Another short forest piece, loosely inspired by the legend of the Pied Piper and a favorite song of mine, Nightwalker by Ten. It always fascinates me how inspiration comes from such arbitrary places. I had fun writing this one. Enjoy!
Arden awoke to the scattered remains of a melody; eerie and made of plucked strings that tiptoed across her skin and into the night like spider legs.
It was only after the melody slinked away that she smelled – felt – the dampness.
Night shirt stuck to dewy skin, she peeled herself from the ground, and found that she was lying halfway through a puddle. Her hair was plastered in clumps against her forehead. Her arm, back, and shoulder were wet, cold in the shivering breeze. It was the breeze that truly woke her, that brought the first fingers of fear gliding across her skin.
Where was she?
The sky above her was the purple of ripe plums.
Sky?
The fingers of fear clasped around her throat. Loose, then punishing, as she took in the swaying, whispering branches of the trees that danced in the sky, the damp earth at her feet, the faint chirruping of night creatures that formed a white noise she had been unconscious of until then.
Arden scrambled to her feet. A rush of cold hit her cheeks, her scalp.
She cast about for a rational explanation. She was in a forest, though the only trees near her house were part of a small copse near the creek. Those were deciduous trees; the trees she gazed up at had deep green needles and floated impossibly high. It was more than that, though. When she spun around in a slow circle, below the strange glow of the sky, the forest was thick and dense. Impossibly deeper and darker than the copse near the creek.
Arden’s fingers found her temples and molded the skin there, as she fought to ignore the wash of fear that filled her, colder than the water of the puddle had been.
She must have been sleepwalking. She was alone, after all, and the last thing she could remember – as she floundered in her memories – was slipping into bed by the glow of the numbers on her alarm clock. But she had never sleep walked in her life, and wasn’t it supposed to begin in childhood? She thought she remembered reading something like that once. She supposed there were always deviant cases, though.
But, even then, where was she? How had she ended up in this forest?
She only remembered the music when the eerie, plucked notes filled the air once more.
Thin and spindly, insectile almost, but beautiful, too. Arden spun, searching for the source, but could not see beyond the deep pockets of shadow between the trees. Someone was playing that music, though, and if they hadn’t brought her there, then maybe they could help her.
Before she could worry further, before she could wonder what would happen if they had brought her there, something in the melody changed.
She could not tell what it was… only that it became more alluring somehow. The notes deepened, the plucked strings became charming rather than eerie. She forgot her worries. Her bare feet sank into the soft, wet earth as she walked towards the thick clumps of trees. Whoever was weaving such a beautiful melody could hardly be malicious, she thought, and the thought sank, too, as though her mind were a pond and her thoughts were sinking pebbles. Watery and faraway.
Her hands and lips grew numb, like she was intoxicated.
The trees embraced her. They traced gentle needles over her cheeks and neck.
Arden slipped through branches hung with bloated red fruit. She waded through syrupy shadows, guided by the music. The eerie light of the sky could not reach her here, and her eyes took a handful of heartbeats to adjust to the thick, velvet blackness. Once they did, she realized what felt wrong about the shadows, what whispered softly in her mind, nearly drowned out by the melody. The darkness was never still, though it only moved in her peripheral vision. Shadows seemed to peel away from it to walk alongside her; long, spindly limbs and misshapen torsos and eyes the red of the fruits hanging from the trees. But, when she turned her head, the darkness paused. Like a held breath.
Below the sweet melody, behind her, footsteps crunched. A heavy, shuffling step, mirrored dozens and dozens of times. As though a horde or a parade were chasing her.
Arden twisted her neck, heart in her mouth, but the footsteps dissipated as she did.
Then, there was only the lovely breath of the music.
Arden must have been drunk on it, because the next time she opened her eyes, she was standing in a clearing unlike any she had ever seen before.
The trees and their heavy, sticky shadows were pushed aside to make space for a smaller ring of trees. These gleamed, white as bone, below the strange skies. At their center, was what Arden could only think of as a throne, though it was misshapen. Cracked and leaning, it was made of sharp branches and the white-as-bone bark. The music was fuller here, sharper. It filled her head and pressed against her bones. It echoed in the hollows of her ears until she was forced to part her lips, and it spilled from them, too.
Sitting on the throne, crowned in bones and berries, was the Musician.
Arden tried to gasp, but the music was gushing from her lips now, and her air was running thin, thin as the strands of music that had lured her here. It hurt to look at the Musician, though she didn’t know why. Its skin, glistening palely and tight over the curves of broken bones; its lips, sewed shut with hooks and needles; its joints, bent inwards like torn branches. Crooked, swollen fingers danced over the strings of an instrument Arden had never seen before. Its eyes were stitched shut; from a distance, it almost looked peaceful.
The crown, she saw as her footsteps brought her ever closer, was fastened to its skull with the sharp ends of the bones stabbing into the skin. Blood, white and shimmering, caked around the wounds.
The music was agony itself; it spoke of endless pain, of centuries of torture. It tore through Arden, slicing her tongue and cheeks, pouring out of cracked, bleeding lips. It filled her eyes with stinging tears that slipped down her cheeks and left vermillion tracks.
All around her, through the glazed, shining blur that her vision had become, Arden could see others, like her, tripping into the clearing. Brought to the Musician by its web of music. They stumbled and clutched at their heads and the shrill music poured out of them. A man near Arden sang so achingly, that his eyes burst below the melody; they trickled down his cheeks in wet, shining trails, thick as raw egg whites.
All around her, the night walkers filled the clearing. One by one, they fell to their knees, filled with the agony of the Musician.
Arden felt the music begin to crack her bones, bend her ribs. Her shriek was swallowed by the music – no, it became the music, transforming into a deep, beautiful melody that caged her pain, her torments, in a web of voices puppeted by the Musician. The Musician, who had felt and would feel all this agony for eternities to come, for longer than she could comprehend. Her pain was fleeting. She was only mortal, after all.
Her knees barked against the ground. Her hands steepled in prayer.
As her vision cracked around the edges and the pain blossomed in her bones, Arden’s voice joined the choir of the countless, who sang and wept for the Musician’s endless agony.
This is what all coked up rock stars think their music does to people
Yikes! and Creepy, even…..the first phrase that spoke to me was ‘Thin and spindly, insectile almost, but beautiful, too.’ but there were many more. You were my 214th bedtime story! Thanks for sending it my way. :)