Even the bush by the stream had shut up. He let the last note go and sat there with his eyes closed.
"Sing that again."
Ray opened his eyes. Her face was a foot from his, upside down, with her hair spread over the roots beside his sneakers.
He had already spent the day's scream. What came out of him now was a noise like a door hinge, and the back of his head hit the trunk. "Ow."
"Again." She said it the way his supervisor used to say "Stuart".
"Jesus. How long have you been there?"
"Long enough. Again."
He rubbed the back of his head and felt his face going hot. The candy hall had been different. That had been a job, with a room full of people who needed a noise. This was the thing he did by himself in the dark, and somebody had been standing in the middle of it.
'It's her tree. Of course she was listening. It's her everything.'
He could say no. She had just thrown him out of his house by the back of his shirt, and he didn't owe her a concert. But she was waiting with her chin in her hand like she had all night, which she did, and she didn't look like she was going to stop waiting.
He cleared his throat and started over. The first line came out rough, because he could feel her watching his mouth.
"You sing like you're apologizing."
"I'm a little self-conscious. There's a vampire in my face."
"Then close your eyes. You did fine with them closed."
He closed them, and it came out better.
"When the night has come
And the land is dark..."
He got most of the way through the first verse before he opened them again, and she was gone. He stopped.
"Don't stop!" That came from inside the cabin.
The window banged open. She came back across the grass with the axe in both hands, and up close he could see it properly for the first time.
It was a bass. It had four strings running down the handle and a body cut in the shape of an axe head, red and scuffed, and the neck was worn pale where her hand went. She hooked one leg over nothing and sat down on the air as if there were a stool under her.
"Is that an axe?"
"It's an axe that plays, squatter." She turned a tuning peg and listened to it. "Still does the chopping, too, if you were wondering."
'A bass guitar that was also an axe.' The old man had gotten that part right, down to the word. Ray looked at the strings instead of her face for a second.
"From the top."
He started from the top. Under his voice, on the second line, the bass came in.
"And the land is dark
And the Moon is the only light we'll see
No, I won't be afraid
Oh, I won't be afraid
Just as long as you stand, stand by me..."
It was the part. He had heard that line his whole life without once thinking about it, under the song in movies and in the laundromat and at other people's weddings, and she was playing it.
She had found it in the dark by ear, from a guy humming under a tree. It wasn't exactly the record. She bent one note where the record didn't, and he liked hers better.
He almost lost the words. He grabbed them back and kept going. 'Oh, she's good. She's scary good.'
The second time around, she didn't have to look for anything. Her fingers were moving before the tune turned, and his voice found the line under it and leaned on it. He had sung along to earbuds a thousand times, and once to a hall full of candy. He had never sung with anybody.
"Again," she said when it ended, and they went around again.
By the fourth time she was adding things. There was a little run up the neck at the end of the chorus, and a place where she dropped out completely and let him carry it alone, and came back in exactly when he needed her to. He laughed in the middle of a line and had to fake the rest of it. She didn't seem to mind.
"If the sky that we look upon
Should tumble and fall
Or the mountains should crumble to the sea..."
Once, on the last chorus, a second voice came in under his. It was low and a little rough, and it sat a few notes below him as if it had always been there. It lasted two lines.
"So, darlin', darlin', stand by me
Oh, stand by me."
Then it stopped, and when he looked over, she was frowning down at her strings like they had done it without asking her.
He kept his eyes on the trees and didn't say a word about it.
When they finally stopped, the sky over the trees was still black. She let the last note ring until it faded, then flattened the strings with her palm.
"What's it called?"
"'Stand by Me'."
"'Stand by Me'." She tried it out, slowly, like she was checking the words for something. Then she asked the one he should have seen coming. "Who wrote it?"
Ray had been ready for a lot of questions tonight, and that one hadn't made the list. "Uh. A guy."
"A guy."
"A guy named Ben." That part was even true.
"Ben who?"
"Ben... E."
"Ben E."
"It's a whole name."
"Where's he from?"
"Back home. Across the sea."
She plucked one string, low, and let it hum. "What else did Ben E. write?"
Ray opened his mouth. He knew exactly one song by Ben E. King, and he had just sung it five times in a row. "He was more of a one-song guy."
