Our story begins in a wild and dangerous place, amorphous and loud, a monster of sorts - where heroes may rise but many will fall into the trap of hunger and greed and the need to have it all.
Where the smoke hangs so thick and low down to the ground when blowing your nose only black will come out. A place we all know, and sometimes might go when the dazzling lights entice us just so - into its twirling, and whirling dance, the chance of a piece of the capitalist pie. Capital L, London Town, the thump of the tube and the beat spins you round and round and round.
So in London, on a hot sunny summer’s day in Regents Park, where our Fiddle Player plays. He is lifting his knees along to the jig, playing his music to the twigs on the trees, humming along with the birds and the bees. As his tune swirls and unfurls, he has the stars in his eyes, a laugh in his ears, and a tongue full of trickery learnt from his fears. Making melodies soar from the lip of his bow, the lilting soft notes turned the warm air gold.
Slinking along in the undergrowth and brush, the fox sniffed the air and something smelt lush. She was hungry, love starved, limping from the last human who had injured her heart. But she knew what she wanted, and that was to eat, she wanted a man on whom she could feast. With her body slung low and tail reaching high, she slunk out of the undergrowth into the Fiddyplayers eye. She started to dance, in an unearthly way, like the long grasses behind her, a mesmerising interplay of elemental essence, sweat slicked darting presence. Her body it moved like the flick of the flame and one look at her and he was burnt in some way.
She smelt of hunger and home and he looked like love long forgot and as they came together, an unspoken thread began to tether them, through their fear and their desire a shimmering invisible wire snagged at some place deep within. It stretched in between them, glistened like the sun, a spider's silk extruded from its spinnerets, filled with life and their love.
The Fiddleplayer saw the thread, its magic sure and true, so he plucked it from the air, to string it on his bow. After many days and nights of feasting on each other, the foxes' fears brought on tears and the fiddle player did a runner.
He criss-crossed across the country, from Easterly to West, and started bewitching locals with the tunes that he knew the best. An easy charm overflowed that slipped like globules off his tongue. “Oh but you, you're one of the special ones. That thing you do? I've noticed it. I've clocked the things that make you you and will sparkle as I say. Oh my dear, I've noticed you, you take my breath away”.
The fox was stray in London, with her maw a bloody mess, after chewing down until the bone, she didn't know what was left. She scurried down into her den, gaping mouth of rot and root, her howls and screams turned children's dreams into nightmarish scenes not forgot. She didn’t know which way to turn, so she surrendered to depths of darkness and deepest pain. Slinking ever deeper into the heart of mother earth, she realised she couldn’t stay in this city made of hurt. The violence of the greed here had seeped into her soul, now she too kept on needing more and more and more. She dug and dug into the depths, until her claws were clogged with mud, then flopped down to her belly to listen to earth. A hum began to shake her, and she shook and shook until the trembling helped her listen to her heart’s hopes overspill. It told her to take a ship made all of golden glow with a golden stern and golden oars, to follow her beloved's golden bow. From there she might not e’er return, but surely she must go. From this ship she’d find new relations, friends of kith and kin, a new life down the coastline was beginning to begin.
As dusk drew in, she began to begin, leaving her old self behind her. She slipped onto the ship with the sound of the lip of his bow singing on the string their meeting had made. It was the thinnest of threads, that music that led her. But each chord tugged at her soul.
So she did her best to trust. And along came a great gust of wind, thrusting them out to sea. Stars dusted down a sprinkle of dreams and she made her nest in a pile of rope, curling up with her tale as the great ship set sail into the night skies eternal horizon.
She was awoken with a splash followed by a dash of white light across the vast ocean. The belly of the boat being tossed to and fro by the motion of waves so huge, they created cavernous caves reaching up from sea graves as the great sea Goddess Sedna roared her revenge. Water poured from the sides and the wide open sky as relentless and strong as a new lover. The ship tipped and churned, turning up to curl into the next break on the boat's starboard. Chaos consumed her, this little soft fox whose life had been held by the landside, so she scurried about, nose seeking out a safe place in which to retreat. But the waves kept on coming, and her heart kept on fluttering a skittering, flittering heartbeat. She wouldn’t be safe till her paws reached the shore, of that she surely felt certain. So she ran and she ran, pulled on ropes and made plans on how she could control the ship's course.
