And Raven realized, with absolute clarity, what she had to do.
For once, this wasn't something Annabelle could fix.
So Raven was going to have to fix it for her.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Annabelle couldn't breathe.
The darkness pressed in from all sides, thick and suffocating.
Everything had fallen apart.
The power was out.
And she didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to fix it.
Then she heard it.
Soft at first. So soft she almost missed it beneath the chaos of crying children and angry parents and her own ragged breathing.
Raven's guitar.
The sound cut through the darkness like a lifeline. Gentle fingerpicking, each note clear and pure and heartbreakingly beautiful in the sudden hush.
Around her, the noise began to die. Parents stopped demanding answers. Children stopped crying. Even Gloria shut up, which was possibly the most miraculous part of the entire evening.
Everyone was listening.
Annabelle turned toward the sound, her eyes adjusting to the dim glow of phone screens scattered throughout the audience, and saw Raven standing at the edge of the stage. Her acoustic guitar in her hands. No amplifier. No microphone. No backing track. Just wood and strings and the raw sound of her fingers on the frets.
Raven's fingers moved across the strings with practiced ease, and then she began to sing.
Her voice carried in the sudden silence, raw and unpolished and absolutely perfect. No studio magic. No Auto-Tune. Just Raven, stripped bare, vulnerable in a way Annabelle had never heard her before.
The melody was familiar, the song she'd taught the children weeks ago. But like this, acoustic and unplugged and achingly intimate, it was transformed into something else entirely. Something vulnerable and honest and real.
"In the pages of a book, you can travel anywhere,Meet a dragon, climb a mountain, fly through the air…"
Annabelle felt tears prick her eyes. Not tears of despair this time. Something else.
Raven looked up from her guitar, her gaze sweeping across the darkened hall. Her voice was gentle when she spoke between verses. "Come on. You lot know this one. Let's show them what we've been working on."
For a moment, nobody moved.
The children sat frozen in their seats, uncertain. The audience held its collective breath.
Then Jamie Long stood up from where he'd been sitting with his mother. Small and determined, he climbed onto the stage and positioned himself next to Raven, looking up at her with absolute trust.
Sophie followed, her fairy wings slightly crooked. Then Indra, still wearing her cardboard costume. Then Marie and Oliver and Thomas, one by one, until all the children were gathered around Raven's guitar, forming a semicircle in the darkness.
Raven gave them a small nod. A silentyou've got this.
And then they sang.
Their voices rose together in the darkness, off-key in places, overlapping in others, some loud and some whisper-quiet, but genuine and sweet and utterly, perfectly real. No choreography. No costumes that worked properly. No special effects or fancy lighting. Just children's voices and Raven's guitar and a song about something that actually mattered.
"Stories keep us warm when days are cold and gray,Every library's a treasure, don't let them take it away."
