Fazi, Melanie - [SS] In the Shape of a Dragon [v1.0]_files/image001.jpga N.E.R.D's Release.txtA N.E.R.D's Release

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Fazi, Melanie - [SS] In the Shape of a Dragon [v1.0].htm

IN THE SHAPE OF A DRAGON

MlanieFazi

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Mlaniewrites mostly in French (her fourth book, a collection of stories, is comingout in February in France) but some of her stories have been translated intoEnglish and have appeared in The Third Alternative, F&SF and TheYears Best Fantasy & Horror. She lives in Paris where she works as atranslator.

* * * *

Even the walls of the house could notentirely stifle it. As soon as one came in through the main door the firstsnatches were perceptible. It slid under the internal doors and haunted thecorridors, like a climbing plant that clings to empty space. It was everywhere,lurking in the corners. Seven days had passed, and even the night was no longersilent.

It was in Faustinesbedroom, next door to the studio, that the presence made itself felt mosttangibly. While still very small, Faustine had learned to lull herself to sleepto her fathers comings and goings in the neighbouring room, the noise offootsteps, the creaking of floorboards and the turned-down radio spinning aprotective cocoon around her. Sometimes, when she concentrated, she could evenmake out the gliding movement of the pencils lead over the paper. Papapreferred to work at night.

On the evenings whenthe studio remained closed it was from the living room, directly beneath herbedroom, that the music came to her, with the laughter of friends that Papainvited to stay late into the night. Faustine had learned, naturally, torelegate the noises to the backgroundat least when she did not strain herears, with supreme curiosity, to catch the idiot laughter of adults transformedby alcohol into a gang of dirty children. The noises kept her company while shelet herself slip into sleep. Absolute silence distressed her.

For a week she wokeup and went to sleep to the sound of the same overworked guitars on the otherside of the wall. On the first morning, it had woken her up with a start. Papahad his rituals while he was drawing, but turning the music right down in theearly hours had never been one of them. Faustine knew that from experience. Shehad hidden under the sheltering bedclothes to await the end of the songwhichwas renewed as soon as it was finished, in a perfect cycle. There was nothingastonishing in that: Papa liked to put certain songs on a loop in order towork. He too could be intimidated by silence.

Mama had comeknocking at the studio door: four closely-spaced raps, louder than wasnecessary. When Papa had opened it to her, their voices had drowned in thesonic mush. Even music allied itself with adults when it was a matter ofprotecting excessively curious childish ears. The door had closed again withoutFaustine having been able to catch a treasonous word on the wingand the musichad followed its perfectly circular trajectory. Hours, then days, went by.

Faustine had quicklybecome accustomed to it. By the second day she had ceased to find itastonishing. It was entirely natural to wake up to the vibrations off the bassline, which she perceived before even catching the voices of Mama and Williamin the kitchen. It was her first impression as she opened her eyes. Had it notbeen for the glances of annoyance they exchanged over the kitchen table at mealtimes, she would have forgotten that there had ever been a time before Papasabsence and the music in the studio. Mama did not even listen to the radio atbreakfast. In those early hours, the sound of her own voice became repugnant toher. She was eager to cut her sentences short with mouthfuls of coffee, andwould rather keep silent unless she was forced to answer questions. The trainof her thoughts was undoubtedly her most agreeable companion.

How could theyunderstand it, those whounlike Faustinedid not have the privilege of sharinga wall in common with the studio? She alone was close enough to hear itproperly. It is easy to grow weary of a song, when one stops at the surface.

Papa no longer lefthis studio. He took all his meals there, and if he came out occasionally insearch of provisions it was doubtless at a time when he knew that he would notbump into anyone. Faustine did not remember having heard him leave the room.Day and night, shuffling footsteps testified to his presence on the other sideof the wallunless she was confusing them with the echo of the drumbeat?

For a week, that muffledvoice had been that of the house. The mosaic woven by the guitars lived in thewalls, spreading itself out in the recesses like the filaments of a spidersweb. The bass imprinted its dull vibrations there until it had impregnatedthem. When Faustine had pressed her ear to her bedrooms decorative wallpaper,it had seemed to her that she felt a pulsation, as if the surface were animatedby a life of its own. Since then, a little of that energy had infected her inher turn. Even when she went out, she carried it within her. On the road toschool, that was what guided her steps. More than once, Faustine had beensurprised to find herself drumming on her school desk, recognising the familiarrhythm thereafter.

