33. Songbird #6
But then, a voice from beside her broke through.
"You sing?"
Charlie turned.
Reyna was looking at her with her head tilted a little, something happening in the corner of her mouth.
"No," Charlie said automatically. "No, I absolutely do not. Not at all. Tavi's just an idiot."
"He seems pretty certain," Reyna countered.
"He's certain about a lot of things," Charlie stated. "He's wrong about most of them. This would be one of those things he's wrong about."
And there it was. There was the same move she'd been making since she was fifteen. Nope, not happening. Change the subject. Turn the radio down.
Katie never pushed Charlie, but she would go ahead and just say it again three months later.
She told me I could sing pretty damn well.
Charlie looked over at Reyna, and suddenly, everything was clear as day.
I'd do anything for her.
Well, that settled it.
And then, the song was just there.
So maybe Charlie couldn't say what she wanted to say to Reyna.
But maybe she could sing it.
Charlie let out a long breath and walked up to the front, next to where Tavi was standing. The library erupted in cheers again.
"So, Charlie," Tavi said from his chair. "What's it gonna be?"
Charlie took a deep breath. "Turn off the music."
Tavi killed the bright lights, leaving only Maren's, the glow strung along the shelves. Charlie listened as forty people in a library went so quiet all you could hear was the hum of the Emberkind's engines under their feet.
Charlie stood in the middle of it with her hands at her sides. She realized she had nowhere to put them, as she'd never once done anything without something in her hands.
She looked out over the crowd of the crew until she found Reyna at the back of the room, watching her.
And in a single instant, Charlie knew that was all she needed. She realized she wasn't going to be able to do this without staying locked on Reyna's gaze as an anchor. And as she held her eyes, she felt Reyna know this to be true, because she wasn't looking away.
And Charlie had never felt more ready.
Charlie opened her mouth and sang.
"Songbird."
Christine McVie wrote it in one night in 1977, sitting down at a piano at three in the morning with the whole thing already finished in her head. Charlie had known it by heart since she was seventeen years old and had never once sung it where anyone other than maybe Katie could hear her.
It was the simplest song she had. There was no metaphor, nothing clever, nothing standing in the way of a hidden message.
It was just a woman promising somebody there would be no more crying, not if she had any say in it.
That the world looked different now. That everything did, all because this somebody was now in it.
And then she says she loves them, three times in a row. As though once wasn't going to cover it, and twice wasn't enough, so she just keeps going.
And Charlie Wickett sang this song with no music to Reyna Solas in front of forty people on her birthday. And she did not look away once from those amber eyes across the library.
It took three minutes.
Reyna's markings stayed gold. Steady, unmoving gold, from the first note to the last.
Except for one iridescent pulse, just like the one Charlie had glimpsed in the flooded bay. Just one, as Charlie echoed the last line three times, closing out the song.
The last note went up into the shelves before it thinned out and was gone.
For about a second and a half, the Emberkind's library was the quietest room Charlie had ever stood in.
Then the place came apart.
"CHARLIE, WHAT THE HELL?!"
It hit her from every direction at once.
Tons of crew members, all of them talking and commenting loudly.
Hands were on her shoulders and arms, and somebody even had her by both wrists.
She soon realized it was Tavi, who was screaming something at her over the roar of the crowd that she couldn't make out.
But of all things, she did hear Borran's laugh come up out of the middle of the chaos.
Crew members were giving her their two cents about her keeping this a secret in spades.
"Charlie, I never knew!"
“You hum! You hum at the console every single day, and that was not humming!”
"Damn, kid, you can sing—"
"What else are you hiding? What else is there?"
"Sing it again. Can you sing it again? Come on, let's hear it again—"
She was laughing, and she didn't even remember starting. Maren was hugging her from behind while Torvax announced to no one in particular that the performance had lasted three minutes and eleven seconds, and that it was sufficiently logged.
But Charlie was stuck. Genuinely and legitimately stuck, boxed in by the incredible crew of the Emberkind. Eventually, she was on her toes, trying to see over all the shoulders surrounding her.
Looking for one person.
And then she saw Reyna making her way through the crowd.
Charlie saw her start from the back wall and push to make her way forward.
A crew member even tried to say something to Reyna on the way, and she went past them without hearing it.
Charlie had watched this woman stop for every single person who wanted her tonight, and this one didn't reach her at all.
Reyna was six feet away from Charlie when her datapad chimed at her hip, stopping her as she reached for it.
Charlie watched her look down, watched her thumb move once across the screen.
And watched her go still.
Whatever was on the datapad, Reyna read it twice. Charlie saw her read it twice.
Then Reyna looked up and found Charlie's eyes across the crowded library, and Charlie felt dread bubble up like bile in her stomach.
Then she watched Reyna turn and go out of that library so fast that people had to move. The door shut behind her, and the party went on as though nothing had happened at all.
Charlie stood there with her voice raw and her heart still pounding.
The crowd closed over the space where she'd been.
"Now where's she going?" Tavi said, appearing at Charlie's elbow.
"I have no idea," Charlie said as she stared at the door.
Charlie felt him look up at her.
"Hey." His voice immediately dropped out of party volume, turning to Charlie. "What happened?"
"Nothing," Charlie said, but that wasn't right. "I don't know. Nothing happened."
"Charlie." Charlie couldn't look at him. "I thought it went great. It did go great. I mean, I was standing right there—"
"I don't know, Tavi."
The library was loud around them. Somebody had put the music back on. Somebody was laughing.
Charlie couldn't take her eyes off the door.
"Tavi," she said. "What if I just made a huge mistake?"