:  “You’ve made me what I am today. I hope you’re satisfied.”

   I think those are lines from a song. I can’t remember it, except for those two lines, though, and the fragment of melody that goes with them. Oddly, it doesn’t matter to me right now. I’m not sure what does matter just now, but that doesn’t seem important either.

   I repeat to the tree, “You’ve made me what I am today....”

   I know I’m miserable, and that my black mood could be potentially dangerous. I don’t care. It’s been a long, long time since I was happy, and I am tired of pretending to be happy in order to stave off the despair that now envelopes me. Indeed, this darkness is almost comforting; it is true, it is honest, unlike everything else I can lay claim to. My very name is not even the one I was given as a babe.

   “I hope you’re satisfied.”

   I suppose I haven’t been happy since I was eight years old. Everything started changing then. But the events were set in motion when two years earlier, when I was my father’s daughter. I was comfortable then. But she came, and nothing was ever simple and happy after that.

   I was eight years old when she came. I had lived with my father all my life, never known my mother. Never cared. Father was good to me, and, although he never told me the reason for my mother’s absence, I never questioned him. That year, he had given me a violin and lessons as a gift; I thought it the best present possible. I loved music with a passion, even at that early age. And he was told I was a prodigy, capable of amazing things. But he never treated me like a prodigy. I was always simply Maviel, his daughter.

   She came one day, stepping out of nowhere into my bedroom. I was standing in the middle of the floor, playing for my father, occasionally stopping to ask questions about my music. He played harp, he knew music. He said it was born into our family.

   She stepped out of a ray of sunlight to stand beside me. I was playing, and she startled me; I nearly dropped my bow. Father had been half-dozing on my bed, but when the music stopped, he opened his eyes and looked up. His face turned pale when he saw her, and he cried out, No, you cannot have her!

   That was when I became anxious. I turned to look up at the strange woman who had stepped out of the late afternoon light to frighten my father. She was shorter than I had expected. I thought someone who could terrify Father so would be tall, imposing. She had hair the same color as mine, a deep red-brown the same shade and sheen as a violin’s wood. Her eyes were a dark, dark brown. Her skin was pale, and she looked the way I thought I would when I grew up. She seemed young, but at the same time, very, very old. And she frightened me, too, although I cannot remember why.

   She said nothing to me, did not even look at me. To father, she answered, It is time. There is not enough for her to learn here. I have watched, and her gift has marked her as one of us. She smiled, and odd, cold smile. She is mine, you see. Her gift will not allow her to be yours. She talked of me as though I was some prized possession. I remember I hated that possessive tone.

   She loves me, he said, pleadingly. He didn’t look at my way, either. You left her here with me, you gave her up. You must not take her away.

   She said nothing for a long, long time, simply looked, and smiled that strange smile. Father, who is she? I asked, growing more frightened yet.

   He suddenly looked old, old and tired, and he would not meet my eyes when he answered. Your mother, he said.

   “You’ve made me what I am today.”

   Am I talking to my mother? My father? Who? Who made me? Perhaps I am talking to myself.

   “I hope you’re satisfied.” I’m certainly not satisfied. I doubt my mother is. And Father... I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since she took me away. I missed him terribly, at first. I tried to run away many times. But she had taken me into the Middle Kingdom, the world between worlds that her kind called home, and I could not get out of it so I could return to the life I knew. Maybe she doubted, then, that I was destined for greatness, marked by a gift that my father had refused to admit I had.

   Once, after I had run away again, she shook me hard, holding my shoulders, and told me I was foolish to try to run away. Your only hope of greatness lies with us, she told me. You will be nothing back there. Nothing at all. I answered that I didn’t care, that I only wanted my father back. She was furious. He doesn’t want you back, was what she said. He hasn’t come for you. He doesn’t care. I believed her. I never ran away after that. But I was miserable.

   She didn’t love me. All she saw in me was a gift, a talent. She said I was a maker, a maker of music that could wring tears or laughter from the stones themselves. That was the only reason she had come to my father. To have a child with that gift.

   “You made me what I am today.”

