After they found Andar, Ben expected that the next key would appear immediately, and when it didn't, he was confused.
"It was very clear," he told Andar one day as they walked through a steep, boulder-strewn field to retrieve Andar's cow. "I knew that we were meant to find you, and then we would know the next step. But here we are, and we have nothing." He gestured at the hillside and the view of the village, the tall mountains always looming in the background. The expanse of mountains that led to the south, and somewhere in the distance, their home.
"Hmm," Andar said. "I see. So should we go searching? Or wait?"
Ben sighed, frustrated. "That's the question. I wish it was more clear. But we still have no idea where Laylit or Auntie Teru are. So how can we search for them?"
"Can you hear them?"
"I can try. Give me a second."
He stood there, gazing out at the view toward home, layer after layer of mountain ranges rippling downward. He opened up his hearing toward the distance. There was Laylit, somewhere near the sea. But where? Which sea? He shook his head.
"It's still fuzzy," he said, turning his awareness to the far-off continent so he could hear Auntie…but he stopped.
A thunderclap of sound crashed over him, and he fell to his knees, stunned, as wave after wave of sound pummeled him, far more potent than anything he had felt from Teru since this whole journey began.
She had only been a tiny blip of sound, barely enough to catch his attention, like one bird in a forest. This was like a flock of shrieking birds, like a waterfall of sound, music that was deep and moving, full of fear and sorrow, but also love and joy. He was overwhelmed. He couldn't get out from under the stream of it, and he knelt down to the ground, putting his face all the way to the warm stone underneath him. The music felt like a strong wind, pinning him to the earth.
It went on and on, and as though from far away, Ben could hear Andar calling to him. Ben couldn't move, couldn't open his eyes. Then others were there—Ivy and Brigid, and they came very close and put their hands on him. Somehow that helped. Some of the intensity moved toward them and away from Ben. He heard Brigid gasp as she felt what he was feeling.
Then the children and foxes were there, and all of them drew close, in a huddle around Ben with Andar, Ivy, and Brigid, and the song's intensity quieted slowly, so slowly, until Ben could sit up, though he could still feel the burning music within him. Then, carefully, he put the song in the room in his mind. It felt immediately as though it wanted to burst out. He looked at them. Dawit and Olumi were there as well. Deto, too. Everyone.
"It's Teru, isn't it?" Dawit asked.
Ben nodded. He still couldn't speak, though he wanted to reassure Dawit, whose eyes showed the fear he was trying to control.
"Let's get him home and close to the fire," Brigid said. "He's freezing. Feel his hands and feet."
Deto and Ivy helped Ben up, and they all walked together, the children and their foxes still following. They were a huddle of people, clinging to one another because of the strangeness of the world that moved all around them, Ben thought, like a whirlwind. Who were they, even, to think they might understand it?
Dawit and Ivy built a fire at Andar's house, and Ben sat as close to it as he could. He couldn't seem to get warm, but then Deto brought him some hot soup, and slowly, he could feel his hands and feet again. The world began to look familiar and soft rather than like a howl of gray. Auntie's music was there still, in the little room Ben had made in his mind. The warmth of the fire strengthened him. Quietness returned to his mind and heart. He sighed a long breath. That had taken him with such strength. He looked up.
Everyone was there, sitting close around the fire, waiting for Ben.
Dawit sat on his knees, watching Ben intently.
"Do you think you can tell us what you heard?" he asked. The gentleness of Dawit's voice contrasted with the anxious music Ben could still hear from him.
Ben tested his voice and found that it worked. "That's the problem," he said. "I'm not sure what I heard. But I will tell you exactly what I know. Maybe you can tell me how to interpret it."
He rubbed his hands together, trying to think of how to put it into words. "Since this began, whenever I heard Auntie's music, it was far away and quiet, like a little bird in a forest. But this time, it was an explosion of sound, like hundreds of birds. But no," he shook his head, "even louder than that. It was as though she saw something or experienced something so huge that all her song could reach me."
At the look on Dawit's face, Ben hurried to say, "Not something bad. The main emotion was joy, but it was joy mixed with sorrow. So strong, so strong, all of it, that I couldn't sort it out. It just kept coming."
Dawit sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. He tried to speak but seemed unable. He put his hands over his face. Andar put a hand on Dawit's shoulder.
"We must get her back," Andar said. "But how?"
"It's not our job to figure that out," Ivy said. Ben glanced at her, startled by the anger in her voice. "Ben is supposed to be leading."
Ben felt stung. "That's what I'm trying to do," he said.
"You have guided us into the wilderness, and we've been sitting around, waiting, ever since."
Ben knew that Ivy was used to a different kind of leadership, leaders like Jabari or Isika. Ben had been following a thread of sound that Ivy couldn't hear, and that must be frustrating. Still, it was all any of them had to go on.
"Benayeem is doing his best," Brigid said to Ivy from across the fire. She looked furious. Ben was touched but also concerned. After what he had heard from Teru, he was too shaky to handle a big argument. Ibba was looking back and forth between the two girls, like big sisters to her, with worried eyes.
"You don't understand his gift," Brigid went on, "so how can you have an opinion on whether or not it's going fast enough?"
