Chapter 2 – The Fife
"Hi mom!" Emma ran up the stairs before her mother could answer. It had been a good day, even if it hadn't started that way. Emma hummed to herself as she changed. She'd proved it, proved that she wasn't weak anymore. She'd almost told Sophia to give the flute back, but she'd been strong and she'd been rewarded. The look on Taylor's face when she'd seen the flute in the trash had been fantastic. The only thing that would have been better would have been if Sophia had broken it in front of the worm, or if she'd told Emma first so she could have had some really cutting remarks ready for Taylor.
"Good day, Emma?" Anne asked.
"Great!" She smiled. The look on Taylor's face…
"It's nice to see you smiling again." Anne leaned on the door frame, and Emma sighed, wishing her sister would get to the point. "Something good happen?"
"Just hanging with Sophia." Who'd reached through Taylor's locker door and taken the flute out and broken Taylor so thoroughly it was amazing. Sophia was a real predator. "She'll be round on Saturday."
"You're spending all your time with her. You should try and make other friends." Anne looked worried, as if she had any clue what it meant to be a survivor.
"I've got plenty of friends." Emma scoffed. Friends didn't matter. The strong didn't need friends.
"Really?"
"Yes, really." The conversation hung into an awkward pause. Emma walked to the door, forcing Anne to step back. "Now buzz off, I have homework."
"'kay, leave you to it." Anne finally left, and Emma shut the door, rummaging through her backpack for her homework. The look on Taylor's face, and Emma had nearly been weak, nearly told Sophia to give it back because Taylor's mother didn't deserve to be treated like that. Emma had been stronger, proved that she wasn't that weak little thing from the- God, she'd have been as pathetic as Taylor.
She flopped back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling and closed her eyes. She'd just take fifteen minutes, a little nap to savour it...
#
Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a little girl, and her name was Emma-Lee.
And she had a shop. It was a rather unusual shop because it didn't sell anything.
You see everything in that window was a thing that somebody had once lost, and Emma-Lee had found. And brought home to Bagpuss.
Emma-Lee's cat Bagpuss. The most important, the most beautiful, the most magical, saggy, old, cloth cat in the whole wide world.
One day Emma-Lee found a thing and she brought it home to Bagpuss who was asleep in the shop window as usual. But then Emma-Lee said some magic words:
Bagpuss, oh Bagpuss, Big, fat, furry, catpuss
Wake up and look at this thing that I bring.
Wake up, be bright, be golden and light.
Oh Bagpuss, hear what I sing.
And Bagpuss was wide awake. And when Bagpuss woke up, all his friends woke up too.
The mice on the Mouse Protector organ woke up and stretched.
Madeleine the rag doll,
Gabriel the toad,
and last of all Professor Yaffle, a very distinguished old woodpecker. He climbed down off his bookend and went to see what it was that Emma-Lee had brought.
"Mya, mya, mya," he clicked. "That is a broken stick. There may be more to it, but I can't see because it is so very mucky." The mice scurried down from the Mouse Protector organ and set to work.
"We will scrub it, we will rub it,
We will wash it clean, clean, clean.
We will dust it, scrub the rust off it,
We will give it a lovely sheen."
The mice patched it and polished it until it shone, but the tube was still dirty on the inside. They got together to push a mouse into the tube to clean it on the inside, but his ears would not fit.
"Stop, stop" said Madeleine. "Charlie Mouse will never fit down there. Go to my workbox and get a knitting needle. Now wrap the cloth over the end and you can poke it through."
"Push, push, push," the mice saidas they did, and the tube lay on the floor, clean. But it was still broken in the middle.
"Careful," said Madeleine. "You're making holes in it."
"Mya, Mya" said Professor Yaffle. "Those holes were already there. It is a tube." And he squinted down the tube. "A tube with many holes. It is a fife."
"I remember a story about a pipe. It calls rats." said Gabriel, and the mice were not very happy at all. They didn't want rats in the shop unless Emma-Lee found them and brought them here to fix.
"No, no, no," said Professor Yaffle, "A pipe is for calling rats. A fife herds hares,"
"Herds hairs?" Bagpuss was puzzled. "On people's heads?"
"No, no, no, hares like rabbits."
"I didn't think hairs liked anything," said Bagpuss.
"I know a song about a hare with a fife," said Gabriel, and strummed his guitar. "And the mice have a roll of music for the Mouse Protector Organ." The mice heaved, and heaved the roll of music into the Mouse Protector Organ, and announced "The Magical, Marvellous, Mouse Protector, Organ."
