The Reconciler of Worlds
BRECKEN FOUND THE DETAILS on the Partridgeville Gazette website a few minutes later. A couple walking their dog on the beach had seen something in the surf, went to look, and called the police, who hauled the body ashore. They’d searched Pinchbeck’s apartment and found a suicide note, the article said, and the police were still investigating. That was all the article said, but it was more than enough to leave Brecken feeling chilled to her core.
The memory of Pinchbeck’s face after she’d played her fugue hovered in her mind’s eye. I did that, she thought. I didn’t know that he’d react that way, and I still don’t know why, but I killed him. I didn’t want that, any more than I wanted Jay to die, but—
♪Something is not well,♪ Sho said then.
♪Yes.♪ In fumbling words, she tried to explain what had happened. One at a time, three additional eyes surfaced on the side of the shoggoth that faced her. Finally, when she’d finished, she looked away and said, ♪Did your people ever do that—kill themselves?♪
A pseudopod closed on each of her shoulders, turned her to face Sho. A dozen wide eyes stared at her. ♪You will not.♪
♪No,♪ Brecken replied, startled. ♪No, of course not.♪ And it was true: a few times in the bitter months after Mrs. Macallan’s death, she’d toyed with the idea of suicide, but even then it had felt like a pointless waste. ♪No, it’s just that I—I don’t understand.♪
She wanted to cry, but there were no tears in her, just a vast emptiness that seemed to reach to the edges of forever.
♪I was afraid,♪ Sho said then. ♪It happened—not often, not at all often, but it happened—that one of my people killed herself to cast such shame on another that the other would do the same. I—I thought your people might do that also.♪
Brecken managed a fragile smile. ♪No. It might have happened long ago, but not now.♪
♪Is it known why he did it?♪
♪I don’t know. I think it was me—the song I made, to show him that he was wrong. I hope that wasn’t it, but—♪
♪I understand.♪ Sho hunched down a little. ♪And if it is?♪
♪Then I’ll live with that.♪ And that was true, too; she’d already learned to live with plenty of bitter memories, and she knew she could do the same with one more.
They spent the evening pleasantly enough, and though it took a long time for Brecken to get to sleep she was rested enough to function the next morning. An hour of flute practice helped clear her mind. Once that was done and breakfast was cooking, she turned on her phone to check messages and see if the Gazette had anything more to say. It didn’t, but the icon showed her that an email was waiting for her. It was from Professor Toomey, characteristically terse: Brecken—can you come to my office this morning before class? She glanced at the clock, talked with Sho, and sent an email back saying she’d be there at 10:30.
It took her a moment to nerve herself up before she crossed The Cave to the elevators, and another moment in the sixth floor hallway before she knocked on the familiar door. “Come in,” said the professor, and motioned her to a seat. She knew better than to close the door.
“You’ve heard about Julian Pinchbeck,” Toomey said. When she nodded: “The police aren’t making his suicide note public, but there’s something about it you should know.”
She gave him a bleak look and said, “Okay.”
“It didn’t mention you at all.”
Her astonishment must have shown on her face, because he allowed a fractional smile. “I thought there was a pretty good chance you’d blame yourself, after the way he reacted to your fugue. What you don’t know is that the morning before you played, I had him come here to talk about his grades and his future plans. He just barely dodged a D in Composition I, you see, and he was headed for worse than that this semester.”
As Brecken took that in, the professor got up, walked to the window on the far end of the little office, and stared out it for a moment, then turned. “There are a lot of tragedies in this world,” he said. “One that the playwrights and novelists haven’t really tackled yet is the one you get when somebody has dreams but no talent. Julian wanted to be a composer but he didn’t have what it takes. It really was that simple—and it’s one of the toughest things a teacher has to do, to tell somebody that they’re never going to be able to live their dream.”
His last three words hung in the silent air, reminding her of Rosalie’s choice, the other side of the coin. Brecken nodded, and said, “Did the note mention you?”
Toomey gave her a wry look, and then nodded. “Yes,” he said. “At length. I wasn’t the only one he blamed, though, and the police say there may have been something quite a bit uglier involved in his suicide.”
“Oh?”
