Dylan Played Piano

(I wrote this story about twenty years ago. I’m convinced it’s unpublishable, but it’s one of my favorite stories. I hope someone reads it. I hope you like it.)

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

I’m supposed to tell why I’m applying for this grant. I need to write down the real reason, but I don’t know if this is the one I’ll tell them.

Reality isn’t what they say it is. We live midway between bigger worlds and smaller ones. I learned the truth from my best friend when I was twelve years old, and I learned the terrible responsibility of having that knowledge.

It has to do with the creatures we’d both dreamed about for as long as we could remember. At first, we thought they were cute monsters from Saturday morning cartoons. It took a while to discover what they really were.

*

The world was warm. The world was dim. The world was snuggly and narrow. Nibbles swam and swam, and had always been swimming. She paused here and there to surround and eat something yummie, then danced a little before swimming on. Swim, swim! That was the world.

There was a rhythm to the world. She could feel it go Thrum! and then Thrum! and the liquid around her would force everything forward, then pull it back a little. It was fun to dance in the thrums.

She was jostled all the time, mostly by Reds. She was a Hunty. The Reds were always busy. They carried juice to the walls and other planted cells, which spat their yucchies back into the Stream. The Huntys like Nibbles ignored the Reds — they weren’t good to eat, and Reds were always too busy to dance.

Swim, swim! Dance and wriggle and find a yummie to eat! That was the world.

Nibbles and the other Huntys would call to each other — “Lots of yummies here!” or “No yummies there!” Sometimes they’d dance together before moving on, especially when they’d eaten a lot of yummies and were very lively. One time, Nibbles had heard other Huntys call, and had found a place where there were lots and lots and lots of yummies. That was good.

One time, Nibbles was swimming and one of the yummies tried to poke her. It hurt, and she didn’t like that. It actually chased her for a while, but then another Hunty tried to catch it when the thrum pushed it backward. Nibbles saw the yummie poke that other Hunty. Something odd happened then — the Hunty got all dark and danced jerk-jerk, and then fell apart. But Nibbles swam on and forgot about it right away.

Swim, swim! Dance and wriggle! Find a yummie! That was the world.

But then, one time, everything changed.

*

Dylan played piano. His six-year-old fingers ran around the keys, and the piano sang for him.

He had always liked music. Even before he could sit up by himself, he’d wiggle and squirm in time to the songs on the radio.

The first time he touched a piano was when he was three years old. It had been in the school where his older sister Jessie was about to start the second grade. He didn’t know why they were there — a three-year-old knew nothing about registering older kids for the upcoming school year. But he instinctively knew what to do with the piano off on one side of the big room.

He was sitting next to his Mom in a little chair in the gymnasium. They were waiting with other moms and kids and brothers and sisters. His mom was chatting with another mom. Jessie was over in a corner with most of the other kids who were also waiting, and they were all noisily shouting jokes at each other.

The piano had been moved into the gym the day before, in preparation for an assembly to kick off the school year, which was going to start next week. The piano was a big upright grand, the kind most schools had in those days. It was dark, and silent, but Dylan could somehow tell that it wasn’t supposed to be silent.

He sat on the little chair swinging his legs, and he stared at the piano. He glanced at his Mom who was saying something about some TV show. He got up and quietly walked away.

Dylan went to the piano, unnoticed. The keyboard cover was open, and the black and white stripes reminded him of a big grin. He touched one key, gently, the way he would gently touch their cat Betsy. His eyes lit with delight when a note sounded from the depths of the huge instrument. He touched the key right beside that first one, and there was a different note. He touched the key on the other side, and the sound was different again.

Methodically, he went all the way up the keyboard, gently pressing each key. He made sure to stay very quiet so no one would mind, and no one would tell him to stop. The sounds got squeakier as he went up the keyboard, and the highest ones felt almost like tickles.

When he reached the end, he walked all the way to the other side, and touched the key farthest down. It boomed, and Dylan could feel the whole piano shake. He glanced up to make sure no one minded. Only one little girl was looking at him, Nohl, who was his age and who lived near his house.

One key at a time, he worked his way back up the piano-grin, listening as the booming got more and more like a normal voice. Then, starting once more in the middle, he listened to all the keys yet again, but two keys apart this time. Then he went back and forth, listening to how the voice kept changing. And he discovered he could make it sound like the nursery rhyme his mother would sing him to sleep with.

The piano would sing to him, if he touched it right.

From that moment on, playing the piano was all Dylan wanted to do.

That night, and every day for a week, he begged his Mom and Dad to bring him back to the school. They instead found a music store in a nearby mall outside their small town in central Illinois, a store that let him sit for hours at an old used instrument they were trying to sell. It was good for the store — over the next few months, he became something of a curiosity, and that would draw in customers. Nohl often came and listened, too.

His parents bought him a used piano for his fourth birthday, not a toy but a real one. It needed to be tuned, three of the keys didn’t work, and one of the pedals was broken, but it was the best they could afford. Most importantly, was a real piano, and it was his, and every moment he wasn’t eating or sleeping, he was letting it sing for him.

Well, almost every moment. He did take time off to play monsters in the park with the kids down the street, especially with his friend Nohl. But everyone knew what he really wanted to be doing. Everyone knew that Dylan Court played piano.

His parents couldn’t afford to pay for lessons, but he didn’t need them. He’d hear a song, and sit at the piano, and within minutes he could play it perfectly. It amazed everyone who watched, to see his little hands dance over the keys the way they did, almost as if they were creatures separate from his body. No one would have believed it if they hadn’t seen it for themselves.

He started very soon to compose pieces of his own. The tunes were simple at first. But he quickly learned about minor keys, and dissonance, about syncopation and odd time signatures. He couldn’t have named any of these things. But he could play them.

He had just started kindergarten, and it was a month before his sixth birthday, when Dylan’s teachers found out what he could do. On the very first day of kindergarten, his teacher, Mrs. Mundahl, had turned her back on the class to write her name on the whiteboard. When she again faced the class, he was gone. His friend Nohl laughed, and she said he’d probably gone off to find a piano.

Mrs. Mundahl hurried through the hallways, prepared to send the boy to the principal’s office. As she approached the music room, she heard what she was certain must be the music teacher, Louise Fletcher, practicing a complex Mozart piece. But when she looked into the room, there was little Dylan Court, sitting on the piano bench, making the most remarkable music. His eyes were closed, a smile playing over his little mouth, and his hands flittered like butterflies up and down the keyboard.

She walked forward slowly from the door, stepping silently to avoid making a sound. It seemed almost criminal, almost an assault against something sacred, to interrupt the music. She reached the bench and stood next to him and listened, transfixed, amazed. After a time, he stopped.

“How do you do that?” Mrs. Mundahl whispered.

Dylan looked up and her and shrugged. “It sings to me,” he said. “I help it sing.”

*

There was a time when Nibbles was floating and dancing, and everything changed.

She was in a place where there were a lot of planted Sprouty cells. The Reds bustled all around them. The Sproutys wiggled, kind of, but they couldn’t dance like Nibbles and the other Huntys. They were always stuck to the walls.

