---

An old stone road climbed the treeless hill. It snuck into the driveway of a small house and crawled under the garage door. A wild wind accompanied it, howling in from the sea that was scratching deep crevices into the far side of the hill.

The house was only small if you were Alma Rosario-Okoye, six and a half feet tall, currently cornered in the garage by her two convertibles and the boxes stacked floor to ceiling. She scowled at the car in front of her, her face covered with purple splotches of paint — in fact, her whole right side was stained purple, down to the tips of her fingers wrapped around a can of royal purple spray paint. She aimed the can at the wall again and let it have another blast, eyes closed. Her phone was ringing. She flinched at the sound, and the blast turned into a streak. She ignored the phone. The beige walls needed to go. The phone kept ringing.

She turned angrily, her fingers twitching, each spasm misting the closest car’s windshield with purple spatters. She swore and vaulted over both cars in a single motion, grabbing the phone with her free hand. She didn't bother to look at the screen. “Hello, I don’t know who you are and I don’t care. Why are you calling me?”

“Rough day, Alma?”

She turned and considered the work. Streaks of purple paint covered the wall in a chaotic maze^[1]. It was beautiful. The purple on the car’s windshield and purple fist print where she’d vaulted were less beautiful. She swore again.

A worried “Hello?” squawked from the phone.

“Yeah, Jeff, I’m here. Just painting my garage.”

“You finally got rid of all that junk?” Jeff’s voice sounded impressed.

Alma sighed. “I’ve told you before, it’s not junk. It’s important to me. All of it.” She'd made the mistake of mentioning the boxes once, and her landlord refused to let it go, even though he hadn't seen how organized the boxes were.

“5,182 cardboard boxes aren’t important. They’re a fire hazard.”

Alma contemplated the garage. The garage was part of the rest of the house, along with the kitchen and pretty much all of the house except for the outside of it. The neat aisles of boxes filled the garage and some of the rest of the house, too, but she didn’t care. She tapped her chin thoughtfully, leaving a purple fingerprint on it. “5,183 now.”

“Alma, you’ve really got to get rid of…”

Alma hung up the phone. She set the paint can down, rinsed her hands in a bucket of mineral spirits, and stepped through the door into her living room. The new box was on the arm of the couch. She peered at the label printed in block letters: GREG’S STUFF (RETURN TO GREG).

She had absolutely no idea who Greg was, so she put the box on a stack of twenty others against the wall next to a window and wandered into the kitchen, wondering why she could hear the faint sound of a typewriter somewhere far away. She shrugged. It was time for a sandwich - something elegant, like beurre d’arachide with a nice orange conserve.

Her plans were thwarted by the realization that she lacked bread, so she slammed the empty pantry door and stomped off to change. She reemerged into the garage, her purple-splattered white coveralls replaced by a sharp purple pinstripe suit, and the car that did not have purple paint on its windshield chirped at her. She pocketed the key fob and backed out, turning the radio up. Her earplugs were purple, like her suit.

The grass on the treeless hill rippled in her wake as she drove down the hill, sonic waves pounding out from the subwoofer in her trunk^[2]. She’d found it in a box labeled MINING EQUIPMENT, which was strange, but whatever. She loved the drive to Chalkbourne, though it was a short one. She made a point of keeping watch in her rearview mirror for the animals while she nodded along to the beat. Somehow that guy who did the nature show with the soothing voice always failed to point out that squirrels and rabbits could fly too.

Something streaked past her peripheral vision. “Was that a deer?” she muttered, but it was too high for her to make anything out ^[3], so she shrugged and kept driving. The subwoofer cut out when she was five minutes out from the town, but it always did that for some reason, so she turned the radio off with a sigh^[4]. "Would have turned it off anyway," she muttered to nobody in particular.

Her phone rang again. She touched a button on the dash. "Who is this and what do you want? I'm driving."

There was no response, so she reached to disconnect, then realized she was still wearing the earplugs. She pocketed them.

"—thinking you should drop by my place. I know you play the bass guitar."

Alma frowned. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"I'm putting together a band," Jeff said. "You know we have the Downs Qualifiers coming up week after next, right?"

"I didn't." The buildings of Chalkbourne rose around her as she entered the town, the wind on her face. "What does it have to do with me?" She found a place to park at the supermarket and went about her bread-buying as Jeff droned on in her ear.

