Wayfarer by Alexandra Bracken
“I’m more nervous about the interview for the tutoring gig on Tuesday,” she whispered back, needing to bolster herself a bit. Whether Gabby actually believed her was up for debate.
The strings caught her attention again, with a vibrancy and joy that breathed life into the tiers of Carnegie Hall’s audience. She felt them stir, responding to the triumphant call of the first movement. And in that moment, she let herself resonate with that tone; she let the piece lift her out of the quiet, small existence she led.
It was an odd thing, she’d discovered, to haunt your old life. A year before, Etta had waited until the fourth of November, her eighteenth birthday, before self-enrolling late in the fall semester at Eleanor Roosevelt High School using the meticulous, not entirely truthful homeschooling records Alice had kept on her behalf. For the first two weeks, she’d walked past the music room, daring herself to go in, to see if there could be a place for her in the orchestra.
There was. She very much liked the idea of playing as part of a group, of disappearing seamlessly into a whole, but the challenge wasn’t there, and Etta had felt herself settling into a complacency that frightened her. The teacher, Mr. Mangrave, recommended her to the director of the New York Youth Symphony, who allowed her to gladly take a seat left open by some poor boy who’d managed to break both of his arms falling off a bike. After graduating high school and spending the summer teaching violin and waitressing, she had auditioned again for a second year with the program to fill the time that wasn’t spent applying for college.
Only sometimes did she let herself go to the Met. On days when it rained, or she was caught in a black mood, or it somehow seemed that enough time had passed to check again. She would always pay the full suggested donation to enter, walk through the exhibits she did not recognize, and sit at the top of the stairwell, waiting.
Now Etta was finished waiting.
The intermediate orchestra moved flawlessly into the second movement. Next to her, Gabby began to shift from foot to foot, adjusting the collar on her black dress. Etta had pulled her own plain, floor-length gown from Alice’s closet. She wondered what her old instructor would have made of all this. Sighing, Etta reached up to smooth a stray hair back into her low chignon, and glanced over at her friend.
Gabby was the only other member of the senior orchestra from her school. She seemed determined to befriend everyone, even the shell-shocked blond girl who would only be in school for about seven months, and she had dragged Etta through all of the introductions in the group. She’d walked her home the night after their first practice, just talking, filling her in on the intricate hierarchy of who was who in their school. And then she’d managed to draw Etta right into her family’s life, where they had welcomed her like another child, and never once mentioned how odd it was that her mother was constantly traveling and never available to take calls.
It was the oddest thing, because the more time Etta spent with Gabby, the better she came to understand her mother. She caught herself managing that same careful distance Rose had cultivated, not only between herself and her daughter, but with everyone in her life save for Alice. Etta tried to fixate on the memories of the life she’d had with Rose before all of this, but inevitably the image of her on the ground, bleeding, dying, was close behind.
The finality of the realization that her father, Nicholas, all of the others, were not just lost to her, but dead, had left her unable to leave Alice’s apartment for days. It was easier to think of time, of their lives, as the loop Alice had written of—that, although they were not with her now, they were still alive in the past.
As much as she understood why Nicholas had done it, understanding did nothing to beat back the piercing loneliness, or the devastation of its finality.
There were moments Etta felt suffocated by the secrets and scars, times she’d had to dig her nails into her palm to stop herself from telling Gabby the truth: that her frequent nightmares weren’t about stage fright or even failing school, but about ancient cities long dead, deserts, and shadows in a dark forest.
There were nights Etta dreamt of drowning, of sinking further and further into the black heart of the sea. No one came to rescue her.
She’d had to rescue herself.
It was only that…now and then, she caught a fragment of a memory long enough to examine it, each a lesson in heartbreak. Nicholas’s secret smile in the rain. Henry’s eyes, watching her play for the tsar. Her mother’s pale hand reaching for her, just as the timeline reset.
The sudden roll of applause startled Etta out of her thoughts. She straightened, shifting her violin out from under her arm, feeling something like a warm buzz move against her skin. The orchestra cleared out through the other stage wing, allowing the senior orchestra members to flood out to claim their seats.
Gabby flashed Etta a huge smile as she stepped out with the others to renewed applause, taking over Etta’s post as the concertmaster. The rest of the students whispered words of good luck and encouragement to Etta as they passed by.
“All right, here we go,” Mr. Davis said, coming up behind her. “I’m so grateful this worked out—I can’t thank you enough for stepping up like this.”
Sasha Chung, a celebrated violin virtuoso new to this version of the timeline, had been slated to perform Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor for the concert; the idea being, Etta supposed, that Sasha would be an additional audience draw and help further raise the profile of the program. On the way to the airport in Paris, however, she’d been in a car accident that had sent her to the hospital, leaving them without a soloist.
