Heartfelt Sounds Read Online Free Page A

hard thump of carriages outside. I catch a whiff of spring, the gentle scent of flowers on a wind made humid with the promise of rain.
    I want to go home.
    Shanti leads me to a door to her right. Slides it open gently. It hisses.
    The room is only slightly bigger than my room at the Orthella. She has already laid out a mat for me, and it lays parallel to her own which is decorated with plush pillows. All purple or plum. Between these mats sits a little table that is low to the ground. On top of it sits stationary. A brush and an ink pot. Behind this, a large window is closed with thick blinds of flax.
    Shanti gifts me one of her pillows, along with an overdress of lavender which she folds and lays down beside my mat before she leaves the room. Leaving me alone.
    I lay myself down, head propped upon the pillow. It smells of goosedown and I breathe it in.
    It smells like strangeness. Like a home that is not my own.
    I hear loud chatter in the streets. Merchants calling. A bell— ding-dong! Ding-dong!
    I close my eyes.
    Girlish laughter erupts from outside my door.
    I snap my eyes open—thinking it's Lore and the others. Thinking I'm home.
    But the voices are foreign. The chatter is benign.
    I am not home.
    And I begin to fear that I never will be.
    …
    I have barely slept when Shanti shakes me awake—her arms heavy with plump bags full of pastel colored fabrics.
    “You're to help me.” she smiles.

5. The Weaver Girl
    I throw on the lavender gown above my shift in a daze. When she drops the bags with a sigh, I quickly scoop them up.
    As Shanti smiles, purple eyes narrow. “Are you sure you can carry all that?” she asks with a slightly cocked head.
    I nod—determined to help. Determined to earn my place here—the tears of yesterday gone for the moment. “I'll be okay.” I murmur, barely believing myself as the bags of fabric pull heavily at my arms. “Where do you want these?”
    She claps suddenly. A single sound. A rap that bursts from the center of her clasped hands. “I'm so lucky to have a helper!” She says, her smile wide as she crosses the room, leading me out. “Do you remember how I used to sew for the girls—back at the Orthella?”
    “I was young when you left.” Far too young to remember much.
    The hallway is dark. Behind me, the window which oozed light just the day before is shut tight. Flaxen blinds covering it. Blinding it.
    Shanti gazes over her shoulder, her violet eye crinkles at its corner. “Then you're in for a treat.”
    …
    In a rush of purple fabric, Shanti leads me through the parlor from yesterday. Her strides are long and graceful, her height emphasized when she crosses the parlor in three quick steps. I jog to keep up—my arms heavy and aching from the weight of the bloated bags. She waits for me by the green door I entered yesterday, and when I finally approach her, she throws the door open. Smells the morning air with a sigh. Lifts her hands to the sky and takes a sharp right.
    The alleyway is tight and dark. When I look over my shoulder, brown splinters still litter the ground where my zither broke and the man collapsed—bleeding. The blood has disappeared now, but the splinters still remain. And I wonder if I'll ever make music again as my tongue glues itself to the roof of my mouth. I wonder if I'll ever sing.
    Farther down the corridor, Shanti slightly raises her hand and waves before she opens a burgundy door and disappears behind it. I follow, shoulders up to my ears as my fingers burn with pain.
    I enter a cozy brown room with a stone floor. To my left, the skeleton of a staircase rises to an open second floor and a breezy archway. On the ground floor, a large wooden loom opens its gaping mouth before me—the threads like tiny teeth as Shanti slowly strums them. She plucks at a snare and hisses when the thing bites back. Leaning upon the right wall is a table overflowing with beautiful fabric, and I move to set the bags near there. Dust rolls from the floor when I