A screen on one of the walls was showing local news. "...Elmer the Elk, on the run for a week now after its daring escape from a northern nature preserve, has just turned up at a local child's birthday party outside Chalkbourne." The announcer stood in front of the deflated ruin of a bouncy castle. The massive animal next to him leaned over and gently headbutted the camera, sending it flying. "Exciting, isn't it?" the announcer said offscreen, but then Alma went back to trying to decide between rye and whole wheat.

"—even listening to me?" Jeff was saying in her ear.

"Uh, sure." The whole wheat was fresher, but she loved rye too.

"Great, so you'll be there? My place, thirty minutes."

"Wait, why —" she started to say, but he'd already hung up.

She took two loaves of each, and an interesting-looking pumpkin loaf as a fifth, and headed for the checkout. Her stomach growled. Whatever Jeff wanted, he'd better hope it was worth keeping her away from her sandwiches.

---

Jeff Kahele hung up the phone and tilted his head from side to side, trying to get some of the tension out of his neck. Alma had sounded distracted, but she always sounded distracted.

He looked around his garage at the cables and equipment lying around. The setup was basic but functional: an old electric guitar, a second-hand electric bass guitar, a synthesizer that he'd never found anyone to play, and a drum kit he'd bought from his neighbor Big Jimmy for a pittance after the neighbors threatened to strangle Little Jimmy over one late-night drumming session too many.

"Boy has to learn boundaries," Big Jimmy had said. Little Jimmy had tried to bite Jeff when he came to pick up the drum kit, so Jeff was inclined to agree.

That had been four years ago, and he'd tried four times to put together an act capable of taking the Qualifiers title from Steve Harrison. Steve owned the local pub around the corner, and his Skarmageddon-on-Sea ska band had walked away with five hundred quid and the trophy four years running. "Better luck next time, mate!" Steve had shouted every time.

He sighed. He just needed a break — the right people, a bit of a magical spark. He'd thought after retiring from two decades directing cruise ship entertainment that running a band would be easy, but he'd always been dealing with professionals who'd already worked out the worst of their dysfunctions and could at least put on a show from start to finish. Doing it from scratch with a bunch of random strangers had turned out to be a much more tangled beast.

This year, the Qualifiers were two weeks away and he hadn't even assembled a band yet, but he'd be damned if he let Steve take the trophy by forfeiture. And the thousand quid — they'd bumped the prize this year after grumbles about inflation. It wasn't hopeless yet; Alma, his tenant, was competent on a bass guitar. He'd heard her practicing once over the phone, shortly after she'd moved from somewhere overseas, but whenever he asked her about it she refused to discuss it.

This time, he wasn't going to take no for an answer. There was Alma, and then there was Charity Bright. He'd spotted her at an open-mic night at the pub. She was cheery and pleasant-voiced, though her lyrical work left something to be desired. That was fixable. He'd been surprised when she agreed to try out as a vocalist, though.

It wasn't a whole band — he didn't have a drummer or a guitarist, but he could play a little bit of light rhythm. Maybe the three of them together could pull something off. He'd already called Charity, and she'd agreed to drop by on her lunch break.

Alma was the first one to show up. She didn't bother opening her car door; she simply threw her legs over the side and hopped out. She wore a purple suit, which was wildly overdressed for Chalkbourne, but she made it look completely natural. It was another reason Jeff thought she'd be a great pick for the band.

She eyed the Hawaiian shirt he wore with a hint of distaste. "I only came to tell you I'm going home," she said. "I'm hungry." She leaned back against her car door, arms crossed.

Jeff held up a hand. "Wait, hear me out," he said. "There's a prize for this. It's not much, but you'd get a couple hundred pounds out of it. And fun! And bragging rights," he added.

"If you win," Alma said. "I don't want anything to do with this. I just want to go home and finish painting my garage."

Jeff sighed. "There was nothing wrong with beige," he said. "And you're going to have to paint it beige again one day when you get a place of your own. Waste of time, if you ask me."

"I didn't," she said, staring at him. He was almost as tall as she was, but she made him feel tiny, and he was built like a wrestler.

He was wondering how to look away when a pink bicycle wobbled its way up the drive next to Alma's car. "Charity!" He broke eye contact with Alma, as if he'd planned to all along. "Happy you're here."

Charity Bright stepped off the bicycle. She straightened her windblown blonde hair with her fingers, her pink coat and handbag as cheery as the smile reaching up to friendly blue eyes. "Hey," she beamed. She glanced at Alma curiously. "Another band member?"