She slung the bass over her shoulder by its strap, and he couldn't tell whether she believed him.
"So." He picked a leaf off his knee to have something to do with his hands. "Am I still evicted?"
"Here's the thing, squatter." She drifted down until she was sitting in the air at his eye level. "I've heard every song in Ooo. Most of them I've heard a hundred times. I get bored." She tipped her head at him. "How many of those do you know? Songs like that one."
"A lot."
"Name ten."
"Okay, uh. 'Hey Jude', you'd like that one. 'Bohemian—'"
Her hand was over his mouth before he got the rest out. It was cold, and it smelled faintly of apples.
"Don't tell me. Then I'll know them." She took the hand back. "You can keep the house." She held up a finger before he could say anything. "Rent's songs. One I've never heard, every time I come to collect."
"When do you come to collect?"
"When I feel like it."
"That's not how rent works."
"It's how it works here. You run out of songs, you're out."
"What counts as a song you've never heard? What if I sing you something and you've heard it and you just say you haven't?"
"Then I guess you'd better sing something good enough that I don't want to lie." She smiled with all her teeth. "Tough break."
Ray thought about his last landlord, a guy who had raised the rent twice in four months, never fixed the dryer vent, and sent every text in capital letters. "Rent in songs? Lady, I've had worse landlords."
'Two hundred and twelve bucks in a bank that doesn't exist. But every song I know, she's never heard.' That was a lot of rent.
"House rules." She counted them off on her fingers. "The string on the shelf stays on the shelf."
"Wasn't going to touch it."
"The apples on the tree are mine."
"All of them?"
"The red ones. You can have the grey ones."
He looked through the window at the bowl on the table. "Are those even food?"
"They're apples."
"They're the ghosts of apples."
She snorted before she could stop it. "The garden's yours. What's left of it."
"There's nothing left of it."
"Should've thought about that before you ate it." Another finger went up. "And when I'm here, stay out of my bed."
"Where do I sleep when you're here?"
"The floor's nice."
"...Can I at least use the mug?"
She took her time. "You can use the mug."
"Where are you going to be, when you're not here collecting?"
"I've got a better house."
"Better than this?"
"It's in a cave."
"And that's better?"
"It has a couch."
Ray looked past her at the cabin. There was the porch with the missing step, and the M on the door, and the window he had watched from a tree all night. A roof, a door that locked, a mug. He had lost all three of them about two hours ago, and he'd gotten them back for a song. He kept looking at the door.
"Deal," he said, before she could change her mind.
"I didn't ask."
"I know. I'm saying it anyway."
She looked up at the sky over the trees, and her shoulders went up.
"Doesn't the sun...?"
"Why do you think I'm leaving, genius?"
...
The sky over the trees had started to go thin at the edges. Marceline felt it on her skin before she saw it, a prickle along her arms that would turn into a burn if she stayed.
She should have been gone ten minutes ago. She floated up toward the tree line with the bass on her back and didn't hurry.
The line was still in her fingers. Two notes and two notes and the climb, and the bend she'd put in the third time around, which was hers and not his song's. 'Great. That's stuck now.' She'd be hearing it in her head for a week.
'Ben E.' She said it in her head the way he had said it, like a guy reading it off the bottom of a shoe.
'Nobody writes that and quits. Bullshit.' He had sung it five times like it was his own, and then couldn't name one other thing the guy did. So that was a lie, and not even a good one.
'Washes my mug. Sits on my floor instead of running. Smells like a human, which shouldn't even be possible.' And then "across the sea", which he said like a place he'd read about once.
'Liar. Fine.' Everybody had something. She had a whole cave full of somethings. She'd find out what his was eventually; if there was one thing she had plenty of, it was time.
At the edge of the clearing she looked back. The squatter had gone up the porch and tried the door, and he was standing there looking at it. The bar was down on the inside, where she'd dropped it. She watched him figure that out. Then he climbed in through the window headfirst, like a burglar, and his red shoes kicked once in the air before they followed him in.
She laughed out loud. It carried, and his head popped back out of the window. He looked up and found her at the tree line, a dark shape against a sky that was getting lighter by the minute.
"Hey, squatter!" She cupped a hand by her mouth. "First payment's due in three nights. Bring something better."