Before the obliviation, before her father’s death, her mother had loved music. Her father had taken a second job working as night-shift security at a Fae bank for months to afford a well-worn upright piano. Cassandra could still recall the pure, undiluted joy on her mother’s face the day it had been delivered. Mama had played for hours that night, and Cassandra had fallen asleep listening to the wobbly tinkling of the untuned instrument.
Her mother had spent the next months teaching Cassandra to play, showing her how to rest her thumb on middle C and curl her fingers just so, poised above the stained ivory keys.
In-between moments.
Cassandra reached for her mother’s hands.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-SIX
The piano bench creaked as Cassandra swung her legs, her feet not quite reaching the floor nor the pedals.
She scooted closer to Mama, pressing into her hip, and her mother’s lilac and cinnamon scent wrapped around her like a lingering hug.
Mama took hold of Cassandra’s wrists. “Not there, my darling.” Her soft voice mingled with the birdsong and children’s laughter floating in through an open window. She moved Cassandra’s fingers down several keys. “This is middle C, remember?”
“I always forget,” Cassandra giggled, resting her head against her mother’s shoulder.
Mama trailed her fingers through Cassandra’s hair, examining the strands. “It’s okay. I forget sometimes too.” Something wistful and forlorn tinted her mother’s words.
A breath of wind rippled the sheet music spread across the piano, caressing Cassandra’s fingers, and her mother looked out the window.
Mama stiffened.
Cassandra followed her mother’s gaze, welcomed by nothing more than the ordinary view: a sprawl of cozy brick houses fronted by fluffy shrubs. Flowering trees shed white petals that twirled like dance partners in the wind.
“Play,” her mother said. A swallowed whisper.
Cassandra looked at the sheet music, but could no longer read the notes. The dots and lines melted down the page, as if the sheet had been dipped in water and the ink was running.
She pressed a key, but the sound that came out wasn’t the expected plunk of a note.
It was a low, wavering wail. A human voice.
She snatched her hand back, horror frosting her veins.
Her mother’s face was still angled towards the window, her mouth a thin line and her eyes blown wide.
“Play, Cassandra,” she begged. “You’ve got to play.”
A swirling vortex of black spread across the horizon. Something pulsing and moving quickly, deeper and darker than any storm cloud Cassandra had ever seen. The jagged edges of thousands upon thousands of feathered wings beat at the sky.
“Cassandra.” Her mother gripped her chin, turning her away from the looming terror. “Do itnow. Play!”
Frustrated tears coated Cassandra’s heated cheeks and fear paralyzed her fingers. “I don’t know how, Mama!”
The black mass swallowed half the sky and the neighborhood outside went deathly silent. Turbulent winds ripped at the trees, then whipped through the room, billowing the curtains and knocking over a vase of flowers. The glass shattered, spilling water and white lilies across the pocked floorboards.
Mama laid her fingers atop Cassandra’s. “We’ll do it together.” Her shaking hands escalated Cassandra’s already galloping heartbeat.
Her mother pressed down on Cassandra’s fingers, forcing them onto the keys, and a symphony of screams burst from the instrument, layer upon layer of agonized wails dragged from the pits of Stygios’s realm itself.
Every chord they struck increased the screams’ volume, until Cassandra could scarcely bear it, her eardrums near to bursting.
The dark cloud outside now blanketed the entire sky and one by one, the houses across the street disappeared, crumbling into an undulating, obsidian abyss.
Sweat coated Cassandra’s palms, her fingers slipping off the keys.
“Mama,” she sobbed. “Please stop. I’m scared.”
