 |
To begin with, she hated music. To continue that thought, she hated her teacher. To FINISH that thought, she hated getting up early on Sunday mornings.
With that thought in mind she made her way up the steps of her teachers house to the lesson room. Slowly.
Her teachers cat, a big black tabby who was out to kill her she was sure, shot from the top of the steps through her feet and around the corner at the bottom of the steps. She stumbled and fell up the last of the stairs, her books scattering at her feet as she landed hard on her hands. She stood up and flexed her wrists. Her luck didn't hold up; they weren't sprained.
"Are you alright Kristal?"
"Yip!" Kristal put on a happy face. Her piano lesson would continue. She had been taking them for three months yet made next to no progress. That was because of a combination of two things: She hated it, and she didn't have a Piano at home. Speaking of which...
"No lesson for you today. Your mom is going to meet us at the Auction House. I found a piano that I think will suit you. I know you don't really like your lessons, but your mom mentioned that you love antiques."
Her teacher bent down and picked up the book that had fallen farthest away from Kristals fingers. As she stood she saw Kristals' expression and laughed.
"Wait until you've seen it. You may decide that you want to learn piano just so you can make a sound come out of hte thing."
The drive to the Auction House was fast, which was good. Kristal wanted to get this over and done with. She just wanted to see it so she could turn it down.
At the Auction House she followed her teacher into a back room where her mother stood beside a HUGE piano. Kristal raised an eyebrow at it and stared like that until the other man in the room saw her and smiled.
"It's called an 'upright grand'. Imagine taking a grand piano and cutting it up right behind the keyboard, then standing the strings up and hooking everything back up."
"Cutting up a piano. Now that I could be good at." Kristal ignored the gasps and glares from her mom and her teacher. She moved to the piano instead.
Kristal knew next to nothing about piano's, but she did know a lot about antiques. This one was in prime condition. The wood fairly glowed, the pedals didn't squeak when you depressed them, and there were no scuff marks or other marks on the surface. Kristal looked at the man, "Can I see inside this please?" The man, forwning at having to cater to this abusive-towards-piano's girl, opened up the top and took off the bottom panel and the panel above the keys.
The date was printed in raised letters along one of the metal support things* and read September 27, 1900 and a name that she assumed was the name of who ever had built it. There was a thin layer of dust coating everything inside the piano which told Kristal that it hadn't been used in a long time. Or at the very least not used a lot.
Kristal stepped back and while she looked inside the bottom panel the man lowered the top panel and closed the top of the piano. The bottom had a thin layer of dust as well, but Kristal was more interested in the scrool work done to the pieces of wood that connected the pedals to the mechanisms that controlled sound.
"That is some interesting scroll work down there. What's the history of this thing?" She refused to refer to the piano as a piano. That would suggest a respect for the thing that she just couldn't bring herself to feel.
"This piano, as it says, was made in 1900. The man that made it made it completely by hand, and completely out of a single tree. That's not actually scroll work on the bottom there. He used the tree roots for those," he indicated with his finger inside teh piano, "and the legs of the piano."
Kristal frowned. "So why isn't it bought and paid for already? I dont' really care for piano's at all, but there must be someone who want's this thing."
"There have been many interested person's, and it has been passed through a lot of hands over the last decade. It belonged to a wealthy and very eccentric old man up until a then. When he passed away he willed it to his daughter, who had as much use for it as you seem to. She brought it to us to sell. Every purchaser since then has brought it back. Some say it wouldn't play in tune no matter how often they had it tuned, some told us that it didn't match their decor. Regardless, of the reason they have brought it to us, it has achieved the name of 'unsellable' by the Auction Commitee and if we can't find a home for it within the next six months we'll have to destroy it."
Kristal sighed. "Mom, I'm just not interested in it. I hate music in general and I can't play worth s**t anyways."
"Well. Then I'll buy it for myself." Her mother looked like she was about to have a stroke. Her face was red and blotchy and Kristal was almost sure she could see the pusle in her mother's throat.
"Whatever. I won't play it. It's not a good buy mom." Having said her piece, Kristal walked out the room the way she had come and left the building. She stood by her mother's car. Her lesson was over anyways.
*A week later*
"So how goes your piano lessons. Is your mom still forcing you to practise for an hour every day?"
Kristal was at her best friends house. Her best friend was a wiccan and teaching her to read Aura's. Apparently she had the gift to see the supernatural. She was having difficulty with it.
"Yeah. My teacher says I'm beginning to improve at least."
"Well that's a bonus isn't it?"
Kristal stuck her tongue out at Michelle. "Maybe if I enjoyed it."
"Why are you doing this again? I mean, if your mom is making you do it, what's in it for you?"
"If I take a year of piano she'll let me go to that private school in Toronto. The one for artists."
"Ah yes." Michelle looked sideways at Kristal. "I'd like to see this piano of yours."
"Let's go then. I'm not making progress here. And I know you love to play."
The girls cleaned up what they had been working on and left. It was a short walk of two blocks to Kristals house and the weather was gorgeous. They talked about nothing in particular on the way, and laughed at some of the little kids playing outside in their yards.
Arriving at Kristal's house the girls said hello t Kristals younger sister, who was doing homework, and her mom, who was watering the plants, before entering the rec room. Michelle was entranced at once by the piano sitting against the wall, a book shelf on either side of it.
"Oh my goddess. You never told me it-" Michelle cut herself off and glanced at Kristal. "Then again, you probably didn't realize did you."
