got a lot to do at DC. You need to get ready for Fire Lake.” He takes her hands. “Congratulations.”

Sing wonders if they were really together in that dark stairwell or if those memories are merely phantoms. Is this new reality creating itself around them? Are all these people and relationships as new as they feel? Or are the past few months a trick of her mind now, seamlessly replaced by a solid chain of events that has always existed?

Nathan smiles. “Thank you. For wishing for me.”

She looks down. “I didn’t. I mean—I would have. But Tamino did this on his own. There was no tear. There was only this warm light.”

Nathan steps to Sing’s bed and sits on the edge. She sits next to him. He says, “There doesn’t always have to be a tear.”

The light from Sing’s window is white like the snow and the sky outside. She rubs her thumb along the inside of Nathan’s forearm. “Your tattoo’s gone.”

He weaves his fingers with hers. “You sound disappointed. Should I get another one?”

“I’m pretty sure there’s a tattoo parlor in the village,” she says.

“Well,” Nathan says, leaning in, “I suppose I could leave tomorrow instead of today.”

She tries to decide if this kiss feels like the first one or if, in this reality, they have already done this. But it doesn’t really matter.

“Wednesday at the
latest,
” Nathan says.

The door opens, but Sing doesn’t even open her eyes. She hears Marta giggle. Then Jenny’s voice. “I
knew
it!”

Sixty-nine

T
HE FELIX DOES NOT KNOW
how long she has been on earth. She felt little of its rotations and orbits, of the rise and fall of mountains. She was aware of time as one who is not a sailor is aware of the sea.

But she knew about forever. She knew that death was forever for the creatures around her, those she devoured and those who simply stopped breathing for their own reasons.

Yet here is the child, back from death.

For the first time since her fall, the Felix is joyful.

And she will choose to spend the rest of forever in the sky.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to everyone who made this book possible, especially—

My mom (who only sings karaoke), my dad, and Mr. K; Ammi-Joan Paquette; S. Jae-Jones and Mollie Traver at St. Martin’s Press; Beatrice Clerc, Sarah Ellis and Leda Schubert, Katie Bayerl, Liz Cook, Alicia Potter, Laura Sanscartier, the Pathfinder Academy junior high, Dr. Jiahao Chen, Piero Garofalo, the Thunderbadgers, Alan Cumyn, Ellen Howard, Blessy Alancheril, and the VCFA community.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ADI RULE grew up among cats, ducks, and writers. She studied music as an undergrad, and has an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Adi is a member of, and has been a soloist for, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the chorus that performs with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Boston Pops. She lives in New Hampshire.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

STRANGE SWEET SONG.
Copyright © 2014 by Adi Rule. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Cover designed by Ervin Serrano

Cover photographs: girl by Yolande de Kort/Arcangel Images; forest by
Shutterstock.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Rule, Adi.

    Strange sweet song / Adi Rule.—1
st
edition.

            p. cm.

    ISBN 978-1-250-04816-5 (hardcover)

    ISBN 978-1-250-03634-6 (e-book)

  1.  Singers—Fiction.   2.  Conservatories of music—Fiction.   3.  Schools—Fiction.   4.  Supernatural—Fiction.   5.  Forests and forestry—Fiction.   I.  Title.

    PZ7.R8875Str 2014

    [Fic]—dc23                                              2013032020

e-ISBN 9781250036346

First Edition: March 2014