Fractured Fairy Tales (21 page)

At the very depths of my pit of despair, the jangling of the phone was a physical blow. It turned out to be more of a mental blow, as it propelled me to action.

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“So you’re just going to fly off to Germany, to visit some scientist you’ve never met before?” Petra was staring at me with a combination of worry and exasperation.

“Yep.”

“Wow.” Her shoulders drooped as she slouched back into the corner of the sofa. “And you call
me
impulsive.”

“I can’t explain it. I just have to go.”

“Fine, but don’t expect me to dust all your other
creepery
. I’ll do the animal stuff, but if I’m not sure, I’m not touching it.”

I laughed. “You won’t have to touch any of it. I’m taking my entire collection with me. Mister von der Meier is eager to see every piece I own.”

Her sigh was mostly relief.

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Graf Tomas von der Meier was every inch the average looking, blue-eyed, dark-haired, middle-aged guy, who could hail from nearly anywhere on the planet, though the Graf in his name declared him a member of the nobility. It was only when he set to work on my collection that he became animated, like someone had suddenly found his electrical switch, and flipped it on.

With my permission, he separated my instruments into classifications according to their constructed materials. I was disappointed to learn that I’d been misled about some of the more expensive pieces. It wouldn’t be easy to inform Petra that we had far more human bones in the house than we’d suspected.

When he had all but the pan-flute in their groupings, he held it up to the sunlight pouring in the windows. He’d been fascinated by the flute alone, but the fact that it would play for no one else whipped him into an eagerness akin to a child set loose in a toy store.

“Now where do you belong, mein freund? Tell me all of your secrets,” he demanded as if it could simply answer all of our questions, right then.

Tomas and his wife, Jan, hosted me in their home, while he ran his various tests. By some miracle, I’d left the nightmares behind in America. Within a few days, I was feeling much more like myself, enough to begin to worry about the expense of this whole venture.

“Ach!” Tomas dismissed my concern with a flick of a hand. “I cannot charge you for this honour. Besides, we are cousins, of a sort, and I cannot charge family for satisfying my curiosity.”

It turned out that Jan was an avid amateur genealogist, and she had traced my ancestry to a common root, many generations back. The von der Meiers took such things very seriously. It didn’t mean so much to me—until the results of the tests revealed another, more disturbing link.

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“You must play it for me!” Tomas demanded, a bit of lunatic light flashing in his eyes.

I thought to play
Scarborough Fair
. From the first exhale, I realized I was playing
Bridge Over Troubled Water
, instead. I closed my eyes as I played, and Tomas sang some words in German that I assumed were the translated lyrics—until I opened my eyes.

Tomas was sitting on the floor, his eyes larger than a frightened doe, and his hands over his mouth as tears streamed down his face. He lowered his hands and his mouth opened and closed several times without forming any words or sound.

“Tomas?” I asked, frightened by the balance of horror and joy in his expression.

“Es singt! It sings!” he finally managed to shout.

He leapt to his feet, and snatched the flute from my hands. Rushing over to his desk, he grabbed a handful of papers and waves them at me like a victory flag.

“
Der Singende Knochen
! You have found
The Singing Bones
! Do you know what this means?” He was practically screaming.

Jan appeared in the doorway, one hand over her mouth and the other over her heart.

“No. I don’t know what any of it means!”

Jan came over to sit in the chair Tomas had vacated. She smiled at me shyly, took both of my hands in hers and began to speak in careful English.

“You have found something magical and tragic, Cynthia. If you will listen with an open heart, I will tell you the story of it.”

I could only nod my consent, and she began.

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“Many hundreds of years ago, when Germany was a feudal society, there was a King, Konig Berahthram, whose lands were ravaged by a wild boar. The boar had killed many men, and nearly killed the king himself. Believing that he would die from his wounds, and only having a daughter to succeed him, he promised her hand to any lord who could bring him the corpse of the boar.

“There was a…” she struggled for the English word, “a Duke, Herzon von Fulda, with two sons. The eldest, Emelrich, wanted the crown for himself, even knowing that the younger brother, Ortwin, truly loved the girl. They set off together to find the boar, but fell to arguing about who would get the girl. Ortwin wanted to take the corpse together and allow the princess to choose, but Emelrich would not agree. Finally, they chose to hunt separately and let destiny decide for them. Ortwin went straight into the forest, determined to win, but Emelrich stopped at a drinking house, to find his courage at the bottom of a mug.

“Just before he entered the forest, Ortwin saw a tiny man sitting on a rock, weeping. He asked the little man what his trouble was, and the man said he wept for the fate of the kingdom.

“When the little man learned that Ortwin sought to win the boar, the princess, and the kingdom, he danced for joy. Then he gave Ortwin a spear, long and strong.

“”Keep the spear in your hands before you,” the dwarf said, “and let no one see your back until you’ve claimed your prize.’

“Ortwin tried to thank the man, but he vanished the moment the young noble touched the spear. It wasn’t long until he found the boar. The beast charged the man, but Ortwin remembered the words of his benefactor and kept the spear in front of him. The boar impaled itself on the spear.

“With the boar bled and hung around his neck, Ortwin trudged back toward the castle. He met his brother along the way, and remembering the little man’s warning, he decided that having Emerlich at his side would be prudent.

“As they walked, the elder brother became more and more jealous. When they came to a narrow bridge, Emerlich insisted that Ortwin go first, so he could watch his younger brother’s back.”