"Are you asking if I knew what ever it is you are talking about or telling me I didn't realize... whatver it is?"
Michelle didn't answer. Instead she sat at the piano and ran her fingers gently over the keys, not making a single sound.
"May I?"
"I already said you could play it." Kristal said, confused.
"I wasn't asking you."
Kristal raised an eyebrow as Michelle smiled and began to play scales to warm up her fingers and learn the pianos' personality.
"Are you saying the piano is haunted?"
Michelle smiled and moved smoothly from scales to Fur Elise.
"More like possessed. But I wouldn't worry. She has no intention of harming anyone. She likes you and your mom."
"I see."
Michelle was pulling songs out of the piano the like of which no one in the house had ever heard. The songs themselves were familiar, but not the sound of them. There were tones under tones under more tones that made the song sound like it was being sung by unearthly voices.
Kristal's family trickled into the room slowly, listening raptly to Michelle as she played.
The phone ringing startled everyone including Michelle. Two hours had passed as though in a heartbeat and it was Michelles' parents' on the phone wondering if Michelle would be home for suppe.
Michelle, laughing, said, "If you ever sell that piano let me know. I'll buy it off you guys in a heartbeat."
Kristal stared at the piano as her friend left. A stream of sunlight pierced the gloom of the living room and struck the piano at an angle that left no shadows. The piano sat, silently condeming her belief that it would play itself, and glowed in its place.
"Supper hun." Kristals' mom had apparently forgotten the spell the piano had woven over the house as she moved back into the kitchen to eat. Frowning, Kristal followed.
The piano glowed through the rest of the strange evening, no matter that the rich warmth of the sun had stopped caressing it. Starlight, usually so cold and distant was reflected in warm glows across its surface. Kristal noticed all these things the way an extreme fanatic notices that the sun will rise and set on their idol. And just like the fanatic, when Kristal slept she dreamt of the object of her thoughts: The Piano.
I was a warm sunny day out, and the piano seemed to be growing in a tree. Birds would start songs and the wind would join them using the piano strings, while rain from nowhere would hit the keys and add their own version of the song to it. And the earth itself, stretching in the dream, sent shivers of gravel and sand to thump the bottom cavity of the Piano, adding in what Kristal recognized as both a drum and heart beat.
She woke in the mornign feeling very conscious of her own heartbeat and the wind in the tree branches outside.
Kristal avoided her living room for the rest of the week and flatly refused to allow Michelle into her house. A few times she found herself staring intently at the piano as it sat innocently collecting dust in her living room. Whenever this happened she immediatly began doing something, anything, to get her mind off the piano; house work, yard work, walking neighbors dogs and babysitting were all things that pulled her attention away from the piano, but only for short periods of time.
On Saturday her family went to the beach. She made up the excuse of feeling ill to stay home. She faked it very well until she heard the car leave the driveway. Then she had a shower, got dressed, and ate breakfast. When she was done she cleaned her dishes and put them away, mechannically, before wandering into the living room. She sat at the piano.
And started to play. She played the scales like her teacher had taught her. Warming up the finer muscles in her hands and getting the blood flowing into her joints. When her hands fairly flew in graceful imitation of swallows over the keys she pulled out a piece of music that she had never seen before and could barely read.
The music flowed out of the piano as her fingers grazed the keyboard and she was transported.
There wasn't a cloud or shadow that dared to mar the perfect day. A breeze played amongst the grass and leaves. A stram ran by the feet of an ancient tree, playing among it's roots before continuing on towards the ocean. A man walked up to the tree and the music changed to incorprate sharp stocatto notes of fear. He raised his axe, and said: "My daughter loves music."
Kristal shot up in bed as her alarm c**k blared at her from across the room. Another dream about the piano. She sighed as the adrenaline slowly left her body.
Kristal dragged herself from her bed and went through her morning routine much faster than usual. She HAD to talk to Michelle. The dreams that she could remember weren't happening all that often, but she knew they were there all the same. She had to find out why.
She got to school in time to catch Michelle before her friend went to her tutoring class.
"Michelle, we need to talk. About the piano."
"What about it?"
"You said it was possessed, and I've been getting really odd dreams lately."
Michelle looked cooly at her best friend. She'd known of course that this was going to come up, but how to tell a very strict atheist about stuff like this. Ah, now that made it a bit more difficult.
"Just tell me in small, easy to understand words, what is in my piano."
Michelle smiled: Much easier now. "When did it become your piano? Doesnt' matter. Your piano belongs to a wood elf. Her tree was chopped down and used to make the piano by a man who had just lost his daughter. Some kind of accident if I recall. His daughter LOVED music. The elf felt sorry for the man, and since blood houses the soul and tears the emotion, and since he cut himself a lot in the making of the piano and cried on it daily, the elf could, and did, stay with the piano. She loves music by the way, so if you ever wanted to get excellent at piano that's the one to learn on. She'll teach you well. And she likes you. Now look, I gotta get in there before those idiots leave thinking they get a reprieve from me for a day. I'll see you in class."
At the end of the school day Kristal went home alone and in a cloud of silence. She heard nothing as she walked in the door, not even the note she crumpled up and threw away explaining that her family had all gone out to her brother's game.
She stepped into her living room and regarded the piano. It wasn't glowing today, but she could still feel it watching her back.
She stepped to the bench and sat down.
And then she started to play.
|
 |
Reply