Charity barely reached Alma's shoulders, but she didn't hesitate to offer Alma a friendly handshake. Jeff nodded. Alma shook her head. She looked at the handshake like it was a snake. Charity pulled her hand back after a beat, but her smile was unaffected.

Jeff grinned at them both. "Alma's still thinking about it," he said, "but she'll come around." He stepped into the garage, beckoning to both of them. "Come in, I'll show you the equipment."

They followed him in reluctantly. "Here's what we're working with." He waved at the instruments lying around, picked up the guitar, and strummed a few chords. He winced at the volume. "Oops, better turn it down a little." He put the guitar down and stepped over to the mixer and started fiddling with knobs. Charity glanced around with curiosity and Alma with impatience.

"So here's the deal," he said. "The Downs Qualifiers are coming up in a couple of weeks. A little show at the Granary Hall in the Old Granary. Battle of the bands, you know? There's a bit of a prize. It's not a lot of time, I know. But! I know Alma here knows her way around the bass — don't try to deny it," he added. She was vigorously shaking her head in the negative.

He rolled his eyes. "I've heard you play. And I heard Charity sing at the Village Bookhouse. She has a good voice."

"Thank you." Charity blushed slightly.

He nodded. "And I'm not the world's best guitarist, but I can strum along." He pulled a battered little notebook out of his back pocket. "I've written a few songs already. We only need to do three."

"What's the competition?" Charity asked. "I've never sung with a band before."

Jeff tried not to frown. "So there's always five or six bands. I've done it a few times before..." His voice trailed off. Four years of misery. The first year, he'd gone country and western with a show that left the judges' expressions desert-dry. He'd gone for pop the second year, but the vocalist had been full of hot air. The third attempt was jazz, a discordant, uncoordinated mess, and his last attempt to assemble a competent a cappella quartet had been a shrieking disaster.

He shook his head. "Anyway, most of them aren't very good. The only real challenge is Steve Harrison. He's Chalkbourne born and raised, and he loves ska. So his Skarmageddon-On-Sea has won the past four years running."

"Sounds like a good reason not to bother," Alma growled.

"I don't know," Charity said brightly. "It could be fun. Why not give it a try?"

Alma stared at them, then turned to leave.

Jeff ran to the door, grabbing the bass guitar on the way and trying not to trip over the cable. "Come on," he said, holding it up.

She stopped, staring at the instrument. She wanted to play it, he could tell. He pushed a little. "Just give it a go."

"That is a bad idea," she said flatly. "This whole thing is a bad idea. And I'm getting hungrier."

He let a bit of his desperation show. "Please?" An idea occurred to him. "Look, help me out and I'll even drop the rent for you. How does that sound?"

She eyed the bass warily, hands on her hips. "How much?"

He shrugged. "Twenty percent."

The money wasn't terribly important. He owned a couple of houses around Chalkbourne and had a bit put away. The cruise director role had paid him well enough to retire early. He'd been happy to hang up his sea legs, but equally happy to settle down somewhere with a bit of Old World charm and a view of the water. The deal would still cover his costs, and every loss to the "local lad" had hardened his resolve to win.

"It's still a bad idea," she repeated. She took the bass guitar and propped it on a knee. "Here's why."

He rubbed his hands together, anticipating. She let her thumb slip over the bottom string, her eyes locked on his. A single low E sounded and —

A tangible wave of bass crashed into Jeff's chest. He staggered backwards. The drum kit collapsed in on itself. The rhythm guitar flipped neck over body and snapped against the wall. ^[5]

Charity shrieked, covering her mouth with her hands. "Oh my god, what just happened?"

Somebody a few doors down yanked a window open. "Knock it off over there, or I'll ring the police!"

"Sorry!" Jeff shouted back. He stared around the garage, hands in his thinning hair. "What the..." he mumbled, but his pulse quickened. A thought was rising. Him, standing on the stage at the Granary Hall, Steve leaning against the far wall with his arms crossed and that ever-present smirk, — and Alma wiping it away with a well-placed F# note. Some things were worth a bit of risk.

He narrowed his eyes at Alma. "I heard you playing. Obviously this doesn't always happen."

Alma held the bass guitar out to Jeff like it was some sort of weightless axe. "Bad idea," she repeated. He didn't take it, and she sighed. "I have a practice room."

"You added a room to the house?" Jeff was suddenly panicked. You needed permits from the council for that sort of work, and he was pretty sure the rental contract prohibited any modifications to the house.

She shook her head. "It's just part of the rest of the house," she said, as if that made sense.

