Free The Visitors by Simon Sylvester Page A

like a sore tooth.
    Now, there came a time when a travelling musician performed at the market. He played the fiddle most beautifully, and the crofter was transfixed. When the fiddle was upbeat, the crofter tapped his foot in time with the music, tasting the warmth of whisky on a hot summer night. And when the fiddle played a lament, the crofter felt the chill of midwinter, all alone in his wee cottage.
    The crofter believed with all his heart that this wonderful music would cure the sadness caught inside him. He resolved at once to learn the fiddle for himself. He sold his mother’s old loom, some family treasures and two of his piglets, and bought himself a fiddle, the best he could afford. He took his instrument back to his cottage and he started to practice.
    O, but how he practised. When he first woke in the morning, he played a little sitting up in bed. He came home for his lunch and played the fiddle while his broth boiled over on the grate. And then, every night, when he returned from the field or from checking on his crab pots, he’d build up his fire, ease off his boots, take up his fiddle and play and play and play. He played until his fingers ached, and his elbows turned stiff, then played until he’d worked them loose again.
    After long years of hard practice, that crofter played second to no other. Each night, the sweetest music poured from the windows of his little cottage. He played the fastest dances, conjuring the wildest ceilidh from a few simple notes, and he played the slowest, softest, saddest songs you’ve ever heard.
    The crofter had learned the fiddle as well as any man alive. But no matter how well he played, still that nagging sadness chewed at him, eating at his insides like a rat. He took to sitting on the foreshore every night, playing laments to his own loneliness, and the mournful music slid across the water softer than snowfall. He played until dark. The sadness sounded like night itself.
    One night, a selkie swam past the island. She heard the fiddle, and stopped to listen. She was entranced by the music, and coveted the crofter’s skill with his instrument. She resolved to take it for her own. Stepping onto the shore, she emerged from her skin and took the form of a beautiful woman. She conjured her skin into the form of a shell, and hid it deep in a rockpool, then ran to the cottage, weeping that she was lost and alone. The crofter was a good man, and of course he gave her shelter. To protect her from the cold, he gave her his jacket and boots. To make her comfortable, he gave up his bed to the selkie woman. He fed her and cared for her.
    As time went along, she bewitched him with her beauty,and they became lovers. At last, the crofter felt that heavy sadness lifted from his spirit. As his love for her grew ever stronger, so his music became more wonderful, more entrancing. Invigorated by this new passion, he played his music to the selkie, and she found it more beautiful than ever. She begged him to teach her the fiddle and, of course, crazy with his love for her, he agreed. The selkie woman remembered every note he taught her, and soon she learned to play. She demanded more lessons, and longer lessons. The crofter was so in love that he forgot his duties. His pigs grew sick and died. His chickens stopped laying eggs and shed their feathers, and then the harriers came for them. He forgot to plant new crops. In his abandoned pots, the crabs starved and rotted. All he did, day and night, was teach his woman how to play the fiddle. With each day, he grew thinner and sicker, nourished only by his desire for the beautiful selkie. And all the while, she grew stronger, feeding like a tick on his love and the gift of his music. She gorged herself on all he’d learned, craving more, demanding more. The skill that had taken the crofter years to master was taken from him in a few short months.
    He grew ever weaker, and the day came when the crofter was too faint to leave his bed. He called to his