DARK TENDRILS FLICKERED in and out of the light. The moaning grew softer as I played a major scale—and they sang it back.
Every scale I played, every arpeggio and trill, the sylph echoed it and hummed closer. Heat brushed against my skin like breath as the shadows drew ever nearer, but did not attack. The scent of ozone filled the clearing, though, and the front light seemed to grow dimmer.
“Good Janan!” A boy’s voice came from the bottom of the path.
Every sylph went rigid and shrieked, and a wave of heat rolled toward the cottage. I gagged on the taste of ash, and sweat prickled over my skin.
“Stop!” The word was out before I could consider the wisdom of shouting, but the sylph froze. Adrenaline surged through me, making my head buzz with terror and my voice too high and pinched. “Stay where you are,” I called to the newcomer. “Stay out of their way.”
Silence. Either he had run, or he was doing as I said.
I couldn’t breathe through the heat. Too easily, I could recall the sensation of a sylph burning my hands. The blaze, the lightning pain, and then nothing.
These hadn’t burned me—yet—and if music would keep them from trying, I’d give them music. Sam would be out soon with the sylph eggs. I hoped.
Sweat pooled between my chin and the flute as the heat intensified, but I could feel their attention shifting back to me as I drew a breath, struggled to focus, and blew a stream of air across the mouthpiece. Haltingly, I played one of the first sonatas I’d learned. It was a sweet, unassuming thing called “Honey,” which Sam had named for Sarit and her apiary five or six lifetimes ago.
My hands and jaw shook, but after a few moments, the sylph heat faded. One or two tried to sing along, and more caught on as I kept playing.
The sylph danced, black knotting with black. Ropes of darkness reached toward the stars, twisting with one another until they melted into one writhing shape.
They seemed to…enjoy the music. A little more confident, I stepped closer and they moved back—as though I were a light they couldn’t stand to be near. But they kept singing, kept twisting. They kept dancing, even as we moved away from the cottage.
Sylph had always been terrifying shadow predators, but these were behaving unlike any sylph I’d ever met. Not like the ones that had chased me on my eighteenth birthday, or the one that had burned my hands the day after. They weren’t even like the ones that had been at Templedark, though those had behaved strangely as well, fleeing from my father.
But this. Dancing. This was not sylphlike behavior at all.
The sonata came to an end. I smothered a moment of panic—would they be angry?—but the sylph hmmed and murmured the melody here and there, like echoes or making sure they hit the right notes.
One at a time, sylph drifted down the path, humming as they went.
Brush rustled, and a flashlight beam bounced across the yard as the newcomer hurried out of their path. When they were gone, the boy climbed the hill, sagging under the weight of his enormous backpack. “What did you do?” he asked.
I clutched my flute to my chest, waiting for my heartbeat to slow to a normal speed. I had no idea what I’d done. They heard the music, sang along, and went away. It was very odd behavior.
The boy didn’t wait for an answer. He pulled his backpack off and dropped it to the ground beside him, glancing over his shoulder like he thought the sylph might change their minds. Did they have minds? They were incorporeal shadows, affecting the world only with their heat. My hands prickled with memory of sylph burns and my phoenix feeling from months ago. The pain had been excrutiating, but when it was over, my scars had been burned away.
“Were they after you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I was walking here and heard your playing. I thought you might be—” He shrugged the words off. “Then I saw the sylph as I approached the path. That’s it.”
“Hmm.” I looked beyond him into the forest, but nighttime hid everything, especially sylph.
“I’m sorry,” he said, offering his hand. “I’ve been rude. I don’t think we’ve met in this life. Cris.”
“Cris.” I glanced at the cottage as Sam’s rushed footfalls came toward the front door. “Purple rose Cris.”
He made a smile that might have been a grimace. “Yes.”
“Sorry, I meant blue.” According to everyone, Cris had bet he could grow the perfect blue rose, supposedly a genetic impossibility. Four lifetimes of rose breeding later, everyone said the results were purple, and Cris left his cottage. This cottage, which people called Purple Rose Cottage to mock his attempt.
“Don’t worry about it.” Another smile-grimace. Cris was tall and narrow, with sharp points at his cheekbones and chin, accented by short hair. Physically, he was maybe only a couple of years older than Sam and me. In reality…
They were all much, much older.