Lessoc Fountain - a fairy-creature tale

Ch. 18.1 Music from Around the Bend

That evening, when she unlatched the glass pane in her front window so she could close the shutters, she caught a few notes of music floating to the chalet from the forest. Uncertain, Cocot leaned on the windowsill, eyes lost in the eerie glow created when the evening sun was blocked by a layer of grey clouds. The trees trembled and shivered in their beds, their green leafy blankets ruffling with every chill gust. The storm that Cocot had predicted on market day was thick in the air; the girl could smell it, sense its electricity.

But more important than the storm, there was music coming from the forest. Violins—two of them, or one violin and another similar instrument that accompanied it. There was also a drum, nothing wild or complicated simply a 'tum...ta-dum...tum...ta-dum' and so on. There might be another instrument; she was not sure if she could hear a flute or if she was hearing the wind whistling through the rocks and branches.

"You must never follow the music," her mother had warned. She had told her to never go to the hills when the mists were about, and to never follow the sounds of flutes or revelry. She had made her promise.

It had been a false promise, the only lie she had ever told her mother. Her sole act of perfidy. Her false promise to never follow the music dangled just beyond the window, tempting her to go to it. How could she not want to follow the music and listen, she who never had any?

She stretched further out as the wind shifted and hid the sound. A black fluttering from above startled her.

"Go on inside and close the windows, Coquelicot," Soufflé ordered. "The weather is turning foul."

"Where is the music coming from?" she asked him.

He landed on the sill next to her elbow, gazing at the garden, the fence, the dirt road and the forest climbing upwards beyond. He did not answer.

"From around the bend and under the hill," she guessed.

He sighed and nodded. "It must be the wind that brings it this far."

"Who is playing the music?"

"You know perfectly well who. I've told you; your mother was one of them."

"A fairy," she said. "You told me she was a fairy, a great fairy. But there was nothing 'fairy' about her. She walked to market, she had the fire wood delivered, she got sick....She...." Her voice broke off. The memory of the tiny, sparkling crystal tumbling onto her palm and then disappearing with a pin prick of blood came to her mind.

"Yet she was a fairy. She had to have been the one who..."

"The one who what?" Cocot prompted him. A flitting group of field fairies appeared at the edges of her vision.

"You must stay inside tonight, Coquelicot," he said.

"No, I'm going to follow the music. I want to hear it better." Saying it made up her mind. She was going, but only a short distance. She had to be home before the sun set behind the charcoal clouds. Part of her hoped he would tell her not to go, that it was too dangerous or that something would hurt her. After Hector had attacked her and the noises on the path that morning, Soufflé's warnings would have been enough to break her resolution. She even waited a moment for his words, balanced over the sill, caught between leaning outwards and standing upright to close the shutters.

He surprised her. His face came together in a knot and he whispered, "You could leave this place entirely. Do you know? Tonight, even. You could pack a bag and go and keep going forever. Nothing is holding you here; your mother is dead. The walls, the roof, the ghost in the next room, these things are not what hold you here. You are free to go, if you choose."