Chapter 1 Magellan
Magellan
Her back to the window, the curtain drawn, Magellan ran delicate fingers up and down her electric piano with her headphones on, searching for the song from her dreams last night. Cocooned in her robe, her morning coffee growing cold, she closed her eyes and let her hands have free roam.
How did it go?
The melody began to crystallize as she carved it out with the keys, over and over, to find the beginnings of the song’s shape. On the cusp of snatching more from the ethers, her cell phone shook and blared a ringtone belonging to one person: her best friend and roommate, Wren.
Wren’s call broke her concentration and pushed the song back into the recesses of her mind. She took her headphones off with a sigh and answered.
“Happy birthday to youuuuuuu,” Wren serenaded her as only an opera singer could and ended with a crescendo, hitting the A above high C.
Magellan laughed, taking a sip of her coffee, a delicious French roast Wren brewed every morning. “Thank you. That was magnificent.”
“Happy birthday,” Wren said and rushed on in excitement. “Have you looked at the sky yet? It’s freaking incredible!”
“You do remember who you’re talking to.”
Of the top phobias people had in the world—fear of heights, water, flying, storms, spiders, public speaking, and the dentist—Magellan was pretty sure she had them all.
“Mags. No. Just no. You have to look. There’s an actual aurora borealis in the sky right now.”
“What?” Magellan jumped up and was at the living room window in two steps. Bracing herself, she pulled back the curtain and worked to keep her equilibrium. Their apartment was only on the third floor, but still.
What she saw made her momentarily forget her fear of heights. The sky was so beautiful she felt the urge to step out on the patio, something she hadn’t done the whole time she’d lived there.
“I have to get back to rehearsal,” Wren said. “Turn on the news. It’s happening everywhere.” Then she hung up.
Magellan hesitated and decided to keep the curtain open. The sky was amazing, like a stunning painting she couldn’t look away from. She turned on the TV. Wren was right. The aurora borealis was breaking news and happening all over the world.
On one station the weatherman said with a cheery smile, “Well, folks, today we have a surprise party in the sky. Experts believe this is a passing global magnetic storm, and the National Weather Service is projecting it will be over in a week. So until then, sit back and enjoy the show.”
Another station had a much less cheery take.
A grim-looking reporter said, “Everyone needs to know this atmospheric phenomenon happens in the Arctic region,” he stressed.
“That’s why they’re called northern lights.
Or the South Pole—which are southern lights.
It should not be happening here during the day.
” He gave a dramatic stare straight into the camera.
“Stay tuned. This could spell trouble on the horizon.”
Magellan frowned, and her cell phone binged. She had missed a call while she was talking with Wren. An old man had left a voicemail saying he had a book of hers. A diary. She cringed as she listened to the creepy message. He had her diary?
She deleted it. Like she would ever return such a call.
People these days were getting more creative with their scams. Checking the time, she abandoned her coffee and the piano.
She needed to get ready to go see her parents.
They were planning a birthday lunch. Although the thought of making her way across town from Queens to the Upper West Side stressed her out, which was ironic since she shared the name Magellan with the famous Portuguese explorer who’d attempted to circle the globe in the 1500s.
Unlike the real historic explorer, she never went anywhere.
Her elderly parents weren’t big on travel, and even if they were, the thought of getting on a plane was too much for her.
Magellan often wondered if she had inherited all her anxieties from her birth parents.
She’d been adopted at infancy, and for the first four years of her life she didn’t speak.
She was tested for autism and other potential causes for the delay, during which time it was discovered she had an extraordinary ear for music.
So extraordinary, she could play any instrument and re-create any song.
It wasn’t until she was four and her speech therapist told her “Did you know your voice is an instrument too?” that Magellan began to hum.
From humming, her speech therapist encouraged her to sing, and from singing to talk, which she finally did, but only when necessary, because music, not words, was her language.
If Harold and Margaret Brighton had shared their daughter’s gift with the world when she was little, Magellan would have been proclaimed a child prodigy the likes of Mozart or Beethoven, but they had not.
Instead, she had been homeschooled, sheltered, and kept off social media due to her fragile nature.
Her parents were extremely protective until they realized their protectiveness was only hindering her.
Magellan’s incredible talent was meant to be shared, not hidden away.
When Magellan turned seventeen, her longtime music teacher, Garesh, was the one who had talked her into auditioning for Juilliard. “Your gift is for the world. You cannot stay here forever. Your ship will depart one day, whether you are ready or not.”
Magellan wasn’t sure what metaphorical ship he was talking about, but Garesh often said such things.
He had been her teacher for as long as she could remember.
He was the tallest and most gentle man she’d ever met, with midnight hair, dark skin, and piercing brown eyes that held a special light.
