London Harmony: Minuette Read Online Free PDF Page A

same chilling effect on me.  I could feel the patterns, the embedded melody, the words carefully chosen.  Every single one of her creations was a work of art and love.  The tracks she created were her children, and the emotions she embedded into them were subtle and sang to your heart.
    She used the piano as a device to share what she was feeling inside as she wrote each piece.  And my voice was the other tool she used to express it.  She knew my range and limits, and every idiosyncrasy of my tone like it were her own and played to its strengths.
    I was her voice and I loved sharing her creations with people.  I opened my mouth and sang, swaying with the music, caught up in its spell.  Smiling internally at the secondary melody, knowing which words went with each story, just as instinctively as if I wrote them myself.  I couldn't help but channel the emotions she wove like a tapestry, being pulled along by the current, swirling away to a destination only this music could bring me to.
    The music ended and I stayed there with my eyes closed a moment to collect myself.  I took a deep cleansing breath as the cheers started.  I whispered, “Minuette out.” Then I opened my eyes and blushed and smiled as I got off the stage and retreated back to Mindy.  I was in too much of a hurry and half way there, I had to turn around and go back to the stage and force myself to take normal strides to the table.  Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen steps.  Good.
    I stood there and nudged my head toward the door. “Let's make good our escape.”  She nodded, with something twinkling around in her hazel eyes that she always had after I sang her music for her.  She always let me make a discrete exit after I embarrassed myself on stage.  I loved her for that.
    She looped arms with me and dragged me toward the door as she said, “You were brill, Nett.”
    I shrugged. “I only sing 'em like you write 'em.”
    We got to the car and she surprised me by not driving us home. Instead, we wound up heading out of London toward Oxford.  We wound up at Colne Valley Park, just past Uxbridge.  She parked us near a stream that we played at as kids when we visited her Aunt Mavis.
    I cocked my head toward her, wondering why we were there and she just smiled at me, closed her eyes, and leaned back in her seat.  She looked so tired suddenly as she just asked quietly, “Read to me?”
    I regarded her a moment, she looked so pretty, but it was tainted by a weariness I couldn't place.  I just silently nodded and fished Vee Jacob's book out of the bags at my feet and flipped through the pages, stopping at Every Day, my second favorite poem.  And I read to her.
    A half hour later she finally opened her eyes, turned her head toward me, and smiled as she sat up straighter in her chair.  “Thanks, Nett, I needed that.”
    I just nodded, not knowing what to say.  But the weariness was gone from her and she looked, I don't know, content?  I was happy I could do that for her.
    She smiled as she started the car. “Happy birthday lady, love you.”
    I blushed and said, “Love you lots.”
    We didn't talk all the way home and I sort of liked it, it wasn't awkward, it was just a certain atmosphere of sharing, of just being next to each other and us both instinctively knowing that is what we needed at that moment.  We were always so in tune with each other, and that left an ache in my heart.

Chapter 3 – Walker's
    Later that week after a couple days of practice each night, we recorded Mind's latest.  The song was like a playful dare to the listener, to take a chance on things and good things would happen.  The Phantom Melody was the counterpoint, a warning that things are sometimes better left unsaid.
    We tossed around some ideas as to where to seed the track.  That was one of the wonderful things about London, there is no lack of happenings on the music scene, whether legit or underground.
    We started going through the BackBeats darknet site online.