They ended up gettingused to one another; it was a mere matter of time. And Mama ended up prowlingaround the studio door on occasion, in the evening, in the hope that Papa wouldlet her come in. And William lifted his eyes to the heavens when he came homefrom college to find the silence still vanquished. He grumbled, thinking of allthe times when Mama had shouted at him for not turning the radio down in hisroom. Go figure the justice of grown-ups.

Faustine did notdespair of penetrating the secrets of what was still, on the first day, no morethan a vague drone. By straining her ears, she discerned the outline of astructure in the apparent chaos. It was at night, most of all, when the housefell silent, that the sounds revealed themselves to her. She learned toseparate out subtle intonations or, better still, successive layers, andwhatever she once unmasked remained definitely acquired. She soaked up soundsto the point of nausea, as if her stomach, filled up by a chocolate orgy,continued to demand its share of sugar: a hunger impossible to satisfy. Therewas something that required explanation.

That passage in whichthe song slowed down before bursting forth explosively ... Faustine would havegive a great deal to hear that clearly. It teased her senses and her brain, bydint of keeping them in a state of tension: the torture of Tantalus readaptedto her scale. It is difficult to appreciate music when a wall separates youfrom it. She still knew it only in fragmentary form, when its thread demandednothing less than to be laid entirely bare.

* * * *

On the seventhevening, rooted in front of the studio door, Faustine pushed audacity to thepoint of pressing her ear to the keyhole. The sound seemed clearer there, andcloser than everwithin arms reach, so to speak. There was no longer thethickness of a wall separating them, but a simple wooden panelhardly anythingto speak of, but still one barrier too many. The bass lines vibration hadalready reached her bones. One gesture would be enough to bring them together,so intimately that she had not dared imagine it.

The door swung openwithout any resistance, without even a creak of protest. To think that she hadalways believed it to be locked, as if it were a sanctuary!

Finally freed fromits shackles, the vague sound unfurled, engulfing her with its clarity. Itbrought Faustine out in goose-pimples. She was now at the heart of things.

The studio seemed sotiny. Judging by the noise of footsteps coming through the wall, and thepattern they traced, she had imagined that it would be more spacious. Her onlyprevious incursion into the room had taken place more than a year ago. Sincethen, a kind of superstitious dread had prevented her from going into it. Theplace was impregnated with an indefinable odour of paint and chemicals: analchemists lair, Faustine thought, undoubtedly possessed by something similar;it was a place where mysteries were created and penetrated.

Seated directly onthe carpet, with his back to one of the walls, Papa did not appear to noticeher intrusion. The source of the music, his CD player, was set at his feet.Faustine was sufficiently emboldened to take a step into the room, so that shemight close the door behind her. It was a bad idea to let the notes spread outinto the corridor; Mama would arrive within a minute to call loudly forsilence.

With the exception ofthe one that Papa was facing, the studio walls were covered with postcards andfilm stills, pinned directly to the wallpaper: decoration worthy of a teenagersbedroom, not of the room where a family man earned his daily crust. Papadesigned book covers; that was what Faustine wrote on the card on which herteacher asked her to write down her personal details at the beginning of eachschool year, under the heading parents profession. The studio wasreminiscent of Williams bedroom, with its walls covered in football posters.

The fourth wall hadbeen stripped in order to be plastered with as many drawings as spacepermitted. To judge by their perfect alignment, they had been arranged in thismanner quite recently, in order that they might be taken in by a single glancefrom the spot occupied by Papa.

Faustine creptforwards like a mouse, obliged to zigzag between the dirty plates and emptybeer- and soda-cans strewn upon the carpet. Excitement knotted her gut; if sheplaced herself right beside Papa, at the very source of the music, she wouldunderstand what she had been hearing for seven days. She would put her fingeron its essence.

When she sat downnext to her father, without a word, he gave her only the briefest glance. Heobviously had not shaved since he had closed the door between himself and theworld, not to mention changing his clothes. Between these four walls the notionof time took on an entirely different meaning. Apparently it had more than one.

The voices...