Ivy looked like she was going to make a retort, but Dawit took his hands from his face and held them up as though holding the two of them apart. His eyes were red, but his voice was calm.
"Teru is held in the heart of Nenyi just as much as she has ever been. We have to trust in that. So let's get some sleep, and we'll talk again in the morning. Who knows? We have dreamers." He smiled at them all. "Maybe something will come to us in the night."
They rolled their sleeping mats out on the wooden floor of Andar's house. Ben settled onto his, wincing. His body felt bruised, somehow, as though all that sound rushing over him had actually made an impact. He missed his bed, and he had no idea when he would get back to it. Ivy's words were still echoing in his head. We've been sitting around and waiting ever since. They stung because they were true. Even Brigid's response ate at him—her quick defense, as though Ben couldn't handle Ivy's criticism.
Why had Aria and Isika given him this job in the first place? Was it pity? They knew nothing about his gifting. No one did. It was unique to him and Asafar, and if they actually understood it, they wouldn't have told him to do this. What a strange way to find missing people; what were they thinking? He knew he was actually angry with himself, but it felt good to blame it all on Aria and Isika, even inside his own head. He fell asleep, finally, feeling restless and sick about his failure to find the elders.
Then he was awake, at home in Azariyah, standing in the center of one of the pastures beyond the city. This was not the northern mountains. He must be dreaming, but he felt utterly lucid. In the distance was a man. No, not a man, no man was that tall, head touching the sky, stars in his skin. Benayeem fell on his face. He, whose fathers had been Ikajo and Nirloth, whose father was now Dawit. He had disappointed Dawit the way he had disappointed his other fathers. Always disappointing; that was Benayeem. He didn't want Nenyi to notice him; he was the lowest of his siblings. But the Shaper began to sing, and Ben knew the song was for him. With the music came the pounding of drums that beat the earth and shook Ben to the center of his being. The song was strength and power, more beautiful and wilder than any song Ben knew. This was the song beneath. This must be the song that kept the world in place, kept everything from flying apart.
But as these thoughts came to Ben, he heard a rumble of laughter from Nenyi.
"Don't think this is such an important song," he said. "This is just one. I have many like it. I can never run out of songs."
In the center of the music, Benayeem felt the cracks that had been threatening for weeks. They stood out in contrast with the harmony that moved through the field. Teru in danger, Benayeem letting his searchers down by not knowing more than he did. His lack of certainty, the fear that he would do the wrong thing. He could feel it stretching, wanting to burst out of him.
He didn't have the training for this. He only knew how to be a disappointment. He looked at the Shaper's face, then, and saw something, someone he had given up on. A father. Nenyi, the father. Not Nirloth. Not Ikajo. Not even Dawit, who knew how to walk in the woods quietly, how to sand a wooden bench until it was smooth as butter. This was the true father.
"Thank you," Ben said to Nenyi, who had appeared to his sisters before but never to Ben.
"You are everything we could have hoped for," Nenyi said. "Be open to the largeness that is coming for you."
The words were overwhelming in their sweetness and their power. This song was strength and power. Ben could feel it sending life back into his limbs, but he was confused.
"What does that mean? My whole life is made of big things."
"No," Nenyi said. "You are always closing part of yourself away because you are afraid that you will disappoint, that you will not be enough. You think you won't be able to handle what comes for you, so you fold up and hide. Be open to the largeness that is coming for you. This story does not end with you being smaller, son. You will be enlarged."
Nenyi was expanding as he spoke, his voice growing deeper and louder until it was nearly unbearable.
"Turn," he said. "Tell me what you see."
"How…" Ben started, but the vision of the field and Nenyi faded, and Ben found himself standing at the shore of a sea. He looked around, disoriented, until he noticed people in the distance. Sea people. He took a step back in the sand, stumbling a little. But then he saw her.
Laylit. She stood thigh-deep in the sea, taking fish out of a net. He tried to go to her but found he was stuck where he was, watching. No one seemed to see him. She looked so different, her hair cut short, wearing the loosely wrapped clothes of the sea people. She looked strong and happy, and she was singing.
Her song was full of joy. It startled him. He had never heard a song like that from her before, full of freedom, from a settled heart. Laylit's song had often worried him in the past, switching from happiness to fear suddenly and without warning. He listened closely and found it was beautiful.
Then Ben was awake, actually awake. Light streamed through the window of the house, and he blinked before jumping out of his bedroll. The Shaper's song was still in him, the vibration promising to shake him to pieces if he didn't get up and walk it off. So Ben climbed straight up the hill above the house and stood there looking out over the valley. He could still feel the warm sense Nenyi had sent him of a father's pride in his son. It warmed him like a tiny sun, warmth spreading all the way to his fingers and toes. He felt that if anyone looked at him, they might see him shining.
He took a deep breath, feeling as though his lungs were able to expand more now. He was bigger on the inside.
Back at the house, Ben stood in the doorway and looked at his friends and elders.
They looked back at him from where they were chopping vegetables for the morning meal, making tea, or rolling bed mats and putting them away.
"I have seen Laylit in a dream," he said. "And I know exactly where she is. We must travel to the sea to find her."