A Dream of Snow - A Christmas Tale {Michael Jackson Story}

A Dream of Snow - Part 2

The first thing he noticed was that the room as extremely bright. He had never had as much light in the house before. But it was a different, diffused kind of light. It was white and cool and seemed to leave no shadows. It was breathtaking to look at, as if the walls of the house had ceased to exist altogether, but at the same time it made everything around him, all that was his home, seem alien to him.
Outside the windows, the terrace, the flowerbeds, the grass, everything was covered under a lining of snow that almost hurt the eyes when he looked at it.
Standing at the top of the steps that led down into the room, he looked around for the raven and spotted it sitting on the closed keyboard of the piano forte, jet-black against the golden- brown wood.
"What are you doing? Having a tour of the house?" he asked in a soft tone as he walked over to the instrument. "Now, come on. Come off the piano. That's not a toy."
Instead, the bird tapped it's beak against the lid, not strong, but audibly and rhytmic. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
"There's nothing under there for you. You can't go in there. It's full of keys. Now, come off!"
The bird kept knocking.
Michael didn't like the sight of the sharp claws on the polished wood. He liked animals, but even in his less-than-conservative opinion they didn't belong on a piano. And if the bird should try to open the lid itself like it had tried to do with his bedroom door earlier, it surely had the potential to scratch the instrument badly. Michael rubbed his chin and sighed. "Alright. Peck-peck-peck means open that for me. I get that. Yeah, I learn quickly, you see. But you have to get off the lid."
The bird still kept knocking.
"Get off the li-id!" Michael repeated in a sing-song voice and lifted it lightly. When the ground under the bird's feet moved, it opened its wings for a better balance and ran – under a lot of painful scratching – along the instrument. For a moment Michael hoped, it would hop off by the end and the problem would be solved, but it didn't. It perched on the frame by the left end of the keyboard and seemed to wait. It took its head out of the way when the lid came up, but stayed put. Then it watched the long line of black and white keys with obvious interest.
Michael, in turn, watched the bird. "I told you it's full of keys," and in demonstration, he reached out his hand and pushed the central C. The tone sounded dull in the otherwise closed instrument.

The bird's reaction came so sudden and unexpected that Michael tripped over the bench behind him. It jumped into the keys, and with the ivories tinkling beneath its feet it stumbled hastily across the keyboard and after some looking around decided to push the E an octave below the C. Apparently unsatisfied with the result, it tried the F-key right above the E, then it gave up.

From the corner of the piano bench, on which he had involuntarily come to sit, Michael looked at the animal in silence for a moment. But when his surprise both at its sudden move and at his own fall had passed, he slowly reached for the C again. This time, being close by, the bird had no problem to find the correct key. It hardly waited for Michael to withdraw his hand before bringing the key down itself.
Michael tried other keys, black ones and white ones, left and right of the bird. It played the game with passion and could even remember two keys in a row, sometimes even three, if they weren't far apart.
"You are definitely not a wild animal!" Michael looked into the feathered face, "Don't you miss your home?" But the bird kept a close watch on his right hand resting on his knee.
"Some more?" With that Michael reached for the instrument again and chose – randomly – the G.
For an odd moment, the animal didn't move, just looked. Then it repeated the G. And then it slowly and under some apparent thinking played a succession of keys that burnt themselves into Michael's brain: G, A-flat, G again, G-flat, G again, A-flat again, A, then B.
Then it walked, under the sounding of ever higher keys, to the right end of the instrument, sat on the frame for a moment, crowed once, and then fluttered off and started marching to the kitchen door.
"Maybe we should be looking for a circus," Michael said quitely, closed the lid quickly and followed.