   When I was ten, two years after she had stolen me from my father, I received a new violin from Scathelocke, the Seelie bard who taught me. Why? I asked him. I have one already.

   Your music has soul, he said. Your old violin is a very good one, but it has no soul. To make the music that you seek to make, you need an instrument to match it. He smiled. I was closest to being happy when he taught me. He did not treat me like a prodigy or a possession. He was very much like Father. You deserve her, he said.

   Her? I asked. It’s just a violin.

   She has a soul, he answered. She and you belong together. He smiled again. You should name her, soon. Things with soul will want names, especially things that you will carry with you for a long, long time.

   I thought. I will call her Westlin, I decided. He looked pleased.

   A good name.

   Westlin. She is the only friend I have.

   “I hope you’re satisfied.” Said with a particular vehemence this time. And I mean it, whoever I say it to. I do hope you’re satisfied with the way things have turned out. Not as anyone expected, is it? I never expected it. Did you, my mother?

   Quite often, I wonder if it is supposed to be this way, as though there was a master plan for my life that somewhere, somehow went awry. Where did I miss a turning? How do I turn around, find the place where it happened, and say, “Let’s try this again”? I wish I knew.

   I was thirteen when I ran away from her for good. I was tired of being a possession she called daughter. She was never my mother. She may have birthed me, and I may look like her, but she was never a mother to me. She never cared. This time, I wasn’t running to my father. I wasn’t running to anywhere. I was just running. Away. With nothing with me but my violin, I was leaving, at last.

   I reached the border of Seelie land, not far from where we lived, and I was suddenly afraid. Out there, beyond a border no one could see (but was there nonetheless) was the land of the Wild Faerie. I didn’t know anything about them, except that they and the Seelie were never on the best of terms. I didn’t think of myself as a Seelie, though; perhaps that helped me think I would be safe.

   I took a deep breath, and stepped across. And then, I knew I was free of her. For as long as I stayed away, I was free of her.

   I wandered for several days before I met any of the Wild Faerie, but when they came, they welcomed me. I don’t know what I had expected, but the warm greetings I received were not what I had thought I would receive. Perhaps they knew of my gift. Perhaps. They took me in, though, and that was all that mattered.

   I studied under several of their musicians; they refused to be called bards. Why, I never knew. Or particularly cared. They taught me how to reach my gift, how to truly use it. They taught me how to make music, not just play it. And with the music that I made, I could do things. Make joyful to one who was grieving. Bring calm to one who was angry. Heal the body and soul, with music pulled from deep inside me. Suddenly, I was more than just someone with a gift. I was me, or so I thought.

   I had taken the name Arin when I joined the Wild Faerie. I was given a second name when I completed my training. Lee. Arin Lee. Not Maviel, not her daughter. Arin Lee. It felt good, being this new person, this free, wild, merry Arin Lee.

   But being Arin Lee wasn’t as merry as I thought it would be.

   “You made me....Dammit! Why isn’t anyone listening to me?” I demand of indifferent trees and skies.

   “As you wish. I’m listening.” The voice is wryly amused, male, and completely unfamiliar.

   I feel too apathetic to be startled, so, instead of leaping up and looking about wildly for the owner of the voice, I sit up, twist around, and spot him in a tree behind me. He doesn’t seem tall, but then, it’s hard to tell. He wears trousers of a pale, dull brown, low boots of a slightly darker shade, and a sleeveless tunic of off-white. His arms and shoulders bear blue knotwork tattoos, amazingly intricate, too. His hair is a nearly white blonde, and long strands hang in his eyes, which are completely black.

   They say he has a thousand different faces, or a different face for each that he is guardian to, but you cannot help but know him when you see him. They were right.

   “You’re the Piper,” I murmur, my tone touched with something that would be wonder if my mood were different.

   “And next you will tell me that you are Arin Lee,” he mocks lightly. His feet rest on a slightly lower branch, his arms resting on his knees. He seems both sorrowful and amused, as though confronted by a particularly fascinating yet distressing problem. “I’m listening. Why don’t you talk?”

   I turn so that I sit facing him, and begin to speak, only to find that I am speechless. No, not precisely speechless; I cannot say what I wish to, for I do not have the words. “Now that someone listens, I find I cannot put into words what I want to say so badly.”