“They searched his computer, and they found a bunch of files about a murder here in the 1920s: a writer, I think it was, who was killed the same way as the two students who were murdered this spring. The two students, as I imagine you know, were his former girlfriend and the young man who took her away from him.”
Aghast, she opened her mouth, closed it again, realizing that there was nothing she could say, not with any chance of being heard. The Hounds of Tindalos, the Liao drug: those didn’t belong in the world Professor Toomey or the Partridgeville police department thought they lived in, and the one thing she could show them to make them believe her—Sho—was the one thing she most needed to keep secret.
“I know,” said the professor. “I have no idea if he did that or not. I hope not, but—” He shrugged expressively. “That’s neither here nor there. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t jump to the wrong conclusion about Julian’s suicide.”
Brecken thanked him, they talked about her move, and she headed down to The Cave. Rosalie wasn’t there yet, and so she went out onto the plaza, found an empty bench, sat there looking at nothing for a long moment, while the wind off the sea danced around the hard gray angles of Mainwaring Hall and clouds hid and revealed the sun.
The world has no eyes, she thought, and as she sat there, the words made sense in a way they’d never done before. Julian Pinchbeck dreamed of being a composer and she’d never imagined being one, but the world had handed the talent to her and not to him, not because she deserved it and he didn’t, not because she was a good person and he wasn’t, not because the universe or the Great Old Ones were out to get him, but because that was just the way things happened to turn out. She thought of Julian and Jay, and then all at once of Mrs. Macallan too—chasing their dreams, each of them, until the dreams broke beneath them and they broke too—and it wasn’t wrong for them to chase their dreams, any more than it was right, for the world had no eyes and wouldn’t have noticed or cared no matter what they’d done.
My life isn’t right or wrong either, she thought. It just is. It doesn’t mean anything to the universe that I fell in love with Jay or Sho or Mozart; those things just happened to me, the way I happened to Sho, or the Hounds of Tindalos happened to Jay, or wanting to be a composer happened to poor Julian. They happened the way that tonality makes music that makes sense, the way a major chord sounds like joy and a minor chord sounds like grief, just because that’s how things happened to turn out.
She drew in a deep breath and let it out again, knowing that she couldn’t be entirely certain she would live to draw in another. When she did, it came as a pleasant shock. That the spring sunlight slanted past her and the wind tasted of the sea, that music trembled in her like the blood in her veins, that Sho had come into her life, that she existed in the first place: none of those things had to happen, and nothing she’d done or left undone made them happen. They hovered there, arbitrary and astonishing, and the fact that they meant nothing to the universe didn’t keep them from meaning everything to her.
The world has no eyes, but I do. Part of her wanted to laugh with delight as she repeated the words silently to herself, and another part wanted to burst into tears. Instead of doing either, she sat there on the bench for a long while, letting each moment surprise and delight her by the sheer arbitrariness of its existence, until the clouds began to thicken and a glance at her cell phone told her there was somewhere else she meant to be.
Other things pushed Julian’s fate out of her mind. Over the days that followed, though, as she and the rest of Partridgeville State finished up the semester and got ready for finals week, rumors linking Julian Pinchbeck to the deaths of Barbara Cormyn and Jay Olmsted spread around campus, at first vague, then painfully exact. Nobody wanted to admit they believed them, but nobody argued against them, and Brecken could tell easily enough how it would end.
Years later, one bleak winter day when snow lay thick on the Massachusetts hills, a passage in the quartet for recorders she was writing kept refusing to come out right, and Sho and her broodlings were settled in a comfortable heap on the sofa, far over on the dreaming-side, Brecken went online and found a story on the Partridgeville Gazette website summing up the tragic events of that spring. The police never officially closed the case, but nobody seemed to doubt that Pinchbeck had killed his former girlfriend, his rival, and then himself. Brecken shook her head, wondered why the photograph of Pinchbeck in the news story seemed only half familiar to her, closed the browser window, and went back to work on the quartet.
THE UNIVERSITY GOT ALL three of the Gurnard Hall elevators fixed halfway through the last week of classes—“great timing,” Rosalie said with an eyeroll—and so when Composition II finished its last session on the Wednesday of the last week of classes, Brecken and Rosalie ended up in The Cave one last time. An awkward silence passed, and then Rosalie said, “Coffee, definitely.” Brecken agreed, and the two of them went through the doors into Vivaldi’s.