One of the Sproutys had a long, long arm that reached way down the Stream. Sproutys always had long arms like that. But there was something different about this arm. It wiggled as if it wanted to be free of the wall, or as if it wanted to touch the Huntys and Reds who were swimming past. Nibbles moved closer and sniffed. It was the strangest scent, almost smelling like something Nibbles might want to eat.

That wasn’t right, and was very confusing. Sproutys and walls were not for eating. She’d never tasted a Sprouty before. At least, she didn’t know if she had ever done it. She didn’t remember very much, after all.

This didn’t quite make sense, and Nibbles was confused. She backed away and tried to dance so she’d feel like usual again. That almost worked okay. Then she sniffed around to decide what to do next. Swim, swim! Eat some yummies! That was the world.

Was there something she was about to do?

She promptly forgot, but then she noticed there were was a long wiggly arm on a Sprouty near her, and it smelled very good, and almost seemed as if it wanted her to touch it. So she danced a little more, and moved very close, and, carefully, brushed against the Sprouty.

It tasted very good when she touched it. She wanted to touch it more.

She flowed up to the arm of the Sprouty, pressed against it, tasting it without actually trying to eat it. Sproutys were not for eating. But she flowed right up against it, pressed hard against it, and started folding herself around it almost as if she’d surround a yummie. She flowed around farther still, until her two sides could touch each other around the Sprouty’s arm. It tasted very good.

And then everything changed.

It started as a tingling, almost like her insides were dancing. The tingles were coming from the Sprouty, which was tingling inside her as she surrounded it. There was something very wonderful about the taste, something wonderful about the tingling.

And there was a rhythm to the tingling, like the thrum, only faster and inside her, not moving the flow of the Stream which was outside and around her. And there were smaller rhythms too, and they danced like she did, but better and fancier, and there were many more thrums. They were telling her things, they whispered to her, things she couldn’t quite understand.

The Sprouty wiggled some more, and Nibbles knew it was trying to throw her off. Was it afraid she would try to eat it? That was silly, because it had seemed to want her to touch it and taste it. She held on tighter. She needed to feel the tingles more, needed to hear what they were saying. She even needed more of the taste of the Sprouty, even though she knew she shouldn’t do that. Sproutys and walls were not for eating.

The tighter she held to the Sprouty, the better she could feel the tingles. They were filling her, making all of her dance more than she ever had. It was the most wonderful thing! She could feel thrumming, and dancing, and tingling, and the best taste she had ever known — and the promise of more.

The whispers were voices, and she never heard anything like them. They said things to her — or maybe it wasn’t to her, exactly, maybe not meant for her to hear. But it didn’t matter if it was meant for her or not. Just listening was more than enough, even if she couldn’t quite understand.

Swimming was forgotten. Eating was forgotten. Even dancing was forgotten. The thrum was gone, the Stream was gone. There was only the tingling and the whispers, and a taste so wondrous there was nothing to compare it to.

She heard music, melodies to accompany the tingling within her, and she’d never heard anything like that. Nothing else mattered. She didn’t know how long she clung there, having lost even the awareness of clinging. She clung there until she could remember nothing more. But no, she did remember, everything more, the time she’d almost been killed by a virus, the time she heard other Huntys calling and found a feast of yummies, and then back farther, a forever of swimming and eating and dancing.

But wondrous as that was, as startling and amazing, none of that compared to the music she heard. There were thunderous bases, soaring calls, a twinkling playfulness, a roaring tide.

And the voices! They spoke and they laughed and they whispered and told of secrets. Each thing slipped away, but always there was more and more and more, and she tried so hard to hold on, tried so hard to remember, and she struggled so hard to understand that she was sure she would burst —

But then the Sprouty shuddered, violently, and she was thrown off.

“No!” she cried, and she swam in desperation. The Thrum! Thrum! pushed her away, down the Stream, and she tumbled. She was weak, she realized — she must have been clinging so long that she was weak and hungry now. She couldn’t swim back against the tide of the Stream.

She was spun away from the arm of the Sprouty, and was pushed away. “No!” she cried. A yummie twirled past her, but she ignored it, trying to move back, needing to move back. But in a moment, she was washed around a bend, and the arm and the Sprouty were gone.

The world was tiny and cramped. The world was dark and battering. She was washed away, helpless, hopeless.

There was nothing left now. No tingling, no music, no whispers. No more dancing. Only swimming and finding yummies when she had to eat. That was all. That was the world.

*

“How do you do that?”

Dylan was nine years old. His teachers were now used to him sneaking down to the music room every chance he got, so he could play the piano. At lunch time, he was never in the lunch room. He was always playing the piano.

Miss Fletcher, the music teacher, was listening as he finished playing. She asked him the same question several times during every school year, the same question his kindergarten teacher had asked him, and she had asked him every year since kindergarten. “How do you do that?” Dylan was beginning to think she wanted him to tell her some Secret, so she’d know and then she’d be able to play like he could.

He looked up at her and shrugged. Usually when she asked, he’d just say, “It sings to me.” But he knew she wanted some other answer. So this time, he thought about it a little more. He pointed to his head. “I hear things,” he said. “In here. There’s music in here. I don’t know where it comes from, but it gets into my head from somewhere else, and then it has to come out.” He showed her his hands. “It has to come out,” he explained, “and I just help it sing to me.”

His friend, Nohl Dhen, was sitting next to him on the piano bench. Her family was from Vietnam. She lived on the same street as Dylan, two doors down. They sometimes did their math homework together, because she was very good at math and all Dylan could do was play the piano, and Nohl liked to listen to him play when their homework was done. Dylan thought she was very pretty, with her black, black hair and high cheeks and oddly-shaped dark eyes. Some of the other boys would tease him about being friends with a girl, but Dylan didn’t care. She helped him with math, and she listened to his piano.

Miss Fletcher frowned. “I like how you play,” she said to Dylan, and she sighed. “But you have to go to your next class now. Lunchtime’s over.”

Dylan glanced at the clock. “I know,” he said. He got up, and he and Nohl hurried away.

The next class was a science class. Dylan tried to pay attention, but there was a new melody in his head and he really wanted to get back to a piano to help it sing. He wanted Nohl to hear it.

The science teacher was Mr. Drexler. He was talking about diseases and germs and white blood cells that would eat up the germs. Something he said caught Dylan’s attention. He said infections were caused by germs getting into your body, like from a bad cut on your finger. But white blood cells would all rush over and eat up the germs. But what Mr. Drexler said didn’t quite make sense.

Dylan raised his hand. Mr. Drexler stopped talking and looked at him in surprise. Dylan never raised his hand to answer a question or to ask something. He was always thinking about music and the piano. So Mr. Drexler looked surprised, and said, “Yes, Dylan?”

“How do they know to do that?” Dylan asked. “I mean, white blood cells aren’t very smart, are they? They’re just cells. How do they know to all go to where the cut is and eat up the germs? How do they do that?” he asked, and he knew he was asking the same thing Miss Fletcher had asked him.

“That’s just what they do,” Mr. Drexler answered. “That’s what they’re for.” But that answer didn’t really explain anything, and Dylan thought Mr. Drexler looked confused, too.

