Prologue
Nearly every day that summer, she came up to the house. She never came in though, at first she simply sat outside in the garden, admiring the hedge sculptures he tended to regularly. At first, he'd been afraid, the last time he'd had any contact with the people down there it had all ended horribly. He'd been alone ever since.
But she never made a move to enter the house and slowly he began to relax, watching her from the attic window. She would spend hours just sitting on the grass, soaking up the sun, and writing in a spiral notebook.
Then one day, she did something extraordinary. He was sitting on his stiff bed, covered in old straw, and staring at the blue sky from the gaping hole in the attic when he heard it. A lilting note, carried on the breeze, made it's way to his sensitive ears and he stood, curious as to it's origin. More notes followed, and then a slow but somber melody.
Looking cautiously out the window, his breath was stolen from him. The girl had come back and she had brought a violin with her. He watched, transfixed, as she tuned it a bit more. Her slender and pale fingers danced over the strings and satisfied with the sound, she began to play.
As she slid the bow gracefully over the body of the violin, her own body began to move – almost as if of it's own accord. Her back arched and her feet danced lightly over the grass. She twirled and dipped, around the head of the sea monster hedge and underneath one of it's coils, up onto the stone ledge that cradled the exquisitely and meticulously shaped green hand.
Her song was lively and cheerful, it made him smile. He found to his amusement that he'd been snipping away in time with her little melody. He'd never really considered himself as a percussion instrument, yet the addition of the quiet snips seemed to only add to the depth of the music filling his body.
And then she was done. Lightly, she hopped down from the ledge and moved to put her violin away. After fitting it snugly into it's case and snapping it shut, she stood. The wind lifted her long, wavy auburn hair away from her face, revealing dark brown eyes that began scanning the exterior of the mansion.
He sucked in a quick and fearful breath as her eyes locked onto his. For a moment, they merely stood there, eying each other. Then, with a grin, she took a bow and left. Things continued along that vein for the rest of the summer. She would come, play her violin and dance with wild abandon in his garden. He would watch and enjoy the little reprieve from the normal overbearing silence that seemed to consume his days.
And then one day she stopped coming. The days became shorter and the nights colder. He went from sculpting hedges to sculpting ice blocks. He spent days crafting figures in various poses, all of them cradling a violin.
Winter faded away into warm spring and he hoped she would return. She did, but something was different. Something was wrong.