The Last Army Is a Choir

How it begins

The last weapon in the city required perfect pitch.

Daniel regarded this as a serious strategic weakness.

He had once conducted a choir that could not agree on a starting note, a meeting time or whether the refreshments were included in the subscription.

Now the governor expected him to stop an army.

"How many singers?" he asked.

"Everyone."

"That isn't a number."

"It is a national emergency."

The ancient score lay on the council table beneath a paperweight shaped like a cannon.

Daniel turned the page.

A third of the music was missing.

From outside the open window, someone sang the absent line.

He went very still.

In the square below, an enemy soldier was hanging laundry between two captured flagpoles.

She sang as she worked.

Not loudly.

Accurately.

Daniel leaned over the sill.

"Do you know the next part?"

The soldier looked up.

"So do you."

"Apparently not."

She sang it.

Behind him, the governor ordered the shutters closed.

Daniel kept one hand on the frame.

"The spell needs her language."

"The spell is ours."

"Then somebody forgot to tell the music."

By afternoon, the soldier sat opposite him in the rehearsal room. Her name was Mira. She had been ordered not to sing anything that reminded the army of home.

Daniel showed her the score.

She read the first page without touching it.

"This isn't a battle song."

"What is it?"

"A welcome."

Outside, soldiers repaired the barricades using pieces of the concert hall's front door.

Daniel remembered every occasion on which he had asked singers to become one voice.

He had never considered how much could be lost in the request.

Mira tapped the missing line.

"Do you want me to teach them?"

He looked at the governor waiting behind the glass.

Then at the score.

"Only if you want to."

For the first time that day, the room sounded ready for music.