Jeff took a deep breath. "I'm going to need to see this practice room."

Steve's smirk floated through his mind, the condescension as tangible as if the man himself were in the room. He crossed his arms. Damned if I lose again. "And if you can practice there, then so can we." He stared at the ruined drum kit. "We don't have a drummer anyway, so the wrecked gear doesn't matter. I have another guitar, and we can rent a drum kit if we find a drummer in time."

He grinned at Alma. "Twenty percent?"

She muttered something under her breath. "Fine, but it's on you when it doesn't work out. And I keep the discount."

Jeff felt unreasonably good. He turned to Charity, who was busy smoothing out her clothes. "Still willing to give it a shot?"

Charity eyed Alma with some distrust, but nodded after a brief hesitation. "Sure, I guess. Just don't point that thing at me," she said, nodding at the bass in Alma's hand. Improbably, Alma was still holding it out by the neck as if it were feather-light.

Jeff grinned and rubbed his hands together. "Alright then. Let's see this practice room of yours." He paused. "I hope you didn't damage anything. That will come out of your security deposit," he said to Alma. "So, my car's in for repairs. Care to drive? I'll just grab the equipment."

She glared at him, but she didn't object. He whistled as he gathered his things. He had a good feeling.

---

Yueling Liu stepped off her bicycle at the top of the hill, pleased that she wasn't out of breath. The climb had been harder than she thought it would be. She'd left town the moment she saw the purple-suited woman in her ridiculous car arrive at the supermarket. Still, she had to admit the woman made the suit and car look good, improbable as that was.

She was only in Chalkbourne for a few days. A client in London had hired her to retrieve a painting from a private collector. Fortunately for her, the old woman was out of town, and she'd already been in and out of the rowhouse in the dead of the night before. The painting was now stashed in a tube concealed under the bedframe in her hotel room. She didn't get away from the city much, though, so she was determined to take in the salt air.

Doing that took her to the lighthouse atop the cliffs a kilometer away on her second day in town, where she'd used her "bird watching" binoculars to take a look at the sea crawling below and the town behind her. The lonely house atop the cliff had caught her eye, and that purple suit had nearly been visible to the naked eye.

"Liv," her stepmother had always told her, "you're too curious for your own good." Liv was shorthand for "Olivia," which everyone called her because both "Yueling" and "月灵" turned English-speaking brains into mush.

Thanks to that curiosity, Liv was standing outside Ms. Purple's house picking the lock on the front door, which yielded easily. A quick glance over her shoulder out of habit, and then she stepped inside, closing the door behind her.

She stood in an ordinary hallway that led to an ordinary kitchen. "Not a secret millionaire, Ms. Purple," Liv murmured. The food stocks were unremarkable. Bottles of jams, marmalades, nut butters of various kinds, and spices filled the pantry. The refrigerator contained spreads of various kinds, assorted sliced meats, a few bottles of water, and not much else. Liv stifled a yawn and stepped out of the kitchen into the living room.

That was more interesting, if only because of the stacks of boxes along the wall. "A hoarder?" Liv asked herself softly. She stepped to the nearest box. "Return to Greg...who the hell is Greg?" The empty room didn't answer her.

The boxes were all labeled, but none of the labels made sense. She rummaged through a few, muttering to herself. "I don't need flashlights... What the hell is amigurumi? Why the hell would somebody have this many trombones? There's nothing in this box but a busted light switch..."

She stopped after a minute and stepped back into the hallway. The next door had a handwritten sign on it: STORAGE. "Let me guess," Liv muttered to herself. "More boxes."

She was right. The room was lined with aisles of boxes. Too many aisles, and too many boxes. Liv's eyes widened. "What the..."

---

Charity sat in the back seat of Alma's convertible as it climbed the hill toward the house at the top. She looked over the door next to her instead of looking ahead, not because it was boring to look ahead, but because two giants blocked her view forward. Both Alma and Jeff were really tall, and she wasn't.

She stared up at the clouds, pulling a notebook and a pencil from the pocket of her coat. One of the clouds looked especially fluffy, like a marshmallow. She started writing: Puffy, fluffy, happy cloud / Sing your story, make it loud!

She chewed on the end of her pencil. Too trite. But still, it made her happy, so she didn't erase it, though the eraser was now damp and she probably couldn't have anyway. She rubbed the eraser on her jeans to dry it, staring absentmindedly across the grass. Jeff and Alma were talking about the rent, so she tuned it out, letting her brain go back to the clouds. Better lyrics were lurking somewhere in her brain, she just had to find them.

