In the perpetual late summer afternoon, the aunties’ percussion threaded in and around the rustling of the leaves, a staccato busy busy busy touched intermittently by the certainty of pie. Allie’s worried minor key supported by Graham’s bass pushed through the underbrush, rising now and then amid the rowans to wind around the boys’ simpler melody. Her sisters’ song, sharp and edgy, ducked in and out of shadow, the sound muffled then distinct. Her mother’s raced from note to note. Katie’s was a base to build on. The rest of the family laid in harmonies and descants and counter rhythms. Over near where the oaks gave way to the aspens and then the willows, Gary’s distinctive touch picked out “The Rain Song” on the bouzouki. A Cape Breton fiddler played “Gooden Well” by a copse of Norfolk pine.

Together the songs were a map of people and places, a way for her to get to anyone. Anywhen.

Charlie listened to the silence where Jack’s song should be as she settled the guitar strap on her shoulders. No more wallowing. If the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale could stop the asteroid, then Jack wouldn’t have to pay the Courts in pain and the two of them could continue avoiding ritual while developing the slightly pathetic relationship the rules allowed.

“And the world won’t end,” she added after a minute. “That’s good, too.”

Allie’s song first. Charlie’s fingers pulled the melody from the strings, her voice adding wordless harmonies, finding the place Allie held for her. Not defining herself by that place, but anchoring herself within it. Allowing everything else to fade away. She touched the two lives wrapped in love beneath Allie’s heart, careful to only Sing what she knew would happen. Adding only the verses that would occur. Music was not random—notes and chords and chord progressions were never tossed out into the universe and expected to miraculously coalesce into Song. The mathematics behind music were known, studied, explored. Art happened when head and heart sat down and jammed.

And sometimes, sometimes magic happened. Sometimes it happened in dark bars where her shoes stuck to the floor. Sometimes it happened in the secret places between worlds. Sometimes it happened as cells divided and twin parasites became people.

Still Singing, Charlie felt power flare.

Heard two new voices separate, no longer adding depth to Allie’s song but beginning their own.

Charlie Sang the family gathered round—in the park, on the hill, in the circle. David on four feet, the men in full horn. Blood and pain and welcome.

There was a future. Auntie Catherine had seen it.

Charlie squared her shoulders, and stepped out of the Wood.