PumaLum

“Excuse me, Mister? Why are your Christmas lights still up?”

The man turns to see the source of the voice, it’s a teenager, in old style clothes, holding out a newspaper, as the man takes it, Jess sees that the date reads May 6th, 1932.

“What sort of question is that? I just don’t want to take them down to have to put them back up. Now take a farthing and get going.” The man Jess is seeing through hands over a small coin to the boy, who looks disappointed, but rides off.

The man finishes watering the garden, and heads inside his house. It’s nice looking, two stories, and behind it Jess can see the rolling hills of the British countryside. Inside, all is quiet except for the man’s footsteps, as he quickly unlocks a door in the hall, and goes down the stairs that it leads onto. He puts the newspaper down in the small room that he enters at the bottom, and tears the date out of it.

“Okay Mark. Okay. It’s fine. Just… Do it. Wait.” He turns back and flips a switch, and a small bulb slowly illuminates the room. “There. A new light, for a new dawn.”

Cuttings of grass flow in an ornate pattern around the floor, a few leaves and flowers are interspersed. In the middle, is a pile of fruits and vegetables, stacked carefully. He sets the date down on top of that pile, and begins to walk, slowly, and carefully, around the outside of the pattern.

As he walks, he speaks a language that Jess cannot understand, but that she recognises as Latin. Slowly, the pattern on the floor seems to move, as if shifting, finding life. As the words carried on, the pattern moved more, and more, before rolling back in on itself, around the pile of fruit and vegetables. It then pulled itself upwards. One of the grassy tendrils moved towards the man, who held out a hand, his gasp of admiration was loud, but cut short, as the tendril moved past his hand.

As he looked down, Jess saw that the tendril had embedded, the grass becoming somehow solid, into the man’s chest. He looks up, and manages to croak out “Why?” before keeling over, and moving no more.

Jess is floating again. She sees another that this new (or old) being has touched, then another, then another, all learning from the first man, Mark.

Slowly it begins to try to understand the people that summon it. Slowly it stops killing them, and instead allows them to talk to it, though it cannot understand. It seems to find small things amusing, seeming to delight over a teapot, as it pours out liquid.

Eventually it learns to understand, if not the words, the idea.

She sees Reggie, asking for forgiveness. What he gets is forgetting.

She sees Jake. Asking for his life back. He gets what life he has slowed down.

But then two people call to it at once. A pair in need. As they hold a small child, not breathing. A doctor stands behind a door, fist clenched in frustration, but the pair call out, in hushed tones.

The being comes to them. And they ask for the child to have life. The being considers what that means, before deciding to get a life that it can find easily. This room has seen a lot of failed births. Together. They might be enough for this one life.

Something is wrong. The child is alive, but it does not look correct. Time hasn’t moved for Jess or the being. It looks at the mother, looks at the father, sees the doctor through the door. It can make them think that nothing is wrong. Maybe even make the newly given form child that nothing is wrong.

It has seen a lot of different humans. Even before Mark summoned it, though there was a long time of darkness, it had seen humans before that. As they searched for meaning where none was to be found. It put all of this together, and gave the child a covering, resolved it. If someone with the sight saw it, they would know, but otherwise, it was just another human.

His image sprawled out before her. It was wonderful. Twisting, unfurling. Never ending, never beginning. Always changing. It was exhilarating. She thought about eating. But no. Sleep first. Eat second. Jess lay down in her bed, pushing aside crumpled pieces of paper from previous attempts to capture his image, and fell asleep.

And as she slept, she saw him. All around her, within her, never ceasing, always changing. Just to be in his presence was enough to bring her such joy. He seemed overjoyed with her. His chosen, having completed the task set for her. Finally, her feelings resolved, he seemed to be asking her a question. Asking what she wanted? Well. That was easy. Something had been bugging her since she and Meg had jumped in time. Since the Pennines had vanished. Even since she found the flute.

And now, she was being offered a chance. She took it.

Getting it was going to be the hardest part. Reggie was brainstorming. Jake was sitting knitting a blanket. Reggie never got how Jake had got into knitting. Jake often said that he found it soothing. Something mechanical that he could just sit and do. Reggie countered that there was plenty of things like that, and besides, having tried it himself, all he got were misshapen garments and cramped fingers.

