Hello again, readers. Goodness, but time doesn't seem to flow normally these days. Almost like we're in some sort of fairy tale of our own. Here's hoping for a happily ever after quickly.
I had a bit of trouble coming up with a modern version of The Monkey's Fiddle, so I looked back at a story I wrote on this blog awhile back, Family Fun, and I decided that family could use another adventure. So, here we have a story about Uncle Gret. I changed the fairy tale around a bit for this story, but this family takes liberties with their fairy tales.
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| The everyday magical items are the ones to watch out for. |
My family's camping reunion was coming up again, and my mom had decided that it would be fun to make a scrapbook of previous reunions. More accurately, that it would be fun for me and my brother, Marsh. Stewart was already out of the house, so Mom couldn't make him scrapbook.
Our family had been having some sort of reunion for a long time, and someone had taken a lot of pictures at every single one. That's what it seemed like anyway. So, there were a lot of pictures to sort through. At least Marsh and I got to laugh at some of the bad pictures from previous years. When everything was still on film, you didn't know if you got a good picture or not until after you got the prints back from the store, a fact some of my uncles decided to take advantage of.
I noticed that Uncle Gret was playing an instrument in several different years. But many different instruments. One year he had a banjo, the next a guitar, or a violin. One year he had an accordion. When Mom came in to make sure we were actually working, I showed her the pictures.
"How come Uncle Gret doesn't play anything anymore?" I asked.
Mom got quiet. This would be interesting. She had a look on her face like when she started talking about how Cousin Mark definitely didn't talk to ghosts, he just happened to know things that only a ghost could know.
Marsh noticed that Mom was quiet too. She looked at us, sighed, and sat down.
"Now, this isn't really my story to tell," she began.
"We won't tell that you told us," I said immediately.
She smiled a little and began. "When Uncle Gret was younger, he headed out West to work for your Great-Uncle Rocco."
"Who was that?" Marsh asked.
"He's Grandma Hazel's brother. He never had any kids and he needed some help on his farm. So Uncle Gret went over and worked for him for awhile. He's got a lot of stories about his time out there, although I think he made most of them up. But after awhile, he wanted to come home. Great-Uncle Rocco paid your Uncle Gret, but he also gave him two things: a pistol that would hit anything you aimed it at, and a magic violin."
"Aw, come on," Marsh said. "That can't be real."
"Does he still have them?" I asked, excited.
"Not both of them," Mom replied. Then she got back to her story. "On his way back home, Uncle Gret stopped in a small town for the night. He used to play a lot of instruments, like you saw, so he thought he could play in a park and make a little extra money. The only instrument he had was Great-Uncle Rocco's violin, so he took it out of the case and started playing.
"A crowd gathered and everyone was dancing. Uncle Gret loved to play and he loved when people danced to it, so he thought everything was going great. But after awhile, he heard people crying. He looked up and saw people were crying while they were dancing. He stopped playing, and everyone fell over."
"Why did they do that?" Marsh asked. I shushed him.
Mom smiled at him. "Because Great-Uncle Rocco didn't tell your Uncle Gret how the violin was magic. It made anyone who heard it start dancing, except for the person playing. Once Uncle Gret figured that out, he started to put the violin away, and he planned on leaving town. But the police got to him first. They demanded to know what he did to everyone. Gret tried to explain, but they put him in jail."
"Uncle Gret was in jail?" I asked.
Mom nodded. "They searched him before they put him in there, and they found the gun from Great-Uncle Rocco too, so they took it away. When they put Gret on trial, he tried to explain, but no one believed him. They couldn't figure out how else he'd made everyone dance, though. So, they fined him. It was just about all the money he'd made working for Great-Uncle Rocco, but he paid it so he could get back the violin and everything else. They gave him all of his stuff back except for the violin. They said they were going to keep it as evidence."
"That's not fair!" I said.
"No one should be playing that anyway," Marsh said. "Why did Great-Uncle Rocco even give that to him?"
Mom shrugged. "Gret never asked him that. Your Great-Uncle Rocco was always mischievous, but I don't think he thought Gret would get in so much trouble. So, Uncle Gret went away without his violin. He didn't want to play it anymore, but he was worried that someone else would. So he stayed nearby in his car the next night. Out in a field, Gret heard someone playing a violin, faintly. But Gret wanted to dance when he heard it. He stuffed up his ears with whatever he had and put his ear muffs over that. Then he crept out of the car, taking the gun with him.
"Gret got closer and saw two people in a field. One of them was playing violin and the other was dancing. Carefully, Gret took off one of his ear coverings. He started dancing too. He managed to cover up his ear again. Just as he thought, someone had stolen his violin."
"That's not right!" Marsh broke in. "If he shouldn't have been playing it, then no one else should have either."
"You're right," Mom said. "Gret felt the same way. It was dark, but he took out the gun Great-Uncle Rocco had given him. He aimed at the violin and fired. The violin exploded in the fiddler's hands. The fiddler and the dancer started screaming, but they ran away, so Gret knew he hadn't hurt them. Once they were gone, he ran over and picked up the pieces of his violin. Then he got in his car and drove away as fast as he could."
Marsh and I were quiet.
"Did he play after that?" I asked at last.
Mom shook her head. "He tried to, but it wasn't the same for him. I know Great-Uncle Rocco didn't mean to hurt him, but it made Uncle Gret stop doing something he loved to do."
"What happened to the gun?" Marsh asked.
"I don't know," Mom said, "but don't go asking Uncle Gret about it. He didn't like telling us about this, and he wouldn't want you or anyone getting their hands on the gun."
"When did he tell you?" I asked.
"I was the first one to see him when he got home," Mom said. "He was a wreck, but he insisted we had to bury the pieces of that violin in the backyard to make sure no one could fix it up. Once we went inside, he told Mom, sorry, Grandma Hazel, everything. She nodded and gave him a hug and some tea, and she went out to where we'd buried the violin pieces."
"What did she do?" Marsh asked.
"I don't know," Mom said, "I didn't see anything, but we all felt a powerful compulsion to stay away from that spot for a long time afterwards."
"That was a sad story," Marsh said. "We should tell Uncle Gret it's okay for him to play again."
"He says he doesn't remember how anymore," Mom replied. "But you can tell him all about how you're getting along with the trumpet, Marsh. I bet he'd like to hear that."
"I should bring my trumpet along!"
"No," Mom said flatly. "You'd be using it to wake everyone up when we did sunrise yoga."
"No, I wouldn't," Marsh pouted.
I laughed at him, because he definitely would.
"Now, that's enough of a break, you two. Get back to work on that scrapbook."
"Fine, but only if you help," I chanced.
Mom pulled her chair up to the table. "All right. What page should I work on?"
We worked for awhile. Then I turned to my mom. "Mom, you won't give me any magic items, will you?"
"I don't think so," she said. "I don't have any to give."
I nodded. "Okay." Then I got back to work on my page of Uncle Gret making music.
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