“Thanks.” I glanced up at him. “I don’t think I’ve seen these pieces before. They’ll be fun to play.”
“I just wanted to hear something new.” Fayden shrugged. “There are a few more places I know where there’s more of this. I can get it for you, if you want. None of the other scavengers want it except for burning in the winter.”
My jaw dropped. “Burning music?”
“It’s a legitimate fuel source.”
I shook my head. “Please rescue it, if you can.”
“Sure.” He patted the piano’s lid. “Just keep playing. It’s . . . nice to listen to.”
I didn’t know what to say.
We’d been so distant since we were children, but now, he asked me to play specific pieces over others, showed me how to duck into the house without encountering Father, and taught me how to cook—sort of. There wasn’t much to cook, and he wasn’t particularly skilled at it himself. But we made do.
And a couple of times, Stef halted my playing to make repairs to the piano. I’d taught him what I knew about its inner workings, and how to tune it, and he’d picked up on the skills with alarming speed and understanding. He refelted some of the hammers where the felt had worn thin. He helped retune the piano, making adjustments while I listened and guided him to hit the right pitch. Soon, the piano sounded better than ever.
The improvements allowed me to play a wider range of music than before, without worrying so much about which keys needed to be avoided.
In the weeks immediately following Mother’s death, I hadn’t imagined I’d ever enjoy life again. But with Stef and Fayden working together, their mocking and encouragement, and the way our grins became easier around one another, it seemed, for the first time in what felt like ages, that I might actually be happy.
After hours of dismantling the glass curtain and organizing the bits of glass by color, we carried the blue shards in boxes into the woods, where Stef’s trap waited. The other colors would sit in the theater until we had a need for them.
Fayden and I sat at the base of an avocado tree, watching Stef shimmy up and down the tree, judging various pieces of glass against the surrounding foliage, hunting for just the angle to imitate the glimmer of sunlight on water.
Fayden cut an avocado in half, tossed the pit, and handed one side to me. Flies swarmed as if from nowhere; we swatted them away.
“Thanks.” The fruit had very little taste, thanks to the drought, but any food was a blessing. We’d all lost weight over the summer. Hunger was a constant low-grade sensation, something we were used to and didn’t even complain about anymore.
“How does it look up there?” Fayden called, startling a few nearby birds into silence.
Stef peered down from the browning leaves and grinned. “Cloudy.”
I scrambled to my feet. “Really?”
“What kind of clouds?” Fayden stood, too, and turned his face to the sky.
Only clear blue shone between the trees here, but Stef had a better view. “The kind that make rain. And they’re coming this way.”
“The trap—”
“Will have to wait.” Stef climbed down several branches, and jumped the last bit. “The glass that’s up there will stay through the storm—I think—but I won’t be able to do the rest of this in the rain.”
“But your meeting with the Council is this afternoon. What will you show them?”
Stef laughed and lifted his face as a cool wind pushed through the forest. “Nothing. I’ll tell them what I have so far, explain how it will work, show the diagrams—but there won’t be anything to see today.”
I glanced at the trees, the invisible trap hidden somewhere in the high boughs.
Stef sobered and bumped my arm. “Don’t worry. The trap is functional. If a troll comes through in the rain, it’s dead. And then we have an even better demonstration for the Council.”
“Oh, good.” Relieved, I helped pack away the bits of glass, placing them carefully between tattered shirts and strips of cloth.
Wind picked up as we hefted the boxes and headed back toward the Community, bringing an ominous hush to the woods. “We can stop by our house on the way to the Center and drop off the glass.” Father would still be out for the day, working to build up homes and shops with better walls or more level floors; most of the Community lived in sad accommodations.
Wind whipped the trees, and shrieks and shouts came from the Community ahead.