Another silence came and sat with them for a while as they sipped their coffees. Rosalie, who was looking more and more uncomfortable as the moments passed, finally chased it away for a little while by laughing and reminding Brecken of one of the silly mishaps they’d gotten into when they’d been roommates in Arbuckle Hall. Brecken laughed as well and reminded her of another, and they spent fifteen minutes or so at that pleasant task of remembrance. There were tears before it was all over, and promises to stay in touch that both of them knew would not be kept, but the music had to be played all the way to the end.
Finally Brecken finished the last of her coffee. The silence had begun to creep back, and it was time to go, she knew it in her bones. “Thank you, Ro,” she said. “Thank you for everything.” Rosalie looked up at her with wide bleak eyes and nodded, unwilling or unable to speak, and Brecken stood, gave her one last smile, and left Vivaldi’s.
The Cave seemed emptier than usual as she passed through it, though there were still plenty of music students bent over the tables in study or standing around in conversation. Maybe, she thought, it was the faces that weren’t there any more—Jay’s, Barbara’s, Julian’s. She squared her shoulders, headed for the glass doors, stepped out of the darkness and the echoes into wind and sunlight.
Later that day she had coffee with Molly at a place in town, got Molly’s email, and promised to send hers once she’d gotten settled in Arkham. “My band gets up there a couple of times a year,” Molly said. “There’s a place called J.J.’s on Fish Street—you ought to check it out, if you like anything but classical. They have live music every night of the week.”
“Blues?” Brecken asked her. “I grew up with that.”
“Every Wednesday night,” Molly said with a grin. “We got there a day early once—it was cheaper than staying in Boston. Definitely worth your while.” Brecken pulled a notebook from her tote bag and wrote down the details.
The next day she’d arranged to meet Darren for lunch at Fumi’s. True to form, they spent an hour over tea, sushi, and edamame picking apart the mathematical structure of one of Bach’s ricercars. Only after they were both sure she’d understood it did Darren bring up the obvious question. “So when’s the day?”
“My last final’s Wednesday,” said Brecken, “and I’m moving the Saturday after that.”
He hunched his head down slightly into his shoulders. “Well, stay in touch.”
“Of course I will! I’ll be getting a new email after I get settled, but I’ll send it to you and we can pick things up.” Then, with a wistful smile: “Though it won’t be the same without your folks and my friends missing the point.”
He choked on his tea, laughed. “True. Very true.”
“Besides,” said Brecken, “if you and Stan get married, I want an invite.”
Darren glanced at her, smiling. It wasn’t the big ungainly smile he used as a shield; it was the little fragile smile he showed only to friends. “When Stan and I get married,” he said, “You’re going to get an invite, and something else. If you’re willing, we’d like to commission you to write an original piece of music for the ceremony.”
Brecken’s mouth fell open, and then she beamed. “Thank you, Darren. That’s really sweet—and of course I’d be delighted.”
When she left Fumi’s a quarter hour later she might as well have been walking on air, and even three more days of frantic studying to get ready for her finals didn’t quite manage to quell her mood. One more errand still waited, though. The day after her last final, as the approaching summer wrapped the hills around Partridgeville with green and the sun shone down from a cloudless sky, Brecken walked down to Central Square, climbed the long narrow stair to Buzrael Books, and pushed open the door. Thaddeus Waldzell was sitting behind the counter as usual, and as she came in, he glanced over the top of his gold-rimmed glasses at her. His smile hinted at unspoken knowledge, as though he savored a jest too subtle to share with anyone else.
“Good afternoon,” he said.
“Hi.” Brecken reached into her tote bag and brought out a hardback volume: the annotated copy of The Secret Watcher she’d gotten at Buzzy’s all those months before. “I’m wondering if I ought to give this back to you.”
He took it, gave it a careful examination inside and out, and then glanced back up at her. “Oh, quite the contrary,” he said. “A mutual friend tells me you’ll need it again someday.”
Brecken gave him a blank look, and then her eyes went round as she guessed which mutual friend he had in mind.
Waldzell’s smile broadened. “The same friend tells me you’re leaving Partridgeville,” he said, “and this would be better off elsewhere. Take it with you and keep it hidden.”
