The Above by Amber-Rose Knowlton

Author:Amber-Rose Knowlton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
Published: 2021-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Riley

It is snowing heavily, and our footprints are prominent in the white ground, but Liam doesn’t ask us to wipe them away anymore. It’s as though we want to be found. We want our tears to be seen.

Ebony walks up from behind me and grabs my hand, looking up with her large, dark, questioning eyes. “Noah is our people too. We will fight for him.”

“We don’t have weapons,” Liam says from in front of us.

“No,” Ebony stops, and I do too, my hand still clasped around hers. Liam stops without turning around.

“Then how do you suggest we fight?” He asks, sternly.

“We have something they do not have.”

“And that is?”

“Our souls.”

’That’s…weak, stupid…" Liam says, but as he turns, he is smiling. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes, a fake smile at best, but a smile all the same.

He begins to walk again, but it doesn’t take him long to stop in his tracks. Ebony lets go of my hand and walks toward an old door, the entrance to a huge building. She pulls a note from it and I read it silently in my head, his hand writing telling me I’d love it here, that he spent ages trying to find it, that he’d always dreamt of coming here and he thought I would too.

I had told Liam coming here—a new place Noah wanted to lead me to—might allow me to find any indication of where Noah had been taken. But now, standing outside this building, I am not so sure. All I feel is a hole in my heart, large and gaping and longing; the absence of his presence.

And fear. I feel fear.

The fear does not stop my feet as they lead me, step by step, into the building, leaving the others to wait outside patiently.

There are chairs, hundreds of chairs. It is dark, dusty, but the stage in the centre has wear which tells stories.

A stadium? A concert hall?

It is eerily quiet, but a singular light shines upon a small object on a chair near the front of the stage. As I approach, I see there are two headphone sets, one which has clearly been used.

My hand shakes as it enters the light, grasps the headphones, places them around my head.

They fit perfectly.

Is this…is this music? My eyes close, and suddenly the hall lights up. It is full of colour and sound, the pounding of drums, the echo of guitars, the freedom of dance and the stories that the words tell in songs of people. He has put songs on here, on this technology, for me, so I can imagine what is like to be in a concert with music from the old world, the Above that I had read about, that I had loved.

The music is my external heartbeat.

It’s everything.

When I open my eyes, I fall back and gasp, eyes burning with silent tears.

“Are you okay?” Liam calls from outside.

“I, uh, yeah…just give me a bit longer.” I look around me, bringing myself out of the trance and wiping away the tears rolling down my cheeks.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.