Nohl was looking at him, her face screwed up in concentration, and he knew she also was trying to work it out.

“But they’re just part of you,” Dylan objected. “How do they know to go to where you’re hurt?”

Mr. Drexler frowned. “They know where to go because they’re a part of you. After all, you know when you get hurt, right? You can feel it when your hand gets cut, and you know where it got cut because it’s part of you and you can feel it. So the different parts of you all know when something gets hurt. See?”

Dylan thought about that. “But do they know they know?” he asked. “Can a blood cell think?”

Some of the other boys were giggling, as if he’d asked something stupid. Mr. Drexler just kept looking confused. Nohl raised her hand. “Mr. Drexler,” she said, “if they’re just part of you, then how can they eat the germs? I mean, something that’s just a part of you can’t eat all by itself — you can’t have your hand eat something. Eating is something all of you does.”

Dylan smiled at her. She wants to know, too, he thought.

Mr. Drexler looked very surprised, and he sat on the edge of his desk. He spoke slowly. “It’s almost as if the white blood cells are a special type of germ, almost as if they were living things all by themselves.” He was thinking hard, too, and he glanced out the window. “Actually, I guess that’s true for all of the cells in you. Every one of them needs food, and expels waste — ” (a couple of the boys giggled at that, but Mr. Drexler didn’t seem to notice) “ — and they all divide to make new cells. Some can move — white blood cells, for instance, they can move on their own like animals can. And some cells are stuck in one place, like plants — your skin and nerve cells can’t move around your body.” He smiled. “It’s almost like your body is a whole world, and the cells of your body are the animals and plants that make up that world. Pretty neat, huh?”

But that just led to more questions. “Does that mean the world is a living body too,” Dylan asked, “and the animals and plants are all cells that make it?”

Mr. Drexler stopped smiling. “I don’t know, Dylan. That’s a very good question, and maybe something for you to think about when you get older. But now, class,” he said, and was obviously going back to the lesson, “there are other kinds of blood cells too, for instance, red blood cells. Does anyone know what they do?”

Mr. Drexler turned his back to go write something on the whiteboard. Nohl leaned over toward Dylan and whispered, “I think you’re a music cell.”

*

Before then, we hadn’t talked about the dreams we’d both had. I guess we’d always assumed the Huntys were just a shared childhood fantasy. But after that day in fourth grade science class, we talked about them a lot. And we realized at least one of them had heard the piano, even though she didn’t really know about us. And we wondered whether she could hear us, too, and what that knowledge was doing to her.

*

The world was dreadful and small and empty. Nibbles spun aimlessly through the Stream, not dancing anymore. She ate when she had to, when the hunger became more than she could withstand. But there was something else, an emptiness and listlessness like hunger that wouldn’t go away. Nothing could fill her.

She remembered things now. She even remembered that she once couldn’t remember. Some of the memories were fading. But some did not fade. Some were vivid. Some stayed just not quite out of reach.

She remembered the Sprouty with the long arm that wiggled and seemed to want her to taste it. She remembered the tickles and the tingles. She remembered hearing things she had never heard, things she somehow had known she’d never heard, even though, back then, she couldn’t remember much of anything. She remembered the whispers, remembered that they’d said things — but she couldn’t remember a thing they’d said. She remembered the rhythms and the soaring sounds — or at least, she remembered that there were such things, even if she could no longer quite remember what they sounded like.

But without them, there was nothing. There was still swimming and eating, and she saw other Huntys dancing so she knew there was dancing. But none of it filled her. She was always hungry.

But then one time she was floating down another Stream, and it was very narrow and crowded. There were lots of Huntys here, and Reds bustling about, and Sproutys wriggling on the walls. The thrum! thrum! was carrying her forward. There was a familiar scent to the Stream. Or at least, she thought it was familiar. Memory was a new thing for her, and she wasn’t certain she could trust it.

There were lots of yummies here, too, and the other Huntys were calling to Nibbles, telling her to eat and to dance. But Nibbles didn’t want to eat, and she didn’t want to dance. One other Hunty nudged her and tickled her and tried to push her over to a yummie. Nibbles pushed back swam away. She was still pretty weak, because she only ate when she had to, so she couldn’t direct where she was going, and she bumped into one of the Sproutys.

And she knew the taste.

She rippled, surprised. It tasted just like the other Sprouty, the one she’d listened to! She didn’t know they all tasted like that. Maybe, if they all tasted like that, maybe she could listen to them all. Maybe they’d all thrum like the one she’d known before!

She gathered up all the strength she had, and pressed against this Sprouty, flowed around one of its arms, hugged it tightly to hang on, remembering the wonderful taste.

She felt the Sprouty shudder, and knew it was trying to shake her off. But she held on, desperately, with all the strength she had, and she waited, and listened.

And she heard, building slowly within her again, yes yes yes! There was the trembling and the tingling and the whispers! Yes, she could hear them again!

But the other Huntys were pushing against her, “Hey!” they said. “Sproutys are not to eat!” She was too weak to hang on with the other Huntys pushing her, and they shoved her right off. “Eat some yummies!” they said, and “Dance!” they said.

And then Nibbles did dance, because she knew she could listen to any of the Sproutys, and she didn’t have to be all hungry and silent all the time! She darted to a yummie and surrounded it, and felt her strength growing again. She darted to another and ate that one too, and danced, and was happy. She could listen to the Sproutys any time!

She ate three more of the little yummies, and was very pleased with how strong she was feeling. The yummies were thinning out now, because the Huntys had eaten most of them, and lots of the Huntys were starting to dance. Nibbles slipped away, and approached one of the Sproutys.

She remembered she had been about to do something. She remembered she could listen to any of the Sproutys. She remembered.

She flowed up to it, and surrounded it, but one of the other Huntys saw her and sped over to her. “Hey!” the other Hunty said, “Sproutys are not to eat!” The other Hunty pushed at Nibbles, and tried to push her off the Sprouty.

Nibbles pushed back at her. “Not eating. Listening. Hush!”

The Hunty was confused. She darted back and forth. “Come swim! Dance, dance!” She pushed at Nibbles. Nibbles pushed back.

More Huntys were crowding around. More and more came, and they started crying, “Hey! Sproutys are not to eat!” The Stream was getting very crowded and full.

They packed in close, and kept urging Nibbles to come away. Soon, they were pressed up very close against each other.

“Not eating!” Nibbles insisted. “Go away!”

“Come dance then!” one called at her, and shoved very hard at Nibbles.

They wouldn’t go away. Maybe she could teach them to listen, and then they’d understand.

“Listen!” Nibbles called. “Thrums and whispers! Voices, rhythms! Listen, listen!”

They all quivered around her, shaking back and forth in confusion. None of them understood. None of them knew. None of them had heard, none had felt the voices and the rhythms. Nibbles tried to tell them, but they couldn’t know, and she didn’t know what to say.

They pushed at her and pushed at her, and she was pushed away from the Sprouty. They pushed her down the Stream. “Not to eat!” they insisted.

Nibbles tumbled away. She was sad again. But then she remembered: she could listen to the Sproutys any time. She could find somewhere there were no Huntys and try again.

