Ballad by Maggie Stiefvater

be more than you are. It only means you should’ve said yes instead of no .”
    I was sure she meant her words to be convincing, but they had the opposite effect. “If I get somewhere in this life, it’s going to be because of me, bucko. No cheating.”
    Nuala made a terrible face behind her freckles. “You’re being quite ungrateful. You haven’t even tried the song I helped you with. It’s not cheating. You would’ve written it eventually. Like, if you’d lived to be three thousand or something.”
    “I’m not saying yes,” I told her.
    “I wasn’t doing it in exchange for yes,” Nuala snapped. “I was doing it to show you what we could be together. Your damned thirty-day free trial period. Could you just take advantage of it? No, of course not! Have to question! Have to over-analyze. Sometimes I hate all of you stupid humans.”
    My head hurt with her anger. “Nuala, seriously. Shut up for a second. You’re giving me a splitting headache.”
    “Don’t tell me to shut up,” she said, but she did.
    “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, “But I don’t exactly trust you.”
    I set my chanter down—it felt like a weapon that Nuala could use against me—and laid my fingers on the cool keys of the piano instead. Unlike my chanter, which was familiar and pregnant with possibilities under my fingers, the smooth piano keys were meaningless and innocent. I looked at Nuala, and unspeaking, she looked back at me. Her eyes were so wrong—so dazzlingly not human—when I really looked at them, but she was right. When I looked into her eyes, I saw myself looking back. A me that wanted more than what I was. A me that knew there was so much brilliance out there to find but that I would never begin to discover.
    Nuala climbed off the bench, very carefully so that it didn’t make a fart-creak, and ducked between me and the piano, my arms forming a cage on either side of her. She pressed back against me, forcing me back on the bench so that she had an edge to sit on, and then she found my hands where they were spread artlessly on the piano keys.
    She lay her fingers on top of my fingers. “I can’t play any instrument.”
    It was weirdly intimate, her sitting in the framework of my arms, her body perfectly mimicking the shape of mine, long fingers fitting exactly on top of mine. I would’ve given one of my lungs to sit with Dee like this. “What do you mean?”
    Nuala turned her head just enough for me to get a good whiff of her breath, all summer and promises. “I can’t play anything. I can only help others. It wouldn’t matter if I thought of the best song in the world—I couldn’t play it.”
    “You physically can’t?”
    She turned her face back away from me. “I just can’t. Music doesn’t happen for me.”
    Something stuck in my throat, uncomfortable. “Show me.”
    She slid one hand off mine, pressed a key down with her finger. I watched the key depress—one time, two times, five times, ten times—but nothing happened. Just the small, muffled sound of the piano key being depressed. She took my hand and dragged it to the same key. Pressed my finger down, once. The piano rang out, a sullen bell that stopped as soon as she lifted my finger back up again.
    She didn’t say anything else. Did she have to? The memory of that single note was still singing in my head.
    Nuala whispered, “Just give me one song. I won’t take anything from you.”
    I should’ve said no. If I’d known how badly it would hurt, later, I would’ve said no.
    Maybe.
    Instead, I just said, “Promise. Your word.”
    “My word. I’ll take nothing from you.”
    I nodded. It occurred to me that she couldn’t see it, but she seemed to know, anyway, because she rested her fingers on mine and leaned her head back against me, her hair scented with clover. What was she waiting for? Me to play? I couldn’t play the damn piano.
    Nuala pointed to a key. “Start there.”
    Awkward, her body between me and the piano and