Sunlight and Shadow

by Cameron Dokey

  Eventually, my grandmother bore a set of twins, a girl and a boy. The boy marched away to war at an early age, leaving his sister, the girl who would become my mother, behind. She was in no hurry to try the magic of the bells. Not until she was a young woman, until the music of her heart became too much for her body to contain, did she sit in one of her father’s many arbors and attempted to sound it out.

  She, too, ended up summoning animals, though not such alarming ones as her own mother. Her first attempt to play the bells summoned field mice from miles in every direction. They gathered around the bench on which she was sitting, noses twitching, and regarded her with round, dark eyes. There were so many of them, the family cat ran away that very afternoon.

  Her second attempt brought squirrels with tails like bushy feather pens. The third, possums so homely they made her glad the animals themselves didn’t see all that well. By this time, I’m sure you’ve gotten the general idea, and so had my mother, to her great dismay

  It seemed her specialty was to be rodents of all shapes, sizes, and kinds.

  This fact upset her so deeply she married the first man who came along. He happened to be a baker, which was a good thing because, in her distress over what her playing called to her, my mother forgot to eat half the time.

  My grandfather built them a house, not far from his own. The baker built a brick oven in the backyard and set about doing what he did best. Soon the townspeople were deciding to overlook their concerns that witchcraft might run in our family. Instead, they concentrated their attentions on my father’s bread and my grandfather’s wine. My mother put the bells away on the highest shelf that she could find, which happened to be in the bedroom closet. And there they stayed, all but forgotten, until the day I was born.

  On that day, a momentous event occurred, and I don’t mean just my own arrival. My mother was in one of those lulls which occur during labor, brief spells between one round of pain and the next. She lay still in her bed, panting just a little as the late afternoon sun was warm upon the bed, exhausted from working so hard.

  She had just begun to feel the grip of the next contraction, when she forgot about the pain entirely. More rabbits than she had ever seen in one place together abruptly leaped in through the open window, and ran across the room and out the bedroom door.

  Before my mother could so much as draw a breath to shout my father’s name, they were followed by a group of foxes, and then a swarm of bees. That was the moment my mother realized the bed had begun to tremble and then to shake. Within instants, the whole bedroom had begun to sway from side to side.

  My mother found her voice and shouted for my father in earnest. He arrived just as the closet door went crashing back and the set of bells hurtled to the floor. They struck the ground in such a way that all twelve bells sounded at the selfsame time. At which the trembling of the earth ceased, and my parents stared at one another in open-mouthed astonishment.

  Oh, yes, and I was born.

  When she had recovered sufficiently to tell my father of the events immediately preceding my birth, Papa, who was somewhat superstitious, decided that we had received a series of omens impossible to ignore.

  And so I was given the name Lapin, after the rabbits who had been the first to understand that something momentous was about to occur, and the right to play the bells, not when I turned sixteen, but from the very day that I was born.

  Lapin Comes to the Point, Finally

  yes, I know. You should hope so. For heavens sake, just calm down. I do have a tendency to take the long way around, I admit it. But melodies and stories both can be like that. Besides, it’s not as if I don’t have my reasons for telling things the way I do. If you don’t know where you’ve already been, how can you know which way to go?

  I didn’t start playing the bells right away. Not in any truly musical sense, anyhow. I did bang on them at a very young age, a circumstance which ended up with me and my playing being relegated to the great outdoors. Children were allowed a bit more freedom when I was young than they are nowadays. I didn’t even have a nursemaid, but no one seemed to worry that I’d come to any harm.

  I wasn’t likely to be attacked or carried off, after all. I was making far too much noise.

  I was five when I called my first bird down from the sky. It was a chickadee, a bird whose song is its own name. One moment I was sitting on one of the comfortable wooden benches my grandfather had made, trying to sound out an actual tune for the very first time. The next, there was a flurry of wings, and a small bird appeared by my side.

  It had a sharp black beak, gray wings, and a white breast. It regarded me first with one expectant, inky eye and then the other, cocking its black-capped head from side to side.

  I knew the legend of the bells by then, of course. My father had assured this by making them the subject of many a bedtime story. I played the melody again, at which point the chickadee threw back its head, opened its throat, and harmonized. And as it did, though I was only five, I understood that my future would be filled with the songs of birds. From that day to this, that moment is still the happiest of my life.

  The week after that, I played a song that summoned a red-bellied woodpecker. After that came a bird with a white body and a dark hood pulled over its head, looking for all the world as if it was in disguise. This was a dark-eyed junco, or so my grandfather informed me. These were followed in succession by a green jay, and, close upon its tail feathers, a blue one. Small birds all, as befitted my overall size at the time.

  Then came wrens, sparrows, and warblers of all shapes, colors, and varieties. An indigo bunting as blue as a cold autumn sky. An oriole as yellow as newly churned butter. A cardinal with feathers as red as the bright drops of my own blood that I saw the day I accidentally cut my finger on the sharpest of my father’s bread knives.

  Sometimes, I would play a song and nothing seemed to happen. Days would go by. Then, without warning, and generally when I was engaged in something altogether different, there would come the flutter of bird wings. The sound of the bells, or so it seemed, could travel as far as any bird could fly.

