In the Cave of the Delicate Singers Read Online Free Page A

media, and National Guard are assembled, as another team of cavers prepares to go down. Boone’s there among them. Seeing me alive, his eyes well, as do mine. I tear off the headphones and sweet sound rushes in, the wind whistling, a truck backfiring, the crowd erupting into ecstatic cheers to see someone come out alive.
    Then they get a good look at me and my appearance—soaked, shivering, smeared with cave dirt and blood—shocks them silent. As one, they reel back. Finally the braver ones gather their wits and being firing off questions.
    What happened?
    What’s down there?
    Is anyone else still alive?
    But these are not words the way I remember them. What I hear is a saw-toothed cacophony, an unwholesome chorale—discordant, repellant, impure.
    I want to rush back inside the cave to get away from their cawing, but I remember that first, I have something important to do. I must warn them of the terrible danger, so I focus my mind and conjure the sounds I will need. When I know what I must say, I run toward Boone, who is already beckoning me. I scream, Get back! Get away from the cave! Everyone inside is dead!
    But that’s not what comes out.
    An excruciating hitch unlocks in my chest as an arcane melody, a kind of cryptic trilling, slithers free and soars to the winds—the feral and wondrous, delicate song birthed from the mouths of monsters, from Pree’s mouth into mine—into theirs.
    Madness made tangible.
    Contagion by sound.
    It spews from my lips—a song of such deadly beauty and unholy allure that I experience only the briefest frisson of horror—an emotion something inside me instantly quells—when their mouths fall open, songstruck, enthralled, and they begin to rend their own flesh and tear each other apart.
    I understand this is how it must be. I go on, unfazed by the carnage, undeterred by the din.
    For I am the throat of the Delicate Singers.
    In the cities, the towns, in the streets, and beyond, I know others are waiting to hear me.

 
    Thank you for buying this
    Tom Doherty Associates ebook.
    Â 
    To receive special offers, bonus content,
    and info on new releases and other great reads,
    sign up for our newsletters.
    Â 

    Or visit us online at
    us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

 

    Copyright © 2015 by Lucy Taylor
    Art copyright © 2015 by Ellen Barkin