“No!” said the boy.
The wealthy father shook his head. “No man mans for you. That’s why we’re sending you away. We’re sending you away to keep you out of trouble. If we don’t send you away, then we are going to have you fixed.”
Now she was sobbing in big gulps. The poor boy rubbed her head and she peered at him through her tears. “What does that mean? Fixed? I’m not broken, am I?”
The wealthy father called the poor boy over and said to him, “I have some things for you. Some food for her. Some cloths for her hair. A few leashes. And some things for your parents.”
The poor boy shook his head. “I’ll take the things for her and the food for her, but not the silver. You have already given enough.”
“The poor do not understand the heavy burden of silver,” the wealthy boy’s father said. “I am ashamed of what I put you through. You’re a nice boy, my son’s best friend, and your parents are good people. I was unkind and I acted selfishly. Please take this silver from me and give it to your parents.”
And the poor boy took the silver for his parents.
When he got her home, his new female man seemed reluctant to go out to her proper kennel. Instead, she stayed in the house, exploring the rooms. When she finished exploring, she picked up the small singing harp and made it sing: “In the heart, in the air, hear the joy everywhere…”
The boy was amazed. “That song, your mother used to play that song.”
“I know,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“She told me.”
“But how did she tell you? She’s dead.”
“Mother is she who gives all to her child. She’s ever with me, telling me things.”
At first, the boy believed her words and pondered their significance. Then it came to him that he was talking to a man. Sometimes they spoke sense, but more often than not they spoke nonsense that had the appearance of being sense. The boy knew that nothing that is dead can still be with us. But he smiled and decided to play along with her.
“What sort of things does she tell you?”
“She tells me that you are very nice and she loved you very much. You took very good care of her. You stood by her side in her trouble.”
“Hmmm. Very nice. What else does she tell you?”
“That you are correct. She died of a great sadness in her heart.”
The boy was no longer comfortable playing this game. He was starting to have a strange feeling. “How do you know that?” he demanded.
“She told me.”
“But she is dead.”
“She is with me now at this moment. I am filled with her.”
He looked at her, and her green eyes had strangely darkened.
“She says that it was cruel of them to take her infant away. She was a mother, but not a mother. It was cruel of them to remove her thumbs. She had hands, but no hands. She could no longer make the small singing harp sing her heart’s pain. She wept every night until the night she died.”
“This is dreadful,” said the boy.
“Truth is often dreadful,” said his man.
The boy was weeping. “Does she tell you any good things?”
“She tells me good things, but those good things are for me alone, and not to be shared.”
“Okay.” He sniffed back tears.
“But she does not want you to weep.”
“I can’t help it. I miss her. I’m sorry how she died. I wish I could bring her back and save her life.”
“Wait, I do have a good thing that I can tell you.”
“Okay.”
“She touched the heart of the father of the wealthy boy. He is afraid of me. He is afraid of you. That’s why he insists that you take his silver.”
“Really?”
“She commands him to do it. He is afraid that she will kill him. But she can’t do that. She is dead. It doesn’t work that way. There is no need to fear the dead.”
“That’s very funny,” the boy said, and he laughed a small laugh.
She added, “I want those instruments in his house. I want every instrument in his house. He is afraid and he will give them to you if you are patient and ask for them one at a time.”
“Okay,” said the boy, laughing. “We will take all of his instruments. Hahaha. One at a time.”
His female man laughed with him, and then she said, “I will tell you a good thing that my mother told for me alone and not to be shared. But she trusts you. I trust you. So I will share it with you.”
“Okay.”
“This world will die one day.”
“What does that mean? Is that true?” He peered into her green eyes, which were now as dark as a forest blackened by fire.
“This world will die one day and all of this shall pass away. But I will not die here. I will die somewhere else.”
“What does that mean?”
“I do not know,” the female man said, “but it is what my mother told me and she does not lie.”
And then she finished her song: “In the heart, in the air, hear the joy everywhere. Shall we call, shall we sing, of the joy everywhere? Come, my friends, let us sing, of the joy everywhere. There is joy, there is joy, there is joy everywhere.”
And the day became evening, and his parents were at home, and they were happy to have a musical man in the house again. She made the harp sing for them as they ate their meal in happiness, and when evening became night, she slept under the boy’s bed.
This went on for many weeks.
When the boy asked her if she wouldn’t be more comfortable sleeping outside in her proper kennel, she told him, “I am afraid. Bad things happen to mans in proper kennels in this neighborhood. From what I see, some of them are desperate in this neighborhood. They are so poor and so hungry. To you I am a man, but what do you think I look like to them? Food. I could be stolen and eaten. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”
“No,” the boy told her. “That would be dreadful.”
“Yes it would be,” she said.
And they laughed together.
In four years, when the boy turned sixteen, his red-haired female man was eight in regular years but twenty-four in man years and in outward appearance. And in that year, the boy found a girl who was about his age and in the natural course of things he began to spend less time with his female man.
He would get up in the morning and feed her, then rush off to school, then after school he would work his hours at the mill, then he would come home and feed her, then don his finest garments and venture out with the girl with whom he was in love.
There were smiles all around the house, but there was a strain too.
One evening as he dressed, his twenty-four-year-old man said, “You know, I created a new song for you. Would you like to hear it?”
He said, “That sounds like a great idea. When I get back, you’ll play it for me.”
“Going out again?” said she.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am,” said he.
He was prepared for a fight.
This time she surprised him by saying: “Have fun.”
When he got back that night, he was too worn out, he told her, to listen to the song and he fell asleep right away. She played the new song to an audience of herself, then folded herself under his bed and went to sleep.
In the morning when they awoke, she asked him if he would like to hear the song she had created for him.
He said, “Sure. Play it.”
She sat down with the small singing harp in her lap and began to make it sing, but there was a noise from beyond the room. Someone was at the door. When they opened the door, it was the girl with whom he was in love.