She wriggled in delight, and danced, and the other Huntys drifted away from her because she was acting okay again. She looked for another yummie to eat to make sure she’d stay nice and strong.

*

“I think you’re a music cell,” Nohl said yet again. She liked to say that to him, and had repeated it nearly every day for the last two and a half years since that time in fourth-grade science class.

It had been raining for most of the last week, and there were standing puddles and big patches of mud lining the streets. Dylan and Nohl were walking home from school in their raincoats and boots. They wore their backpacks filled with school books over the raincoats. A steady drizzle made their faces and hands cold.

Dylan had told her he’d been spending time working on the one special piano piece he’d been struggling with for more than two years now. It was turning into a concerto, but he still wasn’t ready for anyone else to hear it.

“I think you’re a music cell,” Nohl had repeated, and she laughed.

Dylan shrugged. “I’ve been thinking about cells, too,” he said. “Sometimes the cells in your body do what you want them to, like when you want to walk. Then the muscle cells and nerve cells make you walk, right? But sometimes, the cells just do what they want, like when Hunty white blood cells go after germs and eat them. You don’t tell them to do that. They just do it.”

Nohl jumped up and came down with both feet in a puddle, and laughed. “See? I wanted to jump in that!”

Dylan smiled at her, and hooked his thumb in the strap of his backpack. “But the thing is, single cells don’t know what they’re doing. I mean, maybe the muscle cells know they’re working, and the Huntys know they’re moving around. But Huntys don’t know they’re eating germs in order to keep you healthy. They just know they’re eating.”

“They probably don’t know about the whole body at all,” Nohl said, scowling. “What kind of thinking can a single cell do, anyway?”

“It’s got to be really simple,” Dylan agreed. “So they have no idea what they’re for.”

They walked in silence for a while, past a gas station where some of the kids from the middle school were buying Cokes and candy bars and trying to convince the guy inside to sell them cigarettes.

“Are you worried about them?” Nohl asked. “The Huntys, I mean.”

Dylan shrugged. “Miss Fletcher still keeps asking me how I play the piano. I think she always wanted to be a concert pianist. She’s friends with the director of the Chicago Symphony, you know.” He wiped drizzle off his face. “But it’s no big secret how I play. I just do. It’s easy.”

“It’s not easy for everyone.”

“It is for me.” He pointed at Ed Bevin, one of the middle school kids over at the gas station. His younger brother, Steve, was in sixth grade with Dylan and Nohl. “Ed there is really strong, and he’s going to be on the high school football team.”

“He’s a bully.”

“Yeah, but playing football is easy for him. And you, you can do math and you know science. That’s easy for you, and I really struggle. The thing is, we do what we do. Right?”

“Yeah, I guess. But what’s that got to do with why Huntys — ”

“I play piano. I can’t say how, any more than you can say how you do math. But I don’t have to know how. Okay, so Huntys don’t know how they do things, and I bet they don’t care. What they don’t know is why. They’re too simple to know — they’re just single cells. And even if they weren’t so simple, they’d have no way to find out. How could we tell them?”

Nohl shook her head. “Maybe we could. We can tell them when we want to walk or play football or jump into a puddle.”

“But could we tell them why we want to do that? Could you explain ‘having fun’ to them, or ‘going home from school’? Do blood cells have fun, or go to schools? They couldn’t know what these things mean, could they?”

Nohl looked at him sideways. “Are you worried about them?” she repeated.

Dylan took a deep breath. “I’m worried about me. I want to know why I play piano.”

Nohl thought about that. “My family’s Hindu,” she said. “They left Vietnam when the Communists came in.”

“I thought most Hindus were from India.”

“Most, yeah, but there’s a few in Vietnam. Anyway, the Hindus have a story about the god Krishna who could walk among mortals, and teach them things — ”

A voice came up from behind them. “Hey, piano boy!”

Nohl glanced over her shoulder. “It’s just Ed Bevin,” she said. “Let’s ignore him.”

“Hey, that’s you, isn’t it, piano boy?”

Ed was a big, hulking eighth grader. His hair was in a buzz cut, and he had narrow eyes and a big jaw. He was wearing a short sleeved shirt, even in the drizzle. He came up and stood in front of Dylan. “Didn’t you hear me? How can you play piano if you’re deaf?”

“What do you want?” Dylan asked.

Ed glanced at the other boys who were coming up behind them, and he laughed. “What do I want? Steve told me about you. I wanna know why you’re such a dork. What’s all this about pianos and crap?”

“I just don’t like football,” Dylan shrugged, and he started to walk around Ed.

But the older boy held out his hand and stopped him. “This your girlfriend?” he asked. He looked Nohl up and down appraisingly. “Hey, what’cha doing with this loser?” he asked her.

“I like brain cells,” she said, and she and Dylan tried to walk away again, but Ed and his friends were surrounding them.

“Oh, yeah, I remember,” Ed said. “You’re that geek girl gook.” One of the others sniggered. “Steve told me about you, too. You think you’re so much better than everyone, just ’cause you get all A’s.”

“And you think you’re better because you can push around younger kids,” Nohl said. She was putting on a good face, but Dylan knew she was getting really frightened. So was he.

Dylan said, “We’re just going home. Prove you’re a good sport, and go pick on another football player.”

The other boys started laughing, and Ed’s face showed he knew he was about the get the worst of this conversation. “Don’t give me your crap, piano boy,” he said, and he pushed Dylan hard, and lashed out a foot to trip him. Dylan went sprawling into a puddle, whacked his head on the curb, and got a lungful of muddy water.

“Leave him alone!” Nohl shouted, and she gave Ed a push and rushed over to where Dylan lay face down in the puddle, coughing, struggling to get onto his hands and knees.

“Goodbye, girls,” Ed said, and he paused long enough to push Dylan’s face into the water again. He and his friends walked off, laughing and shoving each other.

Nohl helped Dylan to sit up. He was wet and choking, and there was blood coming from a gash on his forehead. He was spitting out muddy water, and Nohl started slapping his back in an effort to help him breathe. He finally stopped coughing, but he held his head and whimpered. There was a big bruise forming there. Nohl tried to wipe the mud away from the cut.

“I don’t feel so good,” Dylan said.

“Look at me,” Nohl said, kneeling in the puddle in front of him.

Dylan tried to look up, but couldn’t. “You’re getting your clothes all wet,” he told her.

“Never mind that.” She put her hand under his chin and gently lifted his head. “Look at me,” she repeated. He tried, and he knew she was doing what she remembered from the reading she’d done about health and first aid. She stared at his eyes. “Your pupils are different sizes,” she said. “We’d better get you home fast. You may have a concussion.”

He started coughing again, while Nohl helped him to his feet, and he was coughing up muddy water all the way home.

*

Nibbles would slip off when none of the other Huntys were around, and would find a Sprouty, and listen. Sometimes, the thrums and whispers were quiet and distant, sometimes they were loud and sharp, sometimes low and rolling. Sometimes, other Huntys would find her and chase her away, reminding her that Sproutys were not to eat. She tried sometimes to tell them what she was doing, and why, but they never understood, and just told her to dance. Of course, they’d always forget right away, and it was easy for her to slip off again after eating a few yummies.

