Crystals & Crows || A Collection of Short Stories

Alfred

Its name was Alfred.

Everyone thought it was a ridiculous name for a piano—especially one that was as expensive as this one. Each part of it felt so delicately crafted and riddled with gold, from the web of strings stretched out across its belly to the wooden ridges, metal pins and strips of bright red felt by the ends.

But Mr Wilson and Mrs Wilson were desperate for Selene Wilson, their nine-year-old daughter, to be good at something.

She had given up on ballet classes within two lessons. She had taken a year of tennis lessons before suddenly deciding she was terrified of balls and rackets and sunlight. She had even given up on reading—insisting that books were evil because they made her sleepy.

The piano was their final attempt at any sort of hobby.

So, when Selene slid her finger across the piano's dark lid and breathed out, "His name is Alfred."

Well. That was simply that.

~.~

The first few years were torture for Alfred.

Selene would come home after school, armed with crayons. And instead of pressing her fingers against the notes and listening to the scales unravel around her, she tried to colour in every single key. Even though Alfred lived nowhere near the kitchen—in fact, he was hunkered down in the grey and stale basement of the house—Selene always found a way to smear butter and chocolate and watermelon seeds all over him.

One day, after what Alfred overheard to be 'Halloween', Selene had staggered down the stairs with pink sugar all over her teeth. And then she had thrown up all over his keys.

Alfred didn't mind, though.

Because, eventually, when she did play?

Magic.

It was the curiosity in her fingers—the excitement and wonder as she finally let the sound curl around her. For Alfred, who saw nothing but sad wooden floors and bare concrete walls, it was dappled sunlight. It was twinkling stars. It was a dawn chorus.

But there was something else too.

She was lonely.

He heard it in her every note, felt it on her fingertips. A strange sort of longing. A bleak sort of hope.

She laid her loneliness bare for him with every chord and trill.

And he listened to it all.

~.~

One day, when she was days away from turning thirteen, she flatly padded her way down to Alfred. Placed her hands on the lid. Paused.

"I changed schools today," she whispered.

The basement fell silent for her. Alfred felt her hands trembling against him.

"I sat by myself at lunch time."

Alfred felt something warm fall onto him—a splash of water. Her first teardrop.

"In the toilet stall."

Another drop. And another.

"Alone."

And when she finally opened the lid and let her fingers crawl along the keys, the whole basement heard that loneliness—felt it like a chill sweeping across the floors.

~.~

Only weeks later, her fingers changed.

There was light in her songs—jauntiness and bubbles. She was happy.