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From
Chapter One
Illustration
by Michael D. Purvis
In
a beautiful kingdom by the sea, lived a people to whom music
was the most important thing in the land. Music, you see,
was a part of their everyday life. And beauty, and all things
lovely, were the subjects of their songs.
In
this beautiful kingdom, almost everyone played an instrument
or sang. During the day, the people of the kingdom would
whistle and sing as they worked. At luncheon time, there
would be recitations of poetry and spontaneous concerts.
And in the evenings, the inhabitants of the realm would
sit together, in families and in groups, and sing of everything
beautiful in their world!
Beautiful
instrumental accompaniments would enhance the singing at
these evening concerts, and together they would let their
songs rise into the heavens. Oh, they were very happy!
When
the people whistled while they worked, or spontaneously
gave concerts at luncheon, or gathered together for musical
evenings, up above, the angels smiled and God shed a tear.
In fact, when the songs were especially beautiful, God and
the angels would cry for joy. Those heavenly tears were
especially nourishing, and would come down on the kingdom
in the form of rain.
When
this happened, all the flowers in the kingdom would be particularly
beautiful the next day, and the maidens of the land would
wear them in their hair, and wear them about their necks
as garlands.
And
when a young couple met and fell in love on one of these
blessed days, the young man, having been entranced by the
sight of his lady love wearing these lovely, rain-nourished
flowers, it was said that their love would be especially
blessed.
When
these young couples married, and produced children, their
little ones would be christened and blessed with a special
ceremony, involving, appropriately, music, flowers, and
rainwater. For, you see, all of these things had contributed
to the love of their parents, and thus to the birth of these
blessed children.
All
was lovely, blessed, and beautiful in this kingdom by the
sea. All was blessed indeed, until one day, the evil sorcerer
who lived in the craggy depths, in the damp dark cave at
the bottom of the cliff at the edge of the kingdom, finally
had enough of all the music and laughter in this musical
kingdom.
Illustration
by Michael D. Purvis
He
had, he decided, heard enough of their whistling, their
luncheon concerts, and their evening gatherings! He could
not, he thought to himself, stand even one more "ooh!"
or "ah," nor one more musical refrain of "Hail
to Child, Lovely Flower of our Heart" from even one
more christening! Nor could he stand the strains from one
more wedding of sweethearts who had met and fallen in love
on a day of beautiful flowers, nourished by tears from heaven.
He
could stand no more!
Unlike
God and the angels, he did not love, or even like the beautiful
sounds of the music of the kingdom, which floated across
the plains, and over the edge of the cliff at the edge of
the land. He, in fact, detested these melodies which drifted
down the long cliff face and into the cove, which formed
the mouth of his sea-side cave.
"Why?,"
you ask. "Why should he be such a crabby and unappreciative
old sorcerer?"
Well,
you see, the craggy cove, with its rock formations, moving
water, and tall cliff-side precipice, served to amplify
the sound, tuning it, often making it clear and crisp. And,
consequently, from inside his dank, dark cave, it was, often
as not, as if the evil sorcerer had a front row seat at
the musical happenings of the kingdom!
Now
you may ask, "Is this really so bad? Surely the music
must have been lovely; and an old sorcerer gets lonely,
doesn't he?"
But
alas, the ancient, evil magician was not made happy by the
music, not happy in the least. He did not see it as a special
gift, these free concerts. Rather, they were to him a curse.
For
if the truth be told, the music he heard coming from the
kingdom, instead of making him cry tears of joy (as it induced
in God and the angels) made his tummy ache.
"Someday,
someday," he would cry when he was at his wits end
and really could not stand another note, "I… I…
I… I don't know what I'll do- but somehow, I'll stop
that horrible, that detestable music!"
The
sorcerer would scream this, and worse, as he heard the daily
music drifting down from the kingdom high above his cave.
"Oh,
I'll make their instrument strings go plunk and break!"
he would seethe.
"I'll
turn their melodious voices to gravelly rasps!" he
would growl.
"I'll
make their flowers shrivel, their weddings and christenings
gloomy, and everything in their lovely little lives less
lively!" would screech the old sorcerer on a daily
basis.
"But
how to do it?" he would muse.
"If
only their songs weren't so beautiful! You know how I detest
beauty!" sighed the frustrated old spellbinder to his
little pet spider, Esmerelda, one day.
"Well,"
Esmerelda said, "You're the sorcerer! Why don't you
do something, instead of grousing and complaining every
day? You didn't go to sorcerer's school for nothing! You
didn't learn black magic spells for nothing, now did you?"
"Quiet!-
or I'll squash you, Esmerelda!" hissed the sorcerer.
"Well,
I'm just trying to be helpful," replied the spider,
trying to look non-chalante and unconcerned.
But
the sorcerer did think about what his little pet spider
had said.
He
thought about it quite a lot.
Illustration
by Michael D. Purvis
©2003,
Michael D. Purvis
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