Ask the Bones (6 page)

 

 

 

N
ever before had Lucas visited the cemetery at night. Never had he been there alone. A chill wind was blowing through the trees, sending moon shadows slithering across the gravestones.

Lucas shivered, but he knew he must stay. That's what he'd been told by an old granny woman: “If you want to learn to fiddle, go to the graveyard alone and practice all night.

“But don't be greedy,” she'd whispered, and Lucas had seen fear in her eyes.

He wanted to run home, but he forced himself to sit on a mossy gravestone and tuck his fiddle under his chin. He drew the bow across the strings. The screeching and squawking were unbearable. He stopped for a moment and heard a chorus of frogs croaking in the nearby meadow. “They sound better than I do,” he moaned.

But he took up his fiddle and tried again. This time he hit a few melodious notes. Lucas was so excited that he didn't notice a whiff of smoke in the air.

He practiced hour after hour. The smoke grew thicker, but Lucas noticed nothing but his music. The screeching and squawking were gone now. Still he wasn't satisfied.

“I wish I were the best fiddler in the world,” he shouted to the moon.

“You can be,” said a voice from behind his back.

Lucas whirled around, his heart in his throat.

There stood a horrifying figure, dressed in a long black cloak lined with red and smoldering at the hem. His black boots were licked by tongues of flame. And his pointed tail thrashed smoke from side to side. Lucas cringed, for now he knew who'd been teaching him to fiddle that night.

“Give it here,” demanded the devil. And he began to play. His fingers danced over the strings and firmly guided the bow. Songs burst forth, so bewitching that Lucas could think of nothing else. “I didn't know you could play,” gasped Lucas.

“Play?” snapped the devil. “I invented the fiddle.” And he began a fiery tune. His fingers moved in a blur.

“I'd give anything to play like that,” Lucas cried.

An evil grin spread across the devil's face. “Even your soul?”

Lucas felt the hot breath of the devil upon him. He drew back, shuddering. But then the devil resumed playing. “You can keep your soul until you die,” said the devil, “then it's mine.” He played so passionately that Lucas began to clap his hands and stomp his feet.

“Where can you find a better deal?” asked the devil.

So Lucas agreed to sell his soul, his fears swept aside by the devil's music.

But he could hardly stand doing what the devil demanded next.

“To seal our pact, you must swallow my spit!”

“I can't,” said Lucas.

“You don't want to be the world's best fiddler?”

“I do,” said Lucas, and he squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed. The devil's spit was hot and sulfurous. Lucas could feel it burning all the way down to his stomach. He thought he was going to be sick. But then the devil handed Lucas his fiddle, and all seemed well.

A flaming hole opened in the ground, and the gleeful prince of darkness sank from sight, sucking the smoke down with him.

Lucas fiddled and danced all the way home.

From that night on, no one could get enough of Lucas's fiddling. He made that fiddle laugh and sing. And when he played for parties, everyone danced until cock's crow. He played up river and down, over the hills and through the valleys. He never tired of playing.

When Lucas was young, his fiddle sang with joy, but as he grew older, sadness crept in. The thought of spending eternity in the devil's fiery realm preyed upon his mind. So Lucas began to scheme. He had to think of a way to outwit the devil.

One moonlit night, Lucas had an idea. He jumped out of bed and raced to the cemetery. The slithering shadows made Lucas wonder if spirits had slipped from their graves. He shuddered, but he sat on the mossy tombstone once more and tucked his fiddle beneath his chin. Then he dragged his bow across the strings, making them screech as they did so long ago.

Just when Lucas thought he couldn't stand his awful fiddling a moment longer, a fiery hole opened up. And once again the prince of darkness stood before him. Lucas leaped to his feet, trembling, but he continued to play.

“Stop that squawking!” bellowed the devil. “You are hurting my ears.”

“I can't,” said Lucas. “This is the best I can do.”

The devil snorted fire and stamped his cloven hooves right through the charred soles of his boots.

“I'm no longer the best fiddler in the world,” Lucas said, trying to keep his voice from quivering.

“You are!” bellowed the devil. “Try harder!” And he threw thunderbolts so close to Lucas's head that they curled his hair.

Lucas jumped back, but he made his fiddle screech even worse than before. Gooseflesh crept up his neck, making his hair stand on end. But he looked the devil in the eye. “Our pact is broken.”

“It is
not!”
screamed the devil, holding his hands over his ears.

“It
is,”
said Lucas, scraping his bow across the strings once more.

“All
right!
” the devil snarled. “You can keep your soul on one condition. You must
never
play the fiddle again.”

Then he sank through a circle of flames and the fiery hole closed behind him.

“Never play the fiddle again?” Lucas trudged home, sobbing. He put his fiddle in a trunk and closed the lid.

Then he took to his bed, feeling old and weary. He shriveled a little each day and spoke to no one. But when his family gathered around, he made a last request. “I want to hold my fiddle one more time.”

