The Fiddler - Short Story

[Dannaron]

The bow raced and his fingers danced.

Brown on black the fiddler hopped down the road. His jig twisted through the silence of the night. Out of the deep shadows cautious eyes tracked his progress. They had not seen something like this before.

Further down the road, looming right in front of the fiddler, was the village.

* * *

It was amazing how quickly it had happened. That was the thought that kept running through my head. A week ago we had just been living here as ever. Afterwards… I’m not sure what we were doing.

It had taken dad. Mum, Curtis and I were all still alive, so we had been luckier than most families. But it wasn’t just losing dad. It was losing…

I’m not sure what. Any idea of normalcy had fallen apart. Any expectations or knowledge that we think we had about the world had left. I, none of us, we didn’t…

We were like newborn babes in one sense, but all too adult in our approach. Everything was new and unknown and frightening. We had memories, but they seemed to be memories of a life somewhere else, on a different world, that operated with friendlier rules where half the people you had grown up with suddenly died.

At the time, I was sweeping. The floor was dirty, so I swept.

* * *

Some of the animals slunk out from their hiding places to see what this strange man was doing. His music trailed behind him, and the animals followed the music.

The town had walls, and gates, but the fiddler knew gates. He looked up, and the gatekeeper looked down. The fiddler raised his hand in a friendly greeting. The animals stopped. Everything stopped. After the jig, the silence was leaden.

Then he tucked his fiddle back under his chin and whipped out his bow-arm. He tapped his foot. The world held its breath.

Beneath starlight the strings met again and a new dance started, one of honesty and plain hearts. The gateman tapped his foot and nodded his head. The doors buckled. The bow blurred.

The music picked up. The gateman, looking down at his own body as if in surprise, began to dance. The gates boomed first outwards, then back in and the fiddler and his entourage capered inside.

* * *

Both mum and Curtis were asleep when we started to hear the commotion. Shouting, running feet. And in the distance… Was that music?

I put down the broom and ran to the door. What now? What else could be thrown at us?

There was nothing to see in our street, it was all dead quite. No torches were lit outside at this time of night and there was no moon. Starlight was the only thing illumining the streets. That, and a faint red glow, like a fire, that seemed to be coming from the other end of town. Even as I watched I saw our neighbours open their doors and look at just as I was.

The scene was familiar, but it took me a while to place it. It sounded like the midwinter revels: distant shouts and exclamations, the suggestion of laughter, running feet. A suggestion of some great festivity taking place. Recent times had driven all such ideas out of my mind, so that now it seemed strange and new.

And yet…

And yet at the same time that distant suggestion spoke to something deep within me. When the whole world has gone mad, the voice whispered, what is there left to do but dance?

After a moment Curtis came down to stand next to me, rubbing his bleary eyes. “What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure…”

I itched to find out. But somehow even amongst this enthusiasm there was reluctance. Something warned me that I might not want to see what I went to find. I squeezed Curtis’ shoulder. “I’m going to go take a look. You are to stay here and look after mum, understand?”
Even fresh from sleep, doubt came to Curtis’ expression. It had not been so long ago when his father, had warned the boy against touching him with a similar expression. I was not talking about the same thing… Well, I was pretty sure I wasn’t.

“I promise I’ll be back. I’ll just grab a peek and return. Don’t leave the house. Don’t come looking for me. And don’t let mum leave either. Do you think you can do that?”

Curtis nodded once. He didn’t have the thoughts to argue back, while sleep tugged at his heels.

“Good. I won’t be long.”

* * *

By now the fiddler had amassed quite a crowd. Owls twisted and wheeled overhead and field mice scampered in diamond-patterns with the village cats. The townsfolk lit torches and came from their houses with dead eyes that had seen too much too soon to watch.

The jig was picking up again. The fiddler was dancing, bowing and ducking forth, jumping and winding through the air while his fingers beat back and forth like rain upon the strings. The notes squeaked and squawked at the highest range and the greatest tempo that the people had heard in the most frantic of parties before. Not knowing what was going on, some people, their expressions grim and manic with too many long nights without their spouse, too many sleepless times without the wailing of their newborn children, leapt behind the fiddler and began to dance. They stepped away from their gathered friends and family and beckoned to them. The moths weaved through the air and were thick about their head, lifting and falling with rhythmic beats of their wings.

The crowd was swelling rapidly. Some joined to dance, some walked behind looking awkward, some came to try and argue or even physically pull their loved ones out of the music, terrified by this new thing.

The fiddler’s eyes glinted. He knew precisely where he was going.

* * *

That the town had gone mad was somehow not that surprising. This form hadn’t been expected, I’ll admit, but then what kind would have been? I didn’t know what I was seeing, but I had the strange feeling that some part of me did and was hiding it from the rest.

People were laughing. It was a sound none of us had heard for some time, and it was like it was catching up. All the laughter we hadn’t had for a few weeks was now bursting forth all at once in long peals like the shrieking of birds.

