Smoke

I still think about him sometimes. Whenever I wander the narrow, serpentine paths as he did, aimless and meandering, moving through the foreboding alleys and ancient useless dead-end streets twisting through the archaic collection of churches and squares and decrepit decaying homes. The kind of village one could explore for years without finding every hidden passage, every dark, unused catacomb. To those that gazed upon it from below, it appeared to have been constructed in mid-air and then smashed into the side of the hill, placed there as though daring some force to sweep it into the valley underneath. A relic of a town that contained relics of people, unchanged through the generations, living as their grandparents did in darker, harder times. Farmers and craftsmen who worked each and every day, knowing nothing but the unending backbreaking labor that kept them and their families alive.

It was a bright fall morning when I first saw him, pleasant and unseasonably mild. The newborn sun had just pulled itself over the horizon, illuminating everything laid out before it with a flood of soft, warm light. As with every day for as long as I could remember, I had crops to tend to and a full slate of dredging work waiting for me on my small plot just beyond the village walls. I turned a corner and was immediately struck by his presence, forced to stop and take notice of the vibrant boy trudging alone through the empty street.

He navigated the cobblestones with worn leather shoes, bare sockless toes peeking through holes in the dark tough material. Blackened with the filth that came from walking the dirty, rocky streets without cover. Frayed cuffs of bright red pants frittered above knobby ankles with each step. A burnt orange overcoat, missing buttons and streaked with grime, flowed from chin to knees, cloth concealing the neck and mouth and the hands to the dirty fingertips. The top hat he wore, pumpkin with a thin scarlet band, sank over his head, the brim jutting away from his temples just above his eyes. Shocks of golden blonde hair streamed from the crown, framing a pair of cobalt blue eyes that glistened even through the dust and fabric that layered his face.

Around his neck hung a grand, meticulously crafted accordion, impeccably clean and in perfect condition. The frame and bellows were the color of freshly mined coal, connected by a snaking crimson design that warped and changed as air was let in and out. Keys crafted of brilliant ivory dotted the darkness, shining in the black like stars and constellations in the night sky. The instrument appeared too heavy for the boy to comfortably carry, but he carried it with a natural ease that could only come from intimate familiarity. He handled it so lightly that it almost seemed to jump away from his tattered clothing, floating on its own through the streets as though the boy wasn’t even there.

He gave me the briefest of glances with his radiant eyes, curious and suspicious at the same time. I met his gaze and he immediately looked away, tightening his grip around the accordion and doubling his pace down the alley. I stopped and turned to watch him go, wondering where he had come from and what he was doing here. He couldn’t have been from this town. I had seen every child of every couple and none of them possessed the bright features and vivid clothing that set this boy so drastically apart from the somber garments and beaten, dejected looks of the townspeople.

I looked after him for a moment before continuing on my way, my mind obsessed with thoughts concerning the young vagabond. His presence in the village seemed almost unnatural, as though it were impossible for this joyless, desolate environment to contain such an unusual being. As with the rest of the residents, I had lived in the town since birth, never straying, my life committed to the place where I was born and where I would die. In my many years I had seen few visitors and none as strange as the boy with the majestic accordion and the appearance of fire incarnate.

Still, I had to put him out of my mind for the moment and focus on my work. Cultivation of my meager patch of land was essential if I intended to reap its offerings before winter set in. An insubstantial crop would mean a season of scraping by, of staving off starvation and daily praying for the frost to be lifted from the ground. After a few hours of work, I needed to take a break, my bones and muscles no longer able to take a full day’s labor the way a young man’s would. I stood and stretched out my punished back, looking out over the quilted earth laid out in every direction. Each patch was manned, men and women and their overburdened young pouring their entire souls into what little of the world belonged to them. A difficult existence, tedious and unending, passed from parent to child like some sort of perverse, bitter inheritance.

The sun began to set, its sharp light igniting the thin layers of cloud that grew and trailed off from the horizon, setting the sky ablaze in a fluorescent explosion of color. I abandoned my land, having done all I could for one day. My fingers were curled and stiff, rendered weak and useless over the course of the day, the most affected extremities of an old, overtaxed body. It was when I passed through the town square that I saw the boy again, standing on the edge of the plaza’s fountain, balanced on the marble lip of the great mouth. Water spat into the air behind him as he looked out over the court, empty and quiet, solid shadows of crumbling buildings stretching over the benches and sculptures and unkempt flower gardens. He stood there, completely still, an unmoving fixture like the ancient statues that littered the plaza, deteriorated and turning green and inhuman as they rotted.

My eyes were locked on his dramatic, solitary form as I absently took a seat, not daring to let him out of my sight. For a few minutes, there was no sound but the distant crowing of scavenging birds and the soft splashing of the fountain’s water as it arced and scattered against the timeworn, eroded stone below. Without so much as a glance in my direction, he took one final gaze over the courtyard before he looked down, closed his eyes, and began to play.

With the fluent grace of an old master, the boy filled the court with the instrument’s soft, sweet melodies, his skinny arms moving and squeezing fluidly and his fingers flickering over the keys like the tips of flames. The music moved tenderly through me, massaging the ache and burden of the day from my body and spirit. A blissful smile crept over my face as I was overcome with a feeling of lighthearted cheer that I had never before experienced.

I heard the creak of a door opening and looked to see a family cautiously creep out of their house, looks of tentative curiosity on the faces of the father and the mother and of the small boy and girl that clung tightly to their parents’ legs. Slowly, they stepped into the plaza, whatever suspicion they might have felt washed away by the same sense of wonder and joy the boy’s music had instilled in me. They found a ledge to rest on and sat and listened, the mother and father smiling warmly and holding each other close as their children curled up in their laps, their wide, astonished eyes lit up and their bright little faces beaming.