   He nods knowingly. “You are discontent, yes? And you do not know why?” I do not need to answer at all for him to know he is right. “You are weary of being Arin Lee.”

   I nodded. “Very weary of being Arin Lee.”

   “Then be someone else,” he suggests. “Stop being Arin Lee and be someone else.”

   I blink, startled. The idea has occurred to me, yes, but I never took it seriously. “I don’t know how to be anyone else.” A dark frown suddenly sets itself on my face. “This gift you so kindly cursed me with has kept me from ever trying to be anyone but Arin Lee. Or the person before Arin Lee. I don’t know how to be anyone but her.” My tone has taken on a low, but angry note. It is not my fault I cannot be someone else now. I tried...but I was always stopped. “No one believed I should be anyone but her.”

   He sighs, wearily, then nods in acknowledgment. “It is the risk we took, by giving you the gift, and the price you paid, for using it.” Lifting a hand, he runs it through his hair, then drops it down to rest again on his knee. “For what good it does, Arin Lee, I am sorry.”

   I say nothing; what is there to say? How to reply? He is honest with me, yes, but what can I do? There are too many ifs. What if my father had never given me that violin? What if she had not stepped out of a ray of sunlight to take me away? What if Scathelocke had not given me Westlin? What if I had not run away?

   He understands. Without me speaking a word, he understands. “You wish to know how to be someone other than the Arin Lee who owns a violin named Westlin; someone who does not make music and make its magic, too. Yes?” I nod, slowly, tucking back a strand of hair. “Then come here.”

   I rise, leaves falling from the skirts of my simple white dress, the dress that marks me for the maker that I am. The maker of music. Carefully, I pick my way over to the tree where he sits, and stand, quiet and still, looking up at him. You made me what I am today, a voice whispers in my head. Then, almost fearfully, it adds, What will you make me into now?

   He drops from his branch to stand before me on the ground. He is tall, taller than I had thought, but he does not seem imposing. Reaching out one hand, he brushes the back of his fingers against my cheek. “We did well with you, Arin Lee,” he says softly. “But you have not learned all you must know.” His look turns regretful, and his hand drops, until his fingertips rest just below my throat. I nearly flinch as he softly begins to whistle a melancholy tune that calls to the place inside me where my gift resides. But he is not calling it up. He is calling it out. With a sharp, bitter pain, a golden thread follows his fingers as he withdraws his hand, following every movement, until he opens his palm; it begins to coil into a softly glowing sphere. A dreadful emptiness takes its place inside me.

   I nearly fall to my knees once it is gone, both hands rising to the place where it seeped out from inside me. Desperate need echoes hollowly in that empty space inside me; it feels as though he took a piece from my very soul. “What. . . what have you done?” I whisper weakly, stunned and suddenly afraid. “It’s gone. All of it, it’s gone! How. . . why . . . ?”

   One hand cradles my gift gently, sorrowfully. “You must learn, Arin Lee. Without your gift to hold you back.” I start to speak again, but he silences me, lifting the hand holding his flute. “This is done for your sake. Give me Westlin, Arin Lee.” Numbly, I remove the strap her case hangs by from over my head and shoulder. He takes her gently, with the same care I have shown her. “I will keep both of these safe, Arin Lee, until you find me again. And you will find me.” I must still look dazed and faintly horrified, for his expression softens. “You will learn to survive without them, Arin Lee. But you cannot learn if you do not. Put on your apprentice greys, for you are learning from Life, now, and go.”

   I turn, painfully hollow inside, and lower my head. I never knew how much I needed that gift, as my soul feels so broken without it; I never knew how badly I would want it back. I feel as though a vital layer of me has been stripped away, revealing a person I had never known, had never wanted to know. Without my gift, and Westlin, I am weak. . . a coward. I begin to walk.

   “Find yourself, Arin Lee. Go.”

Continue to Part II

Return Home

"Curse of an Aching Heart" is copyright 1998 by E. A. Fredericks. All rights reserved. Before putting this story on another page or linking to it from another page, please Request Permission.