Faustine had alwaysexpected there to be only one voice. It was obvious now that she had overcomethe last barrier, though, that she had been listening to two voices allalong, without being able to tell them apart: two male voices, so similar intheir texture that a wall was sufficient to efface their differences; twovoices that alternated before joining together in subtle harmony.

The bass vibrationsslowly insinuated themselves beneath her skin to blossom inside her. She feltso well, as if she had found her true place. Every now and again, the songwould interrupt itself in order to begin anew: a slide, a burgeoning hum, acrescendo. Then one of the voices would pronounce the first words; everythingwould go smoothly.

But the voice thatwas raised first was her fathers.

I cant draw anymore, Faustine. Its over.

Slightly embarrassed,she resisted the temptation to stare at him. It was difficult to believe thatthis was the father she had seen full of smiles while he added the final touchto a new drawing: the father who sometimes sang joyful tunes in the privacy ofthe studio, while he naively thought himself sheltered from indiscreet ears. Tojudge by his tone, she thought he was about to burst into tears. But what wasthe world coming to, if fathers dissolved in tears in front of their youngdaughters?

Faustine redirectedher attention to the drawings. Her toes, like the fingers that clasped herknees, were trying to twitch in time to the rhythm, moved by an innate energy.She had not come in here to listen to a confession of impotence.

The wall wasplastered with drawings, some of which overlapped for want of space. Faustinerecognised some of them, but ... they were not the same. Altered. And notmerely because she had seen them in other circumstances, to the sound of othermusic than this. All of them, without exception, had changed to varyingdegrees: effaced by blots or scribbles, or torn as if by invisible talons,eaten away by an acid that had spared their backgrounds.

There was a besiegedand snowbound village; a pack of wolves with blood-reddened fangs; a swordembedded in a stone; a cloud of crows; a half-human, half-fox creature standingin a boat; a crocodile standing up on its hind legs. And, at the centre of thecollage, lined up side by side: four dragonsas similar as drawings traced bythe same hand could beidentical to a fifth dragon enthroned in the heart ofthe room, isolated on an easel.

That one lasted agood twelve days, Papa said. The contagion got to them all, one by one. Itall began with the zebrado you remember the zebra? The one William wanted tohang up in his room? Completely erased in the space of three days. Imagine askin disease that spreads like wildfire ... but one that attacks paintings. Adisease that has no cure. Do you understand?

You can draw themagain. I liked that onethe zebra.

Ive tried torestore the missing parts, but it does no good. The following day, everythinghas reverted to its former state. I cant draw any more, Faustine. Theres nothingleft for me to do.

Faustine only heardthe end of the sentence, because at that precise moment the song reached whatshe had nicknamed the roller-coaster passagethe one that she had never quitebeen able to make out through her bedroom wall, asking herself night afternight what was hidden in that sudden silence. But the cut-off was not quite asabrupt as she had always thought. The transition was too subtle for her to beable to perceive it until she found herself at the heart of things. The wholepiece built up to that moment: the progressive slowing down; the resumptionpreparing for the explosion, like a wild beast bracing its muscles beforeleaping upon its prey; the same savagery following the same cool premeditation.Faustine saw herself momentarily at the top of the roller-coaster, anticipatingthe moment when her stomach would turn in the intoxication of the descent.Until she heard this song, she had not known that music was able to reproducesuch a sensation.

It was necessary toconcentrate to hear Papa over the music, and she had no desire to make any sucheffort now that she had heard it for the first time. If only Faustine couldworm permission out of her parents to camp out in the studio for the whole ofthe following day, with that music, instead of going to school ... she had somuch to discover, more than she had ever learned in a day spent on the schoolbenches. It was there: true knowledge.

The music, Papawent on. You must have wondered about it, no?

Faustine pricked upher ears involuntarily. He had pronounced the key word.

Ive always drawn tomusic. Do you see all those drawings, on the wall? Every one of them was bornof a song. Sometimes just in the details, although Ive sometimes based anentire composition on a songbut never in so perfect a fashion as with thatdragon.