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Jess continued to knit the blanket. She didn’t know why, but she knew it was unfinished. Her arms were tired from that afternoon’s topiary lesson. But she felt secure in the knowledge that she was learning. In the meantime, she could add a pattern to the blanket, which already had small patterns on it, but was missing something in the middle. She felt sure that it needed something there. It almost looked naked as it was.

Meg was whistling to herself as she cooked in the kitchen. She poked her head round the door quickly. “Bangers and mash okay?”

Jess looked up, taken aback by the interruption. “Yeah. Yeah that sounds good. Do you want a hand?”

“Looks like you’ve got your hands full, and it’s all fine. You enjoy the blanket!” And like that, she was gone.

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The two of them tucked into a dinner of beans on toast. The cabin was sparse, but they knew enough about camping to make it. Besides, they just needed to set events in motion. Reggie knew what he had to do. He had to take the flute.

Jake was trying to reason otherwise. “Look mate, you can just ask to borrow the flute. I’m sure they’ll let you have it.”

“They won’t. They’ve always said that it was not mine to bear, and they won’t change now.”

“What if we explain what it’s for?”

“Then it sounds like seeker talk. They definitely won’t let me have it.”

Jake sighed. Looked Reggie dead in the eyes. The campfire lighting his face, as his hands still moved, adding stitch after stitch. “Then you have to take it.”

And with that, there was their plan.

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Jess had not settled on the pattern. Instead she found herself automatically trying to make his image.

To her surprise, it was working. She was making the elegant waves, folds, lines. She was certain that somewhere she would mess up. But she kept going. Kept working at it. Until finally, Meg called her for dinner.

Reggie was mourning the loss of his wife still, but Jake was helping him to get through the pain. Maia and Louis were mostly along for the ride, but still, it wasn’t hard to forget all the intervening years, and just see the four of them, riding their bikes again, on that dark forest path in the shadows of the Pennines. Gods, it had been years.

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Jake, Peter, Meg and Jess were sat in the window booth of Janet’s, a Halifax institution. Teens, businesspeople, and everyone with an hour to kill had been coming here for over twenty years. Jake was looking at the photo. Meg was looking uncomfortable. Peter was somewhat confused.

“Sorry, but you’re saying that this photo came from 1987? You can see how that’s not possible, right Jess? He threw up his hands, placatingly, as Jess snorted, opening her mouth, ready to respond. “I know, I know, you knew this Reginald guy, and that you think this is him, but… Come on. Jake’s not fifty. He’s thirty three. Even if he was alive in the photo. He’d look younger than he does there. Maybe it’s just a really good shop?”

Jess was exasperated. This was another mystery, to add to the others. The time travel. The disappearing and reappearing mountains. Her need to create the image (which she was currently doodling on a napkin). They all felt so out of sync, but all connected.

She sighed, and took another gulp of coffee. She wasn’t really interested in what Peter had to say, so she shrugged.

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Jake put his hand on Reggie’s shoulder.

“Hey, don’t you try and brush me off on this. You said your friend had a flute or something right? Like the book? Come on, we’ve been friends since school, we all want to know, and it’s hardly like we’re going to disbelieve you, not after what we’ve all seen.”

Maia and Louis nodded. Louis leaned forwards, his characteristic crooked smile plastered on his face. “Look mate, it’s hardly news to us, all this magical stuff. So why’ve you kept stum about it all these years?”

Reggie looked between them all, and put his head in his hands.

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“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Well, Meg, Jess, you might. Peter, you haven’t seen it.” Jake was nervous, Jess could tell by the way that he was sweating. “Meg, Jess, you know how I told you about the snowfoxes, their quests? I was speaking from personal experience. Mine was easy. But I got a gift for completing it.”

Peter was still looking confused. Jess, surprised, leant back; Meg however leant forwards, eager. “What was it? What did you get?”

Jake looked around at all of them, then up at the ceiling. He looked like he was looking for an escape route. “Time. I got time.”

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“What do you mean that it wasn’t the right time?” Jake was looking a little offended, but Reggie cut him off before he could start shooting off comments.

“None of you were there. Jake you’ve been gone for the last five years, dropped off the radar. Maia, Louis, you’ve been off in Leeds. What should I have done? Written a letter? I didn’t even have an address. It was bloody chance that we all ran into each other on Christmas eve. And don’t get me wrong. I’m thankful. That each of you have come to me again in a bad time in my life, but don’t pretend that I’ve been keeping this a big secret from you all. I haven’t.”

