Mictar stood between them, closer to Cerulean than to Felicity, no more than sixty feet away from the supplicant. The stalker glanced back and forth between the two, looking frightened and confused. Obviously, he didn’t dare confront Cerulean, but he didn’t seem to want to leave. Every time he looked at Felicity, his eyes took on a hungry look, even though the little blind girl had no eyes for him to take.
Cerulean sang new vowels, each one sounding like a daddy’s comforting lullaby. Felicity echoed the translations. Her voice, strong yet tremulous, carried to Nathan’s ears.
You need no crutch, no hand to hold.
My voice is all you need.
So cast away your fears and cares
And harken unto me.
Felicity threw her walking stick to the side and, extending both hands in front of her, walked forward.
The smell of death grows strong and foul.
It permeates the air.
It threatens those who fear the dark;
It kills when souls despair.
As she neared Mictar, Felicity slowed. Cerulean raised his voice, his passion rising with every note.
But neither height nor depth nor darkest pits
Will separate us hence;
The healing one will find you soon
And mend the cosmic fence.
Felicity came within reach of Mictar, her arms still extended and fingers groping, and her feet within inches of the stalker’s long, spindly shadow. Mictar lifted his violin to his chin, its black wood a stark contrast to his pale face. He played a loud note that muffled Cerulean’s voice. Then, sawing across the strings, he created a scratching, buzzing noise that barely resembled music at all.
As Mictar stepped back toward Nathan, the path ahead of Felicity collapsed. A deep crevice stretched at least fifty feet from side to side. With earth still crumbling away, the edge crawled to within inches of her feet.
Nathan jumped ahead. “Felicity! Stop! There’s a — ”
“No!” Again Cerulean held up his hand. “Do not add to her fears!”
Felicity halted at the very edge and stretched out her fingers.
“Is it safe to walk?”
“No!” Mictar said as he lowered the violin. “If you take one step you will fall into endless depths, and you will never be in your supplicant’s arms.”
“He lies,” Cerulean countered. “Run to me. This is your dream. You can do whatever your faith allows. No valley will swallow you as long as you believe.”
Mictar raised his violin again. While Felicity paused, every limb shaking, Nathan whispered to his mother, “It’s time to replace that musical hack. Play something. Anything. As long as it’s melodic and loud.”
She lifted the violin and played the opening measure of Finlandia. Nathan lunged toward Mictar. Like an out-of-control linebacker, he rammed into the stalker’s lanky body and bulldozed him into the ground. He jerked the violin away and jumped to his feet, careful to avoid Mictar’s deadly hands.
Standing over Mictar with the violin raised, Nathan growled, “Remember the last time I clubbed you with one of these? If you move or make a sound, you’ll get an encore performance.”
“Fool!” Mictar sang out a shrill note. A streak of blackness shot from his mouth and splashed across Nathan’s chest, sending him flying into a backwards somersault. He slid on his back, and the violin’s strings banged against the turf, sending out a violent stream of twanging notes.
As he righted himself, Felicity spun toward him. “Nathan?”
The ground shook in time with the echoing call of Mictar’s violin. The edge of the crevice gave way. Felicity toppled into the void and disappeared. Her screams, loud and heart-wrenching, faded away. Still clutching his hat, Jack jumped in after her.
“Nathan!” Cerulean shouted. “Take off your sweatshirt! Francesca! Keep playing!” In a flash of blue light, he dove into the growing chasm.
Nathan looked down at his chest. A mass of blackness stretched like wiggling fingers toward his face. Dropping the violin, he grabbed the back of his sweatshirt and peeled it over his head, careful to keep his face out of whatever that black stuff was.
His mother ran to his side, then resumed her playing as she stared at Mictar. She had switched to “Danse Macabre,” and the notes seemed to fly toward the stalker in long ribbons of white.
Mictar scrambled to his feet and grabbed some of the ribbons out of the air. He threw the handful to the ground and stomped on them with his boot. “I may not be able to overpower both of you while you play,” he said as he swatted down more of the ribbons, “but I have another victim in mind.”
