-- There's that voice. Her voice. She's on the radio again - not surprising, she's a song on every station, all over them, country, rock, jazz... people are calling her the original Torch Singer, they say she's a goddess, sometimes. They don't know her, the girl with a voice like an angel. They haven't seen the scars. The brand. Her eyes, behind the cage that is the only home she's known for years.

She is a caged bird, the Songbird. They never put a name to her, you know. They, the infamous They, music writers and news reporters and a hundred publishing companies that would sell their souls for just one of her songs... no names. The Songbird. Nothing more. As if she had no name.

She doesn't, you know. She doesn't remember ever having one, just that one day they were calling her Songbird and that she answered to it. In her head, she sometimes thinks of herself with the other name they used to use, though. She remembers being their little Prize. There's a story behind that name, too... back when her keepers first acquired her.

That's not the story I'm telling yet, though. I've only got one chance to write this, to tell you about the Songbird and about her music, where all that passion and pain and fire comes from. People say she can break your heart with a note. Odd... but not really too surprising. She learned from the best - her own heart's broken, shattered. A man did it, of course. Isn't there always a man behind these stories? But perhaps we'd better call him a boy, youthful and only ninteen, his heart still on his sleeve, or at least so it seemed to her.

She didn't know any better, she was only fifteen herself.

She remembers him, still. She remembers the first time she saw him, soaked in sweat, in blood, thrown down on the floor in front of her as if she was a queen, his nose pressed into the dirty wood that was barely enough to cover the stale, dry dirt beneath it. He looked up at her, then put his head back down as if he was ashamed. Embarassed that she see him like that, filthy and helpless and still whimpering loud enough that she could hear it. He spit out a bit of blood and she cringed.

"It's ok."

He only whispered it, only muttered it into the boards that he was held down on, but she heard it, and so did the men holding him. Kick. Leather, thudding against torn silk and bare skin. Slap. A scream of pain, and he was huddled in a ball suddenly, bleeding again, and she screamed as well, high, piercing, and they stopped.

Stepped back.

Left him there, at her feet, her tears mixing with his blood and the dust on the floor.

He didn't uncurl for a long time, as she counted it. Long enough to sing her scales ten times over, long enough for her voice to start to tremble, and when it wavered there was suddenly water there, a glass of it, the one certainty she had in this new life. When her voice broke, there was comfort... but only if it didn't break too soon. They could tell when it was real. They could hurt her. But if her voice was hurt, then they took care of it.

She'd come to regard her voice as something separate, another little creature living inside the skin she inhabited. She showed the singer to him, tones echoing through the room, soothing and light, healing... and he finally uncurled, looking up, and at the sight of the water she held he whimpered again, lifting bound wrists to her, pleading.

No one had asked her for anything, ever. In all her memory, no one had asked, only demanded, forced, taken. And he asked. No defenses against that, this little Prize with nothing of her own... but the boy at her feet thought the water was hers, and so she gave it gladly. Sip after sip, his head resting on her lap, and she petted him. She remembered petting. Someone had petted her once, and she still brought up the memory of warmth, pressure, the way the lady's hand felt in her hair. She petted the boy, because it was all she knew of comfort.

His eyes were on hers again and she looked at him, no idea what to say, what to do, but he acted first, rolling away and crouching again. Nature shows. She remembered watching the picturebox and seeing a wolf held at bay, teeth gleaming, eyes lit up, and the first words out of her mouth were sung...

"Wolf, no weapons, no fire, wolf at bay but I am nothing."

And he trembled... his eyes widened... they dragged him out after only a few minutes, because he was still screaming, his hands over his ears, she had forgotten to sing low enough for him to hear it right, and her guilt drove her back into the little steel cage before her keepers could even come into the room.

That night she sang about wolves, howling, prancing, she always pictured them moving in a glade. There was a picture in one of the picturebooks they gave her, a fairy ring, and all the fairies were on wolfback, and all of them had this boy's face, scared, confused, the trickle of blood running down his cheek. She knew about blood, knew it came when you hurt, it came when you sang too hard, and sometimes it came in the night, stealthy, between your legs but nowhere else. She'd wondered what notes that mouth sang, but she could never hear them, no matter how hard she tried to coax her body to make them audible.

