***
Esmeralda’s father had decorated the entire house for her party and done an incredibly bad job at it. He had run streamers crookedly across the ceiling and covered the dining room table with a wrinkled, white tablecloth. There were balloons, but not filled with helium; they said “Happy Birthday” on them and clung fearfully to the ground. On the dining room table sat a little circular cake, not encased in plastic. Upon it, in blue frosting, the words “Happy Birthday Ezzie” were written in a rather unsure and haphazard style.
“Oh, no,” Esmeralda said, inspecting the dessert. “I think Dad tried to bake.”
“What do you mean, tried?” Esmeralda’s father came out from the kitchen wearing jeans, a white t-shirt and an apron with “Kiss the Cook” printed across the front.
“Hello, Mr. Comstock,” Robert said.
“Robert, you know to call me Aaron,” Esmeralda’s father said.
“I know that you want me to, sir, but propriety really dictates that…”
The doorbell rang.
“Excuse me, Robert.” Mr. Comstock walked from the dining room muttering something about twelve year olds using words like propriety.
“You think it’s edible?” Robert asked.
Esmeralda shrugged. “Last year he bought a cake.”
“Hey!” Esmeralda’s father shouted from the living room. “Raahi? Is that you?”
Esmeralda and Robert ran from the dining room and found that in the living room, just inside the front door, stood Mr. Chandrasekhar wrapped in a great green parka. Mr. Chandrasekhar was standing in Esmeralda’s house. Esmeralda’s father shook his hand enthusiastically.
“You’re here!” Esmeralda blurted.
Mr. Chandrasekhar regarded her for the first time. “Now, I wondered about this.”
“How are you here?” Esmeralda was in a kind of shock.
“You know Raahi?” Esmeralda’s father asked.
Esmeralda looked at her father as if he had just entered the room. “You know Mr. Chandrasekhar?”
“Mr. Chandrasekhar,” Esmeralda’s father snorted. “Me and Raahi worked together during my college days.”
“Yes,” Mr. Chandrasekhar, Raahi, said, “your father and I were great friends, Esmeralda.”
“This is weird,” Robert said under his breath.
“And now,” Raahi said to Esmeralda’s father, “I have been substituting for Esmeralda’s teacher. The circle completes itself.”
“They usually do,” Esmeralda’s father said, smiling. Then he turned to Esmeralda. “I used to work the night shift at a hotel downstate, the Claymont Inn. That must have been, what, twenty years ago?”
“Most certainly,” Raahi said, “twenty years at least.”
“This is amazing,” Esmeralda’s father said.
“Amazing is one way to put it,” Robert whispered.
Esmeralda stared.
“Well, come in, come in. Take off your coat.” Esmeralda’s father waved Mr. Chandrasekhar into the living room, gesturing toward the worn, little couch.
“I see you are having a party, I suppose for Esmeralda’s birthday,” Mr. Chandrasekhar said, hesitantly shuffling into the living room. “I don’t want to disturb anything. I can leave and catch up with you another time.”
“You can stay,” Esmeralda said quickly. “You don’t have to go; it’s just my birthday. You can stay…if you want.”
“Alright.” Mr. Chandrasekhar sat on the couch, and he and Esmeralda’s father talked of old times and stories. Some of these had become wonderfully hazy with time’s passage, and they could fill in the gaps at will, polishing the details with colorful flourishes. The recollections became little duels of cleverness and improvisation. Esmeralda’s father was always good at telling stories.
“Well, Raahi,” Mr. Comstock said after a little while, “I want you to come upstairs, to my study. There are a few items I have to show you.”
The adults left the room, which is something adults seemed to do when they were having a good time and the requirements of children temporarily left their minds. Esmeralda and Robert sat in the living room in their respective seats, still a little dumbstruck.
“Your dad knows Mr. C.,” Robert said after some time.
“I know he does,” Esmeralda replied.
“It’s weird, right? I don’t want to be the only one who thinks it’s weird.”
“It’s weird.” Esmeralda squinted her eyes. “But it also kind of makes a lot of sense.”
Robert thought about this a moment. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I’m not sure; it’s just that…”
Esmeralda’s eyes darted to the sound of adult male clunkyness bumbling down the stairs.
“Esmeralda,” Raahi said, entering the living room, “I feel that I have intruded horribly on your party. I did not want to do so. I have made contact with an old friend. That is enough for today. I will leave you in peace.”
“Will you stay?” Esmeralda had a strange, desperate feeling at the thought of Mr. Chandrasekhar taking his leave. “Could you maybe, uh, maybe play us a song?”
Mr. Chandrasekhar smiled. “Esmeralda, I thought you might ask me that. Perhaps I was counting on it, even. I will, if you’d like, play you a song and give you a present. Though I am afraid I haven’t wrapped it.”
Mr. Chandrasekhar left, apparently to retrieve his flute from his car. He was gone a few moments, and when he returned he held his wicker briefcase in one hand and a small drum in the other. It looked very old, made of some dark wood like mahogany or rosewood. A faded, brown skin stretched across the top. The wood was decorated with odd, angular letters that Esmeralda didn’t recognize. On the top of the drum, painted into the skin, lay a dull, red circle.
