As they floated, he watched the birds diving and rising on the currents of air, coursing in flight with the river. He wished he was with the Doctor, to tell him that he had seen them, so that the Doctor could add them to his collection of sightings. He wondered what the Doctor was doing now, how they were preparing, if he too would bear arms against the attack. He imagined the Doctor turning back and seeing Khin Myo standing in the flowers. He wondered how much he knew and how much she would tell. No more than twelve hours had passed since he had touched his lips to the warmth of her neck.

And from Khin Myo, his thoughts drifted to a memory of the old tuner he had once been apprenticed to, who used to sneak a bottle of wine from a wooden cabinet after they finished work in the afternoons. What a distant memory, he thought, and he wondered where it came from, and what it meant that now was the moment of its remembering. He thought of the room where he had learned to tune, and the cold afternoons when the old man would wax poetically about the role of a tuner, and Edgar would listen with amusement. As a young apprentice, his master’s words had seemed maudlin. Why do you want to tune pianos? asked the old man. Because I have good hands and I like music, the boy had answered, and his teacher laughed, Is that it? What more? replied the boy. More? And the man raised a glass and smiled. Don’t you know, he asked, that in every piano there lies a song, hidden? The boy shook his head. Just the mumblings of an old man perhaps, But you see, the movement of a pianist’s fingers are purely mechanical, an ordinary collection of muscles and tendons that know only a few simple rules of rate and rhythm. We must tune pianos, he said, so that something as mundane as muscles and tendons and keys and wire and wood can become song. And what is the name of the song that lies in this old piano? the boy had asked, pointing to a dusty upright. Song, said the man, It doesn’t have a name, Only song. And the boy had laughed because he hadn’t heard of a song without a name, and the old man laughed because he was drunk and happy.

The keys and hammers trembled with the sway of the current, and in the faint ringing that rose up Edgar again heard a song with no name, a song made only of notes but no melody, a song that repeated itself, each echo a ripple of the first, a song that came from the piano itself, for there was no musician but the river. He thought back to the night in Mae Lwin, to The Well-Tempered Clavier, It is a piece bound by strict rules of counterpoint, as all fugues are, the song is but an elaboration of one simple melody, we are destined to follow the rules established in the first few lines.

It makes you wonder, said the old man, lifting his wineglass, why a man who composed such melodies of worship, of faith, named his greatest fugue after the act of tuning a piano.

They floated downstream. In the afternoon, their progress was slowed by a steep drop through rapids, around which they were forced to portage.

The river widened. Nok Lek tied his dugout to their raft.

In the early evening, they stopped at a small deserted village by the edge of the river. Nok Lek paddled the canoe to shore and the two other boys jumped into the shallows, splashing while they pulled the raft. At first it resisted, like a recalcitrant animal, but slowly they pulled it out of the current and into an eddy. They fastened it to a log that lay on the beach. Edgar helped them untie the piano and lift and carry it to the bank, where they rested it on the sand. The sky was heavy and they pitched a shelter with woven mats and covered the piano.

At the edge of the buildings, the boys found a discarded chinlon ball and began to kick it about in the shallows. Their playfulness seemed incongruous to Edgar, whose thoughts raced one upon the other, Where now are the Doctor, and Khin Myo, Has the fighting begun, Perhaps the battle is already over. Only hours ago he had been there, but now he could see no smoke, nor hear gunfire, nor screams. The river was calm, and the sky clear save for the gathering mist.

He left the boys and walked up the bank. It had begun to drizzle lightly, and his feet punched out dry footprints in the moist sand. Curious as to why it had been deserted, he followed a trail that ran up from the shore and toward the village. It was a short climb; like Mae Lwin, it had been built close to the river. At the top of the path he stopped.

It was, or had been, a typical Shan village, a collection of huts gathered in disarray, crowded on the bank like a flock of birds. Jungle swelled behind it, flowing down between the huts in tangles of vines and climbing plants. Edgar sensed the burning before he saw it, a mistiness in excess of the rain, a stench of soot that sifted up from the charred bamboo and mud. He wondered immediately how long ago it had been abandoned, if the stench of burning was fresh or but a reincarnation in the rain, Moisture destroys sound, he thought, but enhances smell.

He walked slowly. Details emerged from soot stains and ashes.

Most of the huts were badly burned, leaving many of the structures standing bare and roofless. In others, walls had collapsed, and roofs of intertwined leaves undulated in half suspension. Burned fragments of bamboo lay scattered on the ground. At the base of the lowest houses, a rat ran through the debris, the pattering of its feet violating the silence. There were no other signs of life. Like Mae Lwin, he thought again, but absent were the chickens that pecked at fallen grain from the path. Absent the children.

He walked slowly through the village, passed burned and abandoned rooms, looted, empty. At the edge of the jungle, creepers had already begun to sneak through the interlacings in the walls, the slats in the floorboards. Perhaps it has been abandoned long ago, he thought, but plants come quickly here, as does decay.

It was nearly dark, and mist from the river sifted through the burned structures. Suddenly Edgar felt afraid. It was too silent. He had not wandered far, but now could not tell the direction back to the river. He walked swiftly through the mass of homes, which seemed to loom, doors like burned mouths, skeletal, leering, mist collecting on the rooftops and coalescing into droplets, rivulets, running now. The houses weep, Edgar thought, and through the slats of a hut he saw the flames of a fire, lighting the mist, and darkened shadows that swelled against the hillside and danced.

The boys were sitting around the fire when he approached.

“Mr. Drake,” said Nok Lek, “we thought you were lost.”

“Yes, I was, in a way,” said Edgar, pushing his hair from his eyes. “This village, how long has it been abandoned?”

“This village?” asked Nok Lek, and turned to the other boys, who crouched by the opened baskets and rolled small bits of food in their fingers. He spoke to them, and they answered in alternation.

“I don’t know. They also don’t know. Months maybe. Look how the jungle has come back.”

“Do you know who lived here?”

“They are Shan houses.”

“Do you know why they left?”

Nok Lek shook his head and turned to ask the brothers. They shook their heads in turn, and one of them spoke longer.

“We don’t know,” said Nok Lek.

“And what did he say?” asked Edgar, motioning to the boy who had spoken.

“He asked why you want to know about this village,” said Nok Lek.

Edgar sat in the sand beside the boys. “No reason. Only curiosity. It is very empty.”

“There are many abandoned villages like this. Maybe the dacoits did it, maybe British soldiers. It doesn’t matter, the people move somewhere else and build again. It has been this way for a long time.” He passed Edgar a small basket of rice and curried fish. “I hope you can eat with your fingers.”