He picked up his violin and strode back to the dream world’s core. He clawed at the dark barrier, searching, groping. Finally, it gave way. He ripped open a gap and squeezed through, disappearing as the wall sealed behind him.
Heaving a long breath, Nathan’s mother lowered her violin. “At least we know how to defend ourselves against him.”
“Yeah, but Kelly doesn’t, and I’m sure she’s his prime target.”
11
WHEN COURAGE IS BORN
Nathan walked to the chasm and looked down. There was no sign of Felicity or anyone else; only darkness spread out below. As he shuffled back to his mother, he spread out his arms. “Now what?”
“What choice do we have?” she asked. “We can’t go anywhere, can we?”
“So we just stand around and wait for Cerulean to show up? Hope that Felicity is with him so we can look for Dad?”
“Patience, son.” She pointed her bow at him. “Since your father’s not here, I think it’s time for a mother-and-son chat.”
“What do you mean?”
“You lost control with Mictar and distracted Felicity. Remember the proverb? A fool always loses his temper, but a wise man holds it back.”
“I remember.” Letting out a sigh, he looked around the deserted cemetery. Another proverb entered his mind, his father’s favorite. Do not be afraid of sudden fear nor of the onslaught of the wicked when it comes; for the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being caught.
And his father faced every danger with squared shoulders and a firm jaw. “Maybe you can help me figure out Solomon Yellow. In comparison to Dad, he seemed . . . well . . .”
“Yellow?” she offered.
Nathan laughed. “I didn’t want to say it. It sounds too corny.”
She sat on the ground and patted a spot next to her. “There’s a story I don’t think you’ve ever heard.”
“Sure. As long as we have to wait, why not?” Bracing his body, he lowered himself, favoring his bandaged hand. “I wonder how long this dream will last. When I fall inside a dream, it usually means I’m about to wake up.”
“That’s happened to me, too.” She set the violin in her lap. “If this dream ends, what will happen to us?”
“I’m not real sure. Some dreams get swept up in a storm, while others just fade away. But I think it’ll just get dark and we’ll be in a gap between dreams.” He looked around at the former cemetery. It was already too dark to see the newly sprouted flowers.
“Darkness is fine,” she said. “I used to tell you stories in the dark quite often. Do you remember?”
“Yeah. I finally made you stop when I was about eight. I said I was too old for bedtime stories.”
She reached over and touched his knee lovingly. “Are you too old now?”
“Too old?” He shook his head. “I think maybe I’m finally old enough to start again.”
“Well, this is a story about courage.” She looked at her wounded hand. Blood still oozed into her palm. “Your father learned courage when he and I were courting. You see, we met when I first started playing for the CSO. During my premiere performance as concertmaster, I played the Tchaikovsky concerto, and your father was in the first row. Back then, he was a college student, but he was interning for the summer at an applied sciences company in Chicago. That’s where he learned a lot of what he knows about
physics and light bending and creating illusions, but I never understood enough to make sense of it.”
Nathan stared at her. This was a story he hadn’t heard. “How old were you then?”
“I was all of twenty-one years old, not much more than a girl, really.”
Nathan reached for his discarded sweatshirt and ripped a piece from the sleeve he had cut earlier. Whatever the black stuff was, it had disappeared. “So, when Francesca Yellow married,” he said, tying the fresh bandage around her hand, “she was a lot younger.”
She smiled as she watched him work. “Yes, and that’s why I’m telling you the story. You see, after that performance, your father waited for me at the door, even though I had taken a long time to come out because of a reception in my honor. Apparently, he was mesmerized by my performance and wanted an autograph, so he paced around the area until after midnight. Unfortunately, a group of four other men also seemed overly interested in seeing me. As soon as I stepped out the door, three of them brandished handguns while a fourth opened a cello case and pulled out a shotgun.”