Mr. Chandrasekhar sat on the floor, crossed his legs, set the drum down to one side, the briefcase in front, and removed his flute. Esmeralda, Robert and Mr. Comstock took seats on the couch opposite Mr. Chandrasekhar. No one spoke, only waited; Mr. Chandrasekhar began to play.
It was slow, mournful music. The flute seemed to pull the light from the air and cause everyone’s skin to feel soft and warm. Esmeralda turned her gaze from Mr. Chandrasekhar’s eyes momentarily and looked at her father. His eyes drooped. Sitting next to her, Robert laid his head on her shoulder and began snoring. After a moment, Mr. Chandrasekhar stopped playing; both Robert and Esmeralda’s father were sound asleep.
“Dad?”
“They are quite deeply asleep,” Mr. Chandrasekhar said.
“But how…did you do that?” Esmeralda asked.
“I did nothing. The music did it. The music and my flute.” Mr. Chandrasekhar placed the wooden instrument on the ground. “I played a song that I know that makes men, and men only, fall asleep. I learned it long ago.”
“Then why is Robert asleep?”
“It works on male humans of whatever age.”
Esmeralda said, “why did you put them to sleep?”
“Are you afraid, Esmeralda?” Mr. Chandrasekhar asked.
“No,” she said honestly.
“Good. I thought that you would not be.” Mr. Chandrasekhar picked up the little drum. “I want to tell you about your present. This is a Largo Drum. It is used to get into the Largo.”
The term seemed slightly familiar. “What is that?”
“Largo is a name that we have given to, well, I suppose you might call it a place. It is really a barrier, an in-between. It is a barrier that you must cross to get to the place where I am from.”
“You want me to go there?”
Mr. Chandrasekhar raised his hand and struck the drum once. The sound was rich and reverberant beyond what one would predict possible for so small a thing. “I have been sent here to plead with you to come. We could not force you. Not even with so much at stake. We wish you to come and help us. Only you can do it.”
Esmeralda thought for just a moment. She had been given no real information, only a sense of urgency, of some Power at the center of Mr. C
handrasekhar’s words. “I will help you. What do I have to do? Where do I have to go?”
“Across the Largo.” Mr. Chandrasekhar put down the drum. “To my homeland, a place called Song. To get into the Largo you must play exactly this rhythm on the drum.”
Mr. Chandrasekhar began tapping his leg in a stuttering pattern and singing with every strike of his hands. “Doom tick tak da doom tick takita, Doom tick tak da doom tick takita.” Over and over he sang the pattern.
“You can remember,” he said.
“I am not sure,” Esmeralda said.
“I wasn’t asking you. I know you will remember it.”
“What will happen when I play it?” Esmeralda asked.
“The Largo is different for each person every time they enter it. Few in the History of the Worlds have entered the Largo. It is unpredictable. The Largo is the membrane between the Worlds. It was not meant to be entered or crossed. What I promise is this: when you enter the Largo, I will be playing my flute to guide you into Song. You must listen very hard for my flute. If you do not concentrate on it, you may be lost to the Largo.”
Esmeralda considered. “But how do I know…”
“What, that I will be there to guide you, or that anything will happen at all?” Mr. Chandrasekhar stood, holding the flute in one hand and the wicker briefcase in the other. “You have a choice Esmeralda: you can believe that something very new and peculiar is happening, or you can think that your friend and your father have simply dozed off and that I am a hare-brained substitute teacher. But, think, according to everything you knew before today, there are no hidden Worlds, no Largo Drums and no such place as Song. If that’s true and you play this drum that I am giving you, nothing will happen. You will have risked very little. If, however, everything you have known up to this point has been woefully incomplete, you will see things and become a part of something larger than you can probably imagine. I’m not asking you to trust me. I’m giving you an opportunity to find something out for yourself. I want you to try and accept the idea that you are a very important person.”
Esmeralda looked him in the eye. “When should I do it?”
Mr. Chandrasekhar smiled. “If you decide to go, play the drum tonight, after everyone goes off to bed. Only make sure that you start playing before eleven o’clock. Make sure that no one is in the room when the drum is played. Anyone who hears the drum’s cycle could be pulled into the Largo with you.”
“My father can’t go, can he?” Esmeralda sensed this must be true.
“A man your father’s age cannot cross the Largo. I wish to heaven that he could. It would make this easier for you and for me. The Largo is a fluid place, very disorienting to a human mind. I have been training in the Largo since I was much younger than you. In the Largo, your father’s mind might crack.”
“I understand,” Esmeralda said.
“You do?” Mr. Chandrasekhar asked the room a question. “Perhaps you do in some way.”
He raised his flute and blew three high, clear notes. Esmeralda’s Father and Robert shook their heads lazily in unison.
“I see my music is so invigorating it lulls the audience into a stupor.” Mr. Chandrasekhar chuckled.
“Raahi, I’m sorry.” Esmeralda’s father wiped his eyes. “I just got desperately tired all of a sudden. Don’t take it personally…”
“No offense taken,” Mr. Chandrasekhar interrupted, “and you must not be offended if I am now on my way. The evening beckons, and I have hijacked your party long enough.” With that, Mr. Chandrasekhar turned, put on his coat, held his wicker briefcase firmly in hand and walked out the door. He left the Largo Drum sitting in the middle of the living room, silently waiting.