“I’m not sure I’m any good at that,” said Brecken. “It got stolen, and—and two people are dead because I wasn’t careful enough.”
“No.” A shake of his head denied that. “That wasn’t your doing. When people go running toward their fate, it’s not an easy thing to stop them from reaching it—whatever that fate happens to be.” He handed her back the book, and smiled again.
She gave him a long, uncertain look. “Can I ask a question?” He gestured, inviting it, and she went on. “The mutual friend—how long have you known him?”
Waldzell’s smile broadened further. “A very, very long time.” Then, meeting her eyes: “You should go now, I think.”
Then all at once she was standing in bright sun in front of the Smithwich and Isaacs jewelry store, blinking in surprise, with no idea how she’d gotten there. She turned to look at the door that led to Buzzy’s, and found it shut, with a CLOSED sign hanging behind the glass for good measure. Shaking her head, she started to put the book back in her tote bag, and stopped, seeing something glinting in the hand that held it.
It proved to be a disk-shaped pendant about the size of a quarter: a circle of some polished black stone, bright as a mirror, with a circle of delicate mosaic work of blue, green, and purple set in silver around the outer edge, and a silver chain to fit around her neck. It took her only a moment to recognize the pattern, to know who had given it to the proprietor of Buzrael Books, and to guess what it might mean if she wore it. It took her only another moment to fasten the chain around her neck and tuck the pendant out of sight down the front of her blouse.
Dweller in Darkness, she thought. I know you’ve given me this for your reasons, not mine. I know you might even be planning to let me die someday, the way you let Sho’s people die. You know what? I’m going to take that chance.
She turned, started back toward Danforth Street.
“THAT’S EVERYTHING?” SAID JANET Kitagawa.
“Just one more duffel,” Brecken said over her shoulder. “I’ll get it.”
Back through the gap between houses, into the cramped and ramshackle little apartment: the journey was so familiar to Brecken that she had a hard time getting herself to believe that she’d never come that way again. Inside, familiar furnishings warred with unfamiliar gaps; the piano was gone, sold to another Partridgeville State music major, and so were all the little touches that had made the place Brecken’s for a while. All that remained of hers was a big black duffel with a rigid bottom and wheels on one end.
She knelt by the duffel and whistled softly: ♪Is it well with you, Saying Farewells?♪
♪It is well,♪ Sho replied from within. ♪I am frightened but it will pass.♪ A hint of the acrid scent of dread hung in the air.
Brecken rested a hand atop the duffel, hoped that some comfort might slip through the cheap nylon fabric. ♪It’s time.♪ She stood up, stooped to take hold of the handle, lifted it with an effort and got the duffel out the door. Her keys and a farewell note to Mrs. Dalzell were already on the kitchenette counter. She pulled the door shut, made sure it latched, and hauled the duffel behind her out to the sidewalk and Janet’s green minivan.
Brecken had put up a card on the board in the Student Union Building where people offered and asked for rides, letting anyone interested know that she was looking for a ride to Arkham, Massachusetts with somebody who had plenty of luggage room, and that she would happily chip in gas money. Even so, it it was a friend of a friend of Molly’s who put her in touch with Janet Kitagawa, a history major who’d just graduated magna cum laude and was heading to Miskatonic for her master’s program. They’d talked on the phone twice and exchanged a handful of texts, and then at nine o’clock sharp that morning Janet parked her half-loaded minivan on the street right in front of Mrs. Dalzell’s house.
“You need a hand with that?” Janet asked.
“No, I’ve got it.” Brecken got the front end of the duffel onto the floor of the passenger compartment, stooped and heaved. The duffel slid across the floor and settled right behind the front passenger seat. “And we’re good.”
“Shiny,” Janet said. Doors closed, opened, closed; Brecken settled into her seat, got the seatbelt fastened as Janet climbed in behind the wheel. As the engine coughed to life, she craned her neck to try to see the little apartment, but the angle was wrong.
Then the minivan rolled ahead, made a tight U-turn, started down Danforth Street toward campus, but turned away onto Dwight Street after a block and headed for the highway out of town. “Kind of scary,” Janet said as she drove. “I’ve lived in this part of New Jersey my whole life—my family’s in Mount Pleasant.” She turned onto the highway. The dark pines of Mulligan Wood loomed ahead to either side of the road, huddling around the feet of Hob’s Hill. “And it’s a pretty big gamble, going to grad school at all these days.”
