Asunder

make us safe. Sylph could fly between trees and catch us in no time.

I shot Sam a pleading look, silently urging him to stay put while I started toward the sylph and my SED again. He nodded once, watching me with an intense protectiveness. But he’d let me do what I needed to do. He always did. And all I had to do was program the SED to play enough music to give us time to get back to Heart.

Sylph whistled and moaned, watching my approach like I might attack them. My heartbeat thundered in my ears as the sun dipped behind mountain peaks. Golden shafts of light spilled across the beach and the dusk-gray water, and the sylph grew darker. Taller. They hummed at the crunch of my boots on sand.

“Back away,” I whispered, and put my hands palm-out as though I could push them. “Back away.”

A line of inky shadows shuddered away from the SED, keeping an even distance from me. Sam gasped.

Shivering in spite of the heat billowing off the creatures, I bent and retrieved the SED. “Stay back,” I murmured, tapping the SED’s face and selecting all of Sam’s music. Typically, selling recorded music was part of how he earned enough credit to feed himself, but as his student—and other things—I was able to access all his music. I’d been grateful before. Now his music would save lives.

The opening chords of Sam’s Phoenix Symphony flowed from the speakers. I put the device back on the sand. The sylph stuttered forward in unison, and stopped when I held up my hands.

A weak, panicked laugh escaped me. I was holding up my hands? The same hands a sylph had burned less than a year ago? Sometimes my idiocy astounded even me.

As before, the sylph began to dance, writhing like dark flames. They flowed in and out of one another, moving closer to the SED as I took measured steps away.

Soon, one picked up the melody, sang the notes just behind the piano, violins, and flutes. Close. So close.

Sam reached for me when I glanced backward. I moved as quickly as I dared. My heart raced and my hands shook, but I didn’t want to give the sylph any more indication of my fear.

I was halfway back to Sam when one of the sylph trilled and turned its eyeless gaze on me. The weight of its attention made me stagger as dusk deepened across the beach.

“What?” My words came as a whisper.

The sylph trilled again, twisting closer to me as it took up its part in the music once more.

It wanted me to sing? I stayed where I was, boots planted in the sand, conscious of Sam behind me.

But when the sylph trilled again, I hummed the next few measures of the melody.

As though electricity surged through the sylph, they all shivered straighter, taller, and closer to me.

They seemed eager and—welcoming?

That sounded ridiculous, even in my head, but the last thing I wanted to do was anger them. I held up my hands as though pushing, stepped forward, and kept humming.

They breezed backward, eerily intent while they sang.

I could feel Sam’s attention on my back, and hear the edges of hushed orders in the forest. A rescue, I hoped, because it was obvious the sylph wouldn’t let me go. At least one had recognized my plan to escape. If I tried again, they might attack.

The sylph eased back as I moved forward. Music played between us, warm and joyful, with a flute duet and bass thudding like a heartbeat. We all—the sylph and me—stepped on the beats.

“What in the name of Janan?” A boy’s voice carried across the twilight beach, stunning the sylph, stunning me.

Someone swore. “What is she doing?”

“She controls the sylph.”

I spun around, too shocked to respond, and suddenly the sylph fanned around me like an escort or army or dark wings, all heat and ashy reek. They keened, voices so high my ears ached, and two of them shot forward to attack the intruders.

“Stop!”

At my cry, the sylph halted and their wailing silenced. Breath rasped across the gloom, the only sound in a pause between movements of the Phoenix Symphony.

“How did she do that?” The growling voice was familiar. Merton? That guy was everywhere.

“Janan has indeed forsaken us,” someone else muttered. “Nosouls will be our ruin.”

“Shut up,” I hissed. “I don’t control sylph any more than you control the weather or your own reincarnation. They like music. That’s all.” Was it?

Councilor Deborl stepped forward, holding a brass egg the size of two fists. “We’ll take care of them now, Ana.” Physically, he was younger than me, but he held himself with all the importance of his rank.

Even his tone was a reminder of his true age.

Darkness shuddered on either side of me: sylph. Heat bloomed against my bare face and hands; I could even feel it through my coat. But the sylph never moved too close—close enough to boil me alive, anyway. Any sylph was always too close.

And yet, they’d responded to music. Now, with the second movement beginning on the SED behind us, one sylph hummed quietly along with the bass line.

I glanced at Sam; the way he stared at the sylph told me he heard it, too.

“Do the eggs hurt the sylph?” I bit my lip, regretting the question immediately. Now Deborl and the guards would think I sympathized with sylph.

“Does it matter?” Deborl moved forward, and a dozen others followed. They all carried eggs. “Sylph will burn you alive. They almost did before, remember? And they were just about to attack Lidea and the other newsoul. I thought you cared about them.”

“I do!” Too shrill, too desperate, but the sylph waited beside me as Deborl, Merton, and the others approached. “I do care, but look, they’re not hurting anyone. What if they just left on their own?”

Sam shook his head, a warning.

“Ana,” Deborl said as he neared the first pair of quivering shadows. The sylph didn’t move. Why didn’t they flee? They would be trapped. “Ana, clearly the sylph listen to you. You’re a special soul.”

Hah.

But I couldn’t forget that night at Purple Rose Cottage, or the way they’d stood guard outside Menehem’s lab. Why were they following me everywhere?

He continued. “Word of this will spread. If you use your gift to help us, perhaps the popular view of newsouls will change.”

Oh. He wanted me to tell the sylph to get inside the eggs, though why would they do that just because I said? Anyway, they weren’t supposed to be able to understand words.

They weren’t supposed to be able to come inside Range, either. These had been very clever, and very determined to get here. Why? To sing at me again? To attack Anid?

They hadn’t attacked him, though. They’d moved toward him, yes, but a group of adults posed no barrier if the sylph had wanted to kill him. They could have killed all of us.

But they hadn’t.

They’d chosen not to kill Menehem during his experiments.

“Ana?” Sam moved closer, though sylph stood between us and he looked torn. Risk the sylph to stand by me, or stay put.

Near the first two sylph, Deborl and Merton twisted the eggs to activate them, and within seconds both shadows would be sucked in“Run!” I shouted. “Fly away. Go!”

Obsidian-black shadows shrieked and surged into the woods, moving around people and the eggs meant to trap them.

People yelled, Sam rushed to my side, and soon Deborl and his guards surrounded me. Blue targeting lights flashed against my coat: the guards aimed lasers at my chest.

“What are you doing?” Sam stepped in front of me, reaching behind himself to touch me, make sure I wasn’t dead. “You can’t shoot her.”

Deborl motioned, and everyone lowered their weapons. Targeting lights flickered off. “No one is shooting anyone.”