“Thank you for the opportunity,” Etta said sincerely.
She liked Mr. Davis; it was easy to return the smile he gave her, to chuckle as he nudged her and whispered conspiratorially, “I think you play it better anyway.”
The orchestra fell silent, leaving only a few stray coughs from the audience to fill the darkness.
“That’s our cue,” Mr. Davis said, motioning her to step out first. Etta ducked around the curtain, half-blinded by the lights at the stage’s edge as she approached her spot near to the conductor’s stand. Because she knew it would make her laugh, Etta reached out and gravely shook Gabby’s hand, the way she would greet any concertmaster, and her friend turned pink with the effort to hold her giggles in. Mr. Davis situated himself at the front of the orchestra, and glanced her way.
She looked out into the audience one last time, at the way the lights under each tier of seating looked like necklaces strung with stars.
In most concertos, there was some small slice of time before the solo violinist entered the piece. But Mendelssohn broke with convention, and the solo violinist was present from the beginning, playing the tune in E minor that he once told a friend gave him “no peace” until he finally situated it in a concerto. Etta had always loved that story. There was something beautifully human in trying to capture a feeling, a fragment of notes, and translating it all into the universal language of music before it fled.
Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor fluidly shifted between three movements: allegro molto appassionato in E minor, andante in C major, and, finally, allegretto non troppo—allegro molto vivace in E major.
All right, Etta thought, lifting the violin to her shoulder, I hope you’re listening, Alice. Because she was going to play the hell out of this piece. She was going to bleed every last ounce of emotion out of it that she could.
Mr. Davis raised his hands.
Etta took a deep breath into her belly.
Felt the ripple of excitement race along her bare arms.
They began.
It was hard to describe exactly what she felt when she played. The best she had ever come up with was a feeling of being whole, though she hadn’t been aware something was lacking to begin with. She became a drop in a larger stream, driving steadily forward without hesitation. It was a voice of beauty when her own faltered.
Etta knew this concerto so well that she barely needed to think thro
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mr. Davis relax and lose himself in the piece. When she hit her first brief rest, Etta risked a glance out to the audience. Something pale caught and drew her gaze to the right end of the front row.
Rose.
The word swung wildly through her mind. But she was impossible in every way, by every definition: impossible to tame, impossible to capture, impossible to stop.
Her mother wore a navy dress, the bandage around her throat half-hidden by a scarf, gazing up at Etta with a faint smile on her face. Etta sucked in her next breath as a quiet gasp, the sight of Rose working through her like a lightning bolt, stunning her so greatly she nearly missed her next entrance back into the piece. But once she’d seen her, Etta found she couldn’t stop looking at her, at her mother’s expression of pride. When Rose turned to look to the other end of the row, Etta nearly dropped her violin.
Henry sat on the edge of his seat, his elbows braced against his knees, his hands covering his mouth, as if trying to hold something—some word, some feeling—in by force. Etta’s heart began to pound, and she felt as if she were rising off the stage as she coaxed the music from her violin. She wanted to shut it off, that swell of emotion in her chest, but the moment she saw the light catch the tears in his eyes, Etta had to look away to keep from crying herself.
How?
The tempo picked up again as they flowed into the second movement, and the question was lost to the flurry of notes—but then the rest came, and she looked again, searching for their faces to ensure that they were still there.
The key changed from the E minor opening to a slower C major movement as they moved into the andante. The tone shifted to A minor, becoming darker. Her accompaniment took on a tremulous quality that required the entirety of her attention before they shifted back to the C major theme and glided to a serene conclusion.
They’re here.
How are they here?
After the second movement came a fourteen-bar transitional passage back into E minor for her and her fellow strings, and Etta braced herself for the fast passagework of sonata rondo form. When she looked up from her strings, her eyes drifted to the back of the auditorium, where a lone, shadowy figure leaned against the wall. Etta squinted, trying to make out the face. The set of his shoulders…the way he held his head—
As if sensing her gaze, he leaned closer to the dim light fixture on the wall behind him.
And suddenly, Etta knew joy. It passed through her like a thousand fluttering feathers.
She felt it explode inside of her as the orchestra moved as one through the effervescent finale, and the music became demanding again. Her mind could scarcely keep up with her fingers, and she had to tell herself, Slow down—she had to tell herself, Don’t rush—
Nicholas.
Etta soared through the ascending and descending arpeggios, trying to keep herself rooted to the stage, to the music. By the time she reached the frenetic coda, she was smiling, near to bursting with the rapid way her world had colored itself back in. She was playing now for the world to hear, and it didn’t matter that she might never have the opportunity again, it didn’t matter that the still life she’d built for herself over the last few months was on the verge of collapse. Etta reached the final note and felt as if the roof had cracked open and finally let the starlight back into her world.