“A shotgun,” Nathan repeated. “Double barreled?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, it was.”
“Did the guy have a gray beard?”
“He had a beard, but it wasn’t gray.” She squinted at him, darkness now shadowing her features. “Why?”
“Just thinking. Go on.”
“Well, at first your father — ”
“No! Wait!” Nathan felt for the violin in her lap and picked it up. “Play it, and show me.”
“What do you mean?”
Nathan tried to see her facial expression, but it was too dark. Still, her inquisitive motherly stare came through in his mind. “We’re in the dream world,” he explained. “Show me, like you did when you played the scenes of you growing up and getting married.”
“Can we do that from inside the dream world?”
“There’s no dream going on right now. And I have a hunch about those gunmen. I want to see what one of them looked like.” He found her wrist and set the violin in her arms. “It won’t hurt to try.”
She laughed under her breath. “It certainly will hurt, but I’ll do it.”
“Oh, yeah,” Nathan said, grimacing. He reached to take the violin back, but grasped empty air.
“Just watch and pay attention,” she said. “I don’t want to do this more than once.” She paused for a few seconds, the sound of her tuning the violin breaking the silence, then her words blended in, spiced with a doubtful tone. “If it works at all.”
She began humming the opening of the Tchaikovsky piece, the orchestra’s introductory measures, then, after a short pause, she played.
Nathan leaned close. The vibrant tones sounded more beautiful than ever. Somehow the darkness enhanced the music, allowing only his mother’s song to penetrate his mind. In a way, he felt like Felicity — his eyesight impotent, but his other senses acute. He breathed in deeply. Each note had a smell, even a taste, as the music-saturated air rushed into his nostrils and then out his mouth, passing over his tongue with a sweet caress.
The sensation reminded him of Scarlet. Her eloquence hadn’t emerged in a while. Had he lost touch with her spirit? Would it ever come back? Nathan let out a sigh and concentrated on the music again. This was no time for mooning over his lost friend.
Soon, a dim light illuminated the area — a lamp perched high above a street about twenty paces away. It shone on a set of four wood-and-glass doors that led into a brick building, and lights attached to the façade on both sides of the doors cast their glow on the wide walkway in front.
Nathan rose to his feet. He stood across the street from Orchestra Hall, deep enough in the shadows to escape notice if someone in the dream world should walk by.
A raven-haired young woman stepped out of the hall. Dressed in a flowing black gown, she smiled at an older woman, also dressed in black, who walked at her side.
“That’s Mom,” Nathan whispered to himself. Staying low, he hurried across the dark pavement and ducked behind a car parked at the curb. Now that he had stepped fully inside the dream, the sounds of his mother’s violin faded away, replaced by the voices of young Francesca and her companion.
“Tchaikovsky himself would have asked for your autograph,” the older woman said. “It was superb. Magnificent.”
Francesca blushed and touched the woman’s hand. “Clara, you’re too kind, but I’m thankful for your encouragement. I was so nervous I almost got sick right on the conductor, and now I don’t remember a single note I played.”
Nathan tried to slow his heartbeat. His mother had just exited the orchestra hall with Clara, his tutor, not too long before he was born. This was way too strange.
A man walked out of the shadows holding an open book and a pen. “Excuse me, Miss Malenkov. May I have your autograph?”
Francesca stepped back, her eyebrows raised. “Oh! . . . Well, yes, of course.”
Francesca held the pen while looking at the man’s beaming face. “And to whom shall I sign it?”
“Solomon.” His voice trembled, but he quickly brought it under control. “Solomon Shepherd.”
Francesca smiled. “I like that name. It carries a pleasant melody.”
“I know this young man quite well.” Winking, Clara shook a finger at him. “Do you often wait two hours after orchestra performances to get autographs?”
“Uh . . . no.” Solomon shifted his weight from side to side. “This was my first time here, and I was so transfixed by Miss Malenkov’s performance, I just had to meet her.”