The car slowed to a crawl as it pulled up at the garage door, which slowly raised itself.

Charity spotted a bicycle leaning against the far corner of the house. "Nice bicycle!" It really was. It was a sporty model, much sleeker-looking than her own Daisy. She felt slightly guilty at the thought. Daisy never failed her, always pink and cheerful even when it was pouring.

Alma frowned. "I don't have a bike." The car eased into the garage and the lights came on.

It was hard not to notice the purple everywhere. There was another car in the garage, a more sporty one with purple spattered across its windshield. The purple was the same shade as the suit Alma was wearing, Charity realized. "Wow, you really like purple!"

Alma shrugged. "It's better than beige."

Jeff stood in the center of the garage. He raised a finger, looking around, his brow wrinkled and his mouth trying to form words. "You expanded the garage? You...this...the contract...the council..."

"The practice room?" Alma's voice was flat and deliberate.

Jeff looked around one more time, then threw his hands in the air. "We'll talk about this later. Where's the practice room?"

Alma took a step toward the interior door, and Charity managed a single step to follow when a clatter from somewhere inside the house froze all three of them in place.

"Someone else living here too?" Jeff sounded even more irritated.

Alma didn't answer. She marched through the door, pausing to glance around. Her eyes narrowed at the open door just down the hall, and she didn't wait for them to follow before charging through it. Her voice carried back through the door, low and menacing. "Who the hell are you?"

Charity glanced at Jeff and he glanced back at her and shrugged, pulling his phone from the pocket. She followed on his heels, glancing around the corner of the door.

"Should I call the police?" Jeff asked.

Someone was sprawled clumsily on the floor between what looked like an aisle of boxes. There were more boxes, and more aisles, Charity realized. Some of the boxes had fallen from the shelf. They looked heavy, maybe heavy enough to knock someone over. The figure on the floor was dressed in black, with a black mask across the eyes, like a robber in an old film...

"Oh my god, are you a robber?" Charity's voice came out in a squeak. Not one of her proudest moments.

Alma put her hands on her hips and loomed over the sprawled maybe-robber, a purple goddess prepared to cast judgment. "Well?"

The figure —a young woman — stood, dusting herself off. She was holding a box. She didn't look scared at all. "Why," she growled, stepping closer to Alma, "do you have a box here for me?" She thrust the box at Alma's face, fast enough that Alma stepped backwards. The label was block-lettered: YUELING LIU (刘月灵). * * What...

For once in the hour Charity had known her, Alma did not have a snappy comeback. The tall woman ran her fingers through her hair, staring at the label.

Jeff pocketed the phone and his expression grew horrified as he took the room in properly. "Alma, what the hell have you done to my house?" He stared at the boxes, and a strange expression crossed his face.

"Alma?" He didn't say anything else. He just pointed.

Charity stepped into the room and leaned around his shoulders. The man really was unreasonably tall. He was pointing at a box. She read the label: JEFF KAHELE. † † the...

She started to put a hand over her mouth, then let it fall and leaned closer. There were two more boxes on the shelf below Jeff's box. It wasn't surprising that one would have Alma's name on it, but the other... ‡ ‡ hell?! Charity turned to Alma, beaming.

"You got me a present!"

---

1. Samples taken of Subject A’s handiwork show a haphazard assortment of apparently random vectors over the wall, but measurements taken on any random selection of five percent of its surface area are exactly 91% purple. [GMRAT: My tax credits paid for somebody to measure this!?] ↩︎

2. A local seismic monitoring station reported unusual activity, which was presumed to be an equipment flaw due to the clearly rhythmic nature of the graph. ↩︎

3. It appears to have been Alces alces, and its trajectory caused it to land on an inflated bouncy castle at a children’s party a few moments before the children were scheduled to use it. The only casualty was the bouncy castle. ↩︎

4. Simulations of the route show an undulatory pattern in the road’s surface that generates a noise-cancelling wave that precisely matches the song Subject A plays from the beginning every time on this trip. How Subject A always starts the song at the same microsecond relative to the moment the vehicle reaches this point remains unexplained. [GMRAT: I think I want a refund.] ↩︎

5. Subject A's directional control of infrasound appears to have improved compared to measurements taken one year previously. This is likely the result of hours spent in the space Subject A refers to as the "practice room." There has been some difficulty obtaining accurate readings of that space due to energetic flooding of low-frequency wavelengths. ↩︎