That night the boy slept fitfully, the walls didn't keep out the sound of her voice, and he dreamed about snapping jaws and fur, and woke wondering why his paws had grown so oddly, turning about fitfully, looking for his tail.

- - -

She's still singing, isn't she? Even though the radio is off now, you can hear her voice, words turning into melody turning into rhythm and spinning off into dreams. She never learned that. Never was taught it. It was always there. Sometimes she has what she thinks are dreams, of warm arms around her, singing to her in tones that no one else heard, high and low, tones that matched the shades of things around her. She doesn't have these dreams often, though. They hurt too much.

She has the smells, instead... and the sights... and the sounds. She can mimic sounds well, it was her only talent, she was told once. Then her keepers had her, and they showed her singing. Music slow and steady, heartbeat music. Music fast, loud, thunder music... and there was the music of summers, and the music of petting, and music for everything. She decided that maybe she tasted music.

She tasted nothing else - it all was the same, it seemed... all dull, bland, frightening with its sameness. Textures everywhere... sounds and colors... but taste? She was not given that.

Blood she knew - metallic and hot. Food she knew - warm, gooey, and blander than most things. She knew water, cold and wet. Dust, the clogging seasoning on everything. That was all.

The boy was there next morning. He came in on all fours, and she again said 'wolf', sang it lower this time, and he heard it. Blinked. He shook his head, then put it quickly down, looking so frightened of his own movements, she thought perhaps he was a Prize too. She knew that fear. But he didn't have the Collar, he didn't have the scars, he hadn't been fire-touched. She didn't understand him.

Hand out, hers to him, through the cage bars. He came close. She waited, held still, instinctive human-to-beast reaction, and he laughed, brittle sound, her head tossed to hear it. He flinched again, but padded closer. Sniffed. He knew this game... and licked her hand, and she laughed.

"Wolf, still a wolf, but your face is a fairy's, your face is a man's. You have stolen a man's fur, wolf. You have stolen a woman's hair and skin. A child's touch. You are a wolf inside, though." and her voice was pure... you've heard that song, haven't you. "Wolf". It was a hit a couple months ago, it's still playing, it was on the "Memories" album. The one with the cover showing a bloody handprint. Do you know where they got that cover? Oh, you'll know soon. This is a tell-all, is it not?

He shook his head, hair falling in his eyes, and she laughed now, soft, pleased with this. They'd never given her anything like this to watch. People, yes... but on the picturebox, or walking past, or people who came to listen and left with tears, their bodies smelling of fear or hunger or sorrow or joy, never the same twice... but not this.

Not another Prize. She tilted her head, pressed at the bars, and he blushed. Key in his hand. There was a key in his hand. She was shocked, only her keepers had a key, but this boy carried one wrapped in leather, bound to his wrist as if it was a bracelet. She knew about bracelets, she'd had one for a whole week once when she was very good. It had glittered. And now he wore her freedom on his wrist like a sparkling charm.

The door was opened. It'd be foolish to say he opened it, because he handed the key to her. It'd be equally foolish to say she opened it, because it was his hand on hers that turned the key, she had never done so before and could not make it move right. So they both opened it, it became a portal rather than a barrier, and she was touching him, fascinated. Hair where fur should be. No muzzle. No tail.

But a wolf nontheless.

He tried to talk once, and she sang back at him. He didn't speak again that day, just listened, pressing his fingers against her lips when he wanted to hear more, and sometimes she would oblige him, but sometimes she would wait, smiling, until he kissed her instead, drunk on this little taste of a power she'd never had before.

Exploration takes a long time, and she had never been able to explore a person before. Her hands slipped under his clothing... he gasped and she pressed more, there, watching in fascination as it shifted. Then her attention was caught elsewhere, she held her hand up to his, matching lengths, her palm almost lost in his despite his small stature.

There was dirt under her fingernails, none under his. She looked at them for a long time, her head tilted, and then "Free" spilled out, unbidden, and he blinked. Shook his head. Confusion then, both of them seeming lost, but finally the words spilled out, her questions, wondering what he was, why he wasn't standing, why the key... he was talking too, kidnapping - she didn't understand, she had always been just taken away when people wanted her, how could anything else happen? ...And there was talk of this place. It wasn't until she asked the bad question that he was taken away again.