Maia and Louis looked taken aback at the heat in his words. But Jake looked mollified. “You’re right. I guess we should be happy to be together again, and besides, the backpackers haven’t all met since what, 88?”

“87.” Maia corrected him.

“87 then. But we’re back, Maia, you and Louis are expecting. I’ve had some exciting things happen to me since then, and Reggie, you’ve got the flute. I think we’ve got what we need to pull this off. And we’ve got the time to do it.”

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“What do you mean ‘time’?” Peter was looking even more confused, but he was clearly intrigued.

“So. Peter, I know this is a lot for you to take in. But that photo is real. It was taken the third to last time that the Backpackers, that’s what we’d taken to calling ourselves, met. The next time we met was in 92. Maia and Louis were expecting -”

“Me?” Meg had cut in. Jess was shocked. Jake looked surprised. Peter’s eyes looked like they were going to pop out of his head.

Jake recovered first. “What do you mean Meg?”

“I mean, they’re my parents. They passed away a couple of years ago now, but I recognise their younger selves. Dad thought that moustache made him look cool.” Meg looked out of the window, slightly wistfully. Jake continued his story.

“Anyway, in the intervening time, those five years, I’d been diagnosed with liver cancer. Untreatable. Given mine and my friend’s old dabbling in the occult. I took it upon myself to try and get help that way. If medicine couldn’t help, maybe magic -”

“Magic? Magic. Jake you’ve gotta understand how crazy that sounds right? I knew you were into the whole dream thing, but actual magic? That’s a bit far, you know?” Peter was almost pleading with Jake. His voice begging him to tell him that it was all a joke. All he got was a stony stare.

Jake’s eyes did not leave Peter’s. “You’re looking at a bona fide picture of me, taken over thirty years ago, looking near exactly the same as I do now. Where do you want me to start explaining from? Because if you have a year I’ll try and show you that which your mind cannot comprehend.” There was a pause. “No? Well. Let me finish.”

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“I’ve been a snowfox. I completed my quest, and my reward was that I got to ask for a boon. I asked for the cancer to be gone. What I got was time. My body is frozen. I need to eat, to sleep, to breathe and to drink, but my health is stuck as it was four years ago. It hurts. But I’m alive. And, as far as I can tell, I’ve got a few years to go. So what I’m saying is that we can complete the ritual. Seal him away. For good. What do you say? You in?” He stuck out his hand.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Reggie joined him. Maia nearly did, but Louis caught her hand, and looked at her bump. She did too, they looked up, obviously torn.

Jess put the photo down and went back to the box. It had arrived with a letter.

“Jess,

I won’t be around to give you this, that much I know. But when you do get it, please, take good care of it. It might raise more questions than it answers at first but keep on learning what you can from its contents, and you will hopefully learn a little about this new world you have entered into.

Regards,

Reginald”

The box itself contained a few items. First was a large leather bound tome, filled with handwritten notes, in several different scripts. This had clearly been handed down to many owners. Second, was the photo, of Reginald, looking younger, Jake, looking the same, and a man and a woman who were standing together, arms around one another. There was something familiar about them, but Jess couldn’t put her finger on it.

The third item was a blanket. Jess didn’t know what exactly it was, she hoped that the book would tell her, but she had found no answers in her quick skimming. It seemed quite short. More of an overly warm and fluffy towel than a blanket. But still, she put it aside for future examination, once she  had had time to go over the book properly. For now, she needed answers, and Jake seemed like the one to give them to her. So she quickly texted him.

We need to meet. Me, you, Meg, and Peter.

It wasn’t long before her phone buzzed back. Two letters

Ok

Folorn, she stirred her eggs. Trying to capture some part of the essence. as though their wisps would give meaning. Alas, they are just eggs.

Though, there was something. The yolk was supported by the whites. Like his tendrils, long and glorious, Supported his centre, everchanging.

“Chosen for what?”

“No one knows. The task varies every time. But the task consumes them. Makes them unable to focus on anything else until they’ve completed it. It seems to be a sort of compulsion.”

“And, snow fox?”

“Don’t really know about the fox part. I presume snow because they tend to be chosen in winter.”

Meg jumped in. “Is there a way to undo her being chosen?”

