[Wild Roses] A small folktale
It was a beautiful piano, old and scuffed through the polished black finish to the hardwood beneath, clawed feet spread to perch on the stone floor. The keys were true ivory, faded toward gold with age and long-ago use--no one seemed to remember that it existed anymore, though no dust had settled between the keys or along the top of the strings.
The servants whispered that it played itself, some nights, trickles of ghostly music that whispered and teased at the ears, untouchable when listened for. The real question, to them, was not whether there was a ghost, but who it was--the second Queen, or the last queen-Consort, the mother of the Bard or the mother of the castle’s Princess.
Time passed. The music continued, in whispered promises in midnights.
Until the night the piano laughed.
Sharp, glistening, metallic notes, not the Court-approved clean melodies, but layered, complex music, played for the joy of it, not in memory.
The next morning, the bravest of the chambermaids ventured in, dustcloth in hand, and found gilded thumbtacks in the hammers of the piano, not a speck of dust in the works, and a long stripe of varnish removed from the front edge of the cover.
After a day-long conversation with the other servants, carried out in passing as boys dragged the coir-fiber rugs outside into the sun to beat the dust out and the cook baked wheat roses, the chambermaid left a pot of wood polish and the best of the rags on the stone floor by the front clawfoot of the piano.
A year later, the piano was a study in golds and muted walnut, and the stories told to new pages spoke only of will o’the wisps that loved laughter and music, not dead queens and their not quite silenced instruments.
The servants whispered that it played itself, some nights, trickles of ghostly music that whispered and teased at the ears, untouchable when listened for. The real question, to them, was not whether there was a ghost, but who it was--the second Queen, or the last queen-Consort, the mother of the Bard or the mother of the castle’s Princess.
Time passed. The music continued, in whispered promises in midnights.
Until the night the piano laughed.
Sharp, glistening, metallic notes, not the Court-approved clean melodies, but layered, complex music, played for the joy of it, not in memory.
The next morning, the bravest of the chambermaids ventured in, dustcloth in hand, and found gilded thumbtacks in the hammers of the piano, not a speck of dust in the works, and a long stripe of varnish removed from the front edge of the cover.
After a day-long conversation with the other servants, carried out in passing as boys dragged the coir-fiber rugs outside into the sun to beat the dust out and the cook baked wheat roses, the chambermaid left a pot of wood polish and the best of the rags on the stone floor by the front clawfoot of the piano.
A year later, the piano was a study in golds and muted walnut, and the stories told to new pages spoke only of will o’the wisps that loved laughter and music, not dead queens and their not quite silenced instruments.