Christopher's Song (Indefinite Hiatus)

Chapter 3

The twins discovered the power in their music shortly after their voices started to change and other signs of puberty surfaced. Before that music was simply a way of relieving stress or having fun. When their voices began to produce threads of power, the boys took it in stride. By that time, they knew they were different from their friends. Most of them squabbled with their siblings and some even had serious conversations with them. But none of them ever indicated any deep knowledge of how their brothers and sisters felt, much less what they thought. They also met other sets of twins. Many of them used a private language known as twin speak, but none could communicate telepathically. When Ethan asked one little girl if she heard her sister's thoughts, she told him condescendingly that no one could do that. When he said he and Daniel could, she thought he was just making up something because she and her sister had their own private language and he and Daniel did not.

When Ethan told his mother about the conversation, she questioned him about his and Daniel's communication style and then told him that it would be best not to hint to others of the ability. She explained that such things were very rare and that public knowledge of their gift might make others treat them strangely. Some, she explained, might even want to study them in an environment other than their home, and she could not bear the thought of being separated from her sons. While Ethan was still young and did not fully understand what his mother was trying to tell him, he knew he did not want to be separated from her. He was so alarmed that he immediately warned Daniel telepathically not to tell anyone about "talking without mouths."

This sense of being different, a needing to protect their secret, had been with them so long that it was now second nature. In a sense they became control freaks, avoiding undisciplined situations where they might accidentally reveal their unusual mental powers. Thus, they attempted to avoid participating in the ritual inebriation that was expected of all but the devout when they reached the age of majority. Sometimes it meant they were accused of being weird, but they chose to settle for being considered abnormal from time to time over divulging their giftedness. They used humor and a self-assurance that sometimes bordered on cocky to keep their caution from earning them the disruptive titles of geek, nerd or freak.

They weren't part of the "in crowd" but they weren't outcasts either. They were caste floaters in the strange hierarchy of the teenage world. They were tolerated by the "in crowd," who showed them a grudging respect. The twins often suspected that their positive self-esteem kept them in the good graces of the popular. Long ago they surmised that many of those kids were very insecure underneath the veneer of popularity. They were accepted by most of the mid-level cliques. They and their friends inhabited the fringes of the middle world, making up a clique of their own with the band providing them a singular identity. Others drifted in and out of their group, but the core had remained in tact since Middle School. Somehow, from this position, they were allowed to associate with geeks from time to time without the label staining their reputation.

When the musical powers appeared, the twins tested them in private, trying to discover just what the strange phenomenon meant. They were not able to decide really how their power worked, but when they needed an effect badly enough, they could usually come up with a tune  to channel it. In general, they used different musical styles to produce distinct effects, but changes could occur when they imagined different instruments as they sang, or when they changed key or tempo. Thus variations on a melody, sort of different arrangements of the same tune, could alter the outcome in a noticeable way. In healing their various injuries, they had found that a more throbbing, insistent bass helped when dealing with a more serious internal injury. They learned this only recently, early one morning when Daniel awoke with excruciating abdominal pain. As they wove the musical strands, Ethan directed them deep into his brother. He added more and more bass to reach the swollen organ that they assumed, based on their rudimentary knowledge of anatomy, was Daniel's appendix.