But of course, as we know, this is not how things go and the ocean had its own plans. At last she let go and let the rigging rip and blow, as the winds of change swept through her story.
As a brighter day dawned the sea softly yawned misty white puffs to the sky, a fresh horizon grew out of the blue and the fox stretched and fluffed out her fur. Mellow white waves still jumped up and played with the hull of the ship on the sea. There were still many days learning to ride this way, with the ever changing currents and tides. The ebb and flow, of the known and unknown, helped her to grow. In time the fox found her own sea legs had strengthened. By the time the ship hit the shore she was changed by the lore of the ocean and being in relation to the ship.
She put her nose to the ground and sniffed out the sound of the song between his soul and hers. Tracking and tricking, tail swiftly flicking her way towards the scent that made her heart run and mind whir. Through winding roads with thickly bursting hedgerows overflowing with flora and fauna, the fox caught the trail of the fiddleplayers exhale as he lay in the grass by his new home. Softly humming bumble bees and dandi-fluff floated on the breeze, filling her heart up with hope once again. For many days and many nights, she traversed by sun and star light as she progressed, almost possessed, by the smell of him stuck in her nose. Then in the dead of the night she came upon the great sight of a manor nestled amongst the hills of the West. With great hope and great dread she approached the homestead, with lights and music spilling out of its sides. As she neared the dust covered glass, through the long window arch, she saw the fiddle player in the centre of it all.
Stomping the ground, singing songs to the crowd of gleeful onlookers who stood and locked on, to the beat he danced out with a sweet smile of self doubt, which only endeared him more in their minds.
Cradled in his upraised hand he had his fiddle from his bag, with the bow shimmering its ephemeral lumessence. As he plucked and he played in his disarming, charming way the girls blushed and let out a laugh. Hoping someday, that this childish interplay would lead them to a life full of music and art. The fox softly whined, felt the loss build and bind her chest into tendrils of barbed nettles and thorns. She snuck into the house but someone shoo-ed her out, no animals were not invited in. She tried to dance, duck and dive hoping to catch the fiddle player's eye but he did not seem to see her there on sight.
So, she waited, and waited, till the dead of the night, then started to sing her own song onto the wind. She howled and she moaned, letting him know that her own love continued to grow. On each hour the clock struck and for seven nights she stayed and stuck to singing her song to her sleeping love up above.
After seven days and seven nights, of seeing him thrive without her love, and singing her hope up on high. She let out a sigh and decided to try to retreat to the moors for some rest. But that very same day, her scent came his way and he followed her up to the moor. He had heard her song, but something felt wrong, she believed in him more than himself. This limmerant need was not true love, indeed, at least not in the screech of her song.
To break the spell that bewitched her soul, he snuck up swiftly behind her, caught the scruff of her neck, hung her up with respect and took a sharp silver blade to her throat. Cutting her free from her obsession, she screamed out in recognition, her last breath a lament for her life.
He had struggled to do what he knew he must do, but he wanted her to be free. So he slit her throat from right to left in the hopes that his wrongs could be righted. As she sang out her song, he let out a howl and watched as fat tears of blood dripped down to the earth.
When the very last drop hit the ground he watched the soil, astounded, for there in the dirt a new shoot had sprouted, roots digging deep into darkness. Bursting forth, a flower, growing up towards the sun's power but instead of petals, a butterfly grew, then took flight. It was a magic like the fiddle player had never seen before, the beauty broke him open and made his own heart soar. He watched as the butterfly fluttered and swung on soft winds in the dawning sun.
As it reached the dark woods it seemed to twirl back his way, and just before disappearing a woman took its place. She looked towards him for one moment with a depth he had not known and a great fear overcame him and turned him to stone. Some say he’s still stood there to this very day, now covered in moss, grass and muck. Aching to feel once again. Others say that he found his own way, selling his old fiddle and starting anew. But this way or that, the truth of his tale will come back when that story is ready to be told. But it’s renowned all around from the folks south west bound, that if you quiet down an overwrought head, you’ll hear each of their songs drifting along, on the south westerly winds of the moor. Crying out for a love that never quite was but a part of what made them themselves.
And a butterfly's wing will always remind him of the girl grown from mud, blood and love. And when she hears a fiddles tune, she’ll remember him too, as one brave enough to cut her false chasing away. And they’ll remember, and remember, until they surrender and they have no more remembering left to do.