“The job market?”
“Bingo. If I’m lucky and work really hard, I might get a job teaching history somewhere. If not—” She shrugged, then changed lanes to slip past a semi hauling hay bales. “I don’t know what I’ll do. All I know is I’ve got to go with my heart.”
“Me too,” said Brecken.
The highway plunged through Mulligan Wood, curved northwards. “You’re a music major, right?” Janet asked.
“Music composition,” Brecken said. “Guess what kind of job market there is for Baroque composers these days.”
“Planning on a day job?”
“Pretty much.” She glanced at the driver. “But I’m going with my heart, too.”
The highway wrapped around the far side of Hob’s Hill, climbing all the while, and then cut across the high ground north of it. As the car cleared the trees, Partridgeville lay spread out below Brecken’s window, filling the ground from Mulligan Wood to Partridge Bay. She could see the bleak gray buildings of the campus, the tall white shape of the First Baptist Church up on Angell Hill, the bland angular masses of the Belknap Creek Mall and Partridgeville High School, a green roof alongside Central Square that she guessed was the Smithwich and Isaacs building. Then, just before trees blocked her view again, she caught sight of a dingy brick building just above the harbor, the place where Jay had lived and died.
Then the highway plunged in among pines, and Partridgeville vanished behind them. Brecken let out a long shuddering breath, releasing everything that belonged to Partridgeville: everything but memories, and one thing besides. My heart, she thought, with a little unsteady smile. My heart is shapeless and iridescent black, and sings to me.
Unobtrusively, she let her right hand drop, slid it back between the seat and the door until it rested against the duffel. A stirring beneath it told her of a zipper being opened from within. A moment later a pseudopod slid out and curled around her hand.
IT TOOK THEM MOST of an hour to get to I-85. From there, New Jersey gave way in due time to the vast sprawling mass of New York City; that yielded in turn to the green hills and harbor towns of Connecticut and Rhode Island, then to the forests and failing industrial belts of southeast Massachusetts and the suburbs ringing Boston. On the way out of Boston, Janet turned onto state highway 1, but as Brecken checked their route on her cell phone she found detour warnings near Danvers: an ugly accident, the media said, all northbound lanes blocked.
“Not a problem,” said Janet, and took the Salem exit. “We’ll go the other way.” Before long they were in Salem, and then crossed the bridge to Beverly and veered east just behind the shoreline, following the same route Brecken had taken on the bus. Kingsport came into sight before long, crouched at the foot of the soaring gray mass of Kingsport Head. Another right and the minivan headed up into the hills, wove through dark woodlands where everything human seemed miles or millennia away, and finally came out into late afternoon sunlight and headed down the long slope toward the gambrel roofs and hulking university buildings of Arkham.
Half an hour later the minivan eased to a stop in front of the house on Hyde Street. “Sweet,” Janet said, considering it. “You’ve got a whole floor?”
“Most of one,” Brecken admitted. “You?”
“One room in a student household over on Halsey Street. It’s cheap.” She unfastened her seatbelt. “Let’s get your stuff unloaded.”
It didn’t take long to get all Brecken’s things out of the minivan: half a dozen lumpy duffels, only one of which contained a shoggoth, and as many cardboard boxes of books, sheet music, and household goods. A few more minutes saw those ferried into the entry, and then Brecken stood on the porch and waved as Janet drove away.
“You can surely rest before you take all that upstairs,” Professor Satterlee said. Then, with an amused glance at Brecken: “Besides, I’m eager to meet a certain someone.”
Brecken beamed, went to the big black duffel, and whistled, ♪Saying Farewells, we’re here, and the broodmother-of-broodmothers wishes to meet you.♪
The zipper slid open as though pulled by an invisible hand. Blackness welled up from within, produced an eye, considered the professor with what looked like trepidation. ♪Please tell her she honors me by that wish,♪ Sho piped.
Before Brecken could translate, Professor Satterlee said, “You’re Brecken’s friend Sho, of course. Welcome to Arkham.”