But then one time she floated down the Stream and heard many Huntys calling. There were lots and lots and lots of yummies up ahead. She turned a bend, and found a place with many writhing Sproutys, and many, many yummies, and Huntys all collecting to eat them up.

Nibbles grabbed hold of one of the yummies floating around, and she ate it. She could feel it giving her more strength. She gobbled up another, and another, and then she noticed something. There were some yummies that were stuck to the Sproutys. They looked like little gray bumps on the arms of the Sproutys, but no, they were yummies. The Huntys weren’t touching them. Huntys didn’t usually go near the Sproutys, because the Sproutys weren’t for eating. But there were lots and lots of yummies clinging to the Sproutys, like little gray bumps.

Nibbles swam up to one, and sucked it off, and ate it. And right away, she could tell there was something wrong. It tasted like the Sproutys did. That was strange, and she didn’t like it, because they weren’t supposed to taste like that. Huntys were not supposed to be thinking of Sproutys when they were eating. But that was why none of the Huntys were eating the yummies that were stuck to the Sproutys. They tasted like the Sproutys did, and Sproutys were not for eating.

But Nibbles didn’t mind the taste of the Sproutys anymore, and there were lots of yummies here that were stuck to the Sproutys, so there was lots for her to eat! She plucked off another one. There were so many Huntys and yummies in here that Nibbles was bashed and battered around while she was eating. It didn’t hurt, but she began bouncing off the walls and the Sproutys. And then, when she brushed against a Sprouty, she noticed something else. The Sproutys that had lots of yummies attached were beginning to taste like the yummies did. That wasn’t right either — yummies that tasted like the Sproutys? Sproutys that tasted like yummies? That wasn’t right at all.

Then she noticed something else strange. The Sproutys looked wrong. They were going all grayish and weren’t wiggling as much as they usually did. The other Huntys didn’t notice, because they couldn’t remember well, not like Nibbles could, and they pretty much ignored the Sproutys anyway.

Something was wrong with these Sproutys. There were yummies stuck to them, and they tasted like yummies. Nibbles had to know if these Sproutys were still okay. She had to know if they still had thrums in them.

She flowed up to one of the Sproutys. Most of the Huntys were too busy eating up all the yummies to notice her. She flowed around an arm of the Sprouty, and listened.

She felt it shudder, knew it was trying to shake her off. But it didn’t seem as strong as she remembered. Maybe it was hungry and weak, like she had been for a time.

But she held on — a much easier thing to do than usually — and she waited, and listened.

And she heard, building slowly within her again, yes yes yes! There was the trembling and the tingling and the whispers! Yes, she could hear them again!

But there was something wrong. She was sure of it. She hugged the arm of the Sprouty, and she listened, and she struggled to listen, but it didn’t build like it had before. There was something wrong.

And she knew what it was. This Sprouty tasted like the yummies. It wasn’t supposed to do that.

She looked around her. The yummies were hurting the Sprouty, the way that one had hurt her so long ago. She thought harder. It had done more than hurt her, hadn’t it? Another Hunty had tried to eat it, and it poked the other Hunty, and then the Hunty had gone jerk-jerk and fell apart.

These yummies were trying to make the Sproutys fall apart.

Nibbles was scared. She didn’t know what to do. She could gobble up lots of them, but she couldn’t gobble up all of them. There were too many, and the other Huntys were ignoring the ones stuck to the Sproutys. She had to change that.

“Hey!” she called to the other Huntys. “Over here!” she called. “Yummies here! Lots and lots!”

There was a hubbub and a ripple. A couple of the Huntys passed by her, sniffed, and moved on. They were confused. Most of them just danced and ate the yummies that were flowing by in the steam around her.

“Hey!” she called again.

One of the passing Huntys slowed down, stopped, moved closer. She sniffed at the bumps covering the arms of the Sprouty. Then she danced a little, plucked off a yummie, and ate it down.

Nibbles wriggled in joy. “See?” she called. “They’re good! Eat them all up!”

“Hey!” the other Hunty said, as she grabbed hold of another yummie, “Over here!” she called. “Lots of yummies here!”

Other Huntys started clustering around, and Nibbles writhed in joy. She slid farther up the arm she was attached to, but noticed she was feeling sluggish. That was strange, because she’d been eating so much. She should be feeling strong and lively. But no, she felt all cramped, and her insides felt all jumbled. She stretched, trying to straighten herself out inside, and to put everything right —

And then there was another Hunty right next to her, just like her, being just as amazed as she was.

“Hey!” she both said. And then she both danced. “Let’s eat the yummies!” she said. “Let’s save the Sprouty!”

So they ate and ate, but then she noticed something else. One of the other Huntys was attached to a Sprouty, wrapped around it, tasting it.

“Hey!” the other Hunty said. “This tastes like the yummies!”

There was a hubbub and a ripple. The Huntys clustered around, and some of them said, “Sproutys are not to eat!” but the one Hunty said, “This one tastes like the yummies!” and the others clustered around.

“No, no!” Nibbles called. “Listen to the Sproutys! Eat the yummies! Sproutys are not to eat!”

But the Huntys were all clustering around, and crowding close, and some were starting to brush up against the Sproutys, and to taste them. “No, no!” Nibbles called. “Sproutys are not to eat!”

“Then go eat yummies,” one of the Huntys told her, and pushed her away.

Nibbles saw lots of Huntys surrounding an arm of one of the Sproutys. It wiggled and tried to throw them off, but it was weak because it had lots of yummies attached to it, and it tasted like the yummies. It suddenly went jerk-jerk, and it fell apart, scattering the Huntys.

“No, no!” Nibbles cried. “Sproutys are not to eat!” But they pushed her away, and she tumbled down the Stream while the other Huntys collected around another Sprouty.

*

The doctor’s office was cold. Dylan kicked his legs and waited. He didn’t like being here.

They’d taken blood samples yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. He’d already missed over a week of school, and he had been too weak with his coughing and headaches even to play his piano. He didn’t want to go to the hospital. He wanted to be home, and he wanted to talk to Nohl.

He hadn’t felt right ever since he’d swallowed all that muddy water, and gotten that awful bash on his head. That was nearly a month ago. The cough wouldn’t go away. The headaches wouldn’t go away. He was sleeping a lot, and he didn’t have much of an appetite. Nohl came to see him every day after school, and brought his homework, and tried to help him with it. But he couldn’t really concentrate, and he was tired all the time, and he was having trouble staying awake.

Then this morning, he decided he just couldn’t stay in bed anymore. His piano was calling to him, and it had to sing, and he had to work on his concerto.

He’d gone to the piano, warmed up a little with some arpeggios and scales, and it felt so good to be playing again! Then he settled down to play the song in his head.

But his hands started shaking.

He frowned and lifted his hands off the keys. The fingers on his right hand were twitching, and he couldn’t stop them.

He tapped them on the bench next to him, and even sat on them. Slowly, the twitching stopped. Dylan took a deep breath and tried once more.

