Music of the Stars

The Music of the Stars is the immense, changing music Momo first hears only faintly and later encounters at the heart of time. It is at once a sound, a creative force that calls the hour-lilies into being, and a presence that persists within her after she returns to ordinary life. Its movement through the story carries the hidden wonder of time into Momo’s memory, her loneliness, and, finally, her song before her friends.

First Hints and the Source of Time

When Momo tries to understand what time is, she reasons from what she can sense: time exists but cannot be touched or held, and it is always passing. She wonders whether it might resemble perfume or wind, then arrives at the possibility of music that goes unheard because it is always present. She has, she thinks, heard it very faintly. Professor Hora affirms that this intuition is why he was able to summon her. Momo continues to imagine music arriving from far away while being heard deep inside her, like wind making waves in the sea. Her tentative language gives a first outline of the experience to come: the music is both distant and inward, beyond ordinary hearing yet recognizable to her.

Professor Hora reveals that all the time in the world comes from Nowhere House, on Never Lane. He explains that when Momo’s own time ends, she will retrace her life through its days, nights, months, and years, and pass through the great round silver gate by which she entered. Beyond it lies the home of the music she has faintly heard; there, Momo herself will become a note in its mighty harmonies. The music therefore connects the time she experiences as an individual with a greater harmony, without erasing the distinction between her time and anyone else’s.

The Music Beneath the Dome

At the lake beneath the golden dome, Momo watches hour-lily after hour-lily unfold and fade. Each blossom differs from those before it, and each seems more beautiful than the last. Then her attention widens: the shaft of light descending from the dome’s center is not only visible but audible. Its sound begins like wind in distant treetops and swells into something like a waterfall or waves breaking against a rocky shore. The gradual change makes hearing an unfolding discovery rather than an explanation given in advance.

Within that vast sound, Momo distinguishes innumerable notes continually changing pitch and weaving new harmonies. She recognizes it as the faraway music she once heard in the silence of a starry night. Yet it is more than music in the familiar sense. The resonant shaft of light summons each bud from the lake’s dark depths and shapes it into a flower whose beauty is unique and inimitable. Sound, light, and the appearance of the hour-lilies belong to the same process: the music does not merely accompany the flowers but participates in their becoming.

As she listens longer, the notes take on the quality of voices. First she hears sounds like those of gold, silver, and other precious metals. Beyond them come voices immeasurably remote yet powerful. Momo understands words in a language she has never learned: the sun, moon, planets, and stars are telling her their true names. Those names express what the celestial bodies do and how, together, they make each hour-lily flower and fade. The music thus gives audible form to the ordered relations that shape each passing hour.

The address feels intensely personal. Momo realizes that the words are directed to her, as if the whole universe, from her position to the most distant star, had become a single immense face looking at and speaking to her. The experience exceeds fear. Professor Hora silently beckons; Momo runs to him and buries her face against his chest. He covers her eyes and carries her back through the tunnel. Once they are in the small, clock-lined room, she struggles to describe what she has encountered, finally calling it very big. Professor Hora corrects her: what she saw and heard was not everyone’s time, but her own. A place like it exists in every living soul, though it can be reached only by those he takes there and cannot be seen with ordinary eyes.

Memory, Language, and Solitude

Back on the grass-grown steps of the amphitheater, Momo recalls the journey through the city, the dazzling white houses, Never Lane, the hall of clocks, her conversation with Professor Hora, and, above all, the hour-lilies beneath the dome. She can close her eyes and see the flowers again; the voices of the sun, moon, and stars remain so clear that she can hum their melodies. The music has crossed with her from an inaccessible place into recollection.

That recollection produces more than a faithful replay. As Momo listens inwardly, words take shape that describe the flowers’ scent and colors she has never seen. In her mind, hour-lilies blossom by the thousand, rising from what seems an inexhaustible spring, and each new flower brings new words. She can repeat or sing them if she listens closely, but their meaning slips away as soon as she utters them. The music gives her language while withholding full possession of what that language means. Its images and words continue to change, yet she can still repeat the words and sing the melodies.

This abundance becomes painful during Momo’s long separation from her friends. She sometimes spends whole days alone on the amphitheater steps, singing and talking to herself, with only the trees, birds, and worn stones to hear. Her vivid recollection of Professor Hora, the flowers, and the music does not forsake her; at the same time, it makes her feel imprisoned in a vault of priceless treasures, buried so deeply in time that no one notices her. There are moments when she wishes she had never heard the music or seen the flowers. The memory sustains what would otherwise be lost, but it cannot itself end her isolation.

Courage and Return

When Professor Hora tells Momo she must not be frightened because she has heard the Music of the Stars, he treats her experience as a source of courage for what lies ahead. Cassiopeia chooses to accompany Momo, spelling out that someone must look after her. The music does not spare Momo difficulty, but her previous encounter gives her a remembered connection to the vastness beyond it.

After time returns, Momo and her friends gather in the amphitheater. When the cheers, embraces, handshakes, and excited conversation settle, a great hush falls as she steps into the arena. She thinks of the Music of the Stars and the hour-lilies, then begins to sing in a sweet, pure voice. The narrative does not supply the song’s words or explain what the listeners understand; it places her remembered music in a shared human gathering. What she once heard alone beneath the dome, and later carried through solitude, becomes song among the friends who have come back together. The expression therefore links cosmic creation to private memory and, at the story’s close, to Momo’s renewed presence with others.