Sho tensed, produced a speech orifice, twisted it, and said, “Thank you.” The words were a little oddly pronounced but clear, and the voice sounded uncannily like Brecken’s.
“You’re welcome,” said the old woman, visibly startled. “That’s a very uncommon skill among your people, Sho.”
♪I do not know all those words,♪ Sho said to Brecken, who translated them into the shoggoth language and then reached out a hand to encourage her to leave the duffel.
A few minutes later they were all comfortably settled on the sofa, Professor Satterlee on one end, Brecken and Sho curled up together on the other end. “I am learning English,” Sho said slowly; the words still took all her concentration. “Because I wish to live with humans now.”
“You’re certainly welcome to live here,” Satterlee told her.
“You are kind.”
“Thank you.” The professor smiled the serene smile Brecken remembered. “But there’s more to it than that. There’s a saying humans have—‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ The people who hunt shoggoths are no friends of mine, and this isn’t the first time I’ve helped someone stay out of their clutches.”
Sho needed that translated, pondered it for a time, and then said, “Do they hunt you too, though you are not human?”
The professor gave the shoggoth an astonished look, then glanced at Brecken, who shook her head and said, “I didn’t tell her.”
♪Were my words hurtful?♪ Sho asked Brecken in a worried whistle.
♪No, not at all,♪ Brecken reassured her. ♪You saw something humans don’t see.♪
“That’s extremely perceptive of you,” said Professor Satterlee. “But you’re quite right, of course—or half right. My mother was human.” Then, recovering her poise: “I’m sure they’d hunt me if they had the least idea who my father is. In the meantime, I make life a little more difficult for them.” She smiled. “And a little easier for shoggoths, among others.”
“I am grateful,” said Sho, once Brecken had translated for her.
Later, Brecken’s things got hauled upstairs, and Brecken and Sho spent a while filling bookshelves, cupboards, the big walk-in closet and the massive oak dresser with the contents of boxes and duffels. Once that was done, Brecken did the Vach-Viraj incantation in the parlor, a daily discipline now, tracing the circle around Sho as well as herself.
Then it was back downstairs for dinner—Professor Satterlee called in an order to an Asian restaurant that had just opened in downtown Arkham, had it delivered, and waved away Brecken’s offer to help pay for it, saying, “For heaven’s sake, don’t worry about it. That casserole you and Sarah made up kept me fed for three days.” Finally, Brecken and Sho climbed the stairs to the apartment while the professor sat down at the piano. The meditative notes of an Erik Satie Gymnopédie came murmuring up through the fabric of the house as Brecken shut the door, turned a look on Sho as tired as it was affectionate. ♪Bed, I think.♪
Four eyes blinked open, considering her. ♪Yes. I will spend a long time on the dreaming-side, but I do not regret this day.♪
♪Nor I.♪ She laughed, headed for the bedroom. ♪Nor I.♪
Later still, they lay together in the big four-poster bed under familiar quilts. Night wrapped Arkham in sheltering darkness. The faint glow of a streetlight a block away trickled through the window, lost its way in the hieroglyphic patterns of ancient wallpaper. Brecken gave Sho a sleepy kiss, felt a pseudopod brush her face.
♪I chose the right name today,♪ Sho said then. ♪But I have seen enough endings and farewells for now. When the light comes back, and for days after, it will be time for beginnings.♪
Brecken wanted to say something in response, agreeing with Sho, but the words unraveled into a spray of musical notes and then fell away into silence. Instead, she nestled her face into the nearest of the shoggoth’s curves and let herself fall asleep.
THERE WERE PLENTY OF beginnings for them both in the days that followed. The beginning that mattered most to Brecken, though, came three weeks later: three weeks of introductions and uncertainties, of walks through unfamiliar neighborhoods, of evenings learning the quirks of the upright piano in her apartment and the grand piano down in Professor Satterlee’s parlor, and of two visits to the house, always at night, by the pale-haired man who wore the Yellow Sign, and who wished to talk to Sho with Brecken as interpreter. The first time he came, she suddenly thought—or was it her thought at all?—of the pendant she’d been given at Buzrael Books, and had worn every day thereafter. A quick gesture settled it atop her blouse, and the visitor gave her a startled look, then a sudden smile and a nod. He knew her loyalties, she knew his, and that was what mattered.