He heard the tune in his mind, had heard it for years, had been trying to master it since the fourth grade. There were two tunes actually, playing across each other, teasing each other like butterflies on a summer’s morning. There was a low bass line behind them, keeping time, keeping meter, keeping the teasing butterflies in line. But they laughed at the stodgy bass, dared it break stride — and then it did, and the laughing paused in amazement and sudden loss. He heard it all, and heard how all three voices mourned and cried, and then tried to console each other until they finally eased into silence.

Dylan could feel the heartbreak. It was the most beautiful melody he’d ever heard.

He reached his hands out once more, coaxing the butterflies, teaching his friend the piano to sing them.

And his hands started shaking again.

He was simply unable to help it sing. The harder he tried, the more his hands shook.

And then, with horror, he realized he was beginning to forget what the butterflies sounded like.

Here he was now, sitting in a damn doctor’s office, and he was beginning to forget the music that wanted him to help it sing.

He had to get back to his piano.

His parents had taken him to Doctor Fischer, and Doctor Fischer had started running tests. One more, he kept saying, one more. This time, he promised, I’ll know what it is.

Dylan sat on the edge of the examination bed and kicked his feet, and coughed.

Finally, the door opened. Doctor Fischer came in, and Dylan’s mom and dad came in behind him. His mother was obviously not crying. His father’s eyes were red.

Doctor Fischer pulled a stool up, and sat close to Dylan. He cleared his throat.

“There’s been an infection in your nervous system,” Doctor Fischer said. “I don’t know if it entered through your lungs, or through the muck you swallowed, or through the cut on your forehead, or maybe all three. Anyway, it’s complicated by the pneumonia you’ve been building in your lungs. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

Dylan blinked. “Of course I do.” He coughed a few times. “Nohl helps me with science stuff,” he explained.

Doctor Fischer gave a quick smile, which vanished just as quickly. “Okay. Now, I can start you on antibiotics. But, we think the infection has somehow triggered an autoimmune reaction — ”

Dylan’s father stopped him. “He’s just a kid, Doctor, he’s smart, but he’s just a kid. Keep it in English.”

“I’m getting this,” Dylan broke in. “Autoimmune means my Hunt — my antibodies are starting to attack my own body. Right?”

Doctor Fischer nodded. “Uhm, yes. Specifically, they’re — well, instead of fighting the infection that’s going after your nervous system, they’re actually damaging you more. It’s like there’s a war going on, and they’ve joined the other side. And the worst thing about that is…” And he paused.

Dylan narrowed his eyes, and searched his memory. Then he sighed. “I know what the problem is. Nerve tissue doesn’t regrow. Whatever damage has been done isn’t going away.” And the doctor let out a long breath, and Dylan could almost hear him thinking in relief, Good thing he’s a smart kid — I won’t have to say it.

“Now, you have to realize,” the doctor went on, “we can’t be certain any of this will work. But we have to do two things. We’ll give you some antibiotics to try to kill the infection. And we’ll also give you an autoimmune suppressor we hope will prevent further damage — ”

Dylan felt himself almost start to panic. “Won’t that kill off my white blood cells?”

The doctor raised his eyebrows. “Some of them. But you don’t have to worry, because the antibiotics will protect you — ”

“No, you can’t do that. You don’t understand!”

“Dylan,” the doctor said quietly, “we really have to. If we don’t — ”

“I know what’ll happen,” Dylan said. “But you’re not sure it’ll help me anyway.” He looked desperately at his mom and dad. “Please don’t do this!”

His dad looked very gloomy, but also very stern. “We’re your parents, Dylan,” he said. “It’s our responsibility to decide what’s best for you. We’re not going to let… You’re going to take the medicine.”

Dylan closed his eyes, and fought to keep from crying. “I want to go home now,” he said.

His parents exchanged glances with each other, and with the doctor, then they left the examining room to talk in the hallway. He couldn’t hear much as they talked out in the hallway, but he heard enough. When his parents came back, his mom was very close to crying. “That damn Bevin kid,” she said.

Dylan shook his head. “He didn’t know what he was doing. He just does what he does. Just like you do.” And then his mom did start to cry.

Then Doctor Fischer also came back in, and he gave Dylan a shot which was an antibiotic, and another which was an autoimmune suppressor. And then Dylan and his parents went home.

Dylan sat at his piano, but he was too tired to even try to play, and his hands were trembling too much anyhow. He sat on the bench, and put his head down on his arms on the keyboard cover, and he slept.

*

There was something odd about the Stream. It tasted funny, and felt strange. It made Nibbles quiver in a bad way, and reminded her of the Hunty that went all jerk-jerk.

She was still feeling bad about the Sproutys that had been hurt, but she reminded herself that she could listen to any of the Sproutys. It wasn’t good that some Huntys had broken some of the Sproutys, but she knew she could listen to other ones.

And then she rounded a bend in the Stream, and came to a place where there were lots and lots and lots of Sproutys. And she saw that all of them were going gray, and weren’t wiggly as much as they should be, just like the ones she’d seen before. And she looked close, and saw there were lots of yummies stuck to them, looking like little bumps.

And as she watched, some of the Huntys drifting around were brushing up against the Sproutys, and sometimes plucking off the yummies, and sometimes even tasting the Sproutys. She knew what was going to happen, because she remembered. This wasn’t good.

She tried to nudge the Huntys away, tried to tell them to eat only the yummies. But the more she tried, the more they decided to taste the Sproutys. And so more Sproutys went jerk-jerk, and they fell apart, and the Huntys didn’t even know that they could listen to the Sproutys instead.

So Nibbles gave up trying to stop the other Huntys. Maybe if she didn’t talk to them, they wouldn’t think to taste the Sproutys. Maybe they’d figure out they were supposed to eat the yummies, and do no more.

But the Stream started to taste funny. Nibbles didn’t like it. And then the Thrum! Thrum! washed a lot of the bad taste past them, and one time, something strange happened. All of the yummies fell off the Sproutys, and they wriggled and went jerk-jerk, and they all fell apart.

“Hey!” Nibbles said, and all of the Huntys listened to her, but she had nothing to say. She danced a little, looking at the pieces of yummies that were floating past, like the yucchies that the walls would spit out. Maybe the Stream was going to eat up the yummies! Maybe the Huntys would leave the Sproutys alone!

So Nibbles floated down the Stream some more, and tried to forget about the Sproutys that had fallen apart. Maybe none of it mattered, and she should forget it.

But everywhere she went, she saw more Sproutys that were gray and not wiggly enough. And sometimes, she found Huntys that were tasting the Sproutys, and sometimes she saw Huntys make the Sproutys go jerk-jerk and fall apart.

She tried to listen to some Sproutys, but they were all pretty quiet, and none of them really sang to her any more. She didn’t want to eat now, and she didn’t want to dance, and the Stream started tasting very, very bad.

The world was tiny and cramped. It was all crowded like she had been that time she had forgotten about but now remembered. The world was dark and battering. She was washed away, helpless, hopeless.

There was nothing left now. No tingling, no music, no whispers. No more dancing. Only swimming and finding yummies when she had to eat. That was all. That was the world.

*

It was two in the morning. Dylan’s older sister, Jessie, was gently shaking him awake. “We’ve got a surprise for you,” she said.

