Mid Spring, The Night the Music Returned

I heard music tonight.

Not the bells, nor the pipes.

Music.

At first it was so faint that I almost dismissed it as wind moving through the conservatory framework above the gardens. It drifted softly through the upper halls sometime after midnight while light rain tapped gently against the glass ceiling. The longer I listened, however, the more certain I became that I was hearing voices rather than the wind.

I followed the sound farther than I should have. It never seemed to grow louder, and whenever I thought I had found its direction it shifted again, always somewhere a little deeper within the Archive. I was never able to locate it, only to remain aware of it.

Clio refused to accompany me beyond the upper library. Ordinarily that would have been reason enough to turn back, but for reasons I still cannot adequately explain, I continued towards the eastern corridors carrying only a lantern.

It was only later, when I reached into my coat pocket, that I realised I had also brought the brass key. I have no memory of deciding to take it with me, nor can I think of any practical reason I would have done so.

The music seemed strongest near the preservation stairwell. It was neither orchestral nor mechanical, but unmistakably human. Whether I was hearing one voice or many I could not tell. The singing drifted upward through layers of stone and water from somewhere far below the foundations, slow enough to resemble a hymn more than a song.

The stairwell itself felt strangely different. I would not describe it as dangerous, only unusually open, as though the building were listening alongside me.

I descended only as far as the first landing and stopped beside the same sealed gate where Clio had refused to continue several days ago. The music ceased the moment I reached it. The silence that followed was so complete that even the rain above seemed impossibly distant.

It was then that I noticed the warmth against my coat.

The brass key.

When I removed it from the cloth wrapping, the metal was unmistakably warm beneath my fingers. It was also wet. Fresh seawater clung to the brass despite the key having been completely dry when I left the study. I know perfectly well how impossible that sounds, but I can record only what I observed.

The stairwell smelled strongly of salt. Beneath it lingered another scent that took me several moments to recognise: old incense, the sort once burned in temples and funeral halls long before either of us would have called them ancient.

For a few moments I considered descending farther. I hesitate to describe the feeling as compulsion because it was quieter than that. It felt less like being summoned than remembering a destination I had somehow forgotten. There was an unmistakable sense that some part of me already knew the song waiting below.

Then Muninn cried out.

I have never heard that sound from him before. It was a single sharp call that echoed down the stairwell with such force that the lantern went out almost immediately afterwards. Darkness swallowed the passage at once, and somewhere far below the foundations, beyond the sealed gates and beneath water older than the Archive itself, something moved.

Not suddenly.

Deliberately.

I felt the vibration travel through the iron railing beneath my hand as an immense body of water displaced itself somewhere beyond the stone.

That was the moment I finally became afraid.

Not of being harmed.

Of remembering.

I climbed back towards the upper halls rather more quickly than my dignity would usually permit while Muninn continued calling somewhere above me. The Archive no longer felt silent. Pipes trembled softly behind the walls, ancient beams answered one another overhead, and lantern chains swayed despite the perfectly still air.

By the time I reached the upper library, Clio was waiting beside the doorway. Her fur stood high along her spine and she never once looked at me. Her attention remained fixed on the corridor behind us until we returned to the study, and neither she nor Muninn has seemed entirely at ease since.

The brass key now rests inside the furnace safe beneath the study floor. I wrapped it in six layers of cloth before locking it away. I suspect that precaution was more for my own peace of mind than for the key's.

Even so, the room still carries the faint scent of seawater.

Every so often, beneath the rain against the conservatory glass, I think I hear the singing again.

It is always just beyond the edge of hearing.

For tonight, I have decided not to listen too closely.

— M