Ruby had been spending more and more time playing, perfecting sections from Sibelius’s D Minor Concerto. The piece was fiendishly difficult, and while she played, she felt she had a sense of purpose, a hope that she might conquer it, do it justice, as only the best players could. Only when the callouses on the tips of her fingers started to bleed onto the ebony of the fingerboard and her shoulders screamed from the tension of the playing position would she wrap the instrument in its ancient duster and place it safely away. Only then would the bad thoughts seep in, along with the loneliness. She tried to keep playing until it was time to watch Yoga Man, but sometimes it wasn’t possible. Thank goodness, then, that in the past few weeks she’d felt a new awakening. She’d started to compose something herself; a piece that, when she was immersed in it, chased away the bad thoughts so completely that she was entirely made of music. It was as if when she played, she was losing herself in becoming a conduit for Sibelius or Mozart or Grieg. But when she sat down to compose, the conduit was something else, not a person. A spirit perhaps, but not a completely nice one. It had personality, this muse of hers.

The melody she was writing had appeared, fully formed, as she watched Yoga Man one night, and she’d scribbled it down, convinced it was something she’d heard before. She hummed it quietly, and its haunting beauty made her think of the ocean at night. The theme began with a tritone—the Devil’s interval—and in her head the first three notes were played slowly, almost tentatively, on a low flute echoed by a solo viola. Where had she heard it before? It turned out she hadn’t. The tune felt so complete, so filmic, and filled with a kind of foreboding. As she went deeper into the composition, it felt less as if someone else had written it, more that it was writing itself. And since then, every time she returned to the manuscript, it seemed like the notes were coming from another place, through her rather than from her. Her fingers held the pen that rested on the paper, and from it the music surged, unexpected, sometimes chilling, and utterly exquisite.