For once, I was calling the tune and it felt amazing. It was something more-a decision to take control and make the tune my own. Just like I’d automatically followed along with Luke and all his strangeness for the last half hour, taking the script as it was written for me.īut the second time through, my fingers plucked out a little variation. The first time through, my fingers automatically found the notes, as I had trained them to for months. I joined in with my harp half a measure later, and together we played. He didn’t look back at me, but he lifted his flute and played the opening notes. I just knew I didn’t want to disappoint him. I sort of had a strange sense then that a lot rode on that moment, on whether I gave up or tried. He slid closer on the table and lifted his flute up. I guess I could see where I could put something in there.” It took me a moment to get past his flirting to realize what he was trying to say. You’ve got the talent for that you just aren’t trying.” I just mean that you could really write a nice little interlude in there that was all yours. I think Luke’s comment sent me to somewhere between “pretty damn cold” and “frostbite warning.” I just get frostier and frostier until I freeze the person out entirely. I get my temper from Mom like her, though, I never show it. “Any less safe and it’d be impossible,” I managed to say evenly.

I didn’t think I could take the designation “safe,” even from the enigmatic Luke Dillon. I’d practiced “The Faerie Girl’s Lament” for months-I had arranged it with so many impossible embellishments and chord changes that even the most cynical of harpists would be awed. My mood immediately shifted from pleased to irritated. I’d heard it so often that it didn’t mean anything anymore. It was stupid, of course, because all my life I’d been told-by highly qualified professionals and people who should know and folks “in the business”-that I was good. You make it sound like something you’d hear on a CD.” “No, I didn’t,” I said, adding truthfully, “You have a wonderful voice. But what I sang-that’s always been part of it. “That bit you sang-‘oh to be by your side,’ that bit-must have been added on somewhere along the way. “-and it’s a very old song,” continued Luke. He turned his face into the sun and sang,įor the price I paid when you died that day I plucked along, bracing myself for whatever his voice might sound like. It’s an Irish song, right? They always die in Irish songs. Do you sing the verse where he gets killed?” I broke off as I heard his flute joining in. I sang, my voice timid at first, and then stronger as I realized I wanted to impress him.

Lament by maggie stiefvater