Light From Uncommon Stars(81)

“You would betray our family just because I am not a son? How dare you destroy the Matías!”

Lucy rushed across the store and reached up and pulled Catalin’s portrait from the wall. Years of dust fell from the portrait onto her hair, her face, into her eyes.

But she gave none of it any notice.

For behind the portrait was an alcove.

And in the alcove were the missing notes and records of the Matías.

For a long while, Lucy sat at the workbench. After all her talk of legacy, here it was … the voices of years, decades, generations, in these notebooks, all resting in front of her now.

With trembling hands, Lucy reached for the first notebook.

Almost immediately, she found an entry for Shizuka Satomi—and there, in a list of her instruments was

Maker: ex. Giuseppe Guarneri, del Gesù (Katarina Guarneria) c. 1742



Katarina Guarneria?

Of course. Suddenly, the Satomi Guarneri made sense.

Katarina was del Gesù’s wife. She helped him in the shop, and as the master faded, she completed, and even built, many Guarneri violins on her own. But throughout history, many of those instruments had their labels removed or altered, because no one would buy a violin made by a woman.

Lucy picked up the violin and examined it more closely. Yes, it was easy to miss, if one were not specifically looking for it, but indeed, this label had been altered.

Someone had tried to erase the maker from history.

But then Lucy put the Guarneri down. What had seemed so important was now an afterthought.

For that had merely been the first notebook. Here were entries in her father’s hand, her grandfather’s hand, and in older hands she did not recognize. Her great-grandfather? What was his name? Yes. Antonio.

These notebooks held not only records of maintenance and repairs, but of provenance, ownership, and more.

Lucy read another notebook. And another.

When she finished, Lucy sat down, listening to her heart. The sound was as if something dead and mortal had finally been shaved away.



* * *



Not the Sort of Thing for Little Girls

“No, no, luce mia. This is not the sort of thing for little girls.”

Those had been her grandfather’s words, spoken each evening as the sun went down. Lucy had grown up with those words, ferrying her home before the stars came out. She had grown up with those words … that let her father in, let her brothers in, leaving her alone with two hands and nothing to hold.

Even a child could hate those words.

But on this night, she had fallen asleep unnoticed. And rather than her grandfather’s words, she woke to darkness and the jingle of the front doorbell.

How late was it? She peered out the window; her father was walking home.

She grabbed her coat and was ready to chase after him when she noticed the door to the workshop was ajar. And on the other side was the back of her grandfather, hunched over his workbench, immersed in what was before him.

“Ah, after all my son gave you,” she heard him say. “You still disobey.”

He said it in a curious singsong, like a parent admonishing a mischievous child. But it was not quite a child.

He took out his chisel and held it over the wood. She had seen him use a similar tool before, but this he held almost like a weapon?

“Now, we shall behave?”

The workbench light seemed to flicker, making the violin appear to twist and squirm beneath him.

Then Lucy heard a strange music unlike any before. It wasn’t that it was beautiful. She had heard plenty of beautiful music. But this made her heart race, and her body eager and jittery, like it did when she held a sharp knife or a box of matches, or walked over a bridge and wondered how it would feel to jump.

The voice blended with the sound of her heartbeat, in time with her breathing. She moved closer. Closer, until she could smell the varnish and the wood. It smelled like flowers. It smelled like blood.

“Lucy, no!”

Her grandfather threw a cover over the violin. He gently but firmly led her toward the door. But Lucy resisted.

“Grandpa, I want to hear more—”

She reached to pull the cover off the violin.

She wanted to see it; she wanted to hear it sing.

“Get out now!” she heard.

And then she felt a sharp slap across her face.

In shock, she ran away crying, and slammed the workshop door behind her.

Not long after, Catalin Matía had found her curled in a corner next to the violas. He wiped her tears with his handkerchief.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

That night, he walked her to the Big Donut and bought her a Bavarian Chocolate with sprinkles. He said he’d buy her hot chocolate if she would promise to forget what happened that night.

“Lucy, do not ever come in there again. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Grandpa.”

“Luce mia, I know it’s not easy to understand. But this is not the sort of thing for little girls.”



* * *



One does not simply break a cursed violin.

Actually, yes, they do.

Cursed violins are more common than one might imagine. The details vary, but most follow a typical pattern of notoriety: the violin is stolen, someone kills for it, dies for it, pulls it from a grave, bathes it in blood.