Today I’m sharing one of my favourite scenes from the Ten Silver Coins series. In fact, it just might be one of my favourite moments that I’ve ever written.
I’m releasing Book One week-over-week right here on Things I Wrote Down with the hopes that it will spark imagination and hope for readers. I hope you enjoy it!
Catch up on previous chapters here.
Chapter Five: The Music Room
After Mr. Kay disappeared into the wall, Jill finished her milk and did the dishes, which was rather easy, since the old man had polished off the food so that they were virtually spotless, and only needed a rinse.
Jill felt alone and sad in the quiet, newly aware how much she enjoyed the funny old man’s company. She hardly knew him or anything about him, but learning that he was a good friend of her family made him somehow feel like he was family himself. It was a comfort to know her parents had a close friend. Mr. Kay gave her hope that she would learn more about her parents and that someday, some of the many questions she had might be answered.
When she finished the dishes, Jill stepped to the large glass door at the back of the kitchen. It opened onto a porch, which overlooked a long yard where a small stream snaked its way from the woods on the western side of the property through grass and wild flowers, only to return once again into woods that bordered the field to the north. On the eastern side of the yard, a field much larger than the yard bordered a fence. Large wooden fence posts connected together by three lengths of barbed wire were evenly spaced along the field.
Jill stood at the door and looked out the window for some time, waiting to get a glimpse of what she might see in the field. The field went far eastward and rose into a slight hill beyond which she could see nothing else but sky. Yet no animal or creature came into view the whole time she stood at the glass door. It was only when the sun started to disappear behind the tops of the trees that she turned from the glass. She reached her hand into her pocket and pulled out the letter Mr. Kay had returned to her.
“Well, Jill,” she said out loud to herself, “no sense in waiting any longer, better go find this treasure and keep it like the Keeper has asked you to. You can’t stand here and think about horses forever.”
Jill skimmed over the letter again and read the clue one more time:
One not all
and all but one
your treasure can find
Unlock destiny
with the touch of a finger
and the wink of an eye
Come to the place
where the stones cry
Jill entered the hallway that connected the kitchen to the front of the house. It was then she realized how dark it was getting and how unfamiliar she was with the house.
“Silly girl, you’ve been off in your own little dream world, and now you’ve got a dark house to explore, all on your own. You’ve got to start paying more attention to the obvious.” Jill stopped in her tracks and laughed, catching herself repeating the words Ms. Steinback, her schoolteacher, said to her more often than she liked to admit. “And to top it all off, you’re starting to sound like that old grump, Ms. Steinback.”
Jill walked with her hand against the wall and stopped when she entered the front room. Nowhere on the wall could she find a switch to turn on a light. She reached the end of the hall and found herself in the room where she had discovered the second letter after she arrived at the Great Hall. The fire was completely extinguished, and the curtains on every wall, except beside the front door, were shut. Jill started to feel uneasy.
She walked over to the mirror, looked at herself and frowned. Then she looked up at the painting that old Mr. Kay had emerged from earlier in the afternoon. She was not surprised but was a little perplexed to discover that the painting was no longer the portrait of an old man smoking a pipe. It had completely changed. In his place was the picture of a large elephant walking on a tightrope that spanned a great canyon. The elephant was being led by a man wearing a white turban.
Jill turned quickly to look at the other wall, curious to see if the other painting she had examined earlier had changed too. To her relief, the painting of the man, woman, and the young child still hung in its thick frame. The man was still pointing at something in the distance, the woman was bending down to touch her child, and the young girl with that curious expression on her face was looking right at Jill.
“Mr. Kay, I wish you were still here to help me find my way through this house, or at least help me find a light switch or two.”
A large staircase fell from the second story of the house and descended to the main floor like a waterfall. The stairs were rounded in the front and curved back into the staircase at the edges. Two thick, dark wood banisters carved a pathway between which Jill could walk. As Jill stepped toward the stairs, the banisters reminded her of the shape a large cello.
Jill put her hand on one of the banisters. It was cold to the touch. In daylight she imagined it would virtually shine, that’s how smooth and polished it felt. The moment she stepped onto the first stair, both banisters suddenly glowed white, then one by one, each stair lit up with light. When Jill looked at her hand on the railing, it glowed bright orange-red, the same colour her skin turned when she pressed a flashlight into her fingertips or against her cheek in the dark.
