I know that if I am patient, I can ask Dax or Simon to explain how time works here, but I can’t bear not knowing how much time I have left, nor how much time has been wasted—by waiting.
I can think of one way of checking the time. The gate is supposed to be active for twenty-four hours. If I can trace my way back to it and it is still active, then I will at least know that it has only been hours. Not a whole day or possibly even a week—or maybe more—that has been wasted.
I go to the window and find that it opens. It’s a two-story drop, but that doesn’t hinder me. Neither does the idea of being seen.
Stealth is one of the things I have been trained in. I excel in it, actually. Out of necessity to avoid Rowan and his cronies, not to mention the prying eyes of the Court. I know I can find my way to the gate and back without being detected. Just stick to the shadows cast by the sun. I can be there and back before the others return.
No one will even know that I was gone.
chapter ten
DAPHNE
I don’t need Marta’s map to find the grove. I follow the path on my bike, finding my way by sound. Like the grove’s song is calling to me.
Most people would say that sounds weird. Or obsessive.
That’s how most people would describe my relationship with music. Many of my teachers did. A group of doctors had. I am always following some sound or song, trying to find the source. That time I crashed my bike on Canyon Road and ended up in the hospital in Saint George, the doctor had looked at me like I was crazy when I told him I was chasing a song and didn’t realize how fast I was going down the hill.
“Chasing a song?” he’d asked. “Like you heard someone’s car radio?”
“No, it was a Joshua tree. It was singing at the bottom of the hill. Its song was so pretty, I wanted to find it.”
“The tree was singing?” His eyebrows drew together. “Do other things sing? Do you hear them all the time? Do you hear music now?”
I nodded, thinking he was the crazy one. I never understood why other people didn’t hear the things I did. The different tones, sounds, melodies that came from living things. The doctor himself had a harsh, high-pitched tone, like the repetitive ting of a triangle. I didn’t care for it. He sent another couple of doctors to talk to my mom and me. I didn’t like their tones, either. And before we left the hospital, they’d diagnosed me with something called musical OCD. They said my connection with music went beyond interest or talent. They called it an obsession. They said I shouldn’t hear the things I heard. They said I was so obsessed that I didn’t know how to relate to the world around me in any other way than through sound and music. So, therefore, in order to cope, I attached musical notes and tones to everything around me.
They said the music wasn’t real, that it was all created by my dysfunctional brain.
They recommended therapy and medication. To this day, I still don’t know if my mom curtly refused their diagnosis because she hated the idea of taking me out of Ellis twice a week for therapy, or because she believed my insistence that the music was real. Either way, I am glad she didn’t let those doctors try to medicate the music out of me.
I use the sounds I hear to navigate my life. I use it to pick my friends. I am always drawn to people with warm, inviting melodies. I love grouping together the things and people whose tunes best complement each other. Like composing my own little symphony of friends. And it helps me read people’s emotions based on the shifts in the tones they put off. I use music to discover favorite things and find my favorite places. Even the earth itself has a song that I can hear when I am being very, very still.
That’s the real reason I want to rehearse in the grove. I want to be wrapped inside the grove’s song, and add my own music to it.
I cross the footbridge that leads to the grove on the smaller island of the lake. I get off my bike and walk it through the ring of tall poplar trees, which border the grove. They remind me of spires, stretching up as if in homage to the heavens. Smaller aspens and laurel trees fill in the center of the grove, creating a thick canopy of darkness—even in daytime—that must have been what kept others away. Normally, I am not keen on dark places, but the grove’s melody draws me in.