Chapter Sixteen
Roxie
The singing is here, it’s real, and it’s beautiful.
I throw my head back and sing along. I can barely help it. I twirl as I walk through the tunnel systems, arms stretched out wide, and I sing as loud as I can. I know it’s stupid -- I know there are things out there trying to find me, but honestly I can’t help it.
It’s almost as if I’m being compelled, deep in my very being, to sing along to this beautiful, harmonious, haunting music. It’s like I know this song by heart, and it’s bursting from my chest.
As if everything in my life has led me here to become a part of this song.
Maybe I belong here. Maybe the Oracle knew that.
Maybe…
I snap out of my trancelike state momentarily and stop singing as I realize I’m in a wide cavern now, lit by streams of light from above, here and there. Twisting roots make up the ground and the walls and part of the ceiling.
I stand in the center of the cavern and fold my arms, humming at first and then singing, tapping my feet on the root-covered ground beneath me. A few feet away from me stands another one of those same electronic black boxes. It blinks with a green light, and it makes me uncomfortable to be around.
I can tell, almost, by the pattern of the melody, that whoever I’m singing along with does not like the black box. The singing voices do not want me to go near the black box. They want me to come closer to them. To be with them. Not with the box.
The more I listen to the singing, the more the musician in me begins to hear the patterns. The peaks and the troughs. The riffs that are left without logical conclusions; the harmonies that don’t quite sound beautiful, and the rush of silence between the notes. It’s like a language that I’m learning from scratch. After a few moments of listening to song, I sing a little of my own melody, and I hear the happy, proud tone I get in response and it makes me feel so good. Who I’m communicating with -- and what I’m saying -- is unclear, but it’s an amazing experience.
“Don’t stop, Roxie,” the AI in my ear says, breathless with excitement. I know it’s only an algorithm that has her speaking in that tone, but she sounds so human and so real, it’s unnerving sometimes. “I’m trying to translate -- I really am. Maybe I’m getting there. It’s just that they speak in notions -- primal feelings -- and not really in words like you and the Firosans do.”
I want to tell her I understand, but I’m trying to memorize the harmony that’s building into a crescendo around me. It’s fantastic. If I could learn this language, I would be a millionaire singer songwriter back on Earth within a year.
“Wait, is this the language of the--”
The ground rumbles beneath my feet and I look down, glancing up to see Vyken burst into the cavern and deflate with relief at seeing me. “Come here,” I cry to him, my knees feeling weak on seeing him. It’s only been two days, at most, and already I don’t like being without him for long. It’s like we’re two pieces of one machine, and we make more sense working alongside each other.
I wonder why that thought sprang to my mind, and I wonder if the singing voices are telling me that. It’s not the kind of thing I would have come up with on my own.
“Roxie.”
“You’re so tall,” I marvel at Vyken’s body. He must be over seven feet tall. At least! In fact … eight feet. Nine feet?
“You are shrinking into the ground,” he observes with a harsh panic note to his voice. The singing voices mimic that note and then build on it, bringing it up and up so that it’s calm and beautiful again. And instead of feeling panicked along with Vyken, I just feel calm. So calm. My eyelids are almost drooping shut.
“Roxie.” His voice grinds like a wrench in between gears, but again the voices catch his tone and repeat it, lighter and sharper and more and more carefree with every repetition.
They’re telling me not to listen to him -- that he’s overreacting. They’re telling me to take a nap.
To go under the ground and take a nap with them.
Forever.
It sounds lovely.
“Roxie,” he says again, but it sounds so muffled -- the singing is so loud now. I’m almost under the ground, and I’m so tired…
Suddenly I feel firm hands clamped over my ears and Vyken’s voice sounds again, vibrating through my skull. This time with nothing keening over it. “Roxie, snap out of it! They’re--”
My eyes fly open and I see clearly. I see Vyken’s worried, beautiful chiseled face … and the fact that the roots beneath my feet are swallowing me whole. Soon my chest will be under the ground. Why are they pulling me down like this?
“Drown out their voices,” Vyken said. “They’ve reverted to their most primal form of language, and it speaks to you for some reason.”
“I’m a singer,” I manage to croak to him. His eyebrows raise as if things are starting to make sense to him.
“The Suhlik device,” he reminds himself. “Do not struggle. Do not listen to the song. They need nourishment but they will not get it from you. We must save them.”
“What?” I reply, shifting my weight around and trying to find a root to grab onto to stop sinking, but nothing is working. If anything, I just slip under the surface faster the more I move around. “Hurry…” I gasp.
Nourishment?? These goddamn half-dead plant people are trying to eat me! This day just went from spectacular to shit real fast.
“No…” I hear Vyken mutter as he reaches the device in record time and inspects it, finding a button. I jerk my head in his direction in time to see a holographic image burst from the top and rotate slowly.
It’s him. How strange.
“No, no no!” he roars, kicking the black box so hard it clatters across the cavern.
“Vyken,” I call over again. “What’s going on?”
“My Roxie,” he says back, his voice a sharp hiss of regret. “Nothing you need to worry about. Just keep still. Keep breathing. Just wait. Everything is going to be fine.”
But I can hear his tone as plain as day. It’s being echoed in the earth, in the roots, in my own heart.
Everything is not going to be fine.