“What is it?” Dylan asked sleepily.

Jessie smiled, and stood from where she’d been kneeling next to his bed. “I can’t tell you yet. It’s a surprise. C’mon, get dressed. And be quiet. Mom and Dad don’t know.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?” Dylan asked. “You’ve got school — ”

“You’ve lost track of the days. Tomorrow’s Saturday. Now shut up and get dressed.” And she left the room.

Dylan did his best not to cough too loudly while he dressed. It took longer than he wanted it to — his right hand kept shaking, and he had trouble fastening his pants and tying his shoes.

Jessie was waiting for him in the kitchen. “Took you long enough,” she said.

“Sorry,” Dylan answered.

“Don’t apologize to me. C’mon, we don’t have much time.”

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll find out.”

They went outside. Jessie was sixteen, and had just gotten her driver’s license. She had an old car she’d bought with the money she earned from her part-time job at the department store in the mall. The car wasn’t much, but it ran. It was parked on the curb outside their house. She motioned Dylan to get in. “Where are we going?” Dylan repeated.

“It’s a surprise,” Jessie explained again. Dylan reached for the passenger’s side door handle, but Jessie shook her head. “Get in the back.”

Dylan shrugged, and opened the back door. Nohl smiled at him from the back seat. He couldn’t help but break into a big grin. “Nohl! What are you doing here?”

She gave him a hug as he climbed in. “Jessie and I planned a surprise for you,” she said. “Just wait.” Jessie climbed into the driver’s seat, and they drove off. “How are you feeling?” Nohl asked.

“I’ve been better,” Dylan answered, and he had a brief coughing fit. He’d brought along a handkerchief because he’d been coughing up some blood. Doctor Fischer had said that wasn’t entirely unexpected, but if it didn’t go away after a day of the medication, he might have to go into the hospital whether he wanted to or not.

“Jessie told me about your autoimmune problems,” Nohl whispered. She had her arm around Dylan’s shoulders, and was holding him close to her.

Dylan tucked his handkerchief away, and it took a while because he couldn’t stop his hand from shaking. He whispered back to her. “I think,” he said, then he stopped, and tried again. “I know they wanted me to go into the hospital. I heard the doctor talking to Mom and Dad.”

Nohl interrupted him. “I know,” she said.

“I have to say this.”

“No, I know already. They don’t know if you can play the piano anymore.”

“Yeah, that’s bad enough, but there’s more.” They were quiet for a while, then Dylan found the courage to go on. “They only let me go home because they were afraid I might not live very long, and they wanted me to be where I felt most comfortable.”

“Jessie told me,” Nohl whispered. “I know.”

“I had to say it.”

They were quiet for a little longer, as Jessie drove them through the town. Then Nohl said, “I told you my family’s Hindu. They tell of the god Vishnu, who dreams about the world. All the world is the dream of Vishnu, so while we’re living, that’s the dream, and we don’t really wake up until we die.”

They were quiet for a while, and they turned onto the highway, going north. “Jessie,” Dylan asked, “what is this surprise?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jessie answered. “You know I’ll take care of you, kid.”

Nohl patted his cheek, to distract him. “I’ve been thinking about talking to Huntys and explaining things to them. We should try to do that.”

Dylan sighed. “Even if we could, what would we tell them?”

“I’d tell them to stop hurting you. Then you wouldn’t need the suppressors.”

Dylan put his head on Nohl’s shoulder. “They couldn’t know what you were talking about. How could they understand what they’re doing?”

“They’ve got to be able to understand that they’re hurting the place where they live — they’re destroying their own world. And if they don’t stop, one way or the other, it’ll destroy them.”

“Our worries aren’t theirs. Different worlds. They couldn’t possibly understand, or even imagine a creature as big as we are, compared to them.”

“I’d explain it to them,” Nohl insisted. “And I’d tell them why. I’d tell them about what you can do, about how beautiful your music is, and how important it is that you have to keep playing.”

“It’s not important. I’m just one kid. What difference does it make?”

She pulled him closer, and touched his cheek. “It matters to me,” she said. “I want to hear your concerto.”

Dylan smiled. He was getting sleepy again. It was well after two in the morning. “I want you to hear it, too,” he said, and he coughed.

*

The Stream tasted worse and worse, and Nibbles didn’t like it at all. It tasted very bad, and it made her hurt all over like the time one yummie had poked her. She didn’t like that.

One time, there was a place in the Stream where there were no yummies and no Reds and no Huntys. Nibbles had never seen a place like that before, and Nibbles could remember.

It wasn’t a big place. It was around a bend in the Stream, and there was a Sprouty there which was only beginning to turn gray. Nibbles was weak because she hadn’t been eating, but she floated over to the Sprouty, and pressed against it. Maybe she could listen to this Sprouty, because it wasn’t very gray. She pressed against it, and wrapped herself around it, and tasted it. She pushed around it, and surrounded one arm, until she could feel both sides of herself pushing around it, and then she hung on and listened.

And she noticed something — the Sprouty was not trying to throw her off. That was strange, but at least it made it easy for her to hold on, even though she was weak.

So she listened, and she listened, and she just waited. There was nothing else to do. That was the world.

*

“I want to hear your concerto,” Nohl said.

Dylan opened his eyes.

He’d woken up, a few minutes before, and the sun was shining. Nohl still held him in her arms. He woke up because he’d started coughing, and that always woke him up. Nohl helped him wipe up the blood, and then he looked around, blinking into the sunlight. “Where are we?” he asked. There were huge buildings all around them, and hundreds of cars, and the air smelled of pollution and car exhaust, and even a whiff of water, far away.

“We’re in the city,” Jessie answered, still driving. “Chicago. You slept for a few hours. We’re almost there.”

“Mom and Dad will be worried,” Dylan said.

“I left a note,” Jessie said, “and so did Nohl, for her parents. Don’t worry about it. If they get mad, I really don’t care, and believe me, neither will you.”

“What’s going on?” Dylan whispered to Nohl.

But Nohl only smiled, and held him tighter and told him not to worry about it. “We’re here,” she said. “Close your eyes, and I’ll lead you.”

Dylan scowled, but he did what he was told, and he felt the car turn a few times and go into an echoing place — probably a parking garage — and after a while, it stopped. He heard Jessie get out and open the back door. “We’ll lead you,” Jessie said, and Dylan could tell from the sound of her voice that she was smiling. “Don’t peek!”

They walked across a parking lot, but their footsteps echoed strangely, and Dylan could tell they were in a parking garage. They went through a door, and up some stairs, and he felt Nohl’s hands and Jessie’s gently guiding him. And then they walked down a hallway — Dylan could tell by the echoes that it was narrow and close. Jessie and Nohl were whispering to each other, and almost giggling, and Dylan tried to keep his hands in his pockets to make them stop twitching.

And then, they were in a place that opened up, and Dylan could feel air against his face, and the echoes were very, very far away.

“Open your eyes,” Nohl said. “I want to hear your concerto.”

Dylan opened his eyes.

