Misha’s guts roll like ocean waves as Granddad prises open the coffin. Talking about these convocations, seeing them from far off, it’s all so different to being right here on the precipice, here at the mouth of the grave, here in this moment when the dance is about to begin.
Grayson, he who never speaks, is first to start humming, holding a single steady note, like he’s testing it. He holds it a long time, draining the air from his lungs. It seems impossible to Misha that he can carry on so long. She feels as if she can’t catch enough breath for herself. Then he drops down through the octave, hitting each note hard and low, holding each for a few moments. There’s the tiniest pause for breath, then back to the top of the octave, then he starts back down. Two notes down, the man standing beside Grayson joins in, but from the top note. Harris keeps rhythm with Grayson. He looks nervous. Misha wishes she hadn’t seen that worry in his flitting eyes. The buzzing under her skin refuses to subside.
At the foot of the grave stands Esme, her face crinkled with folds, her eyes always behind sunglasses. She adds her rasping voice to the round, again two notes into Harris’s scale. Misha has heard the Scales before, but from outside the group. It’s a lot different, a lot scarier, being within the circle as the Scales approach her position. There are moments of discord as the trio go through the octave, staying in perfect time, each person two notes adrift from the last.
There’s a dreadful creak from down in the hole, and Misha has always thought herself brave, but whatever’s happening in the grave is something she never wants to see.
So she takes a quick glimpse, the most fleeting of glances. Granddad, feet braced against muddy walls, heaving open the coffin to look inside. The leather of his skin, the wire of his neck muscles; a vampire desperate to return to its slumber.
Morgan’s humming now, hands flourishing along the Scale, and she taps Misha hard on the shoulder to get her attention, as it will be the girl’s turn in mere seconds, and Misha can’t do this, it’s a mess of noise, she can’t even do the Scales for more than ten seconds when it’s just her and Granddad, and she’ll mess it up and break the chain and leave an opening
and
Morgan points
and
she’s humming, and she’s going to cry because she will get this wrong even though she’s concentrating so hard. There are five voices – six now – that are all hitting different notes in each moment, and her ears keep training in on each voice in turn, and she wants to sing the same note as them, not something out of tune. It’s an unending, always fluctuating buzzing vibration. She’s convinced she’s not hitting the notes right. She can’t. Her throat hurts already.
The lurkers at the edge of the circle, the ones that Granddad says are real, really real, they’ll be on the group in a heartbeat if the Scales fall. Something, reaching for her, for all of them. Pushing. Pressing.
She must stick to her Scale.
The others are humming strong and loud. And, Misha realises, so is she. It thrums in her chest. It feels good, and powerful. It comes easy. It wants to be, it wants to exist. Round and round go the Scales, and the pressure at her back fades. Their voices have woven into one, become a force. She’s no longer scared of upsetting the Scales. She’s scared that it will simply stop.
The volume swells, and she isn’t yet aware of the watching boy in the bushes. She’s aware of just one thing: she’s succeeding.