The people in Sonata began to talk about how the Hollows were haunted because of all the strange singing they heard coming from the caves. It was like our own private joke, listening to them whisper about how the fishermen could hear the singing from their boats and some of the farmers swore they could hear songs coming from the Hollowlands. Whenever I would come see her, she would take me down to the Hollows and we would practice singing and dancing. From the outside it looked like she wasn’t giving me any instruction and that I was just making things up but if a person could see and feel the things I felt while the music carried me, they’d know that the way has always been there, but you have to do more than see it to follow it.
There came a point where she gave me actual instruction. I started getting lessons on how to apply everything I’d learn about the rhythm to things that directly opposed me. The last thing I expected to learn from my experiences with Jezebel was how to fight. She told me that I would inevitably meet an opposing current.
Instead of going to the Hollows, she took me out behind her cabin to where a sea of grass stretched out in place of a sea of water. I followed her a good thirty yards away from he house where she told me to stand perfectly still and to feel the world around me. She stood opposite of me, dressed in billowy attire, sarong hanging loosely from her hips. So far, nothing seemed different. I didn’t have to close my eyes anymore to see the tempo. It was like a second kind of vision I could switch to at will. It was smoe kind of new awareness.
I stood there, waiting for whatever came next when suddenly she was only inches away with her palms colliding with the center of my chest. She sent me tumbling backwards. I got up onto my feet and began to ask “What was that all about?” when she was on me again, standing at my side with one hand thrusting into my stomach hard enough to make me double over and the other hitting the top of my spine. She made a curling move to guide my petite body into flipping over so that by the end of it, I would be on my back.
I got up again, this time with my hands up defensively so I would be ready for the next attack. She thrust her right hand out towards my face and I saw her lips mouth the word “break”. I brought my hands up to block the hit. The hit didn’t come. Instead, she pulled her hand back at the last second and twisted to corkscrew her body downward so that when she faced me again, she had a firm grip on my ankle to yank it upwards and jerk me off my feet where I landed on my back once more.
I was getting frustrated at that point. I rolled back to my feet but this time I was ready to go on the attack. Anger had built up in me and I was going to give it all to her with a curled fist sailing right for her gut. Her hands rose and cupped my fist in mid throw, turning her body outside of mine at the same time she guided my fist to slide past her. While she was parrying my punch, she shifted to the side so that I would pass right by her and it would have just been a dodge, but her foot had moved outward and slipped in front of mine, causing me to trip over it and land on my face.
I wanted to throw something at her but all I could find was an assortment of rocks scattered in the grass and if I threw one at Jezebel and it landed, it would probably do some serious damage. I got up instead and tried to keep my distance. “Now you’re afraid to move,” she observed.
I clenched my fists again. “I’m not afraid!” I shouted defiantly.
She shook her head. “Cautious then?” She began moving closer to me, making me move in the opposite direction. “You’re being pushed. You are letting another force manipulate you and force you away.” I stopped moving but that just made me more frustrated. What was I supposed to do if I couldn’t move away and I couldn’t defend myself? “Take the force and move it. Guide it. Find out the direction it is flowing and move with it, then change it as it goes.”
I moved forward, taking quick but careful steps to reach her. She let me come and as soon as I was within range, she shoved her palm towards my head. I watched it thrust out at me and ducked under, letting it sail over the top of my head. “Guide it,” she said. “Change it as it goes,” she said. I brought my hand up, turning my palm upwards and grabbing her arm. I caught a hold of her forearm and pulled her in the direction she was thrusting, only this time I was taking her body with it. As it went, I pushed out my palm as she had and slammed it into her stomach.
She let out a hard breath and stumbled backwards when I let her arm go. I expected her to rush me with more movements that were impossible to react to. Instead she smiled her honey-sweet smile. “That was very well done. You are a very fast learner, child.” It was my turn to smile, feeling heat come to my face. It was the opposite of what I had heard from everyone else. I was described as pig-headed and stubborn, mostly. It turns out I just needed to apply myself to something I actually wanted to do.
She took in a long breath, chest rising and falling slowly then came at me again. At first her movements were too fast to follow. She came running up to me thrusting her hands and occasionally swinging her legs at me and all I could do was block. That ended up pointless because she’d find a way to either go around my block or use it against me and I’d end up right on my butt again. But I was a fast learner and it didn’t take long before I was able to twist and move to keep up with her, also also give back.
