A Silver Song

[OrangeblossomTook]

A Silver Song

It was a bright dawn in the high summer of my seventh year when I heard the song that would shape the rest of my life. I, like the other children could no more deny it than the rats could deny the song he played for them.

How can I describe that song? It was wild and sweet and sad and merry. It described everything precious about childhood; laughter, summer days at play, treats at Yule, a mother’s bedtime song. How could a child not follow such a song? I tried to keep up with the other children as they skipped and danced through the town and the summer woodland behind the Piper but, although I strained so hard with my crutches I thought my heart would burst, I was lame and came to the mountain too late. I only heard a sweeter music still and saw flashes of bright color before that door shut in my face and closed forever.

How I wept. For days I would not eat and could not sleep. I longed only to hear the Piper’s song again and took no joy in anything else for there was no beauty in the world compared to what I had heard that morning in summer when I became the only child in Hamelin.

In the autumn of the year, a peddler came to the door and my mother, anxious for something to lift my spirits, told me I could have anything I desired from among his wares. He had a silver flute and I thought that, if I could not hear the Piper’s beautiful song again, I could, perhaps, make one of my own. It was desperation and not the arrogance of childhood that made me think this.

My mother begged me to choose something, anything else. No one in Hamelin would teach music after what had happened, after all, but I would have the flute or nothing and the old man offered it at a small price for such an instrument.

I blew on it and clacked my fingers on its keys for days before I could produce a recognizable tune but the notes where sweet and pure. I kept playing on it every day, though I could reach no great proficiency on my own. They small ditties I created were but crude things but in a town without the laughter of children or a single note of music, it was all I had.

The years went by and I was coming into manhood. Any pity for me or special consideration for being the only child left had vanished. As a lame child, I had been a burden. As a lame young man who would do nothing but wander in the woods playing a flute, I was seen as a waste.

Gypsies camped on the outskirts of town in the spring of my sixteenth year. I could hear their pounding drums and wailing violins drifting across the moonlit fields. I ran away with them. They agreed to teach me music and let me live with them. There were many small chores I was capable of doing and there was room for me in one of the caravans.

It would have been a merry enough life if I had not yearned for the song I had heard so long ago. I was never truly one of them but they were kind and my playing improved.

One day, the caravan camped at the foot of a great, black mountain, much like the one outside of Hamelin. I went out alone that night with my flute. It was the first full moon in fall and a heavy frost was on the ground. I shuffled up the mountain path until the caravan was out of sight and began to play.

I put everything I felt into my playing; the longing for what you cannot have, the sadness of being alone, and the bittersweetness of beauty just out of reach. It was not the Piper’s song but it must have been as powerful because a door opened in the black rock. It was my song.
There was nothing visible inside the door, just perfect blackness. I went in, determined to see what the door my music created led to.

I had not gone far when the moonlight disappeared behind me and I saw the door was now gone. I was not afraid for I saw a tiny flicker of silver light in the distance and slowly felt my way toward it. However far I went, the light seemed to be no closer and the path went down into the bowels of the mountain.

I do not know how long I was lost underground but, by the time the cave became larger and began to be softly illuminated by the light, which was growing brighter, I was almost too weak to walk. The light shone almost as brightly as the moon on a clear night and I could hear the welcome sound of lapping water.

After I slaked my thirst, for it was fierce by that time, I saw that the light came from the glow of large, crystalline rocks which hung from the roof of this enormous cavern. This radiance glinted off the waves of an underground sea. Little phosphorescent fish swam in the shallows and I walked along the shore on sand that was as white and as fine as sugar.

The first sound that I heard other than the waves startled me for it was a voice, a female voice. It reminded me of the chiming of the silver bells for it was a silver voice; fresh and tinkling and cool. On a white rock set some way from the shore was a creature glowing in the light of the crystals. Her upper body was that of a woman, albeit one with skin and hair as pale as milk, but, instead of legs, she had the tail of a fish, which was a silver brighter than a freshly polished mail shirt.

I put my flute to my lips and began to accompany her song. She looked at me and was not afraid but kept singing. The glow from the crystals waxed and waned with the rise and fall of the notes and the exquisite melody we created pierced my soul. It spoke of the beauty of silver light in dark places and the purity of fresh, cold water. I would have kept on played but the deprivations of my journey underground finally caught up with me and I collapsed on the white sand. I heard a splash before I lost consciousness and vaguely thought the strange mermaid was swimming this way.

I awoke when I felt myself immersed in frigid water. I was supported in the water by the mermaid, who turned me around to face her. Her eyes were not red or pink like an albino’s but a luminous silver-blue. She drew me close and kissed me. The water did not seem so cold and, when she swam away, I found that, not only could I swim but I possessed a fish’s tail of my own.

I did not mourn the loss of my less-than-useful legs and swam back to shore to retrieve my flute. I joined my mermaid on her rock and now we make music, explore the secret places of the underground sea, and feast on the white shrimp that dwell in its waters. I have never found any of the other lost children of Hamelin but am no less content for all that.

[Froda Baggins]

Oh, how beautiful! What a poignant way to tell the story of the one lame child left behind by the Pied Piper... lovely idea, OBT.

I liked that he, like the other children, was eventually stolen away from the 'real world' by something of myth and legend, if of a different sort than the Piper.

Bravo!

[OrangeblossomTook]

Thank you so much, FB. Good to "see" you again.