Siobhan Parkinson

Second Fiddle

The forest was the last place you'd expect to see such a thing. When I thought about it afterwards, trying to remember, there was this dreamy feeling to it, as if maybe I hadn't seen it after all, but I know I did, because later, I got to talk to it - I mean to her. She was a girl with a brown cloud of hair, and she was standing right there, apparently suspended in the leafy air, high above the woodland path, with her back to me and her elbow out, practicing. An unknown girl playing the fiddle in the forest.
  When I looked again, I could make out that she wasn't suspended in mid-air after all, but was standing on something quite solid: the balcony of a tiny wooden hut, which was so well hidden amongst the trees that I had never noticed its existence before.
  'There worn't no' ut' ere yestern,' I muttered to myself in the special woodland voice I'd invented to go with my new persona as a girl who has made the woods her territory. I shook my head as well, in the sorrowful sort of way that  thought best suited the woodland voice: a slow, shaggy shake that made my hair swing. I was enjoying being a woodlander. (You might have noticed that yourself, but at the beginning of a story, I thought it might be helpful to nudge you along a bit, just til you get used to it.)
  Nobody contradicted my muttered observation, which is the great thing about being alone in the woods - or nearly alone, but of course, the girl with the violin was too far away and too engrossed in her music to hear what I told myself under my breath. We were all alone together in the forest, except for the trees. It made me go all shivery when I thought of it like that. It seemed spookier than being alone by myself, if you see what I mean.
  'Not ver' frien'ly, iz she?' I said to myself as I studied the strange girl's back.
  I could see the creamy top part of her back, and the top two or three knobs of her vertebrae, because she was wearing one of those boob tube T-shirts with no shoulders; you know the kind shaped like a large sock with the foot part cut off, which just goes down over your body and sort of sticks on by itself - elasticated, with no straps or anything to hold it up. Not, I should perhaps make it plain, since of course you don't know me very well yet, the kind of garment I am given to wearing myself.
  I snorted without really meaning to. It was the elasticated top that did it. It seemed such a silly thing to be wearing in the woods.
  The girl must have heard me, because she suddenly stopped playing.
  I stood absolutely still and concentrated on my hard-breathing. In case you don't know what that is, it's when you close your mouth tight and breathe very lightly and softly, so that it feels as If your lungs are hardly involved at all, and the spaces in your skull seem to fill silently with air instead.
  Perhaps the girl was only taking 'a rest'. That's what you call it when you don't play for a note or two. I know that because I was in the choir at my old school, in the second alto line. 'Rests' are anything restful. They just give you time to imagine how dreadful it would sound if you hit a wrong note when it is your turn to start up again.
  The girl with the creamy shoulders seemed to be having an extra long rest. She stood there, with the violin clamped between her shoulder and her chin, her elbows poised like awkward wings. While I tried to make myself invisible and inaudible and breathe only in my skull, which gets a bit stressful after a time, you may as well know in case you want to try it for yourself. I thought the girl must be listening, because I could see that her head made tiny movements, and I noticed that the movements slunk down the side of her body and came out at her right foot, which taped out a slow rhythm.
  I watched the silent violinist's back for maybe half a minute, and then suddenly her elbow started sawing again and she played a final violent outburst, leaning dangerously far over on her left side so that it looked as if she might topple over the flimsy wooden balcony railing that ran round the porch. At the last moment she straightened up, flung one arm out from her body, and made a low, sweeping bow to an imaginary audience.
  I laughed, because all I could see of the bow was the girl's bottom sticking up, gleaming synthetically in its tight-fitting Lycra leggings, and the top half of her body disappearing below the rail of the balcony. There she goes, bum in air, big black shiny peach - if she could see herself from this point of view!
  The girl spun round at the sound of laughter, but I stepped quickly backwards into the greenery. I knew that there was nothing to be seen where I had stood, except perhaps the uncanny nodding of the long, protective arms of the brambly brush-wood that his me from view.    
 
Second Fiddle © Siobhan Parkinson, 2005. Published by Puffin Books.