  Before too long, my grandfather, getting on in years but still hale and hearty, set to work building bird feeders and bird houses. I began to play the bells at all hours of the day or night. For I had heard an old woman who’d come to buy bread say that not all birds like to sing in the bright light of day. There are some who prefer the soft shadows of the night.

  And here, at last, my story is about to intersect with Mina’s. For it was in calling down a night bird from the sky that I first came to the attention of the Queen of the Night.

  I have already told you how the house my grandfather built for my grandmother came to be located on a hillside near the town where they’d both grown up, with my parents’ house close beside it. But, as is often the case with hills, the one on which our houses resided did not stand alone. It was one of a series of many hills, all rolling together until, from their very center, a tall mountain shot straight up.

  Among the many tales whispered about this mountain was that it was the first in all the world. The one, in fact, from which the world itself had sprung. And this was the reason, it was further whispered, that the mountain was the chosen dwelling place of Sarastro, Mage of the Day, and his consort, Pamina, the Queen of the Night.

  Not that anyone had ever seen them, of course.

  But it was spoken that, in the time when the world began, they had wed and chosen this mountain in which to dwell. Like all the local children, I was curious about these tales. But I never thought I’d discover the truth of them for myself.

  I did so when I was eight years old.

  On the night of my eighth birthday, in fact. In honor of the occasion, I had been allowed to stay up a little later than usual. As always, I had with me the set of bells. My parents had thrown me a wonderful celebration. My heart was full of joy. And so, after all the guests save my grandparents had departed, I did the thing I always did when my heart was fu
ll. I sat in the orchard with my family around me and attempted to play the music of my heart upon the bells.

  I’m not sure I can describe the melody I played. It was born in my heart and, if it lingers, it is there alone, and not in my mind. But I do recall that, for a long time after I ceased playing, nothing happened, save that the sounds of the world around me grew silent and still, as if they, too, had listened to my song.

  The silence stretched for so long that I had pretty much decided there was no bird song to answer it, or, if there was, it lived in a breast that was very far away from mine. I had just risen to my feet, the bells tucked beneath one arm, when I heard the sudden rush and sweep of wings. And then a voice so sweet and clear answered my music that I swear I felt my own heart skip a beat.

  “Mercy upon us,” I heard my mother whisper. “You’ve called down a nightingale. They do say that’s the favorite bird of the Queen of the Night.”

  No sooner had my mother finished speaking than the nightingale swooped from the branch on which it had landed and alighted on my shoulder. From there, it refused to budge. Together with my family, I returned to the house and went to bed, the nightingale perched upon my headboard with its head tucked against its breast. It became a fixture in our household from that night on.

  I never saw it during the day. But, for the next week, each day at precisely the moment the sun slipped over the horizon, the nightingale would appear with that same rush and sweep of wings, finding me no matter where I was. Though I cherished all the birds my playing summoned, I freely admit I harbored a special spot in my heart for this one.

  One week to the day after my birthday, there came a night when the moon was no bigger than a crescent of cut fingernail floating in the sky. All day long, my mother was edgy, murmuring under her breath that it was on nights such as this that the powers of the Queen of the Night, whom she sometimes called die Königin der Nacht, were strongest.

  More than that, on such dark nights it had long been whispered that die Königin der Nacht walked abroad. Many had felt her passing, though few had seen her. For only those to whom she wished to reveal herself had the power to see her in the dark.

  And, sure enough, as soon as the sun slipped over the horizon in a riot of color, the Queen of the Night arrived.

  Her coming made the hillside around my parents’ house tremble as it had the day I was born, a thing that convinced my father that the events attending my birth had now come full circle. He only hoped we would all survive them.

  How shall I describe her to you, die Königin der Nacht?

  Even though I was only eight, my eyes were old enough to recognize her beauty, my heart steady enough to feel the beat of hers and know that it was filled with anger and sorrow in almost equal parts. Her dark hair streamed out from her head, so long and fine it seemed to mingle with the darkened sky. Beaten silver was the color of her eyes. They were filled with tears, and when she wept the tears slipped down her cheeks like a shower of stars.

  In her arms, she held an infant. It, too, was crying.

  “Selfish, foolish boy!” scolded the Queen of the Night. “Where is the bird that you have stolen from me? Speak quickly, or I will put an end to your miserable life!”

  It was at this moment that the first of several very astonishing things happened, as if what was happening already wasn’t astonishing enough. My mother, the same mother who’d panicked at the sight of a group of field mice, stepped in front of me, standing toe-to-toe with die Königin der Nacht.

  “How dare you!” she shouted. “Stop threatening my son right this instant! He didn’t mean to take anything from you. He’s a good boy. Besides …”

  Here, my mother reached behind her back, hands flapping as if searching for something. Understanding immediately, my father rushed forward, snatched the set of bells from my hands, and thrust them into my mother’s. Triumphantly my mother whipped them around, holding them out before the Queen of the Night.

  “It was these that summoned your bird down from the sky. They have been in this family for three generations, given to us by the powers that watch over the universe. I’m thinking that means we’re under their protection. You’d better watch out.”

