HEATHER STEWART

A Piano

We don’t know how much time has passed, since the last time we were played. We are quiet tension built in wires, waiting, pulled and drawn and strained tight as a screw. Attuned. Attentive. It might be years, centuries. Have you ever spent a day inside while it rained? Didn’t it feel like a lifetime? Our soft hammers have attracted the thinnest layer of dust but would shine if there was light. Have you ever been stood waiting for a friend to arrive? Did you suddenly have more energy than you knew how to spend? This is how we live, all set up and standing in our scrupulous rows, anxious for the next stranger to open us up and stroke our keys.

I know how that sounds. How promiscuous we are, letting just anyone play us for fools. But we certainly have our favourites. We can’t see their face but we know their touch. They are coming back tonight and we are ready. Our glossy ebony frame shines, our brass is polished, and that devil the Tuner visited earlier. We were already perfect – there was no need for all that unpleasantness.

Ah, their footsteps now. What will it be? Of course we love Liszt, Chopin, Debussy (if we are sad), but then there is Sergei. He understands us. He reaches down into our hard heart and extracts something akin to a soul. He takes so much wood and metal and felt and he clears our metaphorical throat of the pain it took to bring us here and he gives us back our voice. Perhaps you understand our pain, I have heard the wails of human infants and that is the unmistakable sound of knowing the pain of existence, of emergence.

I was once ore in a mountain, watching the sea, moving up through the rock, down and up again over the millennia. And I was a tree, alive and sucking in the water from the earth and exhaling great clouds of breath into the sky. Let us say only that it was a shock to be manipulated into a piano. But here we are. And our consolation is Sergei. The vessel, the pianist, is caring enough, their touch and phrasing intuitive, without flaw.

The floor vibrates as all the furniture of the orchestra is arranged, the larger instruments brought in, the conductor’s pedestal erected. Lastly, we are rolled into place, ready to perform. Whoosh – breath of air and the roar of light on us for the first time. Lid propped open we are revealed, fallboard lifted, keys exposed, pedal down. They test the sustain, then the soft. All in order. We know already. We still wait, wanting needing.

The collective silence of a thousand mouths, the creak of a cellist as they shift in their seat, the looks that must be passing between them all. We are ready to be reminded of why we are here. We can’t stand a moment longer, please…

First touch. Yes, strike! F minor, D flat major 7/F, F minor 6, F minor 7, F minor 6, D flat major 7/F, C minor! Such bittersweet release. We are singing our favourite tonight, the Piano Concerto no 2 by our Sergei. Yes, we will go all the way this time, surrounded by our friends in a vigilant crescent we succumb to the orgiastic pleasure of resurrection.

Forte, fortissimo, they strike us, embrace our keys and our hammers slam the wires and we sing sing! Dust is shaken off at last, the touch of light on our shining metal and the vibrations resonating out, roaring across the space, we are glorious in this progression. We sound together in huge chords rising and our bass thrums enough to still the heart. Settle, settle, let the shimmering notes echo a moment more. A smile shivers across our ranks as we wait again – we know what’s coming – we are happy to wait this time. Intake of breath, the silence before a lightning strike.

Ah! And we shiver fluid sequences now, waves of gentle bouncing rounded spirals up our spine. Softer then harder, brought together and cry out and once again dolce cantabile, sing softly and sweetly, we have a voice again and we serenade. There is no other voice here but us, our unhuman regularity, iron clad and ivory white.

Faster again, no time to dream of clifftops and moon silvered songs, faster, an entire keyboard ablaze. All our octaves croon as they do not miss a single note. We are alive again. Our wood shudders, it remembers the voice of the wind and the touch of the rain on its skin, yes, but no time now for reveries – accelerando! Crescendo! Everyone sing until the final blow and…and…dazed dreaming silence entombs us in darkness again.

Heather Stewart is a Writer and Optometrist originally from Lancashire, currently living on the Isle of Wight. She loves reading anything with a fantastical twist and sifting through second-hand vinyl. She has several fantasy works available on Amazon Kindle and is currently working on completing her Master’s in Creative Writing.