Two Hums Together Call It Home

There it was again. A hum, so low that Amara felt it in her slippers before she heard it in her ears. She stood on the balcony of the Star Tower with her chin tipped up and her mouth a little open, the way you open your mouth when you're trying to hear something a long way off. Behind her, through the open door, the lamp burned yellow and Nana Nissa's chair creaked every so often, and the balcony rail was warm under her two hands.

The hum rolled around the sky, slid off the edge of it, and everything went quiet. Amara stamped one foot on the stone. "Fourteen nights," she said. "Fourteen nights of that thing humming at me, and I still can't hear it properly."

Down in the courtyard the clocks were ticking their way toward morning, and the air smelled of cold and clean sheets. Above her a thousand small suns glittered, slowly, the way frost does when you turn your head.

Everyone in the palace could hear the Humming Comet. The cook had heard it years ago, while she was washing a pot. The gatekeeper said his whole family heard it every spring, all seven of them, standing in the vegetable patch with their mouths open.

Amara had a sky glass, which was better than ears. It was brass, it slid open in three pieces, and the big lens at the end was round and clear as a raindrop that had decided to stay. Nana Nissa had given it to her eleven days ago, along with a warning. "A sky glass is a funny thing," she had said. "It isn't really a one-person instrument." Amara had decided not to think about that.

What she thought about instead was her list. She kept it in the back of her atlas, in pencil, and on some nights she read it out loud just to hear how good it sounded. Number one: the seven bright stars of the Ladle. Number two: the pale lane of dust that runs from the top of the sky to the bottom. Number fourteen: a planet with a ring, if there is one. Number forty-one: the Humming Comet, heard, not just seen.

The balcony step creaked. Amara didn't turn around. She knew that creak. It was Omar, who wound every clock in the palace, and who had, in Amara's opinion, the most inconvenient timing in the entire kingdom.

"Your Highness," said Omar. He always said it all in one piece, as though it were a single awkward word. "Is it out? The comet?"

"It's out," said Amara. "It's very out. And it isn't a good night for two people." Behind her back she slid the sky glass under the fold of her sweater, which was a ridiculous place to keep a sky glass and she knew it.

Omar stood on the step with his hands behind his back. In one of them was a small green notebook with a rubber band around it. He had carried it for a year. It was mostly drawings of the sky, done from memory, and the drawings were not very good, which he knew, and he did them anyway.

"I only want one turn," he said. "Not a long one. I just want to see the fuzzy bit at the front, where it looks like it's coming apart."

"It isn't coming apart," said Amara.

"It looks like it's coming apart," said Omar. Then he said, "Also, those seven stars are more like a spoon than a ladle. I've looked at them quite a lot." "They're a ladle," said Amara. "Agree to disagree," said Omar, and because he was polite, he went back down the stairs.

The next night the sky was even clearer, and the step creaked again. "Not a good night for two people," said Amara, before he had said a single word.

The night after that, the same. And the night after that.

Amara was not being lazy. She was working extremely hard on the hum. On the second night she held her breath until her ears rang. On the third she pressed her ear against the cold stone of the tower, which told her only about the wind. On the fourth she hummed first, one long low hum of her own, and waited, and the sky did nothing at all. On the fifth she set a cup of water on the balcony rail to see whether the hum would make rings in it. The water stayed flat as a coin.

"You've gone quiet," said Nana Nissa, tucking a blanket around her shoulders. "Quiet isn't always peaceful." "I'm being a scientist," said Amara. "Ah," said Nana Nissa. "Scientists eat oatcakes." She left a plate on the window ledge.

The truth was a small cold pebble that Amara kept in her pocket and did not take out. Everyone else in the palace heard the comet. If she handed Omar her sky glass, he might hear it too, and then she would be the only person on the whole hill who couldn't. It was easier to keep the glass to herself than to find that out.

Once, on the sixth night, she almost did. She got as far as holding the sky glass out sideways, and Omar's hand came up, and then she heard herself say, "It's cold. It needs warming up first," which was not true, and she tucked it back under her sweater. Omar nodded as though that made perfect sense. That was the worst part. He always nodded as though it made perfect sense.

