The Musicians II

Following the music took Annie into the deepest depths of the ship, where passengers never went. It was deep in the hold that she finally found the players of the music she had heard. It was the same duo she had seen in the parlor before but they had totally changed. She had a musical ear, improved by the years of music lessons which her father had insisted that she take. When they had been playing in the parlor the duo had been average, not horrible, but neither had they been amazing. Now she found herself wanting to dance, to move with the music, and most of all to sing like she had never sung before.

Annie peered around the door into where the music was coming from. The man with the piano had traded his instrument for flute. They had broken into crates of toys that had been stored down in the hold and had made themselves an audience with the dolls. Tin soldiers stood in full regalia in their regiments, porcelain dolls sat like fine ladies on thrones of machinery goods, rag dolls propped up their weak backs against boxes of dry goods. It would be humorous to Annie usually, the musicians playing to the imaginary audience, but the music was such that nothing seemed funny, only beautiful.

As their song ended both musicians stopped to bow to their fake audience and then started a new song. This was a song that Annie knew and she found her words almost torn out of her, she began to sing along with the song. Instantly she was ashamed and stopped, they would surely stop playing now, they would flee, embarrassed. They surprised her. Instead the flute player put aside his instrument for a minute and walked over to where she was hiding. He didn’t say anything but he took her hand and lead her into the middle of the room where they were playing. Normally she would have objected to a strange man holding her hand with such familiarity, but nothing seemed more natural in this case.

Still neither man said anything but the man with the flute motioned that she was to continue singing, Annie couldn’t account for how long she sang, down there, surrounded by the audience of toys. Sometimes once they had finished a song, or executed some difficult part, she even imagined that she could applause. Once her voice started to go the man with the flute took her hand once again while the violinist played for both of them, they danced.

As they danced, Annie was under the impression that the man became more handsome, and slightly more youthful. She even found herself looking down at herself to make sure that she wasn’t growing older and uglier as compensation, but she was unchanged.

It was a mystery to Annie what happened then. One second she was dancing, and growing tired, in the arms of the flutiest, the next she was standing in the ship’s parlor. She expected her feet to ache but they did not, and after looking around for a few minutes, she returned to the dock. There Elizabeth was waiting for her, an abrupt call to reality.

Elizabeth demanded where Annie had been in a frantic voice. She had clearly been worried. Annie looked back at the ship only once, and then turned back. “I was looking for you, where else would I have been,” she said.