When she looked more closely at it, she saw the staircase and banister had somehow been transformed into the purest, whitest ivory. Jill gasped at the beautiful pattern carved into the stairs and banister. Everywhere she looked there were engravings of birds and flowers and words from a language she could not read. And, in the middle of each stair, set in the ivory, was a beautiful golden tree with large branches and many leaves. Words in the same script curled up the tree and around its branches.
Jill turned to the painting where the old man used to be and smiled, convinced that somehow Mr. Kay heard her request for light. She said “thank you” then started walking up the stairs. If she had looked at the painting a moment or two longer, she might have seen the elephant flap its ears then reach forward and lift the white turban off the man’s head with its trunk.
The stairway opened into a small sitting area with couches, end tables and other sitting room things. There were paintings everywhere, and another fireplace, which was warmly burning in a stone hearth. The sitting area split off into three hallways, one that ran away from the staircase toward the back of the house, and two that went opposite directions toward the eastern and western walls of the house. At the top of the stairs, Jill’s attention was immediately drawn to a green light moving in one of the closest rooms. When she stepped away from the stairs toward it, the staircase went dark again, which also made the room grow dim. Jill smiled and shook her head. “Where am I?”
Jill walked toward the room, curious to see what was inside. In the dimmed light, she could see that the green light scrolled from left to right. Jill tilted her head to the side and smirked. “Is that what I think it is? I was expecting something, well, magical,” she said with a chuckle.
When she entered the room, she discovered that she had guessed correctly. The green light scrolling from side to side was the welcome message of a CD player. The rest of the room was dark. Jill bent over to read the small green letters:
Welcome to the Music Room of the Great Hall. Hear you are loved; Hear you are treasured; Hear and let great music be heard.
“Hmmm,” Jill breathed. She reached forward and touched a button that had a little green triangle pointing like an arrow to the right. If Jill knew what was to happen next, she might have hesitated to press PLAY. But Jill had never been into the Music Room of the Great Hall before. When she pressed the button, an electric shock jolted from her fingertip through her entire body, and before she could shout, “What Have I Done!” she was thrown into the air, blown back by the speakers the way she blew tufts of dandelion seed into the air.
It was the impact from the bass woofer that threw Jill into the air, and when the air from the speakers hit her, her eyes closed shut. Jill kept them shut because she didn’t want to watch herself hit the ground. The bass kept booming, so loud and deafening that she could hear nothing else. The sound pounded through her body and thumped against her heart the same way the drum of a marching band had pounded through her during an outdoor parade in Vendor. But in the Music Room of the Great Hall, it felt like the marching band marched inside her body, through every organ and part.
It took Jill a few moments to realize she felt no impact of the fall at all. She slowly opened her eyes, so she could survey the damage done to her body. When she opened her eyes she screamed a loud, terrible scream of terror, which she could not hear over the noise of the music. The floor had fallen away, and was replaced by grass and trees that were very far below her. She was suspended above them, high in the air! All about her was the blue colour of sky and the whiteness of wisping clouds. Jill screamed again.
But, once she realized she was not going to fall, and that somehow gravity did not try to pull her to the ground, Jill took a deep breath. She moved her hand to her face to brush the hair that had fallen in her eyes, and as she did, she moved across the sky. Jill let out a short shout, and then a quiet laugh that grew louder and louder.
She noticed that the boom of the bass once so loud and rapid had quieted and slowed down. She put her hand to her heart to feel its pace, and as she did, twirled in the air. When she felt her heart beat it was slower, calmer, in exact rhythm with the boom of the bass sound she heard.
Soon Jill discovered that moving in the air was not much unlike swimming in water, only she could breathe better and move more gracefully in the sky. For a long time she threw herself at the clouds and spun in the air like the swallows she watched from her window at school, no longer having to imagine the birds’ happiness at the sensation of flight.
She turned and dove and climbed, all the while whooping and shouting out loud. Each time she did, if she had been listening carefully (her ears at the time were not trained yet to distinguish the slighter nuances of music) she might have heard the sound of crashing cymbals, the high notes of trumpets, or the roll of the tympani whenever she shouted.
Then she plunged deeper and deeper toward the ground. As she descended, pulling herself downward to the trees and grass so did the notes of music down the musical scale. It was only then that she realized her movements in the air made different movements in the music. She also realized that she was outside the house, above the yard and field and the trees she had looked out upon earlier that day, after her supper with Mr. Kay.