Some of the dancers had thrown their torches aside and they had caught the thatch. Houses and buildings were on fire: that was where the light and the heavy-handed heat was coming from. Some people stared at the fire, some had joined hands and formed rings that danced around it, some shrieked and cried before it: no-one tried to put it out.

The dancers were beginning to shed clothing in the heat, laughing as they did. People had rushed into their houses and emerged with accordions, drums and pipes and were playing along to the song.

The song?

What song was it? I could hear the music, but somehow I knew it was just accompaniment, harmony. The actual song must be at the front. I bit my lip as the congregation swept past me. I’d promised Curtis I’d come back, and I had the feeling that we should be doing something before these raging fires reached our house.

I would go further. See what had started this. And then I would trek back and warn them.

Resolved, I walked up through the crowd. I moved, from one side to another, weaving and dodging past the frenzy of the crowd, sweeping from one side then to the other, counting the rhythm to avoid it.

As we swept past town hall I realised with a jolt where we were headed. The church spire loomed above us into the red night and the rolling clouds of smoke. I broke into a run. The heat was lying on top of me, my breath came short and quick. All around me were the blank, sweating faces, the pressed exertion of so many people. Did they know what was happening better than I did?

Finally I broke through the front of the line, but was pushed off balance by a reveller behind me. I pirouetted with the blow and took three spinning steps forwards, my arms flung out by my side. For a moment the giddiness of being off balance filled my form.

Red, black, flesh and sweat, heat and fire, music and-

But then I stopped and stood upright in horror. I had been dancing. And now that I was at the front of the crowd, I could hear the music. It was a fiddle. Moving in through the fence beside the church there was the leader, the pointy end of the crowd. For a moment he glanced straight at me, and I realised that I had made the wrong decision. I would never be back home.

* * *

The fiddler jumped onto the fence and beckoned his retinue onwards for a moment before leaping off again. Zig, zig, zig, the fiddle sang. And moving first towards one shoulder and then towards the other he swept up into the graveyard.

* * *

The sky breaking like glass and the moon rolling down into wrack and ruin, the red seas foaming high and the mountains toppling on each other, the earth and water itself rising up in one grand dance!

I fell forwards and caught myself on the fence.

I couldn’t stop. My head was spinning and my body seemed to spin along with it. The fire was now racing through the town, joining into the beat. The village dogs were howling with the tune. Birds swept and wheeled in the air and then dived head-long into the ground like black rain.

I held tight to a fence post to stop my feet from carrying me away. The crowd filing up to the graveyard was entirely dancers and musicians now. The air was syrupy with sweat. Everyone who I knew, everyone who I hadn’t already said farewell to in the last few weeks, all of them filed past. One or two nodded or waved at me, their eyes resigned.

One small figure broke from the crowd, pulling a larger one with him.

Curtis’ face was stained with tears as he stared up at me. “I’m so sorry! I tried to stop her, but then I just wondered- and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I don’t know- I’m scared!”

I risked letting go of the fence to hold both of them to me. “It’s ok Curtis. It’s good that we’re together.”

* * *

The fiddler’s fingers were so fast that they had vanished. The dancers, their bodies creaking and groaning with exertion, moved their stiff limbs still faster, willing the last of their life into frantic movement.

The church spire creaked, cracked, and fell inwards on itself. The stones slid off one from another and fell inwards. In the village the fire roared and flicked up to the sky.

The earth began to heave as the crowd, which by now was the whole town, filled out into a circle, joined arm in arm. The fiddler stood in the middle amongst the graves and the bodies of the birds that slapped to the ground at his feet.

* * *

Our graveyard had run out of room before, fire and blood. There were still carts and wagons of bodies waiting to be buried, wrack and ruin.

Broken flailing burning wheeling spinning falling. Curtis and mother were here with me, and I was both grateful and ashamed. I was glad they were with me, but horrified that they were here.

The circle closed in and moved out again, death and light. We all began to shout and sing wordlessly. This was older than words.

* * *

The carts stirred and dead feet twitched to the tune. The ground gave one last groan and hands burst forth from the soil. Boney, rotten, worm-eaten, with long white hair and long yellow nails, the dead burst forth for one last dance.

Now everyone was gathered and waltzing in time. The music stopped. Everything stopped. Everyone stared. The fiddler raised one hand and smiled.

* * *

He lowered his hand in one motion. I heard a ripping noise, and watched as the air itself peeled aside like a curtain. A bright, blinding light shone from the other side.

And then -

[Si'anelle of Avelorn]

Crikey! What a story! what a piece of story writing! Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!

What a spell you've spun; - I could hear the music, the dance, smell the smoke! Brilliant absolutely brilliant!

[Dannaron]

You are most definitely too kind Si'anelle, but very hearty thanks all the same! Reading such positive feedback made my morning.