At one point we had to stop so she could explain, “it does not take the entire river to weather away the stone.” My confusion must have been obvious because she went on to explain, “you are hitting me too hard and I’m starting to bruise.” She kept smiling, even as she was holding her stomach were I first hit her. Apparently I needed to start holding back or I would end up breaking my teacher. I apologized and we continued.
When half the day had gone by and I thought we were done, the second set of lessons came. Even with her body feeling sore, she was still strong enough to give me lessons on how to dance and sing. I admired her strength but even more I admired her ability to never be slowed down by the needto rest and recover. She just moved on to the next strenuous activity.
Against fighting and dancing, I liked singing the most. We eventually got radios to our cut off part of the world and while most of Sonata listened for news about what was going on beyond their imaginary walls, it was the music stations that we were fascinated with. So many beautiful voices and hypnotic instruments leading the heart on a journey it didn’t know it was taking; all while sitting still and listening to this little box play transmissions from an entire sea away.
I found out another one of Jezebel’s many talents while listening to the radio in her home. “I wish I could play my own music to go with the songs I sing,” I casually remarked while sitting in the window box in her home. It was a rainy day, music pattering as softly as the raindrops on glass. Her face lit up the gloom of the weather and she left for a few minutes, only to return with a guitar.
“How about a different kind of lesson today?” she asked while sitting back down next to me. “I can teach you any instrument you are willing to learn, provided of course I have it.” She curled her fingers against the strings, one hand strumming the notes and the other changing the way they sounded. She matched the music on the radio as she heard it and I could feel her colors mixing with the plethora of beauty coming out that small speaker.
She sat behind me after handing me the guitar and draped her long arms over me so she could guide my hands to the strings and show me how they worked. She showed me how to change the sounds the guitar made, how to adjust and tighten the strings, how to bend the notes and extend the sounds, how to make a note long or cut it short, how to match the radio the same way I first matched her voice and how to make my own sound. I got lost in the music and even when I was making my own path for the river to flow, I never truly knew where I was going, only that I was at peace just moving in the rhythm.
She took me back to a part of her house that I had only been through once or twice and showed me a cloth draped over something large and imposing. When she pulled the white curtain off it, I got to see my first piano. It made me wonder how she got it here given her whimsical lifestyle but she had been rooted in Sonata for at least a few years before I met her. Even though she didn't get along with the village, they didn’t outright refuse her business eiter. Somewhere along her travels she had been lucky enough to gain some kind of wealth and this was the only kind of luxury she ever spent it on. Otherwise, she was happy living out the rest of her life in simple peace.
She taught me how to pull the music out of the piano, the drums, the guitar, and many other instruments she had learned while wandering Embre. Some days she would let me pick the instrument and she would chose one that best harmonized with it, then the two of us would play until our fingers and throats had gotten too worn out to play any longer. We continued dancing lessons, also for entertainment and for defensive means.
I spent so much time with Jezebel that I didn’t notice how much the people of Sonata were changing. Mark and June were being pressured to reel me in and show me more discipline. The other teenagers were starting to fall into their natural paths of boredom and mediocrity. Luke and Jani became the "power couple" everyone knew they’d become and the adults would remark on how adorable they were together and how sweet and innocent their love supposedly was. But secretly, they would fight over stupid things or sneak off to do not-so-innocent things and no one knew because they put up such a good illusion about being the paragon of love.
Chris was learning to become the town doctor like her mom, or at least that was as far as I had heard. I hadn’t spoken to her in years like I hadn’t spoken to many of the other kids but whenever I’d ask about her, she’d be off somewhere studying. Much later, I'd find out that Chris would run away from home. After she was gone, no one really knew what happened to her; not her parents, not the villagers, not the other kids from the village.
For the time being, I tried to simply enjoy my life in Sonata even after spending so many years resenting what it meant. I didn’t want to stay there and let my life become meaningless like so many others had, but I was still trying to find a reason to leave. Day after day I would wait for some reason to present itself, practicing music and meditation with my teacher who would tell me, “The reason why it has not come to you is because it is waiting for you to go out and find it. Maybe you are afraid?" Maybe I was.