“But the warning was to let
no one
see his back!” I interrupted.

As Jan nodded, my heart began to pound and my stomach to fold in upon itself. My chest constricted, making it hard to draw a breath.

“Emerlich attacked his brother!” I hissed. “He hit him, and then stabbed him with the spear.”

Jan and Tomas stared at me in growing horror as I detailed the rest of my nightmares, but I could sense no disbelief.

When I had finished, Tomas pressed one hand to his chest, as if to keep his heart in place. Jan shuddered, one great physical motion that ran like a wave from her head to her feet.

“Emerlich took the boar to the konig and wed his daughter, becoming next in line for the throne. He told everyone that the boar must have killed Ortwin, as he had found it covered in blood already. For many years, the people believed him.

“To Emerlich’s dismay, Konig Berahthram recovered from his wounds. Emerlich chafed at having to wait for his kingdom, but he played the dutiful son-in-law. His own sons grew. One would be Konig after Emerlich, the second would be his…” she groped for the right word, “his chamberlain. The youngest boy, being a simpler man, became a musicker…a minstrel, and traveled the world.

“One day, when the youngest boy, Chlodovech, was returning home for a visit, he was crossing a bridge, and saw something gleaming white in the water below. He climbed down the bank to the stream, where he found seven bones.

“Chlodovech sat down upon the bank and carved the bones into a flute he had learned of in Griechenland.”

“The pan flute!” Tomas shouted, finding his voice again. “He named it
The Singing Bones
, because it sang to him when he played it. Not just an instrument’s voice, but it sang with a man’s voice, Ortwin’s voice.”

“Chlodovech took his new instrument to the castle,” Tomas took up the tale, “to play for the Konig, and when he played, the voice came forth with the same words you heard just now: ‘ Ach! Du liebes musicker, du blasen auf meinem knochlen. Mein brüder mich erschlugen unter die brücke begruben, um das wilde schwein für die königs töchter.’”

“Oh, dear musician,” Jan translated. “You are blowing on my bones. My brother struck me dead, and buried me beneath the bridge, to get the wild boar for the daughter of the king.”

“Konig Berahthram heard these words, and Emerlich heard them. The elder brother knew he had been found out, and pleaded for his life. The king’s daughter, however, was heartbroken. She had loved Ortwin, but never Emerlich.

“Ortwin’s bones were retrieved, and the stream became a river again. The king had the elder brother tied up in a sack and drown in the river. Ortwin became a local Saint, and his bones were buried on holy ground, including the flute.”

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I stared at the flute in my hands, with a jumbled mixture of horror and wonder. I’d never believed in magic, or fairy tales. Now both lay in my lap, and everything I thought I knew had been turned on its head.

“So how did the flute end up in a drawer in an American flea market? How did it make its way to me, and finally to you, who are probably the only people on the planet who know its history?”

“We are not the only ones who know
The Singing Bones
.” Jan nodded sagely. “The Brothers Grimm heard the tale many years ago, though they believed it was a fairy story, and changed it somewhat before they gave it to the world.”

“And your government, or someone in it, knows the true story, as does ours.” Tomas added, putting a hand on the shoulder of his wife. She smiled at him sadly, over her shoulder, and covered his hand with her own.

“How…?” I couldn’t form the question clearly, but I didn’t have to.

Jan looked a question at Tomas, who nodded back with his lips drawn tight.

“A few times, the bones have been dug up,” Jan said, “stolen by grave robbers. Ortwin was stripped of all his finery the very first time, but the flute always makes its way home again. Somehow it always comes back to one of the descendants of Chlodovech.

“It is said that Emerlich’s eldest son, Gebahard, was much like his father, and planned to murder both of his brothers, for fear that they would try to depose him. Just as he made to execute his plans, though, the flute was returned to court, and Konig Gebahard begged his brother to play it for him before it was returned to rest.

“Chlodovech obliged, and the voice of Saint Ortwin sang out a warning, which saved the two younger brothers. The Konig was deposed and the second brother took the crown from his sons, cursing Gebahard and all of his descendants, and banishing them from the kingdom.”

“Since then,” Tomas continued, “any time one of Gebahard’s descendants tries to return to Deutschland,
The Singing Bones
return also. If the flute is played in their presence, and they are black of heart, the song of the flute will stop that heart from beating.”

“The pan flute
kills
people?” I shouted. I set it on the table beside me, suddenly eager to have it as far away as possible.

Jan nodded again. “The last descendent of Gebahard to hear the flute…was Adolf Hitler.”

I nearly fell out of the chair.

“You and I,” Tomas said, “are descendants of Clodovech. Last in our lines, actually. So far as we know, your government spirited the flute away after the last descendant played it. Whoever that was must have kept it, and taken it to America.

“It made its way back to you, and from you to me, here in Deutschland. The flute has come home.”

“But why?”

“That,” Tomas replied gravely, “is what we must determine. Has it returned to rest, or is another descendant of Gebahard here in Deutschland, planning some kind of evil?”

Tomas looked into my eyes then. I could see sadness, pity and hope in that stare.

“The flute will not play for me. You are the only one who can bring forth the voice of Saint Ortwin. Will you stay here in Deutschland, if it means saving our world from evil?”

In that moment, my life changed forever; all because I’d bought something for ten dollars, at a flea market.

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