Prologue: Emmy Foster, one of the first Listeners

Far, far away, they are singing. They are singing to the earth, to the moon, to the sun and to the sky. They are singing to the clouds and stars. They, they who care, who know that we have precious little time left here on this planet, are singing to connect themselves with everything. I can hear it. Way over here and I can hear it. I've always heard it. I've had the knowledge that these creatures exist for my entire life. It's always seemed normal to me. I don't think anyone else can hear them though. They never do like I do. They don't look up when there is a particularly swooning verse that gives me little shivers, or pause in the midst of daily business to feel the vibrations of the voices that carry through the ground. They even look at me strangely, like I'm delusional. Like I'm a crazy person who's just hearing things. Yes, I am hearing things, I tell them. I am hearing singing. I tell my mother and father, my classmates, everyone. I am hearing the voices of the angels or fairies or whatever you call the singing creatures that are not quite of our earth and yet they are.

I told the same thing to the woman with the office and the couch who called herself a therapist, and the man at my school with the ugly bow tie and fake hair who said he was a guidance counselor, and the men in the white coats who came to my house. That was after it had all started to go bad, after my mother and father decided I was too old to "play pretend" and did everything they could to squash my "imagination". When that didn't work they began taking me to people who were supposed to help. They all listened well enough, but when that was said and done, they tried to persuade me, told me I was making it up, even gave my parents prescriptions for pills, saying I might be schizophrenic. I took the useless things like a good girl, having a laugh at the attempts to "cure me" behind their backs. There was nothing to cure. I was not sick.

I continued to listen to the voices. I stopped to pick up the pitch during class, walked into things because I was not paying attention, even crept out of the house at night to hear the melodious tones of the darker midnight songs. Then the men in white coats came. Well, I told them the same thing I told everyone else, despite the warning my frantic mother and stoic father had pressed on me earlier that day not to tell them about my so-called fantasies. Something funny happened after that. The men in the coats left, certainly. But they came back the next day, and there were more of them.

Tearfully my mother handed me the suitcase she had insisted I pack the night before, simply shaking her head every time I asked where I was going. She hugged me tight, her warm tears soaking the shoulder of my shirt. "Goodbye, sweetheart," she whispered. My father patted my back, as sentimental a gesture as he could manage, and said gruffly "So long, kid."

Still perplexed, I said goodbye to my breaking down parents as the men led me out the door towards a white van. These people certainly did like white. In my befuddled state I did not even bother to struggle or try to ask these people who they were or where they were taking me. I simply walked, dumbly, towards the vehicle. As I approached, the side door slid open and I climbed inside automatically. If I had been paying attention I might have noticed the looks that passed between the coat-wearers of relief and a little surprise at my lack of rebellion.

Someone buckled my seat belt for me. As I felt the cloth sliding over my clothes and listened to the click of the buckle I wondered vaguely if they thought I was not capable of such a feat or if it was simply because I seemed too stunned to remember to do it myself. I looked up once before the door was shut and caught a glimpse of my parents in the doorway. My mother was sobbing into my father's shoulder, tissue in hand. My father was standing and staring out at his daughter being taken away. I'm not sure if he was really seeing it. Then the door was slammed and I was left with the shadows of people passing by the tinted window and the sanitary gray interior of the van.

They took me to this place, this place with a happy smiling receptionist and many drawings on the walls that looked like the artwork of kindergarden students. After we entered through the sliding doors, one of the white-coat people, a woman this time, hurried to greet me and led me up to the desk. She signed something handed to her by a young man who had rushed up as soon as I arrived and then indicated that I should sign in on the clipboard that lay on the reception desk. I obeyed without hesitation, still dumb-struck. Then she led me away and down the hall. As we passed room after room, some with open doors, some shut, a few with colorful embellishments to the piece of paper that gave the person (or patient, I thought anxiously)'s name, I clutched my suitcase tightly and the bewildered feeling began to ebb as fear and uncertainty about my new location set in.

Finally we reached a room with an empty plastic holder on the open door. The woman placed the piece of paper she had signed in the holder, and I saw that it said "Emmy Foster" at the top. I did not get a chance to see more of the form before I was swept into the room. Inside the small space there was a bed, a chair, a dresser and a mirror. The woman spoke briskly to me. All I caught of it was that I was to be staying in this room. Before I could ask her anything else the woman had left. Nervously I walked to the bed and sat down. For a few minutes no one came and I was left alone to my uneasiness, still clutching my suitcase and staring out the open door. If I had only known then how long I would be surrounded by those same four walls and wishing I had run when I had the chance.

I realized all too late, when a man came in some fifteen minutes later to explain to me that I was in a "special hospital" (as though I was so thick I could not figure out that that was code for "mental institution") because my parents could not deal with me. As soon as I was cured, he said, I could go home. As soon as I stopped hearing the singing, I was free. And I thought, this is going to be where I live out the rest of my days.