This was true.Faustines gaze had already lingered upon the dragons, entirely naturally. Theywere measuring one another as two creatures of the same species do whenencountering one another for the first time. She thought she had made out afamiliar gleam in the beasts eyes, doubtless because it seemed perfectlyintegrated with the musical passage. The combination of the dragons and themusic, their juxtaposition, gave Faustine an impression of plenitudeat leastso long as she made the effort to ignore the areas etched by the void, whichruined the perfection of the design.

Every song has astory to tell, you know, Papa went on. Sometimes one accepts me into itsconfidence, letting me tell it in pictures. I drew that dragonthe first, theone on the easelin a single session, in a state of grace. Ive never knownanything like it, and Ill never be able to repeat it. If I could just saveonethat one, especially...

Ive tried to standguard in the studio, day and night, hoping that the contagion would cease if Iremained here watching them all. One sometimes gets funny ideas, eh? But it wasno good. It was then that I decided to try to copy it. They arent as good, thefour others, dont you think? I drew them to the sound of the same song,though. It hasnt stopped cycling since.

Even from where shewas sitting, at the far side of the room, Faustine had no difficulty indifferentiating between the drawings, but she could not quite understand why.The four copies pinned to the wall had the contours, the colours and thetextures of the original, down to the smallest details. The same proud bearing,the same positioning of the tail and the limbs, the same reflections in thecomplex mosaic of their scalesbut the heart was no longer there. None of themtruly resembled the song. None of them reproduced the spark of life thatshone in the gaze of he original dragon. Their scales did not reflect the lightwith such precision. They could only simulate life, while the fifth possessedits essence.

When it began, I hadthe impression that the contagion spread less rapidly once I had set the songon a continuous loop. It was just enough, sometimes, to give me false hope. Itwas only two hours after I finished the last when they began to crumbleawayall four of them, with a common accord. Theyd certainly taken a rise outof me, so to speak.

It was odd, though,that Papa had not shown her this drawing before. More than once he had eruptedinto Faustines bedroom after her bed-time to show her his most recent work, ashappy as only a man intoxicated by his own creativity can be. It was so veryconvenient, her room being so close to his studio. Then too, Mama did not givehis drawings the same attention she once had: ten years as a teacher issometimes enough to deform the most innocent gaze. And William had decided,since starting at the college, to relegate his fathers drawings to thecategory of things associated with childhood, and hence detrimental andembarrassingespecially in front of his friends. Faustine alone still possessedan entirely virginal gaze.

Is that reallypossiblea song in the shape of a dragon?

Papa answered herwith the smile that he gave her every time that Faustine tried to dismantle theworkings of questions reserved for adults, as if to say: she understandsthings, my little girl.

In a manner ofspeaking. Listen carefully ... the riff, for example. Do you hear the riff?

Whats thatthereef?

By way of reply, Papaset himself to reproduce on the ground, with the tip of his index finger, themotif woven by the guitars. It was a rough approximation, but sufficient toallow Faustine to identify the designated element.

There it is, theriffdo you hear it? It has always evoked the image of a dragon in me. Imaginea dragon with a body as supple as a serpents, which might undulate to therhythm. And the progression ... I dont know how to explain it ... Youvenoticed that the song starts very slowly, to the sound of the bass line, andthat the tension mounts progressively? I dont know about you, but I find thatit speaks of an immense worm in the process of waking up.

Faustine understood,now. The music assumed the contours of a dragon, right down to its colour. Shedid not know yet how sounds could be translated into colours, but if this songhad one, it was definitely the blood-red of its scales. Perhaps, too, becausethe sleeve of the CD, placed next to the player, was itself almost uniformlyred?

And that was not all.There was that impression of strength, of pure energy, when the song attainedits apotheosis at the end of the third minute. That was the spark in the dragonseyes, the muscles that played behind its scaly carapace, the wings on the pointof unfurling. And the stormy sky in the background. The slowness of theopening, so very restrained, suggested the step of an enormous beast making theground shake.

Tell me, that funnynoise you can hear at the beginning...

Yes, Faustine?

She hesitated. Howcould she translate into words the subtle skimming of cymbals that she had onlyjust noticed? For want of the right terms, she found herself reduced toreproducing it with the tips of her fingers on the wall. Papa shook his head,visibly intrigued.

I think one mightcall it the sound of talons rubbing against rocks. Papa pointed a finger atthe easel, at the rocky ground that formed a casket around the beasts talonedfeet: the ground already corroded by the promise of impending obliteration.Although the dragon was still virtually intact, the scenery was beginning tocrumble into fragments.

