Market Hexagon is loud, even in the middle of the night. Behind the noise of commerce comes the staccato symphony of the City’s factories working their indentured servants round the clock; the shriek of steel sliced into weapons so the poor may fight and die for aristos’ entertainment; the whine of cement and stone under iron carts pulled by captive magical creatures; the banal melodies piped into working class neighborhoods to quell thoughts of revolt—a perversion of the true sound of my People; their heritage warped into a weapon of bondage.
I run through my measurements, maps, and sheet music one last time. Stars, spheres, whale pods in the oceans, flocks of dragons in the skies, and the molten metal core that ignites the aurora australis—all align with the secret groove hidden in my blood since my grandmother’s grandmother plucked her first string. The notes have been waiting for one like me to bind them together and make them sing.
I plug my amplifier into the market’s eldritch grid. It siphons enough power to darken every light in the square. My invocation to Yy, She Who Gave Us Groove, glows briefly in midair; the amp grows into a tower with me on top, my arms loose and my bass guitar hanging like a battle-axe. I slap its lowest string and the city rumbles with me. The magisters have banned this low-end timbre—calling it Lewd, Seditious, & Base.
I inject notes between the spaces in the corporate conjurers’ tune, destabilizing their rhythm and undermining the sacred melodies with forbidden intervals. The people of my city hear it—the workers and crafters and cooks, who raised me and marvelled at my talent, who were dismayed when the proctors took me to train in the melodic magic that keeps us enslaved. The people of my city listen and start waking up, asking questions, testing their shackles. Spoons bang on pots, palms pound packing crates, feet tap out a quick, syncopated beat.
The elite hear the chord change and dispatch their champion, Ash, on his flying chariot. His bottle-blonde hair is teased up in an unlikely hair spray–hardened teardrop. It’s a low stratagem. They aim to throw me off, to make me remember our time together as Lower Musical Adepts, teaching each other by night what the Proctors wouldn’t teach us by day.
“I come to put you back in your place, Zyv!”
To cover my disquiet, I yell, “I know exactly what my place is, and who my People are. Do you?” I twist sharply; my hiplength locks fly behind me and clear my sight, if not my mind, for the coming battle.
He pulls out a jagged, four-stringed monstrosity. “While you were off fraternizing with your fellow half-breeds, I studied the bass!”
“You used to adore my half-breed skin, Ash. Remember?” It’s a feint to make him also think of the softer season we shared as lovers instead of enemies, but I read my failure in his scowl—what was once hot and tender has turned into cold and sour shame in his heart.
Ash plays a crushing riff. His amplifier has the combined might of the patricians focused through his toxic resentment. Its pressure wave blows me over; I tumble from my perch and hit the ground hard. My bass makes one last, discordant sound and lies silent and broken; the battle over before it even began. My spirit lies shattered by Ash’s hope-crushing sound; under its powerful influence, I curse myself for believing my uncivilized, vulgar melodies sufficient to counter his breeding and refinement.
He forces the City’s song into lockstep with the generals and property owners. Workers again feel compelled to process food, build weapons, and solder electronics. His simple, monochromatic tune drowns out the chanties, dances, and jams that had briefly thrived. It’s a driving clockwork that leaves no space for life, love, or lust—just production and profit for the privileged. A static grid of clouds shrouds the sky.
But Ash has no groove—he never did.
The rhythm I set in motion hasn’t died down yet. A young girl doing quality control in a paint factory snaps her fingers. A notary hits the keys on their typewriter in an insistent diddid-deetdeetdeet. Pack animals bray in unison, adding a raucous rebuttal. Children playing in garbage-strewn lots sing rhymes that mock the priests and bureaucrats whose job it is to stifle their development. Cooks rattle pots, carpenters hammer double time, the City bumps and boogies.
Ash’s playing becomes more frantic. He skips notes, loses his beat, and through this gap my People’s newly remembered melody lifts me back up to my perch, remade bass in hand and eyes bright with hope. My hands play the strings but I am not in command of the sound anymore—just a piece in its foundation, a rock-solid base.
Ash tries to overpower me once more but I see clearly now; his attacks are artificial and isolated, while I have an entire City’s living music behind me. I slap my low string hard, joining the dance rhythm rising from Market Hexagon and playing three-part harmony with an anarchist choir. His chariot begins to smoke. He looks angry, then scared. He flies off towards the Spire of Glorious Purpose, trailing bitter smoke.
Seven seventh-sons of the seven ruling families, who would sooner witness the end of the world than change their way of life, climb to join their flag bearer. Their irate invocations implore the Elder Gods to come forth and raze the treacherous throng. A stench of dank sewers and centuries-old vaults fills the air. A spiral of dark clouds twists around the tower at the focus of wealth and power.
As has always been the case with people of the ruling class, their shrill demands are heeded; the demon-herald Sug’lth-C’rath splits the Earth with its thirteen horns. Thunder crashes as eight massive legs span the breadth of the entire City. Everything shakes under its wrath. Ash and his cohort are lit by the apparition’s red glow, their faces stretched into snarls of satisfaction.
The demon pulls the colossal Trumpet of Silence steaming wet from its abdomen and brings it to the gaping gash of its mouth. Its deadly blare announces the coming quiet that will leave the planet a flat, still wasteland awaiting the dark gods’ return. Skies take on the gray, opaque sheen of a dead animal’s skin, and the trees of the Families’ hunting preserve wither into nothingness.
Music, however, is older than the Elder Gods; it was before Day fled from Night, before the first crafty hominid thought to exploit his sister’s labor; Music shattered the primordial Silence, bringing forth Life and Love.
I keep playing fast and light; drum sounds emerge from all around the City, thick with snares, rapid percussion, and jangling shakers, with the joy of simple survival, of waking each day knowing it is your own. It’s barely loud enough to be heard under the Trumpet’s single, searing note, but it is everything that gives meaning and spirit to our lives.
The skies burst into rainbows, unicorns, and capybaras on the wing; lightning bolts draw patterns across the heavens. The world pauses for a single, pregnant second. Then, Yy, She Who Birthed the Dance, accepts my invocation and bursts forth, laughing on a cloud with Her seventeen arms playing air guitar.
The Music of Yy, She Whose Song Created Life, reaches back in time to drown out the deathly Trumpet’s wail, cracking the instrument of doom down its full length and rewinding its deathly touch on the City and its environs.
With a laugh and a wink, Yy, She Who Dances on Light, dispatches Sug’lth-C’rath with a single shake of Her mighty derriere. Its monstrous form rests on the ground, waiting for the millennia to absolve it with grass, trees, and Life.
Ash and his minions shake and howl as they demand the presence of the demon’s overlord. Almost as an afterthought, Yy, She Who Sings in Every Song, plays Her unseen instruments. Power chords and trills ring out and topple the Spire, sending the last scions of the City’s powerful plummeting into oblivion. I watch my onetime love fall, realizing he has no power over me—he never did.
With these last hecklers banished, Music as Magic can now sustain itself, syncopated and freewheeling over and under rooftops. Chains break, machines stop, and the murderous walls that kept workers in their skin tone–assigned neighborhoods crumble into piles of bone with a sound like a wet sigh. Crowds rush through streets that were once forbidden, singing their joy. Yy, She Who Laughed First and Longest, smiles at me before disappearing into the heavens on a burst of fast, ascending notes.
I keep playing, feeling the bass line spread its wings, lifting us all in its embrace, but not for politics or combat or primordial goddesses; rather, for Music itself, for the dance, for the groove, for the deep, ringing freedom in the depths of my soul.
• • •