He tried to shout to her as they dragged him out the door. Tried to talk. They gagged him, and he couldn't answer, couldn't tell her what was beyond the door and the hall, couldn't tell her how to go find the fairies or the wolves or the sky.

One day. Two. She knew when it was night, because the lights dimmed, and she could see the moon in the little window that opened. It didn't move much, her moon... it rose and set sometimes, other times it just stayed there, changing shape like the moons in her books. She'd seen a sunrise there once, too... and once seen a fire, flickering, all night long. Sometimes she imagined that it was real, but she knew better... nothing but another picturebox.

There was no scent from it. No heat. Nothing but the light and the sometimes-sounds. Crickets, she thought... and wolves, sometimes... sometimes other animals, coyotes, dogs, cats... she liked the cats, liked all the animals, but wolves were her dream now. She dreamed about this new wolf, three nights, four, five... it was a week before she saw him again.

They threw him in this time, and he was not gagged, not bound at all, but there was no key, either. She touched his lips, curious, and he flinched. Opened his mouth. There was something wrong with his tongue... and now she was the one who screamed, pulling away and then pulling him over, shaking her head, the worst nightmare she'd ever had was loosing that song that she could bring out, the creature, despite its separation, was her only companion. She couldn't imagine loosing it. She was sure he felt the same.

Laughter, and she was stunned, how could he laugh? But his arms went around her and he laughed, mumbled something, and she tried to smile. Perhaps it would heal, she knew about healing. She sang at him, trying to coax his creature to heal, wanting his soul to come out again. He didn't sing... but he spoke, and maybe he would talk with her.

You know, in all her songs, she only mentions taste twice. Every other sense is explored, explained, worshipped. That one? Ignored, mostly. It's in two songs, though. One of them is "Drown In You", do you remember it? Surely you've heard it, it's played at every wedding in the known world, it seems. There's a line in it, "I never knew that every tear had flavor, every time you touch me I can taste your soul"... she learned that from him. She learned to taste him.

His fingers, his lips, his hair and throat and feet and hips, his entire body, she licked him clean once. She remembered seeing wolves do that, and wondered if he missed it. He petted her, and she laughed again, the first time he'd heard her laugh in pleasure rather than humor, and the sound was so many tones at once that he almost hid from her.

She learned to tell when he was in the room, just because the air tasted different. She bit him often, wanted to taste his blood, and every time she bit him he whimpered and curled up as if he was a puppy.

He cried the first time she let him in, cried because he felt her break around him, knew what he'd taken. She had her mouth open, screaming, but so high that he only felt her pain and not the sound itself, and his tears dropped in her open mouth. When she swallowed, when she tasted his regret that she couldn't understand and couldn't comprehend, she came.

- - -

She was discovering this new sense, but somehow it only seemed to apply to him. The food still tasted the same. The dust tasted the same. She tested once, and couldn't find a difference between the wood floor and the metal cage, only the texture differed. Once she tried to lick the man who fed her, but tasted only more dust on his boot when he kicked her in the mouth. She never saw that one again, the next day it was a woman feeding her, but she didn't try licking again. Three days, she couldn't sing, and during those days her Wolf played little games with her, and fed her tiny bites of food, and tried to comfort her.

He seemed surprised at how frightened she was, the time he raised his fingers to her lips, traced the bruises, brushing them. She pulled away and ran to the far side of the room, huddling, finally, just outside her cage, unwilling to go in, knowing from long experience that once locked in, she might not get out for a while. Her keepers were often unwilling to release such a foolish little songbird, such a stupid Prize.

The days passed and she healed. Her body recovered from the blows - since he had been thrust in with her, they had not beaten her once, other than that kick. Her mind, slowly, started to recover. No, she didn't understand this healing, you've heard her music, and you can tell which stuff was from this period. It's... it's happy, yes. Cheerful. And face facts, you don't like it as well, do you? Oh, you wouldn't switch it off on the radio, wouldn't dare skip over it on an album, none of us would, but... there are others you prefer.

She didn't know how to deal with happiness, she'd never really had it, only a few simple gifts sometimes, trinkets, perhaps a little glimpse of something new. She earned her picturebooks that way, one page at a time, and she always knew which page went to which book. Careful piles of paper, here, there, she slept surrounded by images of beauty and death and everything violent and perfect. And she had her Wolf.