It all seemed soclear now. The pulsation that breathed music into her life was the beating ofan enormous heart. So much still remained to be discovered in this arrangementof sounds, so many successive layers to strip away. Every day, more of it wouldbe revealed to her, provided that she learned to listen.

You know, Faustine,Ive been thinking quite a lot about this all week. Ive begun to ask myselfwhether I might have used up my capital. It may be the case that people like meonly receive their gift for a fixed period, their mission being to get the bestout of it. What do you think? Might it really be taken back? Because if thatsthe case ... how can I put it...? Papa searched for words with the air of agood pupil caught in flagrante delicto, having no ready answer to ateachers question. ...Ive never been able to do anything else.

Faustine did notreply. Since when did adults allow themselves to speak of confidential matterslike that in her presence? Parents usually kept that kind of subject forwhispering behind closed doors. Faustine was not sure that she had any desireto play the role of an outlet for secretsnot if that implied seeing her fatherthrow in the towel. Cowardice, in a grown-up, was too embarrassing to confront.

Anyway, that wasntthe important thing.

If he hadnt foundthe solution, that was doubtless because he hadnt really looked for it. Inthose sounds, however, in the architecture of those voices, there was thepromise of a rebirth: an amulet against the void.

* * * *

Faustine sleptpeacefully that night, cradled by the domesticated song, curled up in thehollow of its belly. A gentle warmth had taken over her body. She felt so well.Now, when the music slid under the door like a ray of light, it was a token ofconnivance; they already knew one another, and were learning to know oneanother better. Faustine could hear through walls now.

The silence took herby surprise the following evening, as did its unexpected arrival. Itinterrupted the song just as Faustine pricked up her ears to catch the renewalof the roller-coaster passage in all its splendour. It was as if a horse werebrutally held back in its course, unbalanced to the point of falling. Thesilence spread throughout the house like the contents of an inverted bottle: athick silence that clogged the ears.

Faustine took refugein a corner of her room, hands plastered over her ears, and began to sing in alow voice to dispel the vertigo that was almost a drowning sensation. Silencehad become alien to her body. It was unnatural, to be so close to the studiowall and to hear nothing therein but her fathers footsteps echoing in theemptiness. It wasnt normal.

An hour passed,dragging its seconds beyond the bounds of tolerability. To bring Faustine outof her torpor required another distinct sound: that of the studio door openingand closing again. It had become sufficiently incongruous for her to understandimmediately what it implied.

Faustine half-openedthe door to her room and slid a timid glance into the corridor. A ray of lightcut through the shadows like an accusatory arrow. Papa was abandoning hisretreat. His creased clothes were the ones he had been wearing the previousevening, which he had doubtless not changed throughout the time the song hadaccompanied him. His face was as firm as a mask, if a mask could have contrivedto grow several days worth of facial hair.

Papa met Faustineseyes and shook his head negatively before turning his back on her. The signalpassed a sentence of death on the dragons. And perhaps on himself, in thelonger term. Since when did adults have the right to admit defeat?

At nightfall, themusic still had not been reawakened. Faustine slipped into the studio. Underthe gaze of the agonised creatures pinned to the walls, she filched the CD thatwas in the player. Scrupulously, she put it back in its box before carrying herbooty to her room. The next step was to get into Williams den without anyoneseeing or knowing. As chance would have it, big brother was spending the nightat a friends house. In the battlefield that served as his lair, he wouldundoubtedly not notice the disappearance of his portable CD player-at least,she hoped so, given that William was inclined suddenly to discover the absenceof a magazine forgotten four days earlier, under a pile of clothes. It was aneternal subject of arguments between him and mother. All she had to do was becareful not to disturb his disorder.

That night, Faustineslept with the earphones securely plugged into her ears, preventing theintrusion of silence. Within the shelter of the bedclothes, the two voices nowwhispered for her alone, with an entirely new intimacy. Everything was in orderagain. She had the fugitive impression, as she dropped off to sleep, of thefingertip touch of another reality, soon out of range. Removed from the studiowalls, the song became different, but it was still too soon to get fully togrips with it.

