Lost Voices by Sarah Porter Read Free Book Online Page A

slammed into the rocks. The strange thing was that no one on board screamed.
    Actually it wasn’t so strange, because Luce understood exactly why all those people stayed so calm and quiet. They were still listening to the music, listening so hard that they didn’t even care if they drowned.
    Luce thought she should be upset, but she found that she didn’t quite care either. The deep invasive chill was still in her heart, and it gave her the funny feeling that these were the same 40 i LOST VOICES
    people who beat their daughters or left them alone to die on the tops of cliffs. She didn’t want to think too much about it, but she almost thought the people on that boat must deserve what was happening to them now. She was still far below the waves, and for some reason she didn’t feel any need to try to reach the air.
    Huge slabs of ripped and twisted metal began to fall past her into the water. Luce saw things she recognized hunks of pipes, deck chairs as well as heavy machine- type things whose uses she didn’t know. Then she began to see the people. At first there were just one or two of them off in the distance, but soon the water was full of drifting, sinking bodies. They looked like enormous raindrops plummeting all around her, their arms slowly wheeling through tangles of seaweed. Some of them still seemed completely calm, and sank with drowsy smiles. One man Luce saw seemed actually to be trying to swim for the bottom of the sea. But others had been shocked out of their enchantment by the cold of the water, and they were flailing frantically, trying to fight their way back to the surface. Even though she thought that they must be bad people, even very bad, she still hated to see them so upset and scared.
    She looked up. In the moonlight the surface of the water high above her looked like twisting golden foil, and against that gold there were dark frantic shapes splashing crazily away.
    Some of the people on the boat must have snapped out of their dreaming enough to try to swim for shore. The wonderful music began to fade, and around her more of the sinking people began to panic. An old man’s face sank inches away from her own, and she looked deep into his shocked, staring eyes and saw his mouth i 41
    contort as he choked on seawater. He was struggling horribly to breathe, but water rushed into his lungs instead of air.
    How long had it been since she’d taken a breath?
    The music came back, but it was different now. It came from a few different directions at once this time, and though the music didn’t sound like any normal voice Luce had ever heard in her life, she couldn’t help thinking the shimmering sound was made of several different voices. Quick curving shapes, as lovely in their movements as living water, began to dart among the swimmers, and Luce suddenly understood that they were singing . They were all singing together in voices too beautiful for Earth, and the music began to swell again in her own chest.
    Above, she could see the desperate swimmers suddenly calming down, settling into the cold waves as if they were going to sleep in their own soft beds at home.
    She must have gone deeper without realizing it, because she found herself face to face with the drowning old man again. He wasn’t afraid anymore. Waves of satiny, vibrating music poured from Luce’s mouth, and the old man was comforted. He gazed at her with his round blue eyes as if she were someone he had always wanted to see, his heart’s only treasure, long lost but suddenly returned to him. Even her own father, Luce realized, had never once looked at her with such profound tenderness, such acceptance. Luce knew the old man must be dying, but he was so happy . Happy just to be with her, and to listen to her singing.
    He understood her so well, and the better he understood her, the more complete his love for her became. He was still smiling at her as the silver bubbles gushed up from his mouth and his eyelids sank over his blue eyes.