Gradually, they were joined by more pilgrims from every part of the village, families and bachelors and rickety old hermits drawn to the plaza by the enticing strains that had drifted into their homes and warmly invited them to come and listen. The square teemed with life mere minutes after the concert began, an entire town gathered to watch the boy with the fiery features and the crow black accordion. His eyes remained closed as he played, as though the notes were imprinted on the insides of the lids and to open them would be to lose the song forever. He swayed gently with the rhythm, a small smile on his face, a medium for the music that so effortlessly flowed through him.

We remained there deep into the night, standing and listening, basking in the glow and warmth of the boy, of the fire that burned beautifully in the center of our town. It soon grew dark and cold, though, and there was still work to be done the next day. One by one, the crowd dissipated from the plaza as the boy, either unaware or uninterested in their departure, continued to play. As it was when he began at twilight, at dark the concert would be for him and me only. Soon, I was forced to retire as well, the chill of the evening permeating my aged body right down to the bone. Stepping lightly and humming one of the boy’s tunes, I returned to my home, grinning from ear-to-ear. As I crawled into bed, the music softly wafted into my room, moving through the walls and doors like a friendly yet solemn spirit, sent to end the day with a song.

For the next few days I would always see the boy on the way to my land, always in the same clothes, never in the same place. As when we first met, he would give me nothing more than a quick glance, which I would return with a gracious, grateful smile. He would instantly look away, but when he passed I could see just a trace of a grin hidden beneath his oversized top hat and the collar of his voluminous overcoat. My heart lightened just by seeing him, I would go on my way with a renewed sense of hope and optimism, knowing that I would be able to make it through another day. And as the labor drew to a close, his melodies drifted into the fields, enticing us to finish up our work and come to the square to listen and lose the stress and taxation it had put on our bodies.

We were all too happy to comply, flowing in from our fields and homes and run-down little shops to receive what he had to offer. He would be just as he was on the night of his first performance, perched on the edge of the fountain, playing as though we weren’t even there. We gathered there in the plaza and I stood shoulder to shoulder with neighbors who had been little more than strangers before, people whom I had shared nothing with. But there we were, drawn together by the music, talking and laughing with a kind of carefree mirth that was unlike anything I had ever seen in the town before. I would stay behind when everyone else had retired for the evening, savoring the boy’s performance for as long as possible and thanking God for sending him to us.

The morning I saw him last was cold, bleak, sunless. Nothing but the gray streets flooding the gray buildings stretching against the relentless gray horizon, an entire dismal landscape expanded out beyond sight. It was a day after one of his concerts and I had just left my home when I caught sight of the boy out of the corner of my eye, kneeling alone in a cramped, dark alley. Curious, I silently approached him. As I grew closer, a feeling of cold numbness grew in my stomach that turned into paralyzing anguish when I could see the full scope of what had happened.

He was crumpled in the middle of the street, shock still and silent. Chunks of wood, metal and ivory sprawled out in front of him, some still large enough to determine their original form, others nothing but flotsam, tiny splinters and brilliant shards of white shining in the dull sea of mud and rocks. In the midst of the debris laid the strangled bellows, twisted and deflated, the life viciously throttled out of it.

His eyes, which had sparkled with such life and beauty, stood dead in their sockets, sunken into a face the color of billowing steam. He didn’t cry, didn’t speak, didn’t even quiver. He simply knelt there, defeated. Extinguished. I heard laughter and looked up to see a company of youths walking into the distance, chuckling and joking with each other. One with a small sledgehammer slung over his shoulder.

I bared my teeth and clenched my fists and shook with anger, but I didn’t go after them. They were young and strong and mean and wouldn’t think twice about beating me within an inch of my life. My eyes returned to the boy, who hadn’t seemed to even notice my presence. I desperately wanted to comfort him, to bring him close to my body and let him cry the way any distraught child would. But I couldn’t say for sure what the broken form before me actually was. I had convinced myself that he was nothing more than a wandering flame, a delicate being of pure energy that would be snuffed out should anyone get too close. To embrace him would be to make him human, tangible, mortal.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stifle the singular glimmering, ethereal spark I had encountered in my barren existence. So I went on. I shuffled past the boy, steadfast in my selfish determination to hold on to this one bit of extraordinary mystery. As I walked, soft, heartbreaking sobs snuck up behind me and shook me by the shoulder, begging me for pity and sympathy. I didn’t turn around.

Several weeks went by and I didn’t see the boy or hear his sweet seductive melodies played in the waning hours of the day. He had disappeared as quickly as he had come, burned out and dissipated into the air. None of us spoke about his disappearance or even his brief presence with one another, as though discussing him would be the same as discussing the passing of a ghost. The knowledge of what had happened to him weighed heavily on my mind, but I didn’t share what I had seen. I was content to let him be an unexplainable piece of lore among the townsfolk, a fable that would be whispered among children when not under the cold, watchful eyes of the grown-ups.

As winter set in and the harvest began, the work became unbearable, days of agonizing labor in the increasingly frigid and hostile conditions. I would be a moment from quitting and giving myself to death when a spark of a song would be alit in my soul, allowing me to smile and hum, warmed by memories of the wandering flame. Through the winters whistling wind I could hear others singing. They too had been heartened by the music. The boy’s energy, his smoke having seeped into all of us. Tears escaped my eyes, freezing on my cheeks as I cried silent apologies to the boy and thanked him for the joy he had left behind. The lingering embers of a majestic blaze.