Ada wrinkled her nose in consideration but shook her head.
“I was going to straighten up our room and go to bed early tonight.”
“That is possibly the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” Corinne grabbed her upper arm with both hands. “Please? I’m bored, Ada.”
She dragged Ada’s name into a whine, giving her best puppy eyes, which Ada never had the heart to tell her weren’t persuasive in the least.
“Fine,” Ada said. “One round, and only because you’re so pathetic.”
“I’ll take it,” Corinne replied, scooting back so that Ada had room to pull up her legs and mirror Corinne’s posture. They sat face-to-face, Ada still holding her violin.
“You start,” Ada said. “Someplace warm.”
Corinne nodded, her face screwed up in concentration. Then she began to speak in measured rhythm.
“I found you and I lost you,
All on a gleaming day.
The day was filled with sunshine,
And the land was full of May.”
Ada released a breath and let herself succumb to the illusion. It was less like opening her mind and more like jumping into a rushing current. The room began to change around her. The ratty armchairs and cluttered coffee table dissolved like burning paper, crumbling into nothing. Suddenly they were sitting on a beach. Ada could feel the coarse sand tickling her legs and taste the salt in the air. The sun was scorching overhead, raising a sweat on her arms. She looked out over the cerulean sea and watched the white-capped waves. She could hear their rise and fall, a steady pulse beneath the cawing birds.
When Corinne created illusions, she usually only gave the broadest strokes, letting her audience’s mind fill in the details. She had told Ada once it was easier that way, and she still had control over the illusion as a whole. But with more effort, Corinne could draw every detail from her own mind, shaping it with precision so that every aspect was her own design.
Corinne grinned at her, and Ada realized it was her turn. She raised her violin and let the bow hover over the strings for a few seconds while she racked her mind for the perfect melody. Then she started to play, letting the emotion carry through the whole room, since there was no one but Corinne to feel it. Corinne softened as she let it wash over her.
Ada began with simple joy, then built in layers around it. Love. Wistfulness. The tiniest hint of fear at the inevitability of such joy fading.
Ada couldn’t read people’s minds to know their memories, but she could harmonize emotions to call forth specific types of recollections. Usually she just knew whether the listener would be remembering their childhood or thinking of a past love or mourning a loss. With Corinne it was different, because she knew so many of her memories so well. Ada had tailored her song to evoke the Wellses’ summer vacations on Martha’s Vineyard when Corinne was a child.
She could tell by Corinne’s expression—nostalgia chased by irritation—that she had succeeded. Corinne didn’t like being reminded of her family.
“Not fair,” Corinne told her.
Ada smiled and kept playing, but she slid into a new melody, drawing inspiration from the ocean that still stretched beyond the horizon. She summoned only emotions this time, no accompanying memories. Freedom. Power. A boundless, howling rage.
It was Corinne’s turn.
Corinne closed her eyes as the emotions filled her. She licked her lips and began to recite.
“Oh, a hidden power is in my breast,
A power that none can fathom;
I call the tides from seas of rest,
They rise, they fall, at my behest. . . .”
As she spoke, the tide began to rise. The sun fell behind roiling gray clouds, and the ocean boiled with the oncoming storm. Ada blinked, and they were no longer on the beach but on the edge of a towering cliff. The wind beat around them, pelting icy rain. A crash of thunder shook the rocky ground, reverberating in her chest. Then came the lightning, a jagged gash so bright that it seared the insides of Ada’s eyelids.
Corinne was grinning again, looking far too pleased with herself.
“Lightning comes before thunder,” Ada said.
Corinne scowled at her, and the illusion dropped. They were suddenly back in the common room, knee to knee on the couch. The rain that had been dripping down Ada’s face just a moment earlier had vanished without a trace.
“Best two out of three?” Corinne asked.
Ada laughed. Years ago, when they had first started this game, it had been a way to practice, with Corinne holding the illusions of everyday objects in her hands and Ada coaxing the simplest emotions from her violin. The harder they had pushed each other, the more complex the exercise had become, until it was less like practice and more like a conversation—a call and response with an intimacy that was lacking during onstage performances.
“I told you, I’m going to bed early,” Ada said.