Jess rankled at that thought. She almost felt pride in being chosen. She had to do this. She had to find his image. If she didn’t, she would have been chosen wrongly, and that thought made her feel terrible. “No. I need to do this. I want to do this.”

Meg looked at her, and Jake sighed. “As I said, Jess, you probably won’t be able to focus on anything else for a while. So what we can do is try to help. What is it that you need to do Jess?”

“I… I need to make his image, properly. Everything I’ve tried so far has failed, so I think it’s the medium of the image. Painting and drawing won’t work. Maybe because they’re two dimensional. In the dream it was a bush that I had cut into shape.”

Jake wrote some notes, before looking back up. “So you think it’s a three dimensional shape? It has to be?”

Jess thought. “Well, it feels like it? Like, if I picture it in my brain, two dee doesn’t feel right. In fact it feels wron-

Meg stood up. “So let’s get this straight. You get a message from some weird being, and now your instinct is to do what it’s told you?” She started pacing. “Doesn’t that seem dangerous? Jess, babe, you have to realise that this feels a bit too far? Right?” She then turned to Jake. “And you! You of all people could try to dissuade her! Aren’t you supposed to be an expert?”

Jess felt a little bit angry at that, but she bit her tongue, as Jake, calmly, shuffled through his notes. “Megan Rothmaker, of all people, I think you would understand a higher calling when one comes knocking. We don’t get to choose, all we can do is interpret as best we can, and I think that’s what Jess needs to do. You can make that harder, or easier, it’s up to you. But I know from experience that if she doesn’t have help, this task will become a detriment to her. So, for Jess’ sake, please, let’s try this?” He stood, and offered his hand, palm down. Jess waited, then realised what he was doing, and put her own hand out. Meg rolled her eyes.

She woke with a start. What did that mean? She still had the image in her head. She couldn’t put it into words. But she knew what it looked like. She wanted to hold onto it. She had to be able to recall it. Quickly, she sat up, grabbed a pencil and piece of paper, and began drawing, frantically. Once she had finished, she stopped, looked at it, and crumpled the paper. It was wrong. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t correct. She tried again, and it was wrong again. She kept going, four, five times she drew, but each time it failed to capture something about them.

Eventually, the sun broke through the gap in the curtains, and she was taken aback. How long had she been doing this? What was wrong? Maybe it was the medium.

She went to her old craft paints, and started painting onto the paper.

It might have been minutes, it might have been hours later, but she was torn out of this fevered painting by a knock on the door. She staggered to it, still in her pyjamas, and, as she opened it, was met by Meg, who she only just realised how much she had missed the past day.

“Christ Jess you look like shit. Are you okay?”

“Oh. Yeah. I woke up really early. And… And… I can’t get this thing right? I dreamt it, but I can’t get it right in real life.”

Meg took her hand, looking concernedly at her as she steered her to the kitchen table. “Ooookay. Do you want some coffee? Tea? You just sit there, I’ll get breakfast, then you can show me what you’re working on, okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.” She realised that she wasn’t wearing the bracelet. “Wait, I need to get something.” She scurried out of the room, to her bedroom, past the desk where paint was still drying on the top, and grabbed the leather bracelet off of her bedside cabinet. She didn’t put it on yet, but walked with it out to the kitchen, and as she rounded the corner, she screamed.

Standing in the kitchen, back to her, was something hideous. Too many mouths, too many eyes, at least several tentacles (which was still too many). She dropped the bracelet. And the moment passed. Had she hallucinated? Meg was standing there, watching her, looking scared.

“Babe, are you okay? What’s going on? And what was that?” She came over, picking up the bracelet, between thumb and forefinger. “What is this?”

“Oh, Reginald gave it to me. Well, he left it for me. He told me to wear it.”

“The creepy old guy from upstairs? And what do you mean left it for you?”

“Oh, oh god yeah. He died, over the weekend.”

Meg looked unsettled. “Has anyone said what happened to him?”

“No, but the police were round, asking questions, so it might not be, y’know, old age.”

Meg nodded, still looking a little shaken. “I take it you said that we were out over the weekend, yeah?”

“Yeah, but when I got home, I found an envelope, and the bracelet was in there, and a note saying to wear it.”

