Back to rip-offs, natch. Or
homages. Yeah, back to paying homage to
some of the greatest plans in history.
By ripping them off.
I read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe when I was a child. Watched it on the TV when I was a bit older
in a Sunday evening teatime slot just before Christmas. One thing that always stuck with me was the
bearded faun, Mr Tumnus, and his plan to kidnap Lucy to hand over to the
eponymous witch, and his failure to go
through with it because he was ultimately good.
He put her to sleep by playing a funny flute-like instrument mixed with
an open fire. When she woke he was
crying at what he had done. I can play
the flute, you know, so I thought it was worth a shot. And, as far as I knew, there was no fascist
regime watching over us to be afraid of.
I made the bonfire quite small, mainly so I didn’t have to carry quite
so much wood to the clearing. Yeah, I
know I could have collected wood once there but I was too scared something
weird would happen. I figured
non-magical wood was the way to go and built the fire as the light began to
fade, igniting the wood in the gloaming; cooked a dinner of sausages and beans
in the glow and heat of my little
creation, by which I then read as I waited for my audience/victim.
Mid-evening she arrived and sat on her hind-quarters opposite me, as it
were, on the other side of the fire. I
picked up my flute for the first and only time that day, having felt that my
presence alone was, by now, enough to bring her to the clearing. Or if not, the fire would be.
I started to play a kind of lullaby that I had spent the evenings of
that week composing (while recording all my weeknight TV for a proposed Sunday
marathon). It was a sleepy, circular
chant with a certain dreaminess to it, or so I thought, or hoped. Something that was supposed to compliment the
fire’s lazy crackles and snaps.
And it started well. The mix of
the repetitive softness of my song and the soothing, rhythmic crackling of the
fire made the unicorn’s eyes droop pretty quickly. And soon she began to sway from side to
side. I watched her through the madly
dancing flames, my eyes (and only my eyes because of my playing the flute)
watched her move back and forth like a swing.
And my ears began to tune in to the fire’s sweet sounds and how it acted
as a neat accompaniment to my piece as I listened to its spiral and watched the
unicorn sway gently. And the fast,
random movement of the flames started to become too much, it made me feel
tired. And the heat of the fire washed
over me, beckoning me like a duvet on a cold night. I decided to keep my eyes on the unicorn to
see the progress I was making, to try and re-focus, but that didn’t seem to
help - it just made me more tired and made my eyelids go heavy and they started
to close briefly and against my will every ten seconds or so as I tried to play
on but my fingers and hands were getting heavier too and then my arms as all
the factors mounted up against me - the lullaby and the crackle and the
pendulum and the embracing heat and the flute’s tune by then just in my head
because the flute hit the floor first.
My head can’t have been far behind.
It was a peaceful night’s sleep in the main - I’m sure there was a dream
of me and the unicorn sitting in the positions we had that night, but without a
fire and in the daytime. And we were
talking. Though, if there was a dream, I’ve
never been able to grasp the contents of what was said.
I woke with a start, hearing what sounded like hooves (or coconuts…)
banging together, by the cold ash of the fire.
It was the middle of Sunday afternoon - I had slept right through. The unicorn was nowhere to be seen so I
sleepily made it back to the van to drive home in time for the evening, missing
out almost entirely on my marathon of weeknight TV.
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