A Single Song by Nico Martinez Nocito
A harp made of bones, they say, will only ever play a single song.
Haunting, my listeners called my melody, and beautiful. My fingers glided over the sinuous strings and my voice, the harp’s voice, unveiled the story that made me a celebrated music-maker, that earned me my name:
A brother betrayed, his life later lost, bones left beneath a bridge for the vultures and the vermin.
My sister used to tell me that I’d never become a bard. She gestured at my slow-moving fingers and imitated my raspy voice, and she laughed in my face with gentle, dulcet tones that left me smarting with tamped-down shame. There were two ways to escape the village where we grew up, nearly lost among trees so old their gnarled branches were as wide as I was tall. The bard’s path was the only one open to me.
My sister took the second path. She became a hero’s wife. I was only eight years old when her husband-to-be emerged from the woods dragging the corpse of the boar who had terrorized our town for two long months and locked eyes on what he later said was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
I always figured he just didn’t want to be alone anymore. He’d lost his brother battling that boar.
So my sister left me with laughter on her lips and a pat upon my braided curls and whenever she returned to the forest, she would mock my aspirations and tell me to become a rich man’s wife, no matter how many times I told her I wasn’t a girl at all.
Both paths, it seemed, were lost to me.
And then I found the bone.
I’ve never listened to a bard quite like him.
That song plays in my dreams every night.
Fame. Acclaim. Buoyed by that simple tune, by its deceptive power, I was summoned to the houses of aristocrats and even the king’s court, where I played for the ruler on his ash-wood throne and the full resplendence of his attendants.
A brother betrayed…
My sister’s husband had been made a knight. He watched me now.
…his life later lost…
His eyes were furious.
…bones left beneath a bridge…
He did not let me finish the song.
His sword was at my throat and my scream was in his ears as he groped for his brother’s bone.
I’d always known the story I sang about was true.
Why else would a tune leap to one’s lips with such ferocity, and such precision? What otherwise could compel it to resonate so powerfully among my listeners, and insist every night on being played?
I was no fool.
Or perhaps I was, for I’d convinced myself it didn’t matter. As long as the bone brought me fame, as long as I could sing and strum and escape my village, what did it change to know that in the past, one brother had murdered another for glory, or for spite?
I’d forgotten the murderer still lived.
I ran. I hid. The bone harp vanished beneath my coat. I would not play, would not sing; I would not be found.
The harp had other ideas.
The harp found its way beneath my fingers while I slept, and carried me with it into the night. The harp dragged the street’s inhabitants from their beds and fashioned them into a mob that screamed for answers at the castle gates.
The harp was determined to play.
So I played.
I played as my fingers lagged, and my mind struggled, and my legs marched forward. I played while my sister and her husband emerged from the gates, her hands clutched around his arm, her lips forming warnings and entreaties.
I played as he drew his sword, and her eyes widened.
When the sword found its way into my heart, the harp clattered and splintered, and I was loosed at last from its strangling grasp.
There are bones in front of the castle gate, picked white by rats and driving rain. The new king is a hero, a boar-slayer, who keeps the remains there as a warning. His wife is a beautiful, silent woman. No one in town can remember her name.
A boy picks up one of the white scraps and begins to whittle. The bone does not give easily to his little knife; he thinks about putting it down.
I force it to stay in his hands.
He will play my song now.
