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weeks, he’d had nothing to do but play the violin until Alice had appeared and rescued him. And then he had rescued her, and then she him, and so it went.
    He drew his bow over the strings and was about to begin when Alice abruptly held up a hand. For a dreadful moment, he thought he’d made a mistake and shewas stopping him. It was one of his secret fears—that he’d made a mistake while playing where someone could hear. His playing, like his pitch, needed to be
perfect.
It often felt as if someone were watching over him, waiting to pounce if he played wrong, though he couldn’t say why.
    But Alice said only, “A moment. I want to try something first.”
    From her pocket, she took a small bird made of gleaming silver. Sapphires made up its eyes and glowed softly at the tips of its claws.
    “My nightingale,” Feng said. “Yours now, Gavin. I am glad Antoine did not get it.”
    “I found it in the hotel.” Alice set the bird at Gavin’s feet and pressed its left eye. “Now, play.”
    Gavin nodded and swung into a song familiar to all airmen. He played a verse, relieved when he got through it with no mistakes, then sang.
    For to see Mad Tom of Bedlam, ten thousand miles I traveled
    Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes to save her shoes from gravel.
    Still I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys, bedlam boys are bonny
    For they all go bare and they live by the air, and they want no drink nor money.
    “Tom of Bedlam” was the unofficial song of airmen everywhere. The idea that men who lived by the air went naked and didn’t want for drink or money held immense appeal, and the song’s infinite verses weremade for pounding out on wooden decks. Gavin started to sing the second verse when Alice jumped in herself:
    No gypsy, slut, or clockwork shall win my mad Tom from me
    I’ll weep all night, with stars I’ll fight, and the fray shall well become me.
    Gavin laughed and joined in for the chorus.
    Still I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys, bedlam boys are bonny
    For they all go bare and they live by the air, and they want no drink nor money.
    The orange sun sank to the horizon and shadows snaked among the trees below. The sputter and hum of the generator continued beneath Gavin’s music as he played and sang his way through “Bedlam” with Alice clapping her hands to the beat beside him. He caught Alice’s eye, letting her know the song was for her. Her face flushed, and he flung her a wide smile. The music cast itself out into the darkening void, sweet as wine, carrying Gavin’s spirit with it.
    “That was wonderful,” Alice said softly. She picked up the nightingale and pressed its left eye again. Then she pressed the right eye. Instantly, the little bird opened its beak and the sound of Gavin’s fiddle trilled forth. It was a smaller sound, with a tinny undertone, but otherwise a perfect replica, a recording. Then Gavin’s voice joined the music, and “Tom of Bedlam”again floated across the deck. The sound struck Gavin. He had never heard his own voice before. It sounded different than it did in his own head, but also vaguely familiar. It made him uncomfortable. He tapped the nightingale to stop the music.
    “I like the real thing better,” he said.
    “I do, too.” Alice kissed him on the cheek, and he smiled again. “Where did you learn to play? You’ve never said.”
    “Gramps—my grandfather—started me on the fiddle when I was five or six,” Gavin said. The strangeness of the nightingale’s reproduction stayed with him. “I mostly taught myself. It’s easier when you have perfect pitch like I do, and when you never forget a song after you’ve heard it, like I don’t.”
    “So the fiddle was your grandfather’s?”
    Gavin was all set to say
yes
, when something stopped him. For a moment, a tiny moment, he remembered something else. A man was handing him the fiddle, but it wasn’t Gramps. A much younger man, tall, broad-shouldered, with white-blond hair. The memory hovered in front of him like a