The boy had a nightmare.

He dreamed that a beautiful melody of the flute floated through the air, soft and caressing, and, driven by a quiet pleasure, he followed the music, bare feet padding softly through the grass. The notes took a low turn, then drifted high again, and as he strained to hear the last vestiges of fading sound, suddenly he lost his footing and all around him was the roaring symphony of the ocean, filling up his nose, his ears, his mouth…

He woke with a start and heard only the regimented thrumming of the walls and splashes of people moving here and there a floor below him. The training grounds were too deep, and he could not hear through its ceilings.

A swirl of music touched him, like the whooshing of a train, and he could feel the questioning intent behind it.

“I’m okay,” he said, and knew without seeing that the mute child was standing in front of his door.

The music wavered.

“I’m surprised they don’t classify you as external,” grumbled the boy. “This is most definitely affecting the world around you.”

The music laughed, like a million tinkling little bells.

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“Sure it does,” said the boy. “They just don’t know how to listen.”

The music danced in questionable acknowledgment.

The boy sighed and slipped out of bed to fold his blankets. He liked the feel of the soft fabric beneath his fingers, ringing in his ears like little dancing fairies.

They gave him free roam of the castle, and in the past days he had encountered one, two, three children from the island. There were more, he was told, but he had not got round to seeing them all yet.

It was a relief to be around them. They sounded like waves and sunlight and pipe organs, and because many of them could understand him, as he understood them, there was no need to speak. He spoke to the mute child only because of those early days, when he had first grasped the concept of words, before he had learned to distinguish, just by hearing, the shape and form of another human being.

He tried asking the mute child what kept him here, and learned of the immense gratitude the mute child felt at being taught to write and communicate in words with his hands. But the boy had trouble understanding. The concept of reading and writing was hard for him to grasp, when all the sounds right there in front of you, and the biggest problem was shutting out the unwanted.

“How is it so hard for them, I wonder,” he said with a sigh.

The music rose to a curious pitch, and he knew it was throwing the question right back at him.

The boy shrugged.

He knew he could enter, as long as there were fragmented bits of music floating here and there, filling the spaces between the silence. It was like hearing the whisper of the wind through a hollow trunk; you just had to listen.

If ever the music around her ceased completely, then even he could not enter any longer.