Strange Sweet Song Read Online Free Page A

last high F, not spinning as smoothly as it should?
    She forces herself to look away. What does she care what an apprentice thinks, anyway?
    Most of the faculty look as if they’ve seen too many auditions today. The president appears to be doing paperwork, and the Maestro is frowning, eyes boring into her. Professor Needleman wears an artificial smile, but at least she’s trying.
    Smile. Sing has forgotten to smile. Will it look strange if she starts now, halfway through? She does anyway, and her sound brightens. Angelique would have a bright, cheerful sound. She must show them she can do it. Here’s the money note, as her father likes to say. She sucks in a big breath and dives into the phrase; the note is good —very good—but she has wasted too much air on the rising melody and the climax is rushed because she’s not sure she can make it through. Then she backs off, worried that if she pushes too hard, the sound will become wobbly or, worse, break altogether. She can’t move her jaw. She tries to decrescendo on the last note, but the bottom just drops out and she’s left with a weak little whine.
    It’s an audition, so there is no applause, just silence as the professors make some notes. Sing doesn’t look back at Ryan. The president raises his eyes briefly and says, “Thank you,” in a final sort of way.
    Sing leaves. She doesn’t notice the apprentice, eyes fully open, frowning slightly.

 
    Seven
     
    T HE FELIX WAS BORN A BALL of light, a soft, twittering, warm thing who saw her own joy reflected in the eyes of her mother. They tumbled and skidded about the sky, and for the briefest of times, all was perfect.
    She wasn’t to know that her happiness set the universe listing, and something had to be done to put it right again.
    So came her brother, mangy and slick, with a film of blood over his eyes. Lashing and snapping, he ripped his way into the universe, took his first fortifying gasp, and set upon their mother like a demon.
    The Felix, older and stronger, lashed back as her mother’s eyes grew dull and empty. The cubs fought and tore and leapt, their cries audible even at the bottom of the oceans.
    Soon the Felix was alone, and might have been happy again even in mourning, with the memories of her mother and the beauty of the stars. But in taking the life of her nameless brother, she had broken her own heart. She was now darkness.
    That day, the Felix came to earth, and she has been wandering ever since. Little remains of her now except hunger and ferocity.

 
    Eight
     
    A NGELIQUE WAS THE FIRST OPERA SING ever saw. She remembers it perfectly—how she could have sworn the tall baritone was singing delicately into her ear instead of strutting around on a stage far below. How the chorus was one voice and many voices at the same time, the sound a school of glittering fish who flashed and darted and drifted perfectly together. And how it felt to see her— her —take those first graceful steps onto the set.
    She doesn’t know the soprano’s name, and it doesn’t matter. She was Angelique, her ruffly white dress billowing, golden hair cascading down her back in bouncy ringlets. Sing can still hear her sweet, light voice fluttering over the high notes and gently alighting on the low.
    It was one thing to sit in front of the record player and imagine, quite another to experience the tingle from chest to temples as the great singer filled the room with harmonics. Magic.
    Afterward, she dug out her father’s records and learned Angelique’s most famous aria, approximating the sounds of the mysterious foreign words. In response to her debut performance at the dinner table, her parents began to fight—her father saying, I said all along she was a singer, and her mother saying, We discussed this—it’s got to be the piano because she has no ear . Five-year-old Sing put her hands to her head in confusion and found both ears where they belonged.
    The piano turned out not to be Sing’s instrument after