The followingmorning, her decision was made. The day was as long as the anticipation-chargednights preceding the revelation of Easter eggs or Christmas presents. She couldnot put the plan into action until the whole house was asleep, when even theadults had gone to bed.

It was lucky thatFaustines room was the only one next to the studio; no one would hear her goin. No one would go along the corridor to see the light gleaming beneath thestudio door. If Mama and William had one useful quality, it was their totallack of unpredictability.

An abandonedwarehouse: that was what the room resembled now. The kind of place that onecould easily imagine infested with rats and populated by spiders. Faustine didnot remember having felt so cold there during her previous visit. Behind themingled perfumes of paint and chemicals was an insistent reek of mouldiness.The only vestiges of her fathers presence were the dirty plates and empty cansthat he had not taken the trouble to remove.

Faustine was preparedfor the necessity of meeting the gaze of the creatures pinned to the wall, butalmost nothing remained of it. Their degeneration had accelerated in aspectacular fashion since the music had ceased. All that remained of the cloudof crows was a swarm of grey stains scattered in a near-virginal background.What had been a sword embedded in a stone, now deprived of shape, bore noresemblance to anything identifiable. Even the wallpaper seemed duller than ithad before, by virtue of some strange effect of mimesis.

The music hadreclaimed its rightsbut for Faustine alone, equipped with her preciousearphones. She could not run the risk of being heard.

Choice inevitablytook her towards one of the dragons, and not only because they were the onlyones conserving some semblance of shape, although she could not do battle withthe original dragon just yet. For her apprenticeship, it was necessary tograpple with one of the copiesbut time was pressing; she only had until dawn.

There was an arrangement,a movement. If the notes were gathering in such a fashion, it could not be thefruit of chance. It was necessary for Faustine to seize the collective movementand let it imprint its vibrations upon her handto let it run over her skin,and breathe in the dragon there.

She began with thearea where, previously, the beasts tail had coiled around its massive body.She had only to let herself be guided by the riff that bristled the crestsurmounting the scaly carapace: a single stroke of the outstretched hand, quitesimply; learning the textures and the colours before conceding to superiorstrength. It wasnt difficult to trace the scales in Crayola, to fight the voidwith its own weapons.

A stroke of thecrayon responded to every note, a colour to every nuance; Faustine allowedherself to be entirely, euphorically caught up by the slide towards thesonorous chorus. Nothing is more intoxicating than the impression of authoritythat is born when one senses life flowing between ones fingersmore privilege thanpower.

The moment eventuallycame when she understood that the music was so securely rooted within her thatthe earphones were unnecessary; not until then was she sufficiently polished toattack the original drawing. Time was pressing, and this opportunity would bethe first and the last. She finally understood how to give physical form to thesong.

Her fingers adaptedthemselves to the rhythm of the music, and even when the piece finished thetransition no longer interrupted her. Faustine watched out for the notes thatdictated her every gesture, her every impulse, and the two voices, each intheir turn, took command of her hands. They imprinted a pulsation upon her thatran through her to the tips of her fingers, as far as the point of thecrayonand Faustine knew then what it felt like to be lifted by a dragonswings, with the wind whistling in ones ears and the minuscule world far below.

The roller-coasterwould be definitive. It was that, more than anything else, which dictated thedragons posture. Every time she heard it, at that precise moment, Faustinefelt her heart stop beating. Time was suspended before the great dive intoempty space, three sublime and terrifying seconds to tie ones guts in knots.That was the image of a dragon cocking and drawing back its head, preparing tospit fireand the explosion of guitars that followed was a jet of flames andsparks. If she succeeded in capturing that movement, down to the colour of theflames, them Faustine would have won her victory. The burning breath of thedragon brushed her ears in a roar of overstretched guitars, and swept awayeverything in its path.

And she knew that shewas capable, in her own fashion, of taming the void.

* * * *

Throughout thefollowing day, Faustine dozed on her school desk. The teacher gave her lines tocopy by way of punishment, but she couldnt care less. While she blackenedpages following the cadence of an imaginary drum kit in the lunch hour, herthoughts were wandering elsewhere. To her fathers studio, to be precise, andthat to which she had given birth the previous night. A dragon, whole buthybrid, in paint and Crayola, which mocked the others in their decrepitude. Itwas still intact when Faustine had quit the studio shortly before dawn. If ithad not regressed while she was at school, then she would have won her victory,against oblivion and against the void.