He spoke softly, with the hint of an accent, as if every word were perfectly measured because he preferred silence.
Once when she’d asked where he was from, he only smiled. “I am from everywhere.”
A brilliant musician, Garesh had taught her musical theories from around the world.
He would come to her house, where they would sequester themselves in her parents’ study.
They would pick apart musical forms, the structures of symphonies, and look to what the composer’s intention was within each movement.
He would bring instruments she had never known existed and encourage her to play them.
Instruments like the crwth, the nyckelharpa, the contrabass balalaika, the cimbalom, and the theremin.
When she was older, he showed her medical journals about the latest scientific studies with music that demonstrated the power of harmonics to heal the body at cellular levels.
He firmly believed the future of the world depended on sound.
Garesh was the one who accompanied her to her audition at Juilliard and sat and watched her earn the awe of the faculty and a full scholarship.
“Will you still teach me?” she asked him, unable to imagine a future without her beloved teacher. For years it had just been the two of them.
He shook his head gently. “You no longer need me.” To which she shook her head back emphatically. She couldn’t disagree more.
At their last lesson together, he brought his violin to play a duet.
This was her special request, for Garesh rarely played.
They played Sarasate’s Navarra together, a virtuoso violin duet that contained lightning-quick passages demanding perfect synchronization.
Their eyes stayed locked on each other as they trilled in harmony, their shared joy in playing infectious.
As the song neared its close, Garesh segued into Bach’s double violin concerto, a poignant piece.
The violins played in tandem, their melodies cascading over each other in farewell.
As Magellan played, she pushed back the swell of tears.
Garesh had said he was leaving. He had work on the West Coast and overseas, while she would be going to college at Juilliard only blocks away.
She didn’t know when she would see him again.
The song came to a close, and the last note seemed to hover in the air longer than it should have; then they both dropped their bows in salute.
He gave her a courtly bow, in that moment looking as if he belonged to an ancient land.
Before he left, he presented her with a parting gift, a ring made of a bronze-like gold with decorative symbols engraved around the band.
“It has been in my family for generations, to remember me by when you are playing around the world.”
Magellan didn’t know about the around the world part, but the ring was a perfect fit. The metal gleamed on her finger in an array of coppery striations that caught the light. “Thank you.” Impulsively she gave him a hug for the first time, afraid to say goodbye. “I’ll always wear it.”
In the years to follow, she wore the ring not only for luck but to remember all that Garesh had taught her.
She threw herself into her studies at Juilliard wholeheartedly, receiving her undergraduate and graduate degree in music theory by the age of twenty-three.
Her mentors helped her to work through the stage fright and anxiety that hit her before a performance.
Technically called glossophobia, the fear of being watched and judged by others, it turned out many musicians suffered from it.
But she found once she started playing, the fear went away, and over time her stage fright became less debilitating.
Right before graduating two years ago, she met Wren during a school production.
Magellan had been the harpist in Juilliard’s student orchestra, and Wren was the school’s star opera singer.
Nicknamed “the Voice” by her friends, Wren could actually break glass if she wanted to.
During a rehearsal, the two discovered they were both about to graduate and needed a roommate.
The result was the beginning of a wonderful friendship.
Now they shared a one-bedroom matchbox apartment in Queens.
In all these years Garesh had not called or been in touch with her or her parents—except on her birthday.
Every year he sent a gift and a card postmarked from somewhere in the world.
Places like Madrid, Paris, Lima, and Wellington.
But this year he hadn’t sent anything. Magellan tried not to worry and hoped he was all right.
Maybe her parents had heard from him. She’d ask them today. Gathering her things to leave, her cell phone rang with a number she didn’t recognize. She answered it, hoping it was Garesh. “Hello?”
“Hello, I’m trying to reach Magellan Brighton.”
“Speaking.” It sounded like a telemarketer. Immediately she regretted picking up.
“Yes, I’m calling from the Morgan Library & Museum. I left a message for you earlier about a special book I have in my possession. The diary?”
“The diary?” Magellan parroted back, now confused.
“I received it today from the Liron Institute in England with urgent instructions to deliver it to you.”
This morning’s message had been from the Morgan Library & Museum? She frowned, confused. “I’m sorry but are you trying to reach one of my parents? Margaret or Harold Brighton? They’re historians and members of the museum.”
“No, no. The instructions were clear, and this diary is most precious.” He sounded so earnest when he requested she come to the museum and said the reception desk would be expecting her. She found herself agreeing, and they arranged a time tomorrow.
Magellan hung up, utterly mystified. Why would someone in England be sending a diary to the Morgan Museum for her?
She had never heard of the Liron Institute before in her life.