Midnight Song

by Kat Heckenbach -


“Sir, they’re singing.”

Spiner looked up from his lab table and found the boy staring through the tiny porthole into the pitch black of space. Surely he’d heard wrong…

“Singing, Gavin? What are you talking about?”

Gavin tilted his head to the side, but didn’t answer.

Spiner propped his chin on steepled hands and stared at the young apprentice. The boy’s freshly cut hair held the slightest curl at the back of his neck. His shirt still hung like a sack on his wiry frame despite weeks of eating four full meals a day. Fortunately he devoured knowledge as easily as he did food and had proven very quickly that Spiner made the right decision by taking him in.

Gavin sighed and turned around. “It’s stopped now.”

Spiner shook his head. “What—?”

“The sea angels,” Gavin said. “The ones Ave told me about, down on the planet. I felt it the other day, but didn’t know where it was coming from. But just now, I realized, it’s them. Not singing with sounds…” He bit his lip, and searched Spiner’s face with his gaze. Finally, his eyes brightened. “They sing emotions. They were singing…joy.”