The Music and the Strife by Susan Rooke

Author:Susan Rooke [Rooke, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Holynok Press
Published: 2025-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

The next thing I knew, the bus had arrived at the high school. I scanned the rows of seats. Many more students filled the bus now: the few who’d been on board at the bridge, and all the others who’d been picked up along the rest of the route. Where had I been? I’d missed every bit of it. The bus driver sat attentively in her seat as she always did, turning the big horizontal steering wheel as she pulled into the parking lot to drop us off. No one paid me any notice. I was still sitting at the back, and strangely, I still gripped the seat beneath me with both hands, bracing myself for the crash on the old truss bridge that I was sure one day would come. Where had I been for the last few minutes? Had I really seen Ruminato, or just some awful vision manufactured by my brain? Clearly, my ride had nothing in common with everyone else’s that morning. Then a horrible thought struck me. Was something physically wrong with me?

I sat there shaking, feeling very alone as the bus came to a wheezing stop. I reminded myself of what Ruminato had already done to me. There was no disputing that, and it gave me the courage to believe in myself. I’d seen something, I was sure of it. Some monstrous being had taken Ruminato. What was it, and where did it come from? If Ruminato was the strife who traveled between the worlds capturing the shadow things, the thing capable of capturing him must have power beyond imagining. What would happen to us all if Ruminato was gone forever? Who would collect the strife?

I gathered my things together, trying to think about this rationally. A few months ago, I hadn’t even met the Millers, I reminded myself, and now I was swallowing everything they told me. How did I know they weren’t feeding me a bunch of lies? I’d experienced strange, frightening things, but maybe there was another explanation. Maybe I’d been hypnotized, even drugged. On the other hand…what if everything I’d seen was real?

The rest of the school day passed in the usual way, I guess. I didn’t really pay attention; my mind was too preoccupied with what I’d seen that morning. I did notice that Holly was absent, which surprised me. She’d seemed fine at dinner. Was her absence connected to Ruminato’s disappearance?

On the bus ride home that afternoon, I was waiting for it, watching for the bend in the road and the steel truss cage that yawned there, ready to swallow us up. I half-expected another incident and was nerving myself up for it. Somewhere in my mind a voice was chanting, Look out, look out. Nothing happened, and a few minutes later, I walked through my own front door with a feeling of relief. I first checked in with Mom and Toulouse, who were both in the art studio. Then I called the Miller house. I would ask about Holly first.

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