  What the Queen of the Night might have replied to this very remarkable speech none of us, not even she, were ever to know. For, at that moment, as it did each evening, the nightingale shot down from the sky. It settled into its usual position on my left shoulder.

  “You picked a fine night to be a little late,” I whispered as softly as I could, and felt the soft prick of its beak against my cheek. The wailing of the infant picked up a notch.

  “You see? You see?” cried die Königin der Nacht. She held up the child. At this, the next very astonishing thing happened.

  “Oh, for goodness sake,” my mother snapped in her most exasperated voice. She turned to me, thrusting the bells back into my arms. “Hold these,” she commanded. “They’re yours, after all.”

  Then she turned, took two steps forward, and snatched the crying infant from the Queen of the Night’s arms.

  For the span of eight heartbeats, the same number of years that I had lived, nobody else did anything at all.

  “There now, there now,” my mother crooned to the infant as she rocked it gently, a thing that only seemed to make it wail all the louder. I saw die Königin der Nacht pull in a breath.

  We are all about to die, I thought.

  That was the moment the nightingale fluttered from my shoulder to my mothers, threw back its head, and began to sing a song so beautiful I swear it made the stars come out. The infant abruptly stopped wailing, hiccuped exactly once, and began to suck its thumb.

  “There now,” my mother said again as she gazed down at the infant in perfect satisfaction. As for me, I kept my eye on the Queen of the Night. I wasn’t so certain she was finished with us yet.

  “This is my daughter, Pamina,” die Königin der Nacht said after a moment, in a voice just like anyone else’s. “The nightingale was singing, just as it is now, at the moment she was born. Ever since, it has had the power to soothe her, a power even stronger than a mother’s love. But, a week ago, the bird flew from my side and did not return. Since then, my daughter and I have had no rest, by day or by night.”

  “She’s beautiful,” my mother answered. “But I think that she’s too warm.” She pushed the cloak in which the baby Pamina was swaddled back from her head. “Oh my.”

  Beneath the cloak, the baby’s hair wasn’t dark like her mother’s, a thing I think we had all expected, but bright and shining as the morning sun, curling up from her head like steam rising from water set to boil. And in this way, I saw the beauty of the Lady Pamina for the very first time.

  “So it is true what the old tales say,” my father murmured, speaking up at last. “Night and day are joined together, and they have made a child.”

  “As you see,” the Queen of the Night replied. “But until she turns sixteen, she is mine alone, to raise as I see fit. To prepare her for what is to come. But I’m hardly going to get anywhere if I can’t even get her to go to sleep at the proper time.”

  She turned her beaten-silver eyes on me.

  “Please,” she said, and I heard my mother catch her breath. “Release the nightingale. Let her come home.”

  I tried to open my mouth, to explain the way I thought things worked, and discovered I couldn’t move my jaw. The Queen of the Night, die Königin der Nacht, had just said please. How on earth could I say no?

  It was the nightingale who finally helped me out. With a great cascading waterfall of notes, she ended her evening song. The Lady Pamina was, by this time, fast asleep in my mother’s arms. The nightingale now left my mother’s shoulder and returned to mine. She bumped her round, soft head against my jaw, as if to knock some sense into it.

  “If you please, Your Majesty,” I managed to get out.

  “Pamina,” said die Königin der Nacht. I think she was trying to put me at ease by letting me know her name was the
same as her daughter’s. I wasn’t so sure it helped any, though. The most powerful being I had ever encountered, was ever likely to encounter, had just given me permission to call her by her first name.

  It was all a bit much for an eight-year-old.

  “If you please, Your Majesty Pamina,” I said, and was rewarded by the glimmer of a smile. “I would if I could, but I don’t think I can.”

  Not particularly eloquent, I admit, but it did get the point across. Not only that, I’d managed to mean no without actually having to say it right out loud.

  The Queen of the Night’s dark eyebrows drew together. “Explain,” she said. “Why not?”

  “No bird who has ever come to me has left me again, not for good,” I said. “I don’t know why. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s the bells,” my father said. “The sound of them just plain gets inside your heart. If their sound calls to you, then you must answer. More than that, it is your wish to answer, just as it becomes your wish to dwell forever with the player of the bells.

  “The bird stays not because my son keeps her captive, but because there is no other place that she would rather go. Wherever he is, that is now the place where she belongs. She cannot return to you, not in the way you wish. The bells have called and she has answered. The nightingale has given, and been given, her heart.”

  “That is it exactly,” my grandfather put in.

  The Queen of the Night was silent for a very long time.

  “I perceive that you speak the truth,” she said at last. She opened her arms, and my mother placed the sleeping Pamina into them. “What, then, shall become of my daughter?”

  “Ow! All right!” I cried.

  Five pairs of eyes turned in my direction, four mortal and one a great deal more. But they all did exactly the same thing: They stared straight at me and at the nightingale perched upon my shoulder. I’m sure she was doing her best to look innocent, assuming that’s a thing a bird can actually accomplish. She’d just given me a sharp jab with her beak. It was this that had prompted me to cry out.