La Chouette in D Minor

There’s very little music these days.

People are too busy scouring the cities for batteries and lightbulbs and wristwatches—all the things humanity doesn’t make anymore. Or they’re like me—huddled around a fire in a basement somewhere, leaning as close to the flames as possible to scare away the cold and fear, scribbling furiously in the flickering light.

Or they’re just dead, like the thousands buried under the snow in Australia, like the millions more in Africa where winter was a fatal surprise.

My smartphone buzzes, telling me that I’m running late. I stuff the wrinkled sheets into my backpack—the same one I wore when Nyx first appeared—and start getting ready. It’s always a hassle getting into my penguin suit, and you’d wonder how I creep out without waking my parents. I always manage, though.

Their door is open when I climb out, the stark yellow light staining the corridor. Millions of children became orphans in the years following the Eclipse, but my parents stuck around because they work in the government and are essential personnel. We have electricity and heating, and food gets delivered in an armoured van every weekend.

I tiptoe past the open door, taking a moment to stare at the sleeping forms of my mom and dad. They love me and I know that, but they won’t understand why I still try when the rest of the world has lost hope.

It’s because I know I can do something.

I’m at the kitchen window before my phone buzzes again. It’s probably Etienne, waiting for me in the church. He’s my best friend and partner in crime. I smile when I think that.

The window is frozen shut, and I have to bang on it a few times to get it open. Icicles clink as they bounce off the broken metal ladder below me. I’m heavy with all the winter gear and my backpack, so I tread carefully on the rungs and jump off the last good one, landing softly in the snow.

It’s a fairly straightforward walk now—although a long one—and the false moon is my only partner as I shuffle down the empty streets. Its shadow stretches ahead of me, and the street lamps are out. I can see, but just barely.

Any object placed at Lagrange Point 1 will orbit in a semi-stable position between the Sun and Earth indefinitely, a fact that most of the world learned the hard way. On the 24th of September, 2023, a mysterious object appeared in space and lodged itself firmly at L1, somehow escaping detection up until the exact moment it eclipsed the Sun.

It is an opaque circle of some sort, with a radius of a million kilometres and an albedo of zero. Indisputably of alien origin, though conspiracy theorists have countless other arguments. We already have Selene; the true Moon we know and love. So we call the intruder Nyx. She just stays there, listening.

* * * * *

For some reason, there’s a thin crowd at the door of the Basilique de Notre-Dame de Montréal, and I’m slightly apprehensive as I make my way through the snow-clad rabble. There’s some murmuring and muttering, and I hear my name whispered a few times. There are some unpleasant glances at me because people don’t believe that a thirteen-year-old girl could somehow save the world.

Etienne is waiting for me behind the huge wooden doors, and I see him signalling to people as I walk up to him. His slender six-foot figure swivels round to look at me, and I revel in the smile that creeps onto his face. Sometimes I forget that he’s eight years older than me.

“Anaïs, mon génie!” he yells playfully, and the entire crowd watches as he folds me into him in a big, warm hug that somehow sucks the life out of and reinvigorates me at the same time. I love him, but he’ll never know that.

Then he places me at arm's length and says “You’re late. The organ was ready an hour ago.”

“I was working on something special,” I say abashedly. “You’ll see.”

He glares at me for a moment, then breaks into a reconciliatory smile. Then he leads me past the pews—seating the scanty few that we’ve come to know as regulars—until we reach the stairs leading up to the organ. Etienne knows not to follow me up, so he pulls off my winter jacket, watches me clamber up the brown wooden steps, then heads back to run the equipment.

I’m at the bench now, and already I feel the instrument calling to me. I’ve played here every Sunday since my parents discovered my musical talent seven years ago, and once a month when I return from New York. I know this organ as well as my own body, all seven thousand pipes as familiar to me as my own fingers.

But this time is different—I’m desperate. La Chouette in D Minor is the best piece I’ve ever come up with, and I don’t think my inner muse has any more to give. She’s dying, just like everyone else, and I’m afraid that this will be her final breath.

Still, there’s an expectant congregation behind me, so I place the sheets on the music deck and smooth out the crinkles in the paper. The tiny barn owl I drew on one of the corners stares back at me, eyes wide and full of pain and fear and anxiety, just like mine.

Etienne gives his signal, the one that means he's begun transmitting on the false moon's frequency, trying to initiate a conversation like countless others around the world have done for years and listening for anything other than deafening silence.

I’m ready, I think. I sit on the bench. I take a deep breath.

Then I strike the keys and hope for the best.