The old barn on the outskirts of town has long been abandoned, but tonight light shines through the slats of its walls and the bustle of a small crowd can be heard from just outside. It’s been a while since anything of interest happened around here, so you feel as if you might as well come and see what all the fuss is about. That’s what you tell yourself, anyway—if someone were to ask whether you truly believed the rumors that had been spreading all day about this performance, you would have easily waved a hand and laughed it off. But still, after dinner is eaten and the dishes washed and dried and put away, you find yourself winding your way out to the edges of town, admiring how the sky purples at the flat and faraway horizon. You’ll be anonymous in the crowd, you figure, so why not go and see if any of it is really true?
A wave of chatter breaks over you as you follow an older couple through the doors of the old barn, which creak on their long-rusted hinges. The ground inside is dusty and covered with straw in places, but so is everything in these parts; it’s been a long time since you stopped worrying about keeping your shoes well-shined or protecting the cuffs of your pants. Plastic folding chairs have been set up in neat rows in the center of the open space, and by now maybe three-quarters are occupied. You wonder who went through the effort of laying them all out. Selecting a seat near the center, you leave a gap between yourself and the nearest audience member: not too close to the front, but not so far away that you won’t be able to hear well. Carefully, wary of the ever-present pain in your hips, you lower yourself into the chair, which creaks as cheap folding chairs tend to do. It’s not very comfortable—your back is going to be sore after this—and you start to second-guess the instinct that led you here; you wonder how long the performance will take.
To pass the time, you examine the interior of the repurposed barn. In addition to setting up the chairs and makeshift stage at the front, someone has strung lines of fairy lights along the walls and on the ground between the rows of seats. With the sun having set, the overall effect is a dim, soft glow diffused through the space. It’s quite well done, you think, in spite of yourself.
It’s not long before the performer enters through the doors at the back and makes their way to the front of the assembled audience. The chatter dies down into an expectant and unfamiliar silence—around here, it’s difficult to get people to stop talking for even a moment. You squint at the young performer, at their close-cropped hair, narrow face, loose shirt and baggy pants, which resist your attempts to classify by age, gender, mien, or place of origin. They are dressed to be truly forgettable; you wonder if this is on purpose. As a result of this lackluster appearance your eyes are drawn to the flute cradled almost lovingly in their hands. It is silvery and polished and reflects each of the tiny fairy lights in a constellation of sparks down its length. It looks like a real concert flute, you think, like one might find in an orchestra. How did this young performer get their hands on such a beautiful instrument? What has drawn them to your little out-of-the-way town in the middle of the countryside? But these thoughts are effortlessly dispelled, flies scattered at the swish of a horse’s tail, as the flautist lifts their instrument and begins to play.
***
From the first note the melody is rich with feeling. It is no less effective than if it were put to lyrics and sung, though what those lyrics might be you couldn’t say, and the emotion washing over you is difficult to name. You close your eyes and exhale, suddenly aware of your breath passing in and out; it flows with the music, steady and slow and laden with memory. The melody smells like the open fields you would run through as a child, like pollen and grain blowing on an autumn breeze; it feels like dirt between your fingers and under your fingernails, the wide blue sky above, dotted with clouds. A raven cries inquisitively in the distance and there is the sound of your father’s voice, calling you in for dinner, the scent of your mother’s cooking curling through the crisp air, carried to you on the breeze as you and your little brother do one more joyful lap around the fields. In your haste you trip and tumble; dust kicks up around you, another scrape added to your growing collection, burning irrelevantly on your skin as you race back to the little gray house in the distance. A cold wind is blowing; a few raindrops have started to fall.
This has the feeling of a memory, you think, as the flautist takes a breath, a recollection of times long, long past. But somehow it is much more than that, and then the melody picks up again and you’re tumbling through the front door, soaked from head to toe, and you and your brother land inside in a heap, laughing at everything and nothing at all. The rain makes the sky dark and so you decide to have a candlelit dinner, you and your brother and your mother and your father who just got back from work, and your dog Sadie, all gathered around the little table in the dining room, eating and chatting and listening to the thrum of the raindrops on the roof. And then it’s evening, and you and your brother run around the house just a little more before you are shepherded to bed and kissed good-night and the blankets are pulled up tight around your chin and your bedroom door is closed, and you fall asleep to the darkness of the room and the sound and scent of the rain.
A long sustained note, low and rich and with vibrato, and the melody drifts away.
***
You blink open your eyes, slowly, as your senses wind their way back through the years and begin to return. The only sound in the barn is the night wind rustling faintly outside. Hanging over you is a residual feeling of freedom, of the kind of unbridled joy that only a child can feel truly.
It has been many years since the deaths of Sadie, of your father, of your mother. It has been many years after that since you last saw your brother; but if you close your eyes, now, you can still hear him breathing evenly on the cot beside yours in the dark bedroom. It has been many months since the last good, hard rain in these parts—the harvests have been small and withered, everything nowadays is even more dusty and dry—but the scent of the rainstorm lingers around you. It has been drawn up from the depths to deliver to you a moment, one single moment, long past and long forgotten.
You come back to yourself. Your blood beats warm and strong in your veins, and the chair does not feel so uncomfortable. You flex your fingers—there’s not a hint of pain or friction, as if your hands, too, remember those simpler times of youth. It feels like magic. You wonder if it is, and the thought does not feel so extraordinary.
You look up: the old townsfolk around you are blinking and shaking their heads, stretching their limbs, contentment and wonder shining on their faces. With these new expressions they look so much younger than you’ve known them.
Even though it is not like you, you have a sudden impulse to go up to the young performer and embrace them, thank them, ask them their name and their history and their future plans. But when you look to the front, they have already left, and after that night, you will never see them again.