Emeline swallowed hard. “And the sheet music?”
“I’ve just offered you your life. Don’t get greedy.”
There was still no sign of Hawthorne. How deep did that cavern go? Would he keep searching until he found the music? If Claw spoke the truth, he’d be searching for ages. Emeline couldn’t keep Claw distracted forever.
She had to warn Hawthorne. But there was no way to do that, trapped as she was on this cliff wall, with a dragon between them.
“Well, creature? What will it be?”
She couldn’t sing from out here, desperately clinging to the side of a cliff.
“I need your word,” she said, thinking of Hawthorne’s warning. “That you won’t hurt me before I finish.”
“You have it.”
Breathing in deep, Emeline shuffled back to the ledge. She moved slowly, to buy Hawthorne more time. Shale crumbled beneath her feet, scattering softly down the cliff face.
“My patience is wearing thin,” growled Claw.“Hurry up before I change my mind.”
When her feet landed on solid rock again, the dragon rose from where it sat up on all fours, nostrils flaring as he followed her scent. He stood over her, the way an ocean liner towers over a rowboat. He was so impossibly huge, he blocked out the sun. Emeline shivered in his shadow.
“Begin,” he growled. “Now.”
Emeline’s fingers itched for her ukulele. She curled them into her palm. She’d have to make do without.
Letting habit guide her, she shuffled through invisible set lists in her mind, searching for the right song.
The air felt charged suddenly, like the moment she got up onstage, before her fingers started to strum and her voice started to sing, pulse humming, stomach clenching. Wondering what kind of crowd it would be, and if she could woo them. Everything resting on her and her voice.
Taking a deep breath, Emeline closed her eyes and began to sing.
She chose Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” It was a cover she used at almost every gig. Not only was it a crowd-pleaser; it was one of Pa’s favorites. He used to sing it to her when he put her to bed as a child. Like a lullaby. And perhaps, deep down, that was why she chose it: because of the memory it contained.
Songs, for Emeline, were like time capsules. They always had been. For her, every song contained a moment from her past trapped inside.
This song—“Hallelujah”—made the cliffside and the rockyledge and the forest disappear.Thissong smelled like the scent of laundry detergent on her pillows. It sounded like Pa’s deep voice, singing off-key as he sat at the edge of her bed, rubbing slow, comforting circles into her back as he tried to lull her to sleep.
She often played this song during gigs to keep the loneliness at bay. She played it because it took her to a place where she still had her grandfather … and he still had her.
Claw yawned as she sang the first verse, then folded in on himself, curling up beside her. His scales and feathers rippled as his body softened.
As the second verse flowed out of her, Claw’s eyelids drooped. His serpentine tail whooshed softly across the rock, lazy and slow.
When Emeline reached the bridge, still trapped in the memory of Pa singing her to sleep, Claw’s jowls went slack, gray lips resting on the ground, as if he was utterly at his leisure.
Emeline sang on.
Only when she reached the end, voice trailing into silence, did the memory release her from its hold. Emeline clung, grasping at it, not yet ready to let go. But the song was over, the memory gone. And as it left, something else left with it. She felt it pour out of her, leaving her empty.
She shook off the feeling as Claw’s snores rumbled through the rock beneath her. Emeline looked down to find the dragon’s eyes closed, his chest steadily rising and falling, and his gray tongue lolling out of his half-open mouth.
She’d sung him to sleep.
A laugh bubbled up at the absurdity of it. She quickly swallowed it down. They weren’t out of this yet. Emeline’s fingers pulled at the rope looped around her waist. Hawthorne’s knots were tight and secure, but she figured them out. When the ropeunraveled, she stepped out of it—slowly, lightly, so as not to wake the sleeping dragon.
But as she stepped into the aerie, an odd heaviness sank into her bones, dragging her down. As if the song had taken a toll on her.
Don’t be silly.
