Lessoc Fountain - a fairy-creature tale

Ch. 18.2 Music from Around the Bend

The skirt of Cocot's red over-dress snagged on a mossy patch on the tree, as though bony fingers held it, keeping her from rejoining the path. Cocot yanked it free.

Distant thunder rumbled. Cocot's scalp and nape prickled at the approaching electricity, but she did not stop or go back. The sounds of gaiety, music and dancing swelled the further she walked. She reached the last corner; cliff face to her right and a steep drop to her left. After this bend, she would see the spruce in front of the crevasse, the fallen tree bridge, and the hanging vines where she had imagined a cloaked figure the day before and where she had fed carrots to Hector for the first time.

Around the bend. This was the bend her mother had spoken of; understanding flashed through her mind like a match striking. She must not go any closer. Pressing her hot cheek to the rock, she closed her eyes and listened. What time was it? Perhaps eight or eight thirty in the evening. She could only linger ten or fifteen minutes—no longer, especially with the heavy clouds threatening overhead.

A new thread of music began—it was a song for those who have enough music to not worry if a song is not particularly joyful, or mournful, or bright, or dark or anything in particular at all. There was a violin, or two that were played together, and another instrument with plucked chords, but neither guitar nor piano. Something in between that Cocot had never heard. The melody was simple and slow and flowed from around the bend, rolled over the path and alongside the cliff, skipping upwards occasionally, then trickling down again.

It set her yearning, but not too much. It called her feet to step in a dance, but not too high or too fast. It beckoned, but only slightly. She answered, and turned the bend, head bowed low under her hood. The path was empty except for the swaying vines and tall trees.

From under the hood, her gaze fell on the fallen trunk that made a foot bridge towards the farm. It was no longer the simple tree that had collapsed over the stream that she remembered; its bark flaking away in patches, fungus sprouting in half circles from the decaying wood. It was a healthy, living tree that had grown sideways, bent at a right angle at ground level and decked with ribbons, decorated with spiraling silver wire-work and bronze half disks.

She crept closer, careful to hold her head bowed and her face hidden. Lightning flashed in the distance, glinting off the fine metal works and decorations on the bridge. She was halfway there. Thunder boomed, rattling her teeth and she flinched. Stepping in to the vines for the security of the cliff rock, she wondered how foolish she was to be out during an electric storm.

That was when she noticed the door. Behind the mess of vines that whipped about in the wind, there was a wooden door leading into the hill. She had passed that way dozens of times in the last couple of years, but never had there been a great wooden door. She would have seen it.

She pushed away the crackling vines and roots hanging down to study it.

The wood appeared to be larch—a heavy, hard wood that blackens with age. The door was entirely black except for the copper hinges and part of the handle, which were green from exposure. The knob on the handle was chiseled glass that contained flecks of silver inside, scattered through the ball like stars if the night sky was folded backwards on itself.

The door's surface was carved with symmetrical patterns and there were lines of symbols that could have been some sort of writing. Cocot traced the main design in the middle; the wood as smooth as the ivory keys on a piano that she had touched once.

The memory of the metallic click—a key in a lock—from the day before came to her and she inspected the copper handle. The keyhole was somewhat oblong with a slightly larger top, the same as the doors at the chalet. There was something else on the handle: an ivy leaf with a curling vine stretching under the keyhole.