Fiddlesticks the First
She just appeared magically one day. Sitting off in the corner of the county pub on the booth bench, she was silent and mute. Although her maple grain gleamed in the lantern light, her strings never quivered, never moved. The key to moving them sat beside her.
No one seemed to know what she was, what she could do. Most just eyed her from afar. A few mindlessly knocked her over or tried to use her as a weapon in a pub brawl. She had a few nicks and scratches, but she always magically returned to that corner booth bench. Her strings never seemed to break, but they never helped her sing.
The pub keep and his woman always just let her sit. They didn’t touch her except to clean that booth. They almost feared her, muttering things about faeries and banshees and pixies. They refused to move her, and they wouldn’t apply the key.
One day, a young couple picked her up. They picked up the key; although there was no forest ambrosia to refresh the key, the couple took the cake syrup the pub keep kept and dumped it down the key.
They tested her, tried her. She sang, she sang, she sang. The song, though, was lifeless. They stroked her neck, a little tight at times, and though they used the key to twist her ears, tweak her nose, and strike her jaw, she never gave that song that vibrated life.
They tried fast, they tried slow, they tried rough, they tried gentle. Something in them and something in her just could not connect. They discarded her back on the bench a bit rudely, and left the pub, talking about others like her.
She just waited and watched. People came and people went. She never saw another like her, although that couple said there were.
Then, on a night fit for neither man nor beast, with rain pouring on the thatching and starting to drip on the bar, the door burst open. He was strange to behold, and not many had his shape. He nervously shook as the pub keep’s woman took his coat and wrapped him in the hearth-warmed blanket.
In the corner, she could feel his eyes on her, like something deep in his heart called for her to sing. Yet if the key weren’t right and he never saw her, never touched her, never held her, she would never sing again.
As the pub keep kept wiping down the bar and muttering about closing time, the man wrapped the blanket tighter to him and walked toward the corner. He shook, as much from cold and damp as anxious curiousity.
As he got to that corner booth, she quivered invisibly as something in her picked up something in him. He sat on the opposite bench, and then he reached out a tentative hand. He stroked her jaw, traced her ears and nose, and followed the strings to cup her curves. He shook, cold, anticipating.
“Is she yours?”
The pub keep dropped the glass he held, and his woman almost knocked over the chair with her broom. Silence followed.
“I know I’m a bit quiet. Is she yours?” the stranger spoke more loudly, confident, yet fearful of the answer.
The woman sighed, and the pub keep responded, “We think she’s faerie fae. We don’t know what she is or what to do.”
“May I?”
The pub keep bent over to sweep the glass. “We don’t care. If you can figure out what she is, get her out of here. She chills most of our locals.”
The stranger grinned broadly. Laughing, he replied, “It’s a deal.”
The stranger reached cautiously, stroking first her curves, tracing the strings up her neck, glancing his fingers off her ears, nose, and jaw.
He first pulled her gently to him. Fiddling in his pocket, he pulled out an odd metal tin with an unusual knot pattern and opened it. It smelled just as awful as the day the man kicked him out, telling him he was changling, no good, worthless, and he never brought anything but trouble.
What was in the tin was a bit sticky and thicker than it had been on the day he left. It was more congealed than the cake syrup. He then reached for the key, and she waited, trying not to let her strings sing until the key was inserted.
He poked in the tin, and the mess that came out was rubbed up and down the key. With his left hand, he gently put pressure on her throat to guide her to his neck and chest. With his right, he gingerly picked up the key.
She felt rather than heard his heart pounding. No one had ever held her like this, so tightly yet so gently.
It happened.
Without warning he wove the key in and out of her strings while his fingers veritably danced across her neck, jaw, and ears. Unbidden, music arose from every pore in her body, and she sang.
Joy flowed.
Frequencies never before heard by humans wove in and out of every lantern in the pub as flames flickered and danced. Life filled every nook and cranny of the pub as the very atmosphere became charged.
After an eternity, he stopped. He held his breath, almost afraid that if he breathed the moment would evaporate. When he finally breathed, and she was still cradled against him, his eyes widened and moistened and he smiled.
“One more, my pretty?” he asked, almost begging, forgetting she had no voice without him. He forgot the pub keep and the pub keep’s woman. Time and they stood still.
He waited for an answer that he knew would not come, like she could only sing and she could only sing if he helped.
He took the key again and wove among her strings, continuing to tickle and stroke her neck and ears and jaw. He couldn’t touch her curves if he wanted her to sing, and he almost preferred her voice to all else even the feel of her wooden curves.
Frequencies from other worlds flowed through her, and she tried to make the wavelengths tighter and cleaner so he would know she appreciated and loved that someone knew how she should sing, how to make her sing, how to hold her in such high esteem.
Fast and furious, the notes danced through the night, weaving a spell that would not soon be broken. Again, he stopped.
“You sure you want me to take her? Seems an awful precious thing you’ve got.”
The pub keep stammered, and his woman shook her head. She said, “Son, a deal’s a deal. I have your coat, and the rain has stopped. I’d let you stay, but we’re not an inn, we’re just a pub and it’s well beyond closing time. But, I think, I’d best warn you. My gran used to always say you’d best be sure the bewitched things are okay with your plans.”
Nodding and pointing with her chin, the pub keep’s woman stammered, “You might best be sure she’s okay with that plan.”
The stranger was stunned. He’d never thought about things with souls; it just wasn’t done or known. He quivered, and set her and the key side by side on the table top.
As he took his cloak from the pub keep, he wrapped in it and turned to address her. She was afraid, afraid she’d stay in that corner, afraid she’d never use her voice, afraid she’d never sing again.
“Lady, let me take you with me. Leave whatever magic you can to help these good people no matter the past. You can’t blame them for not knowing. You’ll have to hide close to my heart because thieves will want you. I will play you as you deserve; you can sing every day of my life, and when I die, if eternity allows it, I will make you sing after my death.”
He waited. She wanted it, wanted what he offered. She didn’t like the sound of thieves, and she didn’t understand death. She didn’t know how to sing without the key.
Nothing happened. He slumped and turned to go.
With all the sorrow she could muster at what she was losing — a master who knew her, who knew how to use her, who knew how to make her sing — she let a cry out, just one eerie note, almost like the cry of the banshee the pub keep used to claim he heard. Her tears flowed along her strings.
He straightened, whirled, scooped her to his heart with the key, and shouted, “I will take that as a yes.”
The stunned pub keep and his woman stood statuesque and silent as the stranger moved so fast his cloak fluttered like butterfly wings.
It’s said in that county to this day joy flows on the wind. She sings, and he after death still finds a way to weave the key so add joy. Neither are ever alone.
And the pub… it’s the wealthiest business in the county. The descendants of the original pub keep and his woman always talk wistfully of what they and their ancestors lost, even though they have everything.
