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“That he had you.”

“And when you saw me tied to that pole?”

“I don’t remember.”

She groans, rolls her eyes, and falls back against the bench.

“I want to hear you. That’s all I’ve wanted since I met you. Now I can, and you’re giving me one-word answers.”

“I’m too stunned,” I tell her. “I don’t know what to say. That’s why I’m quiet.”

The island lamps come into view ahead of us before I’m ready for them. She stands up, closes the short distance between us, and presses herself to me, her arms around my waist and her face against my chest.

“Maybe it was a good thing,” she says. “It brought us back together.”

I turn my face away from her. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. She may not know until it’s too late to matter, and that’s my greatest fear. She says she’s not influenced by my voice, that she can leave if she wants to. But it’s hard to believe. Centuries of experience tell me it’s, in fact, impossible.

At the dock, I tie the boat to the post and reach into my coat, where the mask has been since I took it off in front of the whole city. I fit it to my face and fasten the clasps at the back of my head.

“Don’t,” she says. “Please don’t put that back on.”

“I feel better with it on.”

“I like your face.” She climbs onto the dock before I have a chance to offer her my hand. “I like all of you, just the way you are.”

It’s what I wanted to hear all my life, but I can’t help hearing it as a warning. I go up the stairs ahead of her and hear her follow. Inside the house, I don’t stop in the living room. I go down the corridor to the library, and Aveline runs after me and catches the door before it swings shut. I grab the books she was never allowed to touch, empty the glass case and the high shelves, and bring down the records I took from her hands and told her she wouldn’t like reading. I lay them open on the long table until there’s no wood showing.

“What are you looking for?” She’s out of breath. “Tell me. I’ll help.”

“Anything in the old songs that might explain why you’re not affected by my voice.”

“It’s probably because I was deaf when I met you.”

“That doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t.”

She gives me a pointed look, then pulls out a chair and sits down. She grabs the nearest book before I can protest and opens it.

I settle in a chair myself and start reading through everything, even though I know most of these songs and records my heart. I read the records of every community that ever found one of my kind, my own journals, my notes on the plague, and the fragments that were left after the Shift, some of them in languages no one uses anymore. None of them describes a person who heard the full voice of a Cantor and stayed of their own accord.

After a few hours of this, Aveline leaves and comes back with a plate for herself. She eats it beside me, looks at my mask, but doesn’t ask if I want any food. When she’s done, she spends another hour reading with me, then goes out again and returns with snacks we keep in the kitchen cupboard.

She turns her head toward a lamp when the oil pops, toward the shelves when a book shifts, and toward her own plate when the knife touches it. It’s like she’s finding out what random things sound like for the first time. She settles into the chair with her feet tucked under her and continues reading.

We keep at it late into the night. At some point, when I think she’s tired and about to give up and go to bed, she smacks her finger on a page in the oldest bound record I own. It’s a translation.

“These lines,” she says triumphantly.

I lean over. I know them well.

“I’ve seen the first two,” she says. “They were on the note Callum sent down with me.”

“Yes,” I say.

“I see there’s more.”