Beyond the imaginary walls of Sonata, rest of the world was waiting. This was the same world that burnt my home to the ground and killed my mom and dad. This is the same world that was making guns and machines to destroy each other in wars that no one wanted to be a part of. Jezebel kept talking about the beauty in the world but it was hard to believe her when the news kept talking about all the death and devastation. Fear is a unique motivator all on its own. It whispers so seductively for you keep safe and stay away that you believe that’s your only real option. It blinds you to your potential in life.
What became the tipping point was when the desire to become something more and the need to keep moving became stronger than the fear of what was waiting for me. “Keep going, even through the unknown.” I needed to keep going. I also needed Jezebel to come with me. She would dismiss me saying that she had already seen the world and that she was getting too old to travel by whim alone. The same woman who knocked me on my rear was saying she was too old.
No matter how much I begged her or tried to convince her that I wouldn’t go without her, she insisted she couldn’t leave. Defeated, I asked if she would at least help me get ready, thinking that maybe if she saw me prepare for what was ahead of me, it would bring out the wanderlust in her and remind her of all the great experiences she had when she was traveling. It was my last hope of getting her to come with me.
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
She agreed to go into town with me to gather up supplies and information so I knew where I would be going and what I would be doing. She decided that the first place I needed to travel to was South City. It was considered the hub all human civilization. Located on the southern coast of Central Embre, most of Sonata's trade business came from South City. It was there or Harusame which was located on the southern coast of Eastern Embre. To get to South City I would need to catch a boat from Hope going northwest. Most boats were going to or from South City anyway. Part of me wanted to go west once I hit the mainland to see the rarely visited Western Embre hidden past the Dragonspine Mountains. Jezebel told me that I was young and that I would have an entire lifetime to see West Embre and everywhere else.
Tension in the town was thick the moment we set foot inside. Eyes turned to us as we made our way towards the center of the town where the supply shops were. Most of the looks were directed at Jezebel. A few glances came my way. Some of them pitied me for being corrupted by her and some judged me for trying to be just like her. It was the kinder hearts that thought I was being seduced by the foreigner while the more closed minded thought of me as some little hellion who wanted nothing more than to be a sinful succubus like my sultry teacher.
I walked in her shadow once the crowd started to thicken. People gathered around the center of the town to contain some sort of drama going on. We could only get so close and we didn’t seem able to get close enough to the epicenter so as to find out what was causing such a scene. I used my smaller body to my advantage, grabbing Jezebel by the hand and wedging through the swarm of the people while pulling her through.
We broke through the thick of them to find the source was a couple fighting specifically. It was Jani’s parents. I recognized her mom from the many times she was pulled away from our play so she could help prepare dinner and set the table. I could only assume that the man was Jani’s dad the way he kept pleading with her by calling her “sweetie” and “my beloved”.
One question that Jani’s mom kept asking over and over was “Who?” I didn’t know what it meant and I was starting to think I never would the way Jani’s dad kept dodging the question. The thing that made the issue bigger than it would have normally been was the threatening steel in her hands, firmly gripped in her palms with most of her fingers curled around the handle except for the one that cradled the trigger. The barrel trained was on the man who was on hands and knees begging for her not to shoot.
Jani’s mom asked one more time and I could see the fear play out in her dad’s pupils, even from several feet away. The panic finally over took him and he turned his eyes away from the gun pointed at his forehead long enough to scan the crowd, thrust out an accusing finger towards Jezebel, and called out “her!” More looks came to swarm all over us. Hushed whispers filled the uncomfortable silence. The woman turned the gun on Jezebel, ready to believe the accusation. “You,” she said in a shakey voice. “It was you!”
Jani’s parents were on the village council and were one of the select few allowed to have guns. They were restricted to everyone else in Sonata from the very moment they arrived from the mainland. Some didn’t want them to be brought in at all but paranoia won out over reason. The few considered “responsible” gave themselves permission to keep them. this is what responsibility looked like, apparently.
Jezebel spoke up, maintaining that incredible calm only she could wear. “I do not know what you think I have done but I am innocent.” The scowl on Jani’s mom’s face showed her lack of belief.
“You foreign whore!” she spat out in a voice choked with anger. “You tried to steal my husband away from me!” I’m sure Jezebel was just as confused as I was. Name calling was not the best way to start a conversation, especially one involving a gun but it takes a special kind of crazy to solely blame the mistress (assuming the accusation was true) for the infidelity of your significant other.