It was an enormous room. There were bright lights shining on him. A few feet away, was a place where the floor dropped off, and then there was a gap, and then row upon row of chairs, that piled higher and higher and farther away. And in front of him was the biggest piano he had ever seen. He knew it was a grand piano. He had heard of them, had even seen them on TV, but he had never seen one close up, in real life. It was enormous.

There were tears in his eyes. “Is this a stage?” he asked, and his voice seemed to reach all the way, back and back, to the farthest chairs immensely far away and very, very high up.

Nohl nodded. “It’s the Chicago Symphony. Miss Fletcher is friends with the conductor here, and they got us in. They’ve got nothing going on this morning — they’re between shows, and no one’s practicing until noon, so we’ve got the place till then.”

“It was Nohl’s idea,” Jessie said. “You had to sit at a real piano, in a real concert hall. She insisted. And I really don’t care whether Mom and Dad get mad at me for kidnapping you, or if Nohl’s mom and dad never let me speak to her again. You had to do this.”

Dylan stared in wonder at the piano. He reached forward and down, and pulled the bench out a little, and he sat. He could feel the tears coming from his eyes.

Nohl sat next to him, and she lifted the cover off the piano keys. “I want to hear your concerto,” she said.

Dylan looked at her, and said, “You know, I think you’re beautiful.”

She smiled. “I know,” she said. “Play for me. Let me hear it sing.”

He reached out his hands, and paused. He closed his eyes and listened to the darkness. His hands trembled, and he couldn’t make them stop. He placed his left hand on the keyboard near the C below middle C, reached out his forefinger, and it wouldn’t be still. He placed his right hand three octaves higher, and all of his fingers were twitching violently.

He gritted his teeth, and sucked in a deep breath, and tried to hold it, but his lungs wouldn’t be still. He could feel tears squeezed from his eyes.

The cells in me, he thought desperately, they’re living creatures. They don’t understand. I can’t explain music to them. They do what they do, and when they do it all together, that’s me. But none of them knows me. None of them knows why they do what they do. None of them knows what the things they’re doing are for.

His hands wouldn’t be still. In frustration, he banged his right hand on the piano bench next to him, but it wouldn’t stop shaking. It hurt — or he thought it hurt, maybe it really didn’t — but it wouldn’t stop shaking.

“Stop it!” he screamed, and he slammed both hands on the keyboard.

The sound echoed, huge, a scream, an explosion, a thunder, the roar of a volcano.

Nohl put her hand on Dylan’s shoulder. “We’re the dream of Vishnu,” she said. “You’re a music cell within the body of the world. Listen to the dream.”

“It doesn’t matter!” Dylan said. “I can’t do it, and it doesn’t matter. I’m just a kid…”

“It matters to me,” Nohl whispered to him. “And it must matter to the world, or you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t have been able to play at all. It knows what it’s for, even if you don’t.”

Dylan took a deep breath, and thought about it again. The thunder and the butterflies were right there, he could still hear them, but they were fading, and if he didn’t play now…

The tiny creatures don’t know what the world is doing. They do what they do, and that’s what makes the world.

He reached one last time for the keyboard. The fingers on his right hand wouldn’t be still — they fluttered and shook randomly. His left hand shook like an earthquake. He squeezed his eyes tightly in terror and frustration, and forced his hands down to the keys.

From his right hand, there came the random dancing of butterflies. They chased each other up and down the scales, they taunted and teased, they skipped and darted.

From his left hand came the rumble of thunder, a bellow that could tear mountains and toss the ocean. There were breakers that roared across islands, shattered cities, washed unslowed over the plains.

The butterflies soared high above, they became stars, dancing and twirling. The trembling of the stars taunted the earthquakes, and the very earth rose up to chase them. There was a howl of a sudden hurricane, and it broke the sky, shattering in a great crescendo of glass that sparkled and sprinkled upon the lava below.

He played for hours. The sound rose and fell, it roared and laughed, it cried and it danced. Jessie sank to the floor behind him, rapt, amazed, transfixed. Nohl sat as close as she dared, she didn’t want to get in his way, but she wanted to be close. She swayed, and cried, she laughed and she wept.

They had never heard anything like this. They knew they would never hear such a thing again.

They heard voices in the music, whisperings and singing, rhythms and tremblings that no hands could evoke from a piano, let alone the random fingers that wouldn’t stay still. They heard more than they heard.

The time went by. Still he played, he played until his fingers were raw, he played until his muscles were aching, he played until he couldn’t play any more, and then still he played.

*

Nibbles clung desperately to the Sprouty. She heard and felt more voices and whispers than she ever had. Her worry about the other Sproutys went away. All the world trembled, all the world was full of the voices and the thrums and the twitters and the tingling. Dancing was forgotten, for all the world danced. Eating was forgotten, for all the world tasted. Swimming was gone, for the Stream was slowing and going thick.

Huntys drifted around her, and some of them tried to nudge her off the Sprouty. But they were weak, even more weak than she was, and they couldn’t move her at all. If she could still dance, she would have danced — silly things, they did not understand, they could not understand —

And then the Huntys around her all went jerk-jerk and broke apart. But Nibbles didn’t really notice, because she was still listening to the Sprouty which was thundering and twittering and soaring and whispering on and on and on and on…

*

A number of musicians drifted into the vast concert hall. There was a rehearsal scheduled for that afternoon. They came in, and they sat in the chairs in the hall, and they listened to the twelve-year-old boy on the stage who played the piano. He played for a very long time, pausing only briefly as one movement of the concerto ended and another began. None of them dared make a sound between movements, for they didn’t want to distract him, they didn’t want to break whatever spell it was that kept him playing.

When he finally did stop, it was because the music was done. It slowed, it ended, it died. It ended because there was no more to say.

Dylan turned to Nohl. His hands fell to his sides. His fingers were swollen, but they weren’t twitching any more. He smiled, and there were tears in his eyes, and running down his cheeks. “Thank you,” he said.

Nohl put her arms around him, and the musicians sitting in the hall started clapping. But Dylan didn’t hear them, and Nohl didn’t hear them.

“I always only wanted to hear you play,” Nohl said, and she felt Dylan shake, and she didn’t know if he was laughing or crying. And then he took a very deep breath, and he let it out, and it took a long, long time for it to empty from his lungs.

*

Jessie called an ambulance, but it was already too late. There was too much nerve damage, and my best friend died in my arms.

Jessie’s parents forgave her for taking Dylan to Chicago on his last day, though they always lamented missing his only concert.

My parents understood as well. They’d fled Vietnam for love of our gods. They couldn’t fault me, their own daughter, for following my heart to Chicago.

Two of the musicians who heard Dylan’s concerto have become famous pop stars, and I can hear some of Dylan’s melodies in their songs. I wonder if they remember where they first heard them.

This was almost ten years ago. I’d told Dylan that his music mattered. I still wonder which of its echoes was the purpose of Vishnu’s dream of him.

This is the reason I am applying for this grant. I need to study consciousness and its relationship to neural biology. I haven’t dreamt of the Huntys since that day. I need to know if they were real, or just a shared childhood fantasy. I need to know why all this happened.

*

Nohl thought about it a good, long time. I don’t think I’ll tell them the truth, she decided. She tore up the grant application, and started again.