A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic by Lisa Papademetriou

hummed with a hundred different melodies. Kai didn’t know much about insects, but she knew about music, and she could distinguish the cheerful creak of the cricket and the rhythmic buzz of the katydid. There were other melodies, too, and although she didn’t know the players, Kai liked the way the sounds made her skin vibrate.
    It was amazing to think that a cricket, a being smaller than her smallest finger, could make a noise that would travel across the yard, through her window, past her hair, and right into her ear.
    There was another insect, one with a clear tenor. She loved the sound it made—every time she caught a piece of the melody, it reminded her of the cello.
    Ah, there it goes again, she thought, straining to distinguish the sound from the many others.
    It sounded so much like the opening of the second movement of Bach’s Suite No. 1. Did Bach like bugs? Kaiwondered, humming along. Filled with a sudden longing for her violin, Kai stood and walked quickly to the closet.
    The black case lay in shadow, but Kai, knowing its familiar shape, kneeled and snapped it open. She reached for her bow, tightening and then rosining it carefully. She tuned up the strings, and then crossed to the window and sent a cool, clear note into the night. The insects seemed to pause for a moment as Kai played a melody that bubbled up from inside of her, and then the chorus swept over her and the hum and rattle from the grass and trees joined the notes like an orchestra.
    A light blinked in through the open window and disappeared, like an ember winking out. Kai played on with her insect symphony, trying to cling to the notes, so that she wouldn’t forget them. I should write these down, she thought . The Bug Sonata.
    The lightning bug floated through the room, pulsing with occasional light until it finally came to rest on the bedside table. It glowed and dimmed and crawled across the pages of an open book.
    The bug was crawling across the The Exquisite Corpse . The band played on as Kai dropped her bow and creptcloser to peer at the page. There was a bit of new writing. The firefly lurched into the air and meandered out the open window. Slowly, Kai crossed the room and skimmed her eyes across the line.
    Perhaps the music was a dream, it read.
T HE E XQUISITE C ORPSE
    Perhaps the music was a dream.
    Ralph blinked up at the whiteness overhead. A slender crack ran along the top of the wall, just beneath the place where it met the ceiling. He had just awoken, but he did not feel awake. He felt heavy, so heavy, as if he might sink through the mattress and into the floor. Through the floor, and into the ground.
    His eyelids sank closed, shutting out the unfamiliar, white room. He did not wonder where he was. He did not care. He just wanted to sleep again, and perhaps to dream of music.
    For a short while, there was no sound but the gentle rasp of his breath. Then a long, high note like a song.
    His eyes drifted open. The music refused to be silent.
    Light streamed in from a window near his bed. Themusic pressed against the window, pushing against the glass like the soft pad of a cat’s paw.
    Ralph turned his head toward the light and sound.
    A woman bustled in. Her dark hair was precisely parted beneath a round hat that perched atop her head like a stack of pancakes, and her long skirt swished at every neat little step. Her nose was fat as a cherry tomato and her cheeks soft and almost jowly. She smiled sweetly down at Ralph, and he thought how plain she was, and how kind she looked. “You’re awake, then?” she said as she snapped the sheet back into place over him and tucked it up beneath his mattress.
    â€œWhere . . . ?”
    â€œYou’re in the men’s ward. Broken leg and a concussion—I heard you played a card trick on the wrong customer, tsk, tsk!”
    Ralph winced as he tried to sit up. Another four years had passed, and Ralph was seventeen years old. He had become quite a cardsharp,