Jezebel opened her palms and stretched out her arms in a gesture of surrender. She bent at the hip to a respectful bow while never taking her eyes off the other woman. She was going to try reasoning with the unreasonable. “I have done no such thing. Your husband is trying to use me as the obvious scapegoat. Its seems you have quite the case against him that would lead you to believe that someone here has been with your husband. However, I am not that someone and knowing who it was should not be grounds to forgive him for his transgressions. He was responsible for his own actions. No one woman could have forced him into their bed.” No woman from Sonata could anyway.
The husband took the opportunity to slink back towards the crowd while his wife began stalking closer and closer towards Jezebel. “You lie,” she hissed. The grip she had on that pistol become more anxious. “You destroyed the love we had with your evil.” Jezebel took in a slow breath, closed her eyes, and as she opened them again, she stepped forward almost too fast to be seen. One hand came up and turned out to grab a hold of the other woman’s wrist, shifting the sight of the gun out of harm’s way while holding it tightly. Her other palm came swinging around just as Jezebel pivoted on her foot and slammed her palm into that woman’s elbow with all the force that she had hit me with the first time we sparred. A sickening crack followed by a scream made a morbid opera of the joint giving way. She forced Jani’s mom’s arm to bend in the wrong direction. I don’t know if it was broken but had been damaged enough to force Jani’s mom to drop the gun.
Jezebel scooped up the firearm as soon as she changed direction and turned once more to face the woman. She pressed the hard steel of the firearm into the woman’s head and I saw something dark work its way behind Jezebel’s eyes. The woman looked up in tears that I was certain hadn’t been shed for her shattered elbow. She was mourning everything she had lost control of. Jani’s mom reached behind her for something. With hate filled eyes, the woman went on, “you evil succubus. I will make you suffer for what you did. You will never be forgiven. I will make you feel pain until you beg-“. A loud bang silenced the grieving wife. “Break,” I heard Jezebel whisper.
Jezebel’s arms jerked back and I saw her almost lose her balance completely. Like many of the small people in the small village, she didn’t know how to use a gun. All she knew was that squeezing the trigger made a permanent solution to a temporary problem. She let her arms drop to her sides and the gun fall from her grip, making a hard thud onto the ground where the heated end made a short stream of smoke to rise into the air.
She was mobbed instantly. I felt someone violently pull me away and hold on to me even as I struggled to get free. Whomever it was tried their best to contain the might of a teenage titanian while I kicked and screamed to be set free. Jezebel was forced to the ground, a large man on her digging his knee into her back and shoving her face into the dirt like he had managed to wrestle some boar that had been eating his crops. He spat curses at her just as everyone else did and I heard cries for justice in the form of torture and death. “Kill her!” one cried. “Shoot her!” cried another. “Hang her!” cried a third.
Jani’s dad scooped up his wife into his arms, staring unbelieving at the bloody hole driven into her head by the bullet and trying to jostle her body as if it was going to wake up. I could see the gears working in his head like a tiny music box most likely playing a tune that sounded like “this is your fault”. Denial must have silenced it because he spoke up over the chaos that was all around Jezebel. “There will be no trial,” he said first, taking control as the town official he was. “All have witnessed this woman’s guilt. She has murdered my wife and she will be executed for her crime.”
I fought to break free from the hold they had on me and it took a strong few hands to hold me. “Let go of me,” I shouted as they pulled Jezebel to her feet and began to lead her towards the edge of the town. I saw someone out of the corner of my eye run to catch up with the head of the mob carrying a rope in his hands. Some were arguing about what to do with me, insisting on taking me away so I didn’t have to see what they were going to do to her, but then a voice came to convince them otherwise.
A man told them to escort me with the rest of the mob and make me watch so I could witness what would happen if I kept going down the same path that Jezebel was leading me. He wanted me to learn the hard way what a life of “evil” and “debauchery” resulted in. There was no logic left in these people anymore and in their irrational state, the villagers holding me hostage agreed. They began walking me down to the edge of the village, too.
