Page 2 of Rise of the Melody
A burn of heat flashed across my skin as something huge and hairy stepped out from behind a crop of tall bushes, sending my heart into an erratic race. I stopped so fast at the massive sight that I tripped over my own feet and landed on my hands and knees. My head whipped up and I froze, holding my breath for a long beat before gasping.
A dog loomed over me. The largest dog I’d ever seen. Its face was long like an Irish hound with a shaggy dark body that appeared oddly greenish. I blinked. It was as round as a Saint Bernard, as tall as a small cow, and its silky tail twitched back and forth behind it. We stared at each other. Every fiber of my body wanted to run, but my mind screamed at me not to move. This giant mutt could, no doubt, take me down and maul my face with very little effort.
I glanced down and saw it was clearly male. With a hard swallow I whispered, “Good boy.”
He sniffed the air and lowered his head, stepping toward me almost cautiously.
My survival instinct screamed to run but I stiffened every muscle.Don’t move, Letty.
The dog slowly sat and then lay before me, its huge paws inches from my hands, like it expected something from me. My heart rate began to slow enough to give me the nerve to move into a sitting position. I never took my eyes off him.
“Are you lost?” I whispered, feeling foolish talking to a dog. “Where’s your owner?” I searched around, but there was no one.
The dog huffed through its nose. Then he lifted a heavy paw and plopped it on my booted foot.
I couldn’t help but smile, though my insides still shook. “Okay. So, you’re friendly?” I let out a deep breath. When I climbed slowly to my feet, he did too. His head came to my chest. He definitely outweighed me, and I was no waif.
My eyes scanned the park now. Literally nobody. Maybe if we walked around we’d find his owner. Taking slow steps, I began to loop the park, and the dog followed me. We passed a few people on the sidewalks now, who all took one look at the dog and steered clear.
One woman scowled. “You need to have that thing on a leash! It’s the law!”
“He’s not mine,” I tried to explain, but she scurried away.
After fifteen minutes of this, my need to get home and talk to Aunt Lorna was overpowering my need to find the dog’s owner. If I wasn’t in the middle of this singing crisis, I would have taken him to a veterinarian to check for a chip, but I didn’t have time for this. And the SPCA was all the way across town. New York was full of do-gooders who would happily take care of him. Right? Yeah….
“I’m sorry, boy,” I said to the dog, feeling silly that I needed to explain myself. “I have to go. Just stay right here until your owner comes back, okay? Or some nice person helps you.”
He cocked his head. Guilt was a stone in my gut as I turned and speed-walked away from him. Thirty seconds later his pitter-pattering paws and clickety-clacking claws sounded loudly behind me. I spun and held out my palm. “Oh, no you don’t. Stay.Stay.”
He wasn’t a very good listener. The dang dog followed me the whole five blocks to the shop. Ugh, Aunt Lorna was going to freak. Granted, she had four cats that lived at her work, but they added to the atmosphere of her witchy apothecary and gem shop. We’d never had an animal in our apartment. I stopped in front of Aunt Lorna’s shop, Moonlight Apothecary and Dispensary, which we lived two stories above.
I caught sight of my reflection in the glass. My gown was officially ruined with the rip and grass stains from when I’d fallen. I’d had to save money to buy it for the state treble choir competition.
Every single person eyed the dog warily as they passed.
“Okay,” I told him. “You need to go. Go back to the park and find your people. Go on,shoo.” He sat and I sighed. He was going to scare customers away. I rolled my eyes and wished him luck as I went inside, certain he’d finally leave once I was gone.
Incense tickled my nose, and the gentle sounds of delta waves playing overhead immediately relaxed me. Stepping into the shop always transported me from overwhelming city into a fantastical, meditative space. I took a moment to peer around at the shelves of homemade vials of oils, soaps, and sage bunches. Displays of authentic crystals with a giant rose quartz in the center. Salt lamps. Potted plants hanging from the ceiling with their long vines spidering out like jungle fingers. A table of incenses dipped by my aunt and me. This shop was our sanctuary.
All around the room were cool framed pictures of drawings—depictions of Faerie queens and creatures from Celtic and Gaelic mythology that I’d grown up hearing about. Sea maidens and forest nymphs. Brownie house spirits. Selkies and kelpies, and of course Nessie, the Loch Ness monster.
“Is that you, Letty?” my aunt called from the back room.
“Yes, it’s me.”
“Good news!” she hollered. “I found someone to watch the shop next week while I go to your graduation.”
“Cool,” I said, my mind still stuck on Mr. Goneley.
Aunt Lorna bustled in, and her pretty face lit up when she saw me. She pushed dirty blond curls out of her eyes and adjusted the quartz necklace around her neck. She often acted like a little old lady, but she wasn’t. She was just wise for her thirty-something years.
“What’s the matter?” Her gentle Scottish lilt from a childhood in the Highlands calmed me for a moment. Then the memory of Mr. Goneley assaulted me again and I cringed. She swished over in her long skirt, the bangles clinking on her wrists. Her eyebrows crashed together as she looked me over. “Why do you look like that? What happened to your dress? And you’re sweating—my gods, were you attacked?”
“No,” I tried to calm her as I reached up and felt my knotted, long locks. “Not exactly. It’s a long story. Something weird happened while I was singing.” At this, she went still, and her face shuttered closed, her lips pursing like they always did when it came to my singing.
“What happened, Letty?” Gods, she didn’t need to look so severe.
“I’m not really sure,” I admitted. “But I got it on tape.”
