All tagged Amahle's music
“Stop,” Madelyn tells Amahle. “Stop with the music! Stop with the panic! Stop!”
Amahle looks desperate and the distant drumming doesn’t stop. “It is how I feel. I can’t help it.”
“I do not care how you feel,” Madelyn tells her. “I only care about you.”
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As usual, Amahle and Elvis appear on the deck of Bonny’s Revenge while Joy is still asleep.
“Amahle,” I call her from the porch, where Suzy and I are sitting. “Let me help you down.”
“I am perfectly fine, Walter.” She uses Elvis and her blind stick to lead her down the ramp which she already knows so well.
As she’s halfway through, Madelyn appears behind her on her wheelchair.
Amahle stops and listens. After a second, she says, “Hello, Madelyn. Comment ça va?”
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“Joy, what’s going on?” Justin takes a few steps towards her with arms open after she asks everyone to get off her ship.
Joy shrugs and looks away.
“Joy, did I offend you?” Amahle says. Elvis, her seeing eye dog, appears at her side, and she begins to walk in Joy’s direction.
“GET OFF MY SHIP!” Joy yells at us, her face red. “Now! Everyone!”
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He docked the ship right outside one of the suns, and Master Mind went to check, quickly returning with Amahle.
“But even though I forgot my dream, my heart was pumping! I felt I had a great inspiration! There was music inside me. And I was certain I could feel what the color blue was, even though I knew I’d never seen it.”
“What?” Justin says. “Really?”
“You could see blue in the waking world?” Charlie asks, just as surprised.
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“Let’s go,” Suzy tells me as soon as Justin takes our little granddaughter to her cabin to tell her a good night story.
For a change, Joy’s been up for quite a few hours before Justin arrived, which means she’s just tired enough for her father to put her to bed.
“Where are we going?”
“To talk to Justin,” she says.
We walk slowly up the ramp to the deck of Bonny’s Revenge. Master Mind is standing guard silently near the wheel. Justin is still in Joy’s cabin.
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I am surrounded by darkness. I’ve been here before, in Amahle’s dream, a dozen times at least. But it doesn’t get easier. And it doesn’t get less spooky that there isn’t even a little bit of light, so your eyes never get adjusted. We are right next to the sun in her dream, and yet there isn’t a photon to be found.
But then, that’s not the only change. As soon as I walk into Charlie’s elevator in Amahle’s dream, there is music. I don’t recognize many of the instruments. But I do recognize the voice. There usually isn’t a voice when Amahle’s music is played outside her head in the Dream. But now… She’s singing. Without any words, just singing…
“The music is making the hair on my hand stand,” Charlie says.
“It’s beautiful,” Justin says.
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It’s not a person’s wail, it’s music that imitates a wail. The wail turns into a scream of pain. And the air is then filled with almost unbearably sad music.
“Amahle?” Suzy asks me. She’s heard the music of Amahle’s dream before, but not like this.
I nod.
“It is a tragedy, Pirate Mother,” Master Mind answers softly, his voice only loud enough to get over the music and reach us, who are leaning on the railing a few meters above him, looking down at him. “The Sunless One’s mother had died.”
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“Have you never heard of the Zulu, Joy?”
“Amahle, I don’t know almost anything,” Joy’s voice sounds like she’s so sad and helpless.
Amahle takes a big breath. “That is not all right. You should speak to your father.”
“I will. Definitely,” she raises her voice, knowing her father is right there.
“Charlie, have you heard of the Zulu?”
“Not much. They’re an African tribe, right? They’re Native Africans.”
Amahle laughs. “That’s an interesting name to call them. They’re Africans. The Zulu are the fiercest and mightiest warrior race that ever was.”
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I hear Amahle ask, “You can hear the music?”
“It’s all around me, like it’s moving,” I hear Charlie say.
“I can hear it. What is it?” I hear Joy ask. “It makes my heart pound, but I don’t know why.”
“Walter,” Amahle calls out to me. As far as she’s concerned, it’s just me here with the kids. Master Mind and Justin are keeping silent and therefore invisible. “Do you hear the music?”
“I can hear it, Amahle. It’s very beautiful. Is that music from South Africa? Who wrote it?”
“Nobody wrote it, Walter. I hear music in my head. All the time. It’s how I feel… How can you hear my music?”
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“You know, my mother used to sit me with here right on this bench when I was a child,” Amahle says.
“Yeah?”
“We sat right here, and she would describe everything to me. See how everything is green, Joy and Charlie?”
“Very green.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Charlie mumbles.
“It’s beautiful,” Amahle says. “She’d describe everything to me. Right behind me is a tree that comes out of its roots in three trunks.”
“That’s right!”
“How the path continues to the right, over there, and to the left. She talked to me about how the leaves of the trees cover everything above us and how the sun’s light comes in just so beautifully between the leaves.”
“Yeah,” Joy says.
“And I would have that picture in my head. Of the entire park. And my head would translate it to music.”
Music begins to play all around us, soft and beautiful.
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