The Singing Cave

On the edge of the Crystal Spire Forest, where great columns of crystal grew straight up out of the ground like frozen towers and hummed very faintly whenever the breeze passed through them, two young friends named Mira and Jun went exploring one bright and golden afternoon.

They had heard a rumour from the older children — a wonderful, unbelievable, too-good-to-be-true sort of rumour. Somewhere deep in the crystal forest, they said, there was a cave that could sing. Not just an echo. Not just the whistle of the wind. An actual song, made all of crystal, more beautiful than anything you had ever heard in your whole life. But here was the strange part: no one they knew had ever actually managed to hear it. Everyone had heard of it. No one had heard it.

Mira and Jun searched all afternoon, squeezing sideways between the tall crystal spires, ducking under glittering ledges, following the little rainbows the light threw across the ground. And at last, just as the sun was beginning to slip lower, they found it: a low, round opening in a mossy hillside, ringed all around with glittering blue-and-violet crystals that caught the afternoon light and scattered little dancing rainbows across the walls within.

"This must be it! This has to be it!" cried Jun, and without waiting even half a second he rushed straight inside. "Sing! Sing, cave, come on, sing!" he shouted at the top of his lungs. He clapped his hands as hard as he could. He stomped his feet on the stone floor. He hollered and whooped and banged two crystals together, waiting and waiting for the beautiful song to come pouring out.

But the cave stayed perfectly silent.

"It's not working," said Jun, his shoulders slumping with disappointment. "Maybe the rumour wasn't even true. Maybe there's no song at all." And he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted again, louder than ever. Still there was nothing — nothing at all but the sound of his own voice bouncing flatly back off the cold stone.

Mira, though, had been standing very still, and she had noticed something. Every single time Jun shouted or clapped or stomped, the little crystals along the walls stayed dull and dark and grey. She reached out and put her hand very gently on his arm. "Jun," she whispered — and she made her whisper as soft as she possibly could. "Wait. Let's try something different. Let's try being quiet. Really, truly, completely quiet. I don't think the cave can sing over all of our noise."

Jun looked at her, and then, slowly, he nodded. So the two of them sat down together on the cool, smooth cave floor, and they went still. They stopped shouting. They stopped clapping and stomping and fidgeting. They folded their hands in their laps. They even hushed their own breathing, until it was slow and soft and quiet — until the only sound left anywhere in the whole cave was the gentle drip... drip... drip of water, somewhere far back in the dark.

And they waited.

At first, there was nothing at all. Mira's nose itched, but she did not scratch it. Jun wanted to whisper, but he did not. And then — so faint and so far away that Mira was quite sure she was only imagining it — there came a single, pure, silvery note. It seemed to hum up softly out of the very crystals themselves, clear as a bell and warm as a shaft of sunlight. Then a second note rose up to join the first, and then a third, and then more and more, until the whole cave was gently ringing and shimmering with a slow, unfolding melody — each crystal singing its own small, perfect part, and all of them together weaving a song more beautiful than either child had ever so much as dreamed. And as they sang, the crystals began to glow, soft blue and deep violet and warm gold, filling the whole cave with dancing, drifting light.

Mira and Jun did not move a muscle. They did not make a single sound. They only sat, wide-eyed and open-hearted, right in the very middle of the singing, and let it wash over them and all around them like warm water.

At last, ever so gently, the song faded back down into silence. Jun turned to Mira, his eyes shining bright in the fading glow. "It was real," he breathed. "It was really, truly real. But — why wouldn't it sing before, when I asked it to?"

"I think," said Mira slowly, working it out as she spoke, "I think the cave was singing the whole time. Even before we came. We just couldn't hear it, because we were too busy being loud over the top of it. It only sings for people who are quiet enough to listen."

Jun nodded slowly, thinking of all the times in his life he had rushed and shouted and hurried noisily past things without ever stopping. "There's probably all sorts of wonderful things all around us," he said quietly, "that we miss every single day — just because we're too loud to ever notice them."

The two friends sat a good while longer in the softly glowing cave, quiet and content, listening to the little drip of water and the faint, lingering after-hum of the crystals. Then they got up and walked home together through the crystal forest — slower than before, and quieter. And all along the way, now that they were truly listening at last, they heard all sorts of small and lovely and secret things they had never once noticed in all their lives before.