The Lost Boy

Part I. Night Music

The girl lived in a small town in Appalachia, a grey place with a grey river running through it surrounded by steep mountains that were always capped in snow. On a cold winter night when the wind howled and the darkness hung over the town like a mourner's veil, the girl set off to climb one of the nearby peaks. She wore an oversized red cloak that dragged behind her in the snow, and in one hand she carried a long black case. She ascended the narrow winding path in silence, her breath fogging the icy air as she climbed. When she reached the summit, she surveyed the little lights of her town twinkling like fireflies far below.

She unclasped her black case—inside was a violin and bow—and nestled the instrument under her chin. As the first notes leapt from the violin, an E from the finest string followed by a G from the fattest string, she soared out of her body, carried aloft by her sorrowful music. She flew over her town, past the little cottage where she lived with her grandmother, over the valley, her music sending her further and further away from home. A big town swept by, and then an even bigger town, but she had already searched those places many moons ago. She flew beyond the mountains, reaching the prairie lands that were studded with ramshackle barns and cows dreaming in the fields. But she had already searched those places, every last pasture, and so she flew onward.

Her music was no louder than a strained hum by the time she reached the city. Cars roared down the streets and the neon signs crackled and hissed even at this late hour. She slipped in and out of apartment buildings, examining city-dwellers tucked into their beds and the ones who were still awake, insomniacs watching television or reading books or staring out the window with so much longing and regret—but none were him. She flew over a dance club with pulsating lights, over a man and woman sharing a secret kiss by the muddy creek, over an old man hawking grilled pineapple to late-night revelers.

She searched and searched but then the music stopped and she was once again standing on the mountain peak, returned to her body which had grown numb from the cold. She put the violin back in its case and descended the mountain to her small town.

Day after day she searched for him, and year after year she found nothing.

**********

The boy's name was Cyrus. He was as fair as she was dark, with pale blue eyes and hair that was the color of spun gold. But they were more similar than they were different: they shared the same birthday, for one, and they both were skilled with the violin. They each had been raised by their grandmothers in identical thatched-roof cottages not far from each other on the same country road.

Both she and Cyrus had other friends among the town's children, but each had known they were the other's truest friend. On summer days they would paddle down the river and free snapping turtles from the wire traps left by the older teenagers. On winter evenings they would have sleep-overs, lying by the hearth and reading each other stories while sipping hot cider. She had never been more content than in those moments, Cyrus' head nestled in her lap with his golden curls reflecting the firelight, asking her to read him another tale. Cyrus had taught her how to tie sailor's knots, and later, how to dance until the sweat poured off their bodies. She had tried to teach Cyrus how to leave his body and soar with music, but though he was as talented a musician as herself, she had come to learn this was not something that could be taught.

Her life in the small grey town wasn't extraordinary, and many days were similar to the ones before. But she had been happy going to her little school and tending to her little garden and spending time with her grandmother and Cyrus. She had believed the years could have passed in this way forever, until she, too, was an old grandmother, but something had changed as they reached the cusp of adulthood. Cyrus had changed. He had stopped meeting her by the river to catch snapping turtles. He had thrown out all of his old books. In place of his carefree disposition, he had grown aloof and distant.

One summer day she had spent the entire afternoon looking for him before she finally found him sitting alone under a tree, chewing on a river reed. She had smiled at him but he had only scowled and turned away.

"Leave me alone," he had said.

"What have I done to upset you so?" she had pleaded.

"It isn't you. It's this town. It's everything."

"What is the matter with our town? This is your home. It's the same as it has always been."

"That right there is the problem," he had snapped.

"I don't understand. Everything you love is here. Your kind grandmother. The majestic mountains that stand guard over our valley. The rustle of the reeds when a breeze blows over the river."

She had not added herself to that list, knowing her heart would shatter if he responded with something cruel. But he had only clutched her hand, staring deeply into her dark eyes with his own the color of sapphire, and sighed.

"I know, and you are right. It should be enough. It should be more than enough. But it's not. It's just..."

He had not finished those words. After some time she had asked:

"What will you do?"

"I do not know. But I need a change. I need something... different."

Then they had sat silently together, neither knowing what else to say, until the sun had set behind the mountains and the sky had turned the color of eggplant and it had been time to go home.

**********

Cyrus had vanished several months later. One night the girl had been washing the dinner dishes with her grandmother when there had been a loud knocking. Cyrus' grandmother had appeared in the doorway in a state of alarm; she had told them that Cyrus hadn't shown up for lunch, nor for their afternoon game of gin rummy, and now he was two hours late for dinner. They had rushed out and knocked on all the neighboring cottages, but alas, nobody had seen him for hours.

The town had formed a search party, gathering all of the available flashlights and setting off into the dark. They had paddled along the river and scoured the most treacherous mountain passes, but it was as if Cyrus had vanished off the face of the earth. They had searched week after week but to no avail. The only clue had come from an eccentric woman who lived in the next town over, believed to be a witch by the local children because she was always stumbling along and raving about in a language nobody understood, who had told them about a black car speeding by as she had been gathering chickweed and horsetail along the road; it had been driven by a beautiful woman with a blond boy by her side. But nobody had thought much about the woman's story, and besides, why would Cyrus have left with a stranger?

One year had passed, and then another. The townspeople had long stopped their search. Even Cyrus' own grandmother had given up hope of ever finding him, withdrawing into the sanctum of her cottage and only leaving once a week with a black shawl wrapped tightly around her to buy groceries. It came to be believed that his disappearance would remain one of the great unsolved mysteries of the world.

Except for the girl. The girl had known not to discount the raving woman's story. In her nocturnal travels she had overheard murmurings of other children disappearing, from places too far away to reach the ears of the people in her small town. And the girl had known why Cyrus would have gotten into the black car.

I need a change. I need something different.

She had vowed to never give up hope, to never stop searching until she was once again united with her truest friend.