“So, let me get this straight. You found a note from a creepy old dude, and a bracelet, and you decided to wear it? Without even checking it? Maybe he coated it in a contact drug? Maybe it’s evidence? Did you tell the police about it?” Meg had raised her voice slightly, Jess, scared, had taken a step back. Meg noticed and shrank away a little. “Sorry. Fuck. I’m sorry jess. I just, I’m worried about you. You clearly aren’t in a good place right now. Do you want to show me what you’ve been working on?”

Jess silently nodded, and gently taking Meg’s hand, lead her to the bedroom.

“Well. I wouldn’t have suggested painting on the desk, but, what are you trying to paint?”

Jess knew. She didn’t know where the name came from. Nor what it actually was. But she knew the name of what she was trying to capture. “Of’thilnet.”

“Bless you?”

“No. It’s Of’thilnet. I don’t know what that is. But I know I’m not doing it right.”

Something felt off today, the colours in the sky were muted. A cold was biting into her, and nothing felt exactly right. But she kept driving, making it to the car park without any problems. A constable was waiting for her, to lead her to the scene.

As they walked, she learned what she could, but the constable seemed uncomfortable talking. All they knew was that the four had told friends that they were coming here, and that none had been heard from since. But the campsite seemed deserted, other than the ruins of a fire that no one had decided to properly remove. The nearby pond was frozen over, and the old archaeologist’s cabin had been left unlocked.

As they made it, there were a few other PCs trudging around, breath misting before them. There was a strange cracking and wooshing sound every now and then, but no one could tell what that was. As she walked onto the scene, she noted that the muted tones she had been experiencing earlier were much more so now. Almost like she was seeing the world in black and white. Maybe she needed to talk to her doctor again.

After thirty minutes of looking, she had ascertained that there were more than just the four who had come and stayed up here, but wind and snow had covered any tracks by the rest. She had also found a few empty bottles of alcohol, stashed in a bush. Those were being bagged for forensics. Still, nothing conclusive, and no signs of the missing people. She hadn’t looked at the pond yet, but with the ice, on this dreary day, she was unlikely to see anything.

As she walked over, however, the sun tried, weakly, to break through the clouds, barely succeeding. It was such a change from the black and white tones just a second ago. Colour was back. And it was showing something worrying in the pond. A slight tinge of red to the ice. As she came closer, she pulled out her torch, and turned it on.

She got to her flat to find an envelope pushed under the door. As she picked it up, she realised that there were bloody fingerprints on it. But it just had a single word written on it. Jessica.

She stopped. Thought. Then, finally, she opened it. Inside was a note, with three words on it, and a thin leather bracelet. She ignored the bracelet, and read the note first.

“Wear this. Reggie.”

She studied the bracelet for a moment. It had runes etched onto the small flaps that interwove with one another. As she watched, they ever so faintly shimmered. Another artefact? And what was with the blood stain on the envelope?

She did as the note said, and put on the bracelet. It felt cool against her skin, and she waited for anything to happen. She wondered why Reginald gave it to her, and as she thought about him, something did happen.

What she was seeing changed. She saw Reginald. He was, presumably, in his apartment. Frantic scribblings onto pieces of paper were all over the table he was sitting at, and a large book sat in front of him. 7:30AM read the clock hanging on the wall. He was writing, into the book. There was a knock at the door. Reginald got up, and headed to the door, grumbling something.

Her vision was interrupted by a louder knock. In the real world, her own door was being knocked on. She checked the peep hole and was greeted with a stern looking police officer’s face. She put the envelope on the table behind the door, bloodstain down, and then opened the door.

“Hello officer, how can I help you?” The officer looked her up and down, and the woman’s stern face softened slightly.

“Hello Miss, I was wondering if you knew the man who in flat 406? Reginald Hammersmith?”

Jess looked at the woman, and weight up her options. She settled on telling as much of the truth as she could. If she told the whole truth she’d sound mad. “I, yes. Well, I met him just after new years. Why?”

The woman looked down for a moment, breaking eye contact, before looking up again. “I’m sorry to say that he’s dead. Was found last night by a friend. Appears to have died sometime on Saturday morning. I’m not saying that you’re a suspect, I just want to know where you were that morning.

Jess was taken aback. Reginald. Dead? No. Couldn’t be. But that might explain the bloody fingerprints. She realised the officer was waiting for a response. “Oh, sorry. Just. Shocking. Saturday morning? Me and my Girlfriend left the building at… What? Half seven? Maybe twenty to eight?? We were going hiking.”