She had him in the purest sense, one day. One day when she took up a pretty little chain necklace she'd hung in the window - she rarely wore jewelry, what's the point in wearing it, you can't SEE it then. But she took the chain and she put it around his throat, and sang to him about her own collar, and the collar she gave him, and her voice slipped out of his hearing only once, when her words were about the scent of his hair as she fastened the metal, and the thoughts that scent pushed into her mind... but you've heard those too. Nothing new here.

They never let her hear another human's voice, singing. Wolf never tried. He spoke, and that was enough for her. Sometimes, though, he would hum... quiet, so quiet, his lips pressed against her ear, a tiny music that he spilled out just for her, and she would sing words for it later. Let the music build first. Grow. And then the words would come to her and she'd climb onto the cage, curling up there and watching him, singing his own music back with words so pure that he cried every time, turning away and hiding his face, ashamed.

She never understood that, not at first, anyway. The words she used, she'd heard them before, and now she was beginning to read them, he taught her that. His fingers guiding hers as he wrote in the dirt, teaching her symbols, patterns, and when she learned them she wrote them crooked, some up, some down, music turned into sketches in the dust that still covered the floor. Her little hand disappearing in his almost, he was small, true, but he was strong, and their hands slowly seemed to change, hers hiding within his, her body kept wrapped up in his.

His fur grew, beard and hair and body, and she rejoiced in it, petting, teasing, her mouth drawn gently over this new coat he grew, fascinated by the feel of it on her lips, the way it tasted, the newness of it. She showed him a picture, a carefully-hoarded page from a National Geographic, with a wolf... she pointed to him, to the picture, and sang about mirrors and the way the sun looks on water, and promised him a universe of forests in her music, a galaxy composed of clear streams and a thousand scents, she could read now and knew that wolves understood scent.

He did, at that... over and over his mouth, his nose, running over her, etching her into his memory. She didn't understand that either, believed that there was no need for such hurry, but enjoyed it nonetheless. Touch, contact, perfection and feeling and she loved the way his breath tickled the tiny hairs that were the only fur she was ever able to grow.

And then her innocence... ah, but everyone knows when that first left. When she first tasted blood that way. I know you've... yes, THAT song, I told you that everyone knows it. The one where at the end she is screaming, voice rising higher and higher... and then she falls, her voice is a whisper, untouched by any emotion it seems, so cold that you could use it to cool the sun itself. "Blood On My Lips". I'll tell you what the song doesn't... or what it doesn't explain, at least.

Months of his company. Companionship, friendship, he taught her so much. He taught her something that they didn't expect, or didn't intend, perhaps. One day she sung only to him. Only in his ear. Only with her eyes, her touch, whispers that no one else heard. She asked him about the world outside, again, and she told him of her desire to see the place that wolves like him came from.

Angry? Yes, they were... and when another day passed without song, without sound, without even her sleepy good-morning lilt that rose up to the microphones hidden within every wall, she was ordered to sing.

Her hand was on his collar. Power, again... every little bit counts, every little bit hurts, sometimes. And they took it away. Pulled him away from her, her hands clinging feverishly to his body as they tugged, her own body pressed, forced, there were hands all over her, places only her Wolf had touched, and then she was in the cage, and he was bound against it, over it... she tried to kiss him through the bars and he only whimpered, looking at her, and he asked.

"Why did you want this?"

They beat him. No clothing for him now, no protection, only the leather tracing fire across his skin and his wordless howls, head thrown back, then pressed against the cage in a futile gesture, and when they ripped away the tiny, cheap bit of metal around his throat she screamed too.

Her screams... ah, you've heard the song. Higher, higher... shattering glass, if they'd let it go on that long, but then the first drop of blood trickled down, landing in her open mouth. A tear, crimson, perfectly formed. You can't begin to imagine the look in her eyes.

Silence. Pefect silence for a moment, her sudden cessation of sound was so unexpected that the beating stopped, his screams stopped, no one so much as breathed... then she sang. Sang, keeping time to the leather against his skin. Sang, rhythm matching his tears, tone melding seamlessly with his breathing, his gasps. She reached into her heart and ripped out every shred of power she'd thought she had, offered it up without any emotion, unable to feel beyond the blinding, helpless guilt, and she thought she understood it now.

"His blood, blood in my mouth, on my shoulders, I have the weight of his life on my skin. His essence, his scent is clogging my thoughts, his eyes are closed now, deadly, can I die from this sin?"