She couldn’t hear the applause over her own heart. Some part of her remembered shaking Mr. Davis’s hand, him saying something to her that was lost as she turned to thank the orchestra. Gabby had to point to the front of the stage to remind her to take her bow.
Etta was the first one off the stage, setting her violin down in its open case backstage and bolting to the green room, and then to the west gallery, which ran along the auditorium seating. The man working the concession stand looked up, startled by her sudden, frantic appearance as she moved past him, exiting at the back of the house and all but exploding through the doors into the lobby.
Nicholas stood a short distance away, hovering near the closed ticket counters. To anyone else, he might have been the portrait of nonchalance, but Etta read the uncertainty in his stance as he tried to take in the lights, the sounds of this world around him. He kept one hand tucked into the modern, relaxed black slacks he wore; he used the other to smooth down the front of his crisp white button-down.
“Hi,” she managed.
“Hi,” he said, sounding slightly out of breath himself. “That was…astonishing. You are astonishing.”
She took another step toward him. Another. And another. Slowly, until he could no longer stand it, and met her halfway. Etta felt unbearably raw, as if her chest had been cut open and her swollen heart was there for all to see.
“And you’re…here.”
The smile that crept across his face was mirrored in full effect on her own. “I am.”
“And…my parents?”
How?
Nicholas laughed softly. “We might have been here to greet you before the start of the concert, but neither could agree on how best to arrive, and by then, there were few seats left to be had.”
Etta was almost dizzy with the sight of him after so long. “I don’t understand—the passage closed.”
He slipped his left hand out from behind his back and turned the palm up to face her. What she saw there was a scar, a whole network of them, that crisscrossed and wove through one another, creating what looked to her like…
“The astrolabe,” she breathed, reaching out to grip his hand, to take a closer look. He’d been holding it when it was destroyed, keeping it in place.
“It took me some time, pirate,” he said quietly, stepping close enough to her that she could see his pulse flutter in his throat. “To find your father in Moscow, and your mother in Verona, and wait for her to be strong enough to travel once more. Li Min did something to keep her breathing before we were all scattered across the years. I’ll not pretend to understand, and while it’s cost her the ability to speak, she is whole, and well. Then there was the not-insignificant matter of finding something from your time to create the passage here. A separate journey unto itself entirely.”
Etta was so close to him now that she had to crane her head back to look up past the strong line of his jaw into his beautiful face. “What did you use?”
He dug a hand into his pocket and pulled out a cheap plastic key chain with the I ♥ NY logo, dangling it in front of her. Etta laughed, taking it from him. “Okay, I need this story.”
Nicholas’s smile was so unguarded, so freely given, she nearly cried at the sight of it. “The Belladonna had it in her vast collection. She was attempting to fetch a king’s ransom for it—or another favor. The resulting destruction to her shop as your parents dueled for who had the right to take the favor caused her to throw it at me and banish us.”
“You’re joking.”
“Sophia called it the most breathtaking display of stupidity she’s ever witnessed—and passes along her regards,” he said.
“So you tracked down Sophia,” Etta said, understanding. “And Li Min?”
“We separated only so she could search for her on her own.” His hand hovered above her face for a moment, tracing the shape of it into the air. His throat jumped as he swallowed hard, bringing the tips of his fingers to brush the loose hairs back out of Etta’s face.
Etta wanted to always remember the look on his face as she kissed his smiling mouth, ki
“It was my turn,” she said at last. “To find you.”
“I consider us remarkably even on that score,” he said with a soft laugh. “But I thought, perhaps, you might like to accompany me to find the others who might be in need of rescue?”
Etta took a small step back, feeling hope shimmer around her like a trembling note.
“You’re opening them all,” she breathed out.
He nodded. “At least, trying to bridge those gaps between what was, what is, and what should be. I think we’ll try again. The families. I think we ought to make a life of it, and if there’s a better way, I think I should very much like for you to help me find it, Miss Spencer.”
She stroked the scarred skin of his palm again, letting her fingers slide down to interlace with his. A thread of doubt wove through the swirling mass of joy. Nicholas ducked his head to meet her gaze, and she saw the question in his eyes.
“Miss Spencer,” she said softly. “Is that who I am?”
Over the last year, she’d tried to piece together her old life, only to find that most of its pieces no longer existed, and the ones that did exist felt like they might choke her if she tried to wear them again.
“You could be a Hemlock, as I could be an Ironwood; or you could sign your name with Linden, as I might sign mine with Hall. Or perhaps you are Miss Spencer, and always will be,” he told her, his thumb skating over her cheek. “Or you could choose, one day, to be a Carter. Or we might be nothing beyond you and I, and be done with this business of names once and for all, for they have never once had a true bearing on who we are or who we intend to be.”