The officer nodded, writing on a notepad. Before shooting Jess a piercing look. “And did you see anything suspicious at that time?”

Jess thought, but she couldn’t think of anything. “No, sorry. I wasn’t paying that much attention, with it being an early morning on the weekend.”

The officer wrote quickly, then looked back up again. She smiled, but it was tight lipped, and terse. “Right, well. If you think of anything, please contact us. Ask for PC Lansberry, that’s me. You have a nice day miss.”

Finally, after waiting for half an hour to see if anyone else would show up, they set off. The group was cheerful, and the weather seemed uncharacteristically warm for early January. The winter sun had burned away the clouds, and stared down at them, a great eye upon the world.

As they stopped for lunch, the group got to talking to each other, and Jess and Meg ended up having a conversation with the singer of the group about how she had gotten into music. It turned out that she had been a classically trained opera singing, but found the pressure too much. She preferred folk, and performing her own styles, which Jess understood. It was what had made her stop playing in band.

They made it to the gathering site, and the ten of them got set up, the alcohol was brought out, and the old cabin, presumably built by whoever first studied the site, was opened up for people to drop off their things.

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Jess couldn’t remember much of the night before, but she woke, Meg’s arm lazily curled around her hip, and smiled, it was nice to be close to someone, so far away from the rest of the world. When she stepped outside, she saw the band sitting, drinking coffee, chatting away in what she presumed was their native language.

Other than that, Meg had found out that the group that were going to make the catchy tune, “Hygge”, were inviting fans to a hiking trip in the Pennines that weekend, and so Meg and Jess had decided to sign on. Maybe it was weird, going to go for a walk with what was currently a small time Danish indie folk band, but they figured that everything else in the last week had been weird, so why not this?

Reginald had resolved to try and read through his old books, so he could tell them more about what he knew, but neither of them had seen him in the last two days. But that was fine, right? He knew where they were.

Jess had resolved to learn a little bit of Danish, or at least one word. Hygge. It didn’t take long to learn the meaning. One google search later, and it was there, on her laptop. Fun. It just meant fun. Well, the song certainly was fun. Or would be. Time was confusing her.

So now, the two of them were packing for tomorrow’s trip. Meg was very excited, and Jess couldn’t help but share her enthusiasm, it had been a long time since they had been hiking.

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The next morning, the two girls bundled into Jess’s car. Everything packed, they were about to set off, but Meg was patting her pockets, she quickly checked her bag.

“Shit. Shit shit shit. Wait, no. I know where I left it! Babe, can I get your keys? I left my phone on the table after breakfast.” Jess shrugged, and handed over her keys.

“Go for it, knock ‘em dead.”

“I think you mean knock yourself out?”

“Oh, right, yeah. Look, it’s early, just go get them. Don’t expect me to be making sense until I’ve finished this.” She gestured towards her thermos of coffee, sitting in the cup holder.

“Alright, miss you!” Meg gave her a quick kiss, and hopped out of the car.

“Miss you too.” Jess mumbled as she took a long drink of coffee.

After about ten minutes, Meg came back.

“Took your time.”

“Sorry, I needed to pee.”

“Just pee? Ten minutes?”

“Okay okay it was a number two. Can we go? I don’t wanna be late!”

“Right you are. We’ll make it in plenty of time.”

He couldn’t say if they were nice or not. All he knew was that they never came out, and the light in their attic was always on. The car in their driveway, a couple year old fiat 124 was gathering dust, and their garden was overgrown.

It made him curious. His wife had often said that he stuck his nose in too far, but he just wanted to know who lived there. So, one evening, after finishing work, he decided to be neighbourly, and introduce himself. As he walked up the garden path, he thought he could see a silhouette in the attic window, someone holding something to their lips. As he got nearer, he began to hear music. Music that seemed to burrow its way inside his brain, an indescribably feel good tune, that lifted his mood. Then, it changed. Became mournful, and Reggie felt it in time with the music. Then, with a quick flurry of notes, the music changed again, instead of a piece, this was a chord. And he felt his body marching quickly to the front door, much faster than he had intended. It was opened before him, and he went inside.

The music had him, and it continued to keep him for many years, until, finally, the player passed on. But they taught him things in that time. Not to do with the instrument, but other things, magical things, like the recorder.