Jill made a dive for the field and stopped short of the fence. She grabbed onto a post and pulled herself toward it. She puffed out air like a helium balloon and lightly, as a feather, touched the ground. The moment she did, she heard the sweet spirited sound of a horse’s neigh.
When she looked across the fence to the rise in the field, over the hill she saw a beautiful black horse canter towards her. It was darker than ebony with a flowing mane. Jill held out her hand and the horse approached her. Hot breath shot out its nostrils against the palm of her hand. The horse had a diamond-shaped star, white as the ivory staircase, and no larger than Jill’s hand, in the middle of its forehead. Jill leaned over the fence and pushed her forehead against the horse’s, then closed her eyes. She let out a laugh of delight. When she opened her eyes the horse stepped back, tossed its head in the air and stomped its foot against the ground, all in time with the music.
The horse stepped back toward Jill and she noticed that the white diamond on the animal’s forehead had turned into a red square. She leaned her cheek against the horse’s cheek, and slowly slid her hand toward its forehead. As she did, the horse tried to pull away, but Jill grabbed it by the mane and steadied the beast. With her left hand she quickly touched the red spot on the horse’s forehead.
Jill’s stomach went queasy and she closed her eyes. Her knees wobbled and her mouth went dry. Everything was silent. Jill could only hear the sound of her breathing. When she opened her eyes, Jill let out a gasp. Her finger wasn’t touching the forehead of the horse anymore, but the red STOP button on the CD player. Instead of a beautiful dark horse face and deep brown horse eyes, Jill’s cheek rested against the cold black CD player. Green text scrolled across the player’s display where she thought the horse’s eyes should be. It read:
Thank You for Playing Your Song; Your Music Has Been Heard
Jill pushed the EJECT button, curious to see if there were any CD in the player or if by some miracle or magic, and not because of her over-active imagination, she had really experienced her whole flight. The disc tray slid smoothly toward Jill, and sure enough, a CD, blue in colour, rested inside the tray. Jill stuck her index finger into the hole at the centre of the disc and lifted it out of the player. Jill spun the disc so the title of the CD was right side up. It said:
Jill Strong: The Flying Fields (A Collection of Songs).
Jill scrunched her face, puzzled. As she stood turning the CD around in her hand, the disc tray slid to a close. Jill looked back at the player when she heard the sound of hard plastic hitting the ground. At her feet was an empty CD case. Jill bent over to pick it up. An album cover was inserted behind the plastic of the casing. On it was a picture of a girl in a red coat, hair streaming across her face, arms extended towards the sky. Below the picture in white letters was The Flying Fields followed underneath by her full name. Jill let out a slow whistle.
Jill looked around the Music Room. Since her music had stopped playing, the lights in the room, somehow, had been turned on. The room was small. There was soft brown paint on the walls. There were no chairs or couches or paintings. Only a small little table with the CD player on it sat in the middle of the room, and a metal music stand stood off in one of the corners. A shelf filled with CD’s formed a continuous line on all four walls. The shelf was about as high as Jill’s chin, and she had to stand on her tiptoes to see the tops of the CD cases. Jill put her CD on the shelf where there was an empty space, then walked over to the music stand. On it was a white book. Jill picked it up and read the title:
The Music Room, A New User’s Guide.
Jill flipped the book open to the first page and started to read. She turned and looked at the player when she read the first line. In bold print it said:
Rule # 1:
The first Rule is the only Rule: Do not press PLAY until you read through the manual.
Jill blushed then sat down on the floor. She decided she had a little reading to do.
© 2024 Andrew Kooman. All rights reserved.
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About Andrew Kooman
Andrew Kooman is a Canadian writer of fiction, poetry, plays, and films. His work has been enjoyed by audiences around the world and translated into lots of different languages.
He’s the author of the children’s books Popcorn Helmet and Simple Christmas Spectacular, the first two books in the Ramsey P. Heaton, Future Billionaire series. Andrew likes to make people laugh in church. His popular plays and skits are performed across North America and can be purchased at SkitGuys.com.
Andrew founded UnveilTV with his brothers Matthew and Daniel, where you can watch content that inspires you. You can follow all of Andrew’s latest work on his weekly newsletter Things I Wrote Down and find him on X and Instagram.