Sitting with his feet dangling overSilver’s side, Dax grinned at Perri and matched that cascade with his own, then added a few extra notes. His fingers moved so fast that Marin couldn’t follow them.
Perri sang back chords, and Dax harmonized, adding a melody in between the sea serpent’s notes. The tri-lute’s music was soft and sweet to the sea serpent’s trumpeting. Marin heard a shuffling behind her and saw movement out of the corner of her eye—one of the other musicians, the bald man with tattoos, was coming onto the deck. He held a flute in his hands. Sitting himself behind Dax, he added a few mournful notes in the gaps between the lute’s notes and the sea serpent’s breaths.
A few minutes later, they were joined by the gold-haired woman with a drum. She added a low, deep beat to the swirling music. It steadied the sound, as the melodies and harmonies swirled around it. From belowdecks, singing rose up, a chorus, sweet and slow and sad. Marin didn’t recognize the words.
Ree joined Marin by the helm. “It’s pretty,” he said.
Pretty didn’t begin to cover it. The sailboat felt engulfed by music. It was as mesmerizing as the sea itself. “What do you think they’re singing about?”
“One of them said it’s a goodbye song,” Ree said.
Softly, beneath the music, Dax said, “It tells a story of a woman who leaves her home because it’s sinking into the sea. The first verse is when the seashore is swallowed, and she remembers her childhood on the beach, playing in the tide pools, digging in the sand, strolling with her lover, scattering his ashes when he died.”
Marin listened to the music as it curled around her. The flute sang a mournful melody, while Perri trumpeted out a counterpoint that made her think of the crashing sea. Beneath it, Dax played the waves, the steady current, while the singers harmonized belowdecks, their voices reverberating in the chamber of the cabin.
“The chorus is her sadness and how she carries it with her wherever she goes,” Dax said. His fingers danced over the strings, and Marin couldn’t tear her eyes from them. Every pluck was sure and strong. She had an immediate and vivid image of those sure and strong hands on her body, and she shoved that thought away as hard as she could—it was not at all a helpful or appropriate thought. Even if he had called her extraordinary.Ridiculous, she thought.I’m extremely ordinary.As the chorus slipped into a verse, he translated, “She fashions a basket made of seaweed to carry her sadness in.”
“What happens to her?” Ree asked.
“Eventually, she finds someone else who helps her carry the basket,” he said. “She always carries it, but it’s lighter, even though as the years pass, she adds more sadness to it.”
“Why doesn’t she just put the basket down?” Ree wanted to know.
“She can’t,” Dax said. “It’s part of her.”
“She’s part basket?” Ree said. “That doesn’t make much sense.”
“Something can not make much sense and still be true,” Dax said. “Especially in art. Music is all about the truth of the heart.”
That was lovely. And it made her think about the stories she loved, like the one she’d told Ree or all the variants on how she’dbefriended Perri—full of very little fact but a lot of truth.No wonder he likes my stories.They were like his songs.
Still, as Marin listened to the music and watched Dax’s fingers on the strings, she thought Ree was right: the woman should just put the basket of sadness down andlive.
CHAPTER NINE
The island of Eventrid was loud.
Marin heard a commotion carried on the wind as they reached the outskirts of the harbor: it sounded like a mix of voices undercut with aboom-boom-boom.
One of Dax’s musician friends sighed. “Ah, home.”
Belatedly, Marin remembered her name: Shiare. She was the one with vibrant gold hair who’d suggested Eventrid, as well as the one who Dax hadn’t wanted to leave without. She’d popped up on deck, looking dazzling in a golden wrap dress, to offer Dax a fish cake that someone whose name Marin could not remember had baked.
Ree shimmied down the mast and asked, “What’s that sound?” Wind ruffled his leaves, and sea spray clung to him in pearl-like drops.
“It’s the noonday drums,” Shiare told him. She ducked beneath the deck and then returned with a drum cradled in her arms. She set it on the deck and pulled out a pair of sticks from her crystal-studded waistband. The drumsticks were the same gold as her hair. Spreading her legs to brace herself, she lifted the sticks, then paused. “Permission to signal our approach?”
“Sure.” Marin didn’t know precisely what that meant, but whatever. “Go for it.”
Shiare flashed her a smile, then slammed a stick down on thedrum. A deep thrum reverberated throughSilver’s hull. Marin felt it through the soles of her boots.
Popping up from belowdecks fast as a curious seal, Dax beamed at Shiare. “Ooh, are you doing the arrival rhythm? Formal or informal?”
Shiare hit the drum again. “Formal. A family member returns.” She beat out a precise rhythm, filled with both rapid notes and silences. Her tongue poked out the corner of her mouth as she concentrated. “I am adding a request for asylum.”
Overhead, seagulls circled, adding their caws, syncopated in between the drumbeats. Marin glanced up at them and wondered if they were drawn to the rhythms or if they were just hoping this was a fishing boat with spare snacks. She’d never been to Eventrid before, so they wouldn’t know about Perri—But they soon will.
The sea serpent somersaulted out of the water and flung fish into the air.
