There was another joy to announce that happened to coincide with the Procession of the Moons. The Instrument Maker had been granted permission by the High Imperial Council of Knowers and Sayers to reproduce. The good news had spread quickly, with the space outside of her small shop piling up with notes of well-wishes and gifts. Tidy, hand-carved boxes, candles, perfumed scarves, dyhydranthium bulbs, homemade sweets, and exotic selections of rare teas and incense.

The townspeople hoped the blessing of reproduction bestowed upon the Instrument Maker might mean a stripling or two with even half of her talent who might grow up to build ukelaklavas and arrange the music which could only be played upon them. They might then be graced by at least some remnant of the numinous sound the Instrument Maker had produced during her lifetime. For now, though, they were just delighted to see what sound this year’s Procession would bring.

She shared in their joy, more so over the simple prospect of becoming a mother than the thought that any of her children might follow in her footsteps. She hoped for that, of course, but it was not the reason she had sought leave of the High Imperial Council to spawn. She’d known that she wanted to raise children longer than she’d known she wanted to build ukelaklavas, which was saying something.

Nevertheless, there was a harmonious intersection that the bearing of children would have with her craft. Only children could play the ukelaklava. Its size, delicate construction, and pitch requirements made it wholly unsuitable for a fully grown Quileg. An adult could try; they could pluck the notes and bend the tonal arm, but it would sound blunted and clunky, whereas in the hands of a well-practiced child, it shouted to the heavens. And maybe one day, hers too would lift the instrument and call down the sky with a chord.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

All of my senses were devoted to the thing before me. I did not breathe – rather, I hovered in the space between the last breath and the possibility that I would never take another; the inflection point every human being pushes through twenty thousand times a day, until the one time they inevitably don’t. Would this be the last breath I took? I was so rapt by the thing that I didn’t dwell on it. If I died now, so be it. All that mattered was the monster.

Patton – remarkably – was still screaming.

My mind returned to me slowly like a thaw. I exhaled.

The screaming strained to a wheeze as Patton used up the remaining oxygen in his lungs. I took the moment to pat him on the shoulder and offer reassurance. “It’s not going to hurt us, Patton. It kept us alive.”

“Why did it keep me alive, Ben?”

I didn’t have an answer for that.