A Song Unheard by Roseanna M. White

Author:Roseanna M. White
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Historical Fiction;Man-woman relationships—Fiction;Women spies—Fiction;Christian fiction;Love stories;FIC042030;FIC042040;FIC027200
ISBN: 9781493412433
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2017-10-11T04:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

Willa lowered her bow and opened her eyes. She stood by her window, closed against the cool air tapping at its panes, and the view of Aberystwyth’s nicest streets greeted her. The last strains of the music seemed to echo long in her small chamber, sweet and high and . . . empty. That was the way her violin sounded now, in contrast to the Stradivarius. Like an imitation of the real sound, but not the sound itself.

No. It wouldn’t do. She would go home soon, and this would be the only violin she would have to play. She would have to get used to its timbre again. Be content with it. And why not? It had been a faithful friend all these years.

Before she had known what she was missing.

Spinning from the window, she raised her bow again. Played, again, the first line of melody she had ever teased from the strings. It was nothing, really—a pub song she’d heard on the streets. Nothing special, something any child could hum. But it was hers. Because she had touched the bow to the strings and the music had been there, waiting for her. There inside this violin, it had seemed—she had simply asked it to come out, and it had.

It had been true with that pub song. She remembered thinking, in a burst of childish wonder she hadn’t indulged in for years, that the music must live inside the violin. And that if that music had, perhaps more did as well. The next day she’d gone out, when she was supposed to be finding pockets to pick, and found instead a few melodies. From gramophones in open windows. From other pubs with pianos. She’d walked about her familiar London with her ears open for the first time, and she’d heard it everywhere—music drifting from windows, from doors, from throats.

She’d gone back to their flat, pulled out that battered violin she’d shoved under the sofa, and asked it if that music would come out too.

It had. And so had the majestic, glorious stuff she’d gone in search of later, in the nicer parts of the city. When she’d climbed that forgotten half-wall, her ears sniffing out music like a bloodhound, and found the orchestra’s practice room’s windows. Her violin had brought it faithfully to life.

With a sigh, she sank onto her borrowed bed with its feather mattress. The music always came . . . But maybe it was just leaping from the instrument, maybe it wasn’t in her at all. Maybe it had nothing to do with her and was just . . . luck. Or magic. A magic violin that would play for anyone at all.

She trailed her fingers over the precious wood, worn so smooth from the thousands of times she’d done just that. It wasn’t the violin—if it had been, the Stradivarius would have been silent in her hands, or produced nothing but screeching nonsense as awful as that atonal mess Lukas had sheet music for.

But if it

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