Toward the end of the three weeks, as the summer session drew closer, a single project took up more and more of her time: final frantic corrections, clatter of her laptop keyboard, hum-chunk hum-chunk of a printer spitting out pages of sheet music with an improbable heading:
CONCERTO IN Bb
Brecken Kendall
The three movements of the concerto had names, too. Brecken had considered putting those on the sheet music, titling the first We Live Beneath the Ground, the second Hear and Remember, and the third Still Beside You, but decided against it at the last moment. Maybe later, she told herself. Maybe when I’ve met more people who can handle knowing why.
Once the music was printed, she spent half a dozen sessions down in Professor Satterlee’s parlor rehearsing with one of the professor’s students, a gifted pianist with a good knowledge of the Baroque and classical repertoire, before the day itself. The day itself was warm and sultry, with a scattering of clouds. Brecken spent a long slow morning with Sho and cooked cheese polenta for breakfast, and the two of them teased each other about apricot jam, as quite a bit of that went atop one of the two bowls. Two hours of flute practice followed; after that, she went to the grocery across the river in the old part of town, came back with two full bags, got red beans cooking in her slow cooker, and spent another hour with Sho, curled up together on the couch talking—anything to keep her mind away from the evening’s events. It was a familiar habit, though Sho made a more effective distraction than most.
Finally, though, it was time to don her dark red dress with the golden sunburst in seed beads, brush her hair into submission, put on makeup and perfume, pick up her flute and head downstairs. The pianist was already there, warming up in a storm of Bach and Telemann. Professor Satterlee looked on smiling from the couch, having already set out wine, crackers, and cheese for the guests. While Brecken was putting Mrs. Macallan’s flute together, the first knock sounded on the front door.
There would not be many people present that first time. Satterlee had advised her on that, and suggested names. All three of the professors on Brecken’s audition committee were on the final list, of course, along with two other professors from the composition program. So was the chair of the music department, though she had other commitments and had to beg off. So was Martin Chaudronnier, a Miskatonic alumnus and local real estate magnate who’d made several large donations to the music department. Finally, so was a professor from Miskatonic’s history of ideas department named Miriam Akeley, who was a friend of Professor Satterlee and also, from hints Brecken had picked up, a friend—or more than a friend—of Martin Chaudronnier. Politics, Brecken wondered, or romance? She had no way of telling. There would be someone else listening, too, from a hidden corner on the second floor landing, and Brecken wished she could introduce Sho to the others, but the gap between the worlds still remained.
Voices and footsteps brought Anne Ricci and Michael Silva into the parlor. They greeted Brecken pleasantly, asked about her move to Arkham, settled on the couch. A knock at the kitchen door, which was level with the alley and thus suited to wheelchairs, brought Paul Czanek. His greetings were brief, and Brecken got little more than a nod, but the fire in his pale blue eyes was less hidden than Brecken had seen it before.
The other professors showed in the minutes that followed. Finally, Martin Chaudronnier and Miriam Akeley arrived together, the one stocky and graying, dressed in the understated elegance of old money, the other silver-haired and lean as a heron, wearing a black dress and a white sweater, moving awkwardly as though she’d been injured and had only begun to recover. Romance, Brecken thought, watching the two of them glance at each other. Maybe politics, too, but definitely romance.
Professor Satterlee spoke next, but by then Brecken was sufficiently keyed up that she couldn’t process what the old woman said. Random phrases murmured themselves in the still air—“promising young composer,” “first substantial work,” “official premier with other works later on”—and then Brecken herself had to fumble through a few words of thanks and welcome, which she did without too much embarrassment.
Silence, then. She picked up her flute and glanced at the pianist, who paused, and began the quick flowing arpeggios that introduced the first movement of her concerto. We live beneath the ground, the theme said, and Brecken wondered briefly if anyone else would ever notice the bridge that she’d made, half by accident, between two disparate worlds.
Halpin Chalmers was right, she thought. There are always two realities, though they’re not always the same two, not even for me. But whether it’s Sho’s world and mine, the baroque and the modern, the human and the eldritch, the terrestrial and the condition of fire—
I am the reconciler between them.
She raised the flute to her lips, began to play.