They left him unconscious, her still caged, the both of them silent. She had again stopped singing, only because her voice had gone. That night, recovering, she sang harshly. You'll never hear that song on an album, never, the wounds dripping, feeding her, and her gratitude for the liquid and for his pain, they wouldn't dare show that side of her.

They wouldn't let you see her, when the cage opened.

When the whip was in her hands.

When he screamed again, for her.

- - -

You're curious now, aren't you? Wondering what she could have done to him, wanting a look at that, at her violence, at the way she reacted to the taste of blood. Voyeur - that's the word for people who want to look, right? But this much you will know, no more: they beat him until he was bleeding, and after, she beat him until he was nearly dead. She hurt him far worse than they had.

No, not because she hated him. Not because she even knew what she was doing, and wanted it. She beat him because she wanted to see it, to feel it, but she didn't know what she was doing at all. When he passed out, she finally noticed how bad it had gotten.

Guilt. They introduced her to guilt.

They say that you can tell when the transition happened... that next album, that you could hear a depth to it that wasn't there before, how it started out so cheerfully, brightness and contentment, and then dropped down with one song... and somehow, everything afterward had a bittersweet edge. One of the music reviewers speculated that maybe she'd just found out she had some sort of terminal disease.

In a way she did - if you'd asked her, if you could have explained it to her, she would have said that yes, she was diseased. Unclean. And as she watched him, waiting silently for him to wake up at first, then finally singing, her creature calling to his, her soul spit out as if she no longer wanted it, hoping to lure him back to this world, she felt she was dying of that disease.

She hated herself already, you see. She'd been raised to view herself as a less-than, only her voice was important... and now someone, Wolf, came along and gave her faith in herself. And she repaid him like this.

Hurt him.

There was blood on the floor around him. Around her. She pulled off her dress, used it to clean up the now-sticky stuff, only twice dipping a finger in to taste it. She kept her eyes on him as she worked, humming slowly. If she'd heard of dirges, she'd have called it that. Not for him... no, not for him. He was breathing, alive, and no one had come in to take him away, so he must eventually survive. This was for herself.

He woke to see her half-mad gaze locked on his own. Licked his lips. Tasted blood... the first words out of his mouth were mumbled, she didn't quite catch them, and when she leaned closer he merely shook his head, dropping it back to the floor after a moment, silent now. He didn't repeat what he said, but later she puzzled it out: "I didn't bargain for this. They aren't paying me enough."

She didn't understand, so she tucked the words in the back of her mind and ignored them.

...until they came out in music, a week later, and the moment she sang them the door slammed open and Wolf was pulled away, kicking, screaming, knowing what he was being taken away for and honestly frightened now, the beating had been bad, her mockery of it had been far worse, but beyond the door the unknown waited.

Forget the Wolf, for now. Forget the cage, the dusty, dirty floor that still has bloodstains coloring it a rosy brown. Forget the people outside. The girl herself. Forget everything but the music, pay attention only to that for a moment. Listen closely and you can hear something else new. It was remarked on, eventually - there seems to be a second voice singing, sometimes. A similar melody, and a quiet one... but a second voice, as if another person is in the room, as if they'd dubbed her voice on twice.

They didn't. There wasn't. She'd learned a new trick. First just wordless humming, that second tone she somehow pulled out despite the clear impossibility of it. Then, gradually, as she waited and waited for Wolf to return, the miracle became almost commonplace. His voice, his touch, the way he moved... all of it spun together into this second voice she somehow projected. Her music, her sweet shadowtune, so achingly beautiful but still oddly harsh. It never lost that gravelly tone, you can still hear it in her songs at times. The sound that tells you the voice is one full of long-past suffering.

She sung him a dirge as she waited, not thinking him dead but no longer certain that he'd return. As the days crept by she sang to him, for him, woke up imagining his arms around her and fell asleep dreaming she could hear him shift on the floor nearby. In the little room that he lived in now, bruised and torn, his body slowly recovering, he could hear her songs. They were piped in all over the building, some days... and his cell was always filled with the sound of her. He didn't speak. Didn't beg. Didn't do anything but lift his own voice in song at times, matching that deep undercurrent she projected, longing, regretting... but no longer able to back out. He was in too deep.

--