The Voice of Roses

I was cocooned in the silence of dusty tomes once Camelia locked both cabinet and sitting room. She crossed the library to return the cylinder to the shelves. 

“That device. Is it truly Fiorello’s creation?” 

Camelia cradled the cylinder in her hands. “The phonograph? Not entirely. Though there are,” She pressed her lips together a moment. “There are modifications and adjustments made by Master Fiorello.”

Camelia turned the cylinder in her hands as I waited for her to offer more. 

“Do you believe in spirits?” It was not what I had expected her to add.

“Like ghosts and devils?” I let the grin slip across my face. 

The sincerity in Camelia’s expression stripped the myrth from my question.

Camelia placed the cylinder of the alluring music into place on the shelves, then scanned as Jessamine had before. When she stopped on a paper tube of black with gilt edges the air seemed to thicken. 

An involuntary shudder coursed through me when the paper rasped against the others while Camelia slid it free. 

“I know you wanted to study in peace, but perhaps this will answer more questions than these old volumes.

I considered the books with pages blackened out or torn free. There were answers in those empty spaces. It was true that the library had become an informant where inhabitants of the house failed. It did not give up all it’s secrets however and there was much I could not find.I resolved to make it my purpose to fill those blanks with the information that remained. Here was close to a thousand years of Hadowen lineage kept in extraordinary records. The ninth century was laid bare at my fingertips, yet so many mysteries remained. The Hadowen family was old, I knew, but I had not considered possibility that they might classify as ancient.

I scanned the shelves of the library as we made our way to the study doors. 

“Are we allowed to do this?” I considered the maid and her reaction to my question.

“Mistress, I remind you again, you are meant to be here. You are meant to learn the history of the Hadowen and yourself.” A curious determination colored Camelia’s tone.

I worried at the crooked letter L imbued upon the library key as I followed Camelia and settled in the chair closest to the phonograph. “Madame Elestren and the others do not seem to feel as you do.” 

“They will understand soon. You were invited. So you belong.” She set the cylinder in place. 

“I’ve yet to find my name, nor even those of my parents in the storied histories of the Hadowen.” Giving voice to the absence pushed a sharp short laugh from my lips.

“This will help.” Camelia set the crank on the player.

As the pins dropped into place so to did the world fall away. 

  It wasn’t music that met my ears, though there were voices. It was less song more an opera of tones and moans. A melodic sigh, a sob, perhaps a laugh. The notes coiled. They bound me to the chair. Imploring, commanding, my ears, to listen. 

Senses peeled back. Vision, touch, taste, and smell acquiesed to sound. The rose dotted walls blurred into a chorus of papery petals shifting against aging adhesives. The chair creaked into a din of dry wood and seeping oils. The warp and weft of toile hummed against my buttocks and legs sending the reverberation through the hiss of satin and hush of cotton. 

The world became sound. Previously unnoted currents of air cried a woodwind lullaby. Scuttle and scratch of beetle and small creatures percussed a rhythm of life and desolation within the walls. Deeper, the music drew.

Had it not been so familiar a sound I could have accounted it to some other household thrumming, footsteps, the tick of a clock, the steady knock of axe on wood. All of these were too far, even if directly under foot or at my side. 

Deeper yet it came, from within. Part of me. My heart. A steady rising to the realization of existence. Could my own heart be beating on this cylinder of captured sounds. Rational though it was, it fell foolishly from my thoughts. 

This heart beat, cued by current my own in fluxing pattern. The beat of the girl I was, then the woman I had been a moment ago. A sound so synced I forgot my true heart existed without the cylinder. 

A click tumbled into a succession. A system of key to lock, grown familiar with the constant reminder at Yarrow Hart. Comforted by lullaby of lock and key, I detached from the rest of the Hart. 

Yet this was a melody of unlocking. A song of opening. A concerto of release. Heartbeat caught in tumble of bearings spun a duet. 

Thump, click, thump, roll, thump, clack. In steady wordless lyric the bardic beckoning echoed a piper’s command. 

Histories unlocked with the ease of turning a knob, or fanning of a page. I lingered at the gates of the Hart. I rode the chuffling train. Heard petals part in Kassia’s spring garden. Kettles cried against the walls Ama’s kitchen. Women wailed mourning. Men chortled darkness. 

Mother’s voice shattered the orchestra. My past pitched an aria pure and golden. I never considered mother a singer, but power and confidence volleyed her notes to breached doubt. Were there words to this opera? None revealed to my ears. The sound was solid, a shape, emotion turned material. An aural sculpture. An answer. 

And the answer was red. 

Too solid to be a flood, it bent like a wave. The world melted into a wall of sanguine satin, the voice of roses.

“Can you hear it.” The question refained the chorus. “Can you remember.”

No. These were not questions. These words weighed as a command. 

No. I did not want to remember. 

Yes. I did hear.

Yes. I did remember.

No.

A red as black as the night itself gripped trenches into my shoulders. I pressed into the chair under the weigh of memories as buried as the dead. 

“This is not mine.” I protested against the memory rising before me.

A woman lay before me. Her skin pale, eyes vacant pools of a vibrant blue. She would have been looking at me if those eyes could see anything. Death masked the cold features. The only color to her cheeks the speckling of crimson that trailed from jaw to brow. 

My mother’s hand stretched to meet that of another. Fingers, as pale as her own. Long and feminine. The notes followed over open palm and up slender arm, strong from turning earth and scrubbing dirt and dross. My expectations begged this other to have been my father. But the hair that covered the down cast face was too long, too soft, and too dark. This other was yet familiar. 

“Stop.” The word felt shallow. “Stop. Please.” Strength tugged my vocal chords. 

“Stop.” Pressure found my palms, tention tightened my limbs. 

“Mistress.” Camellia caught my shoulder as I dumped a thick volume of the biology of roses from my lap to the floor. 

“Camellia.” The named coughed free. 

The library was heavy with silence. A ringing cottoned all other sound. 

“I’m home.” 

“Yes.” The acceptance in the maid’s voice sent chill rather than comfort.

“Mistress Magareen, you’ve spent quite a long time today with the histories.” 

“Have I? I feel I’ve looked at nothing at all.” My hands turned unfamiliar as I bent to retrieve the volume from the maid’s hands. “Did the music end?” 

My gaze floated to the locked entrance to the room with the phonograph.

“Forgive me, Mistress. That cylinder refused to play. You seemed deep in your study though so I thought not to bother ask if you wanted another to play. You did say you prefered silence.” 

“So I did. But.” Perhaps I had dreamt it all in my state of study. “It didn’t play at all?”

“Please. Mistress.” Changing the subject Camellia offered to assist me from the chair. “There are events planned for the evening that should not be missed.”

“Is the hour so late?” A cursory glance found the clock.” When I returned my attention to Camellia a flash of anxiety danced her features.

“So many rules to Yarrow Hart. And laws from Madame Elestren. Lead the way.” I hefted the book of roses to return it to it’s place upon the shelves. 

My gaze lingered on the row of cylinders, and the gap it their ranks.