~Once there was a merry young hare,
That roamed the bay without a care,
She didn't even turn a hair
When she found the evil Dragon
- in his lair
Once she heard the roars of strife,
She stood her ground and drew her fife
For in her hair the fleas were rife
The Dragon roared, the others fleed
- for their life
Her hair was roused, the fleas took flight,
The Dragon faced their awful might,
They bit him wrong, they bit him right,
He fleed the many fleas
- without a fight ~
"Nya, nya, nya, Dragon don't flee hares." said Professor Yaffle.
"This one did." said Gabriel. The mice agreed. "But the fife is still broken."
"Nya, that is not a problem," said Professor Yaffle. "The break is clean. A little glue and the two halves can be joined as good as new."
The mice took a little bit of glue, and pushed the two halves of the fife together. When they were done, the fife lay there in one piece, as good as new.
Then Bagpuss put the fife to the shop window so that if the person who owned it should happen to pass by, they could see it and come in to claim it.
Then Bagpuss gave a great big yawn, and settled down to sleep.
And when Bagpuss goes to sleep, all his friends go to sleep too.
The mice were ornaments on the Mouse Protector organ.
Madeleine and Gabriel were just dolls.
Professor Yaffle was a carved wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker.
Even Bagpuss himself, once he was asleep was just an old, saggy, cloth, cat. Baggy and a bit loose at the seams.
But Emma- Lee loved him.
#
Taylor hurried down the Boardwalk in the rain. The shops weren't open yet, but after yesterday she couldn't face Winslow, couldn't face Emma. Her backpack was still sticky after she'd cleaned the juice out from two days ago. She'd take a bus in when she calmed down, she told herself, before it got late enough that people were asking about her not being in school. Her Dad didn't need a truant report on top of everything else.
The bus stop was at the end of the block, and she walked towards it slowly, looking in the shop window displays, at clothes she couldn't afford, games she'd never play, and the small box on the outside of a clothes shop window, which looked far too familiar. She blinked, reminded painfully of her mother's flute before they had – before Emma who'd been like a sister – before that bitch -
She looked again, walking closer as she stared. Incredulously she picked it up. It was the same slightly battered case she remembered so clearly. It couldn't be. Emma had discarded the case when she had desecrated the flute. Unless this was just another cruel trick. She looked round, expecting Emma to be watching, but no of course she wasn't. All Taylor saw was one of the Boardwalk Enforcers, out early, bearing down on her.
"Is that yours?" He demanded.
"I-" she stammered stupidly, as her brain failed to catch up. "I don't know."
"How can you not know? It is or it isn't."
"It was stolen at school." She blurted out. "From my locker." The Enforcer raised an eyebrow.
"That so? What's in it?"
"My mother's flute."
"Any identifying marks?"
"It has her initials on the back by the end. Her name was in the case under the insert."
"What was her name?"
"Annette Hebert."
"Open it." Taylor didn't want to, but under his glare she had no choice. The lid lifted. The flute lay on its velvet pillow, pristine. Taylor's thoughts flailed as the Enforcer plucked it out, turning it over. At the end, engraved carefully into the metal were the tiny initials A.H.
"Looks like you said." he said, more kindly. "Didn't think you'd see it again, huh, kid?" It was impossible. Had Emma broken a duplicate flute? One of the teachers had it repaired? But what was it doing here? "Where's her name in the case?"
Her fingers weren't shaking as she pulled down the small ribbon tab in the lid, pulling away the padding to reveal her mother's name in her mother's careful calligraphy.
"Looks legit." He was a lot less aggressive than he had been.
"But what's it doing here?" Tayor said incredulously, the only question that kept running round her head. The Enforcer snorted.
"Probably tried to pawn it, and dumped it when nowhere would take it. Market's flooded with second-hand instruments. You got any I.D?" he asked. Taylor dropped her backpack, going through it to find something with her name on it, holding the student card out to him. "Taylor Hebert, huh? Looks like this is yours." He put the flute away, handing the case back to her. "Take better care of it next time."
Taylor nodded. Her backpack still stunk of two-day old juice, so she tucked the box inside her hoodie to keep it safe from the rain. The Enforcer's eyes narrowed sternly, but not unkindly.
"And shouldn't you be in school?"
"My bus-" she pointed as it shot past the stop.
"Then get the next one. Move it, kid." Taylor nodded, not wanting to start anything while she had the flute, impossibly safe. Once his attention was out of reach she broke into a run, crossing the street and jumping onto the bus going to other way before the rather unfit Enforcer could catch up. She'd go to school later, but first the flute was going home where it was safe.
Good things didn't happen in Brockton Bay, but as she clutched the flute and watched the rain run down the window, Taylor had to wonder if sometimes miracles did.