On the seventh night she went looking for something else to read. At the bottom of a chest she found a roll of old star charts, soft as cloth, and she unrolled them one by one across the floor. In the corner of the last chart, in Nana Nissa's small square handwriting, was a rhyme.

"A hum alone is a hum alone. Two hums together will call it home."

Amara read it four times. Then she hummed, low. Nothing. She hummed high, which came out more like a squeak. Nothing. She hummed low and then high, one after the other, quickly, the way you might knock on a door. The sky stayed exactly as it was, full of stars and empty of hum.

She sat back on her heels. A hum alone is a hum alone. It wasn't a riddle about comets. It was a riddle about people. To call the hum home she was going to need a second hummer, and to get a second hummer she was going to have to say something true and uncomfortable out loud.

Omar was sitting on the third step from the bottom, which is where he sat most nights after the clocks were wound, close enough to hear what happened on the balcony and far enough away to pretend he wasn't there.

"Omar," said Amara. "I can't hear it. I've never heard it. Not once."

Omar was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "I can't either."

"Why didn't you say so?" asked Amara. "I thought you'd laugh at me," said Omar. "You're a princess. You're good at everything." "I'm good at eleven things," said Amara. "I've counted." "Eleven is quite a lot," said Omar, and it was such a kind thing to say, and he meant it so completely, that Amara had to look at the floor for a moment.

Then she showed him the rhyme. Omar read it slowly, moving his finger under each word, and when he got to the end he looked up. "So it isn't a listener," he said. "It's a duet." Amara stared at him. "That's the best thing anyone has said all week," she said.

So they stood side by side on the balcony, and Amara said, "Low first," and Omar hummed low, and it was a good low hum, steady as a cart wheel. Then Amara hummed high over the top of it, thin and bright, and for a moment nothing happened at all.

Then the sky answered.

The hum came down through the cold clean air, low and round, like somebody drawing a wet finger slowly around the rim of an enormous glass. It hummed in the stone under their feet. It hummed in the brass of the sky glass. It hummed in the small bones behind Amara's ears.

"Look," said Omar. "Look now."

Amara held the wide end and Omar looked through the narrow end, and there, at the edge of the dark, was the comet, and it wasn't one comet. It was a big one and a small one, traveling together. The big one hummed the low note. The small one, tucked in close beside it, hummed the high note, so faint that you might easily mistake it for the edge of the bigger sound.

"Nothing up there sings by itself," said Omar. "Apparently not," said Amara, and she felt the cold pebble in her pocket turn over and go warm.

After that they took turns, because that was the other thing they had discovered. When one person held the sky glass alone, it wobbled, and the stars shivered like reflections in a pond. When Omar held the long brass tube and Amara cupped the wide end with both hands, the wobble went out of it and the stars went still and sharp.

"There," said Omar. "Four stars in a little square, right at the corner. Like a footprint." Amara had been looking straight past them for six nights. She fetched her atlas and wrote it down. Number forty-two: four small stars like a footprint. Then she handed him the pencil, and he drew them in the margin, and the drawing was good, because it was a thing he had actually seen.

Below them the palace was putting itself to bed. A door clicked shut. A cart rolled slowly home along the hill road. The great clock in the hall chimed ten, and Omar, who had wound it himself that evening, didn't move.

Nana Nissa came up the stairs much later with oatcakes on a plate and another blanket over her arm. Nobody had to explain anything. She sat down behind them, looked at the two heads close together over the sky glass, and hummed one low note, and Amara and Omar hummed the high one, and the sky hummed back, softer than before, as if it were getting sleepy too.

The clocks ticked. The blanket smelled of clean sheets. They went on taking turns, and the list grew to fifty-one, and near the end of it Amara wrote, in her best pencil: "The seven stars of the Spoon, which some people call the Ladle."

The comet drifted. It was a long way off by then, a bright smudge with a small bright crumb beside it, humming its two notes so quietly that you had to be almost asleep to hear them.

Amara lay back on the warm stone. She wasn't counting anything at all. It couldn't be written on a list, this part. The hum came up through the floor, slow and low, the way a house sounds when everyone inside it is already asleep, and the thousand small suns glittered, and the hill went quiet.

Beside her, Omar hummed the low note one more time, very softly, just for her. Amara closed her eyes and listened with her whole back, and the night got longer and softer, and the sky hummed them both to the edge of sleep.