Page 37 of Our Strange Duet

“I don’t know the words,” I admitted, feeling foolish. The music was just on the edge of familiarity, but each time the refrain began to resolve into something I felt I recognized, the Angel would alter it, changing the line’s tempo or its key.

“You don’t need them. Sing.”

“But—”

“Sing, Christine,” he pleaded.

I wanted to. I felt pulled by a strange compulsion to do anything he asked of me, but something about this song felt…dangerous. It was too big, too easy to lose oneself in. I had the unreasonable fear that should our voices blend together, it would be like tossing embers on a pile of kindling.

Both of us would be set ablaze.

“It’s there, inside you,” he promised. “Just let it out, Christine. Let everything out. Sing. Sing for me.”

I parted my lips, ready to protest, but a series of notes poured out instead. They wavered, trying to find the right complement to the Angel’s, before striking the perfect tone.

It was just as I feared.

It was greater than I could have imagined.

Our voices collided, igniting an explosion of fireworks. It was as if a bomb had gone off. The aftershocks left me reeling.

Together, we swooped along the melody, our notes entwined in a sinuous embrace. He coaxed the music from me, drew it out of blood and marrow, pulling it from parts of me so deep I’d never even known they’d existed.

But he had.

I felt laid bare and exposed. I could not have been more seen had I stood before him stripped naked, clothed in nothing but awestruck reverence.

He saw me. He saw all of me.

Every yearning, every impulse. Each soaring joy, each sorrowful regret and smoldering shame. He saw my hidden secrets, my darkest desires. I had no doubt that he saw things in me that even I was unaware of, dreams and wishes hoped for in the deepest recesses of my soul. He saw every fiber, every flexing muscle, every straining sinew. The beat of my heart. The racing of my blood.

I leaned toward him, wondering what things I could uncover there in his shadow.

But I suddenly lurched backward, my equilibrium thrown to chaos, as the skiff met shore. He grabbed my hand, saving me from falling.

I turned to look behind me and caught my first glimpse of…

I squinted, unable to make sense of anything I saw. There were too many candles; there was too much smoke. But then I saw the pipes. They spanned an entire wall, tallest at its center, then receding as they trailed toward the corners.

It was an organ.

And there, in one of the far niches, a grand piano, so sleek and black it looked as if it were made out of the night itself. There were other instruments too. A cello, a bass, and a beautiful violin, resting on a marbled plinth like a prized statue. There were brass horns and woodwinds of all sizes. Some were familiar. Others looked like alien creatures pulled out of the deepest depths of the sea.

The Angel helped me from the boat, and I entered his domain, too awestruck to ask for permission, too enchanted to wait for a tour.

One table was heavy-laden with architectural renderings and schematics. Rolled tubes of paper littered the floor beneath it. Tiny models of arches and towers held open a ground plan. Its blue lines were too complicated for me to decipher, but I traced my finger over one of the models, a small version of the opera’s façade.

There were other things littering the space too, strange mechanical pieces I did not understand. Cogs and wheels, tools and scrap metal. Springs and spools of wires, bits of fabric, coils of rope. Packets of ribbon, lengths of thread.

He was using them to build…I didn’t know what to call them. They looked like the dress-form dummies filling the wardrobe department, but instead of structured muslin and horsehair, these figures were wood and metal, like the inner workings of a clock. Disembodied hands flexed fingers in hypnotic patterns and a pair of pointe shoes pirouetted round and round without an attached dancer.

Automatons!

The word bloomed in my mind, though I was certain I’d never heard it before.

One of their ilk sat on a papier-mâché box, looking more finished than the rest of its brethren. It was a monkey, with tufted hair and a jewel-toned vest. He held a pair of brass cymbals, and I wondered if there was some sort of switch that would make him play. As I looked, his eyes seemed to catch mine, and, for just a second, I thought he winked at me.

And then there was the music…