The two voices playedhide-and-seek in the innermost recesses of her brain, in the background butjust present enough to surprise her with the turn of a phrase that suddenlyseemed to reveal them. She would gladly have blackened the pages of herexercise book with their words, if only she understood their language and itsbarbaric orthography. Faustine did not despair of mastering them one day; forthe moment, it was still necessary to listen to them exchanging their darksecrets in an unknown code.

It was Papa whoopened the door of the house to her on her return. Faustine understoodimmediately, by his expression, that something was worrying him. If he had discoveredthe surprise, he did not exactly seem to be overjoyed by it. She had hoped somuch that he would be glad.

He waited forFaustine to take off her satchel and coat before seizing her by the shouldersto force her to look him in the eyes.

Id be glad,Faustine, if you didnt go into my studio again.

But Ive left mycrayons there. Can I go back to look for them?

Ill get themmyself. Im asking you not to cross that threshold again, understand?

His voice andexpression assumed the hardness of a sharp blade, more appropriate to accompanya slap or a reprimand: the kind of pressure adults preferred to exert on thosesmaller than themselves, by virtue of which a simple prohibition took on theforce of law. Grown-ups obtained their victories thus, simply by raising theirvoices.

Faustine bit herlower lip, caught between resignation and deception. It would, however, benecessary for her to cross that threshold. How else would she know whether thegraft had taken?

Papa came back tofind her at the kitchen table, where she was eating her tea. He set down infront of her the box of crayons she had forgotten the night before. In hisother hand, he displayed the key to the studio, while holding it at arespectable distance from Faustine, as if tempting her to try to snatch it: thegesture that William used when he shook magazines bought with his pocket moneyunder his little sisters nose, which he hid away to prevent her from readingthem. Its clearly understood, Faustine? You wont go into the studio again.

Tell me, Papahasthe dragon been erased?

He didnt reply, butshe read in his eyes that it was not gone. That was exactly what had made himangry. The victory was Faustines, not his. She knew then that he was capableof going into the studio to destroy every trace of the dragon. Who knew whetherhe had already burned it, while she was in class? Against the void, Faustinehad been able to find weapons, but how could a dragon be defended against itsown creator?

* * * *

Everyone knows thatonce midnight has passed, apprehension never entirely vanishes no matter howsafe the circumstances. What if someone should come along the corridor todiscover her bedroom light on? Faustine kept the switch of her bedside lampwithin arms length, ready to extinguish it at the first warning sign. Fearlent a delightful electrical sensation to her epidermis; it was not,fundamentally, the most disagreeable of stimulants. Discretion was secondnature to her.

Papa had thrown inthe towel? Well, in that case her turn had come to pick it up again. It wasnecessary that the music should find another foundation through which toexpress itself. It still had not given its all.

A song belonged toeveryone and no one at the same time, but there was doubtless only a handful ofpeople in the world capable of hearing it properly. Should the fancy take holdof Papa to go into the studio to destroy the dragon, Faustine had decided notto get in the waynot now that she had understood the real nature of the music.She had other priorities now.

In her fathersterritory, she had only been able to reproduce his own version of it. Anothersetting was requiredher bedroom, her own point of anchoragein order that itmight finally dictate its true message ... and the flow of energy ran throughher fingers, guided her hand with even greater facility than before. The timehad come to give birth to a new work.

Papa had notunderstood. This song did not have the shape of a dragon at all. It undulatedlike a serpent, and the piano notes that pierced the riff here and there, sodiscreet that one could scarcely make them out, shone like the moon reflectedfrom jet-black scales. The two voices were declining a litany of sibilanthisses, according to a scheme known only to themselves.

Not a dragon, to besure, but a serpent. It would soon be embodied on the sheet of paper thatFaustine was filling with broad strokes of Crayola. And this was one that Papawould not have: a serpent in the moonlight, united with the earth by somesecret bond.

Faustine had alreadycompleted four similar ones, which she kept hidden under her bed. She would nothave allowed them to be taken away from her, for anything in the world.

From Black Static Horror Magazine - Issue 02 - November 2007 .txtA N.E.R.D's Release

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