Just outside the village of Sonata, beyond the crops to the south and in the opposite direction of the Hollows, an assortment of trees grew into a small forest. At the edge of the small forest, the trees were more sparse and scattered. The townsfolk searched for one that could serve their needs with a thick trunk and strong branches that reached out above the heights of most. They wound the rope into knots while leaving a circle at the end large enough to fit a head through before tossing it over the strongest looking branch. I watched as they tied a noose for my only friend.
I heard someone call over the crowd and I tried to turn my head to see who it was but they had me by the back of my skull and were forcing me to watch them test the noose around Jezebel’s neck. I couldn’t see who exactly the voice was coming from but I knew who it was, recognizing it as the same voice that told me she was proud of me when I did good and scolded me when I made a selfish decision.
June was pushing through the crowd to get at me. “Let her go! Let Melody go!” she shouted again and again.
The man who had spoken before came forward, getting between me and June as soon as she came into view. “Get back, June. She has to see this. She has to learn what fate befalls those who try to live hedonistic lifestyles. This is for her own good. If she is allowed to go on thinking that this is the way to act, she will have no place in this village. We tolerated this harlot long enough but I will not allow her to corrupt our youth any further.” As the man spoke, I could only see the back of him, still not able to find out what he looked like, much less who he was.
I could barely see June on the other side of him but I knew by her tone that she had her arms crossed and her eyes narrowed. “This is too much. This will scar her and leave her broken. She will think that the only way to deal with a problem is to murder it.”
The man disagreed. “She will think that problematic people will have no place in functioning society and it is the moral duty of the good people to cut out the infected flesh before it spreads.”
I heard June spit out her disgust. “People are not inflected flesh, Gabriel. They feel pain and fear and love and are capable of amazing things if you know how to nurture them without taking away their freedom. This is not some cold medical procedure. This is murder.” I figured it out then. It was Chris’ dad standing in front of me. As the assistant to his wife, who was the village doctor, he had a hard and clinical way of looking at things.
I saw Mr. Gabriel ball his fists while his posture remained still, putting all his tension into his hands. “Murder was what this harpy did to Cherise. Murder is taking a gun, pointing it at someone’s head, and pulling the trigger. What about Cherise’s pain? What about her fear? What about her potential to do great things? It’s splattered over the ground in the center of town, lost forever and that is the thing that did it.”
I was starting to not like the way he kept referring to Jezebel as a thing. He was trying to dehumanize her so that he wouldn’t feel guilty when they strung her up from the tree and watched her lungs desperately struggle for air. I began kicking and shouting again, pulling at the people during with all their might to keep me detained. “Let me go! This isn’t right!”
They didn’t care about what I thought was right or wrong. They were sure that Mrs. Cherise was an innocent victim in the whole event. No one ever knew what she was trying to pull from behind her back when she had lost her gun. Everyone seemed to have forgotten the threats she was spouting as she became more and more unstable. Everyone ignored the fact that moments before, she had a gun pointed at her husband and was ready and willing to execute him. Defending herself was a death sentence for Jezebel.
I tried to pull away again and they pulled the opposite way, pushing their feet into the ground and bracing themselves against my struggling. Then, I felt everyone stop. I took advantage of whatever was distracting them and broke free, moving past Mr. Gabriel and throwing my arms open, locking them around June as if she was my salvation.
When I embraced her, I was surprised to find out she wasn’t facing me or Mr. Gabriel anymore. She was looking the same direction everyone else was. They had all gone silent and stiff, only seldom blinks and subtle breathing giving any hint that they were not statues. I followed their gaze and saw the end of my life in Sonata.
Jezebel swayed from beneath the tree, rope caught around her neck and holding her up as a display of the cruelty of the world. There was no dance of fire behind her eyes anymore. It had been snuffed out, frozen in sorrow. Her beautiful hair spilt around her equally beautiful face and that beauty would never grace the world again. I would have given anything to see that limp body dance again, to hear that heavenly voice call the colors of the world to mix together in a symphony of joy and wonder, to feel the warmth of her smile as she looked past what I was to what I could be.
I knew why it was silent now. There was no more music. Everyone had taken it for granted, never noticing how much it was a part of their lives. They feared so much what could happen if they opened their hearts to the rest of the world that they kept their hands over their ears and tried to ignore it. They had become the monsters they were afraid might someday charge their gates. I couldn’t stay among them anymore. I couldn’t stay in Sonata. There was no music left. The only thing left was despair.