“Well, she really needs her rest.” Clara hooked Francesca’s arm. “We have to — ”
“Oh, Clara.” Francesca’s eyes sparkled as she gave Solomon his autograph book. “It’s all right. I can sleep in — ”
Four men jumped out of a car parked in front of the one Nathan hid behind. Three ran toward the door, handguns drawn, while the fourth, a bearded man, lagged behind, carrying a cello case.
Clara pulled Solomon in front of her and Francesca. “I hope you don’t mind being a shield.”
“Shut up, lady,” one of the men said, “and step away from Malenkov.”
Clara wrapped an arm around Francesca and pulled her close. “Or you’ll what?”
The bearded man withdrew a shotgun from the cello case and aimed it at Solomon and the two ladies. “Or we’ll have to drag more corpses away than we counted on.”
Solomon leaped for the shotgun and wrestled it away. One of the men shot him in the chest. As Solomon backpedaled, he returned fire, blowing away his attacker with one barrel and two more with the other. With blood soaking his shirt and suit jacket, he glared at the fake cellist. “Drop to the ground,” he said, breathing heavily, “before I kill you, too.”
The man laughed and dug into his pocket. “You might need some of these,” he said, displaying a handful of shells.
“Not when I have a club.” Solomon reared back and bashed the man’s arm with the shotgun, knocking him down. Then, gasping and gurgling, Solomon wobbled back and forth before toppling to the concrete. The attacker scrambled along the sidewalk toward the gun, but a high-heeled shoe stomped on his wrist.
“That’s far enough, cello boy!” Clara said, aiming a handgun at his head.
As a siren wailed, the man looked at her with menacing eyes. “I have friends in high places. I will be back to kill the gifted one.”
Nathan crept closer to get a better look. There was no doubt about it. The guy with the shotgun was the same gunman who had chased Clara and him through the streets of Chicago and then stalked Kelly and him in the observatory. His beard was dark back then, but it was definitely the same guy.
Francesca cradled Solomon, crying and mopping his brow as they whispered to each other. Nathan tried to listen, but two police officers ran onto the scene, one barking into a radio about needing an ambulance while the other shouted commands.
His heart again beating wildly, Nathan backed away to the st
reet and then completely out of the dream. With the glow of the streetlight guiding his way, he found his mother, still playing her part of the Tchaikovsky concerto.
She opened one eye and smiled. Then, easing through a final note, she let out a long sigh. “The bullet missed his heart, but there was quite a bit of damage. He almost died from loss of blood. He was in the hospital for over a month.”
With the light from the street beginning to fade, Nathan sat down and tried to calm his heart. “I saw you whispering, but I couldn’t hear what you said.”
She gave a gentle laugh. “I’ll never forget his words. He said, ‘It will never hurt worse than it does now.’ So I asked him what he meant, and he said, ‘Protecting you. I took a bullet for you. I will gladly take another.’ ”
She drew a fist to her mouth, covering her trembling lips. “He told me later that what he did was really an instinctive jump, but since then he’s never let fear stop him from doing anything. It’s as if he faced death and stared it down.”
Nathan touched her arm and replied in a near whisper. “And Solomon Yellow never had a chance to do that. That’s why he’s so different.”
She nodded, took a deep breath, and composed herself. “I assume Francesca Yellow is not yet concertmaster of the CSO, so I wonder how they met.”
“I guess Kelly and I talked her into marrying him,” Nathan said. “Since she spent so much time in the other Earths, she missed some years on Yellow and lost ground. She was kind of hesitant, because she was so young, but they managed to get together.”
She stroked her violin with tender hands. “Well, as long as they married and had a baby they named Nathan, I assume it will all work out.”
“But that Nathan won’t learn what I learned from Dad. Solomon Yellow won’t be able to teach him to stare down death.” He touched his chest. “I learned not to let fear stop me from doing anything.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “Oh, is that so?”
“Well . . .” He let his hand drop. He was no match for his mother’s skeptical stare. “I think it’s so.”