THE PENNY WHISTLER

A little fantasy about an elderly grandmother and magic.

"The trouble with drains," muttered Granny Bones, "is they stink, and I have to sleep in them."

"No you don't, gran," chirruped Isiah, you've got a lovely bed in your bungalow."

"Had," growled Granny. "Had!"

"Where's it gone then, gran?" asked Stella. "If you had a lovely feather bed yesterday, why haven't you got one today?"

"Because I swapped it," growled her granny, defensively.

"What for?" asked Isiah, curious.

"I swapped it for a penny whistle if you must know," almost cackled his grandmother. "I swapped it for a penny whistle so's I could make music."

"A penny whistle's worth a penny and a feather bed's worth hundreds of pounds," gasped Stella.

"So what?"

"It's just that you got a bad bargain if you swapped a double bed with a lovely feather mattress for a whistle worth a penny," sighed Isiah. "You must be bonkers, granny. Absolute bonkers!"

"Calling old ladies names like that!" snarled Granny. "Making out we're senile when all we want to do is make pretty music for our grandchildren to enjoy! There's no pretty music these days, and I wanted to make some. So there."

"There's nothing pretty about sleeping in drains," growled Isiah.

"I love it!" snapped Granny Bones. "I even love the stink! You can't beat a good stink, that's what I've always said!"

"You're bonkers!" grinned Isiah.

"Cretinous," added Stella, who had learned the word only that morning.

"Senile," growled Isiah darkly.

"I'd rather be senile than a young twerp like you!" cackled the old woman, annoyed by the two youngsters who didn't seem to approve of her recent swap.

"If you've got a penny whistle, show us," suggested Stella, seeing the expression on Granny's face and knowing it might herald something even darker.

"I won't then!" snapped Granny.

"We're going then," said Isiah, standing up and holding Stella by one hand. "We're going where people are more regular and less mad!"

"Where they don't complain about sleeping in drains," added the girl.

"All right. See if I care," growled Granny Bones, and she pulled a rusty old penny whistle out of her pocket and looked at it affectionately.

"Is that it!" sneered Isiah, "is that rusty old piece of tin your penny whistle?"

"That it is," growled Granny Bones.

Then she did something rather wonderful.

She did something astoundingly wonderful.

She placed the penny whistle between her lips, and blew on it, and the sound that issued forth, the gentle warbling notes more beautiful than nightingales might sing in a springtime garden, washed over the two grandchildren like the purest melodies of any age, and they stood there, he holding her by one hand, transfixed.

And Granny Bones winked at them, and blew a little harder, and the music lifted the three of them into the air as it washed over and under and through them, and they joined all the birds in creation on the back of a teasing breeze, and drifted wherever the music took them, down dells and along dales, past the roots of mountains and into the very cradle of the moon.

And that was then and now is now and a fully grown and very adult Isiah and Stella stood at the foot of an already weathered old gravestone and sighed.

"She was a daft old bat," murmured Stella.

"With that silly grin of hers," nodded Isiah.

"And the way she swapped one thing for another," agreed Stella.

"Like her lovely bed for that old tin whistle," sighed Isiah.

"And the music she played ... The bloody marvellous music she played ..."

"And the places we went," wept Isiah, a sudden awkward frog in his throat.

"Like dreaming," concluded Stella, weeping as well.

© Peter Rogerson 07.02.13

 

Reviews

[D.S. Dirck]

Very well written. I really like your dialogue.

[Peter Rogerson]

Thanks for your comment.

[Joshua]

I like this piece. Very bitter sweet and the emotions transfer over very well. Thank you for sharing.

[Peter Rogerson]

Thanks for the review, Joshua. Sometimes a story like this one seems to come out of thin air and write itself.