He ran his fingers over the smooth wood and quietly fingered the strings. Then, in a rush of unexpected strength, he played a haunting melody.

“Now put it away,” he said. And they did.

But before he could sink back on his pillow, terror overtook him. He tried to shield his eyes from something no one else could see. A bolt of lightning hit. It blinded everyone around him. When they recovered their sight, they couldn't see anything on the bed except scorched sheets.

And when they looked for the fiddle, they saw a smoking hole in the lid of the trunk—and nothing inside.

 

 

 

W
ill couldn't take his eyes off the mysterious drum. Its wooden bowl was covered with tightly stretched reindeer hide, and on that hide were the eeriest drawings Will had ever seen. From the drum's edge, three brass rings dangled on leather thongs.

“Who wants me to tell his fortune?” cried the Lappish drummer. His eyes were pale as arctic ice, and when he faced the English crowd, he seemed to be staring at other worlds far beyond.

The townspeople murmured to one another, curious but wary. No one stepped forward.

But Will felt himself irresistibly drawn to the drummer's side. “I do,” the boy said. “I want to know my fortune.” He handed a coin to the drummer and watched him lift the dangling brass rings and place them on the drumhead.

Then the drumming began. The Laplander beat his drum with the horns of a reindeer, slowly, softly, not disturbing the rings at all. But as the pace quickened, the ornately carved rings began to bounce over the drawings. They encircled great round eyes, suns and moons, fish with two heads, four-legged birds, animals and monsters of every shape and size. The rings bounced across letters of an ancient alphabet, and signs and symbols known only to wizards.

When the drummer stopped, he looked at the rings. A demonic grin lit up his face. One ring had landed between drawings, encircling nothing. The second encircled a monkey and the third encircled the chain that led to the monkey's collar.

Will was merely curious until he glanced at the drummer's face. Then he felt a twinge of fear. What was his fortune ? What gave the drummer such fiendish glee?

Will stepped back, nervously waiting for the drummer to speak, and then he heard his father's voice echoing across the town square. “You!” he shouted. “You with the drum! I'm the magistrate. Show me your pass.”

The drummer pulled forth a crumpled piece of paper, but the magistrate refused to accept it, insisting it was a forgery. “Lock him up,” he told the constable. “I'll keep his drum.”

But before the drummer was led away, he issued a challenge to Will. “I dare you,” he said, “to use my drum.”

“Never!” said Will's father.
“No one
will touch it.”

The drummer crowed with laughter as he walked to the jail.

That night Will lay awake, too uneasy to sleep. He heard branches sighing in the breeze, revelers walking home from the inn.

And drumming?

Was it possible?

He lay absolutely still, listening. It started as soft tapping on the doors of the magistrate's house, then moved to the walls, then to the roof, repeating the circuit, louder each time. Stranger yet, no dog in the household barked.

Will heard his father rouse the servants to search for an intruder. But no one was there. And the servants said they heard nothing.

But father and son heard the drumming for weeks, as if the drummer were trying to enter their home, trying to find his drum. Yet all the while, the drummer sat in the jail across the square.

Will could hardly stand the drumming. Night and day, it reminded him of his mysterious fortune, the one the brass rings had foretold.

He wanted to question the drummer, but his father forbade it. “Stay away from that man,” he said.

So Will spent hours in his room, his mind racing. He
had
to learn more about his fortune, the only way he could, by examining the forbidden drum.

The very first evening his father was away, he slipped into his office to search for it. He looked in every cabinet, every drawer. He looked behind draperies. He pulled books from the shelves. But he had no luck until he remembered the window seat with the storage space beneath. He lifted the seat.

And there it was. The drum with all its eerie drawings. The drum with the picture of a chained monkey.

Will knew his father would be furious if he touched it. But he wanted to look at it more closely. Just look, that was all. So he carried it up to his room. It was as cold to the touch as an arctic night.

Will stared at the drawing of the chained monkey and was startled to see that its hands were now raised to its cheeks, and its mouth was wide open as if it were screaming.

And somehow, the monkey's face was looking more like the face of a boy.

Will felt like throwing the drum out the window, yet his hands clutched it more tightly. And while he held it, it grew warm.

It began to pulsate faintly beneath his fingers.

It seemed alive.

To Will's horror, his hands picked up the brass rings, set them upon the drum, grasped the reindeer horns and began to play.

Even more alarming, he heard echoing drumbeats from across the square—and he felt a surge of power down to his fingertips.

No matter how hard he tried to still his hands, they beat the drum faster. The echoes quickened and the brass rings bounced.

Will thought maybe he could break free from the drum if he returned it to his father's office. But his legs would not obey him. Panic swept over him, but there was nothing he could do.

His hands drummed faster. The echoes grew louder. The brass rings bounced higher and higher until they bounced right off the edge of the drum.

While the rings were dangling from their leather thongs, suspended in space, a fierce drumbeat echoed across the square and in through the open window.