I noticed the girl first. How could I not? Wheat-headed and sky-eyed, with a beautiful pink mouth always open in laughter or song. And then her brother. Twins, it seemed, differentiated only by their clothes and colors. Her in yellow, a skirt that swung ‘round her ankles, doing nothing to hide her delicate-boned feet. Him in blue pants that would be too short by fall.

Some would say summer incarnate. Beauty perfected. I knew better. They were each saved from such clichés by a single and small error of the body. Hers was a mole at the corner of her eye, an ugly thing, too large for her face, and it gave her features a one-sided downcast, as though she’d pushed too hard to be born, scrubbing her face against her mother’s insides.

His was a tiny harelip, a slit cut in the middle of his upper lip, the pink skin pulled back to expose a sliver of teeth. It took his smile from the sweet petal of youth to something more knowing, almost sinister.

It is these tiny slips, these errors of some maker’s judgment that lets us be whole in our imperfections, it seems to me. Much as music must never be so perfect that it goes unheard, unnoticed. There must always be some small hitch of breath, a murmur where there should be silence, a stilled pale where there should be a red pulse beat.

* * *

The twins--and the rest of the town children--played every day in the small cemetery behind the inn where I stayed. I wasn’t a traveler, no, although I’ve gained that reputation now. I lived there, I did. Born and raised, although I’d left and come back after many years. I was one of the town’s own. If anyone chose to look, they would see my mother's grave marker sits in the cemetery still today.

Days, I’d stretch out on the grass, legs crossed at the ankle, leaning back beneath one of the big oaks that shaded the graves. From houses nearby, small winged birds called their freedom to those of their kind clipped inside window cages, and I put the flute to my lips to echo their call. I used a short, simple flute, made from elk bone. There were no elk nearby, not in that part of the world, and the notes pearled from my lips, unbeckoning to any.

The twins noticed, but they didn’t at the same time. I was just some man in the cemetery where they played, another sound among many. I’ve heard hunters work this way, and animal tamers. Sitting still until they’re part of the scenery, scent and sound and motion. Still, the twins were curious. That was the key. That’s always the key. A desire for knowledge, to know. To discover.

After a few weeks, watching them play, I switched instruments. I carried the crimson case down to the garden, unwrapped the pale pinkish flute from its black velvet. This one longer, more intricate than the other, the long hollow bone inlaid at one end with a dark braid around its surface. Through the years, my mouth and hands have worn the bone smooth, small indents where my fingers dance over the holes, a softness where my lips settle to breathe.

The boy was the first to come, intrigued, his lips curling. He was too young to understand, I think, what happened to his mouth when he smiled, and so he smiled freely. At his sister, at a garden spider that he poked with a stick, at the sound of pebbles landing in an arc against an old grave marker. While he approached, she sat, leaning against a tilted grave marker taller than her, watching me without pretense, the patterns of leaves and sunlight spreading along her skin. From so far away, the mole was nearly impossible to see and her beauty was marred only by that perfection. I wanted her closer, to see her as she truly was. She was getting closer every day.

I could have acknowledged one or the other, but I merely kept playing, fingers dancing as my lips moved along the pale instrument, the material sheened and softened by years of playing, smooth as skin.

In the shy way that boys have, he circled far away, a moth unsure of the light, fluttering around as though the broken markers interested him, the broken twigs, the inn wall that edged against the cemetery. I kept playing, eyes mostly closed although I parted the lids enough to watch him. Coming ever closer, until finally, he was standing before me, kicking at a stone.

I played some more, no longer matching the bird songs, but taking them higher, slower. A lullaby and a morning song. Sleep and be awaked. I watched my fingers move over the instrument, not that it was necessary as long as I’ve been playing but children spook easily, like does or rabbits. You must let them approach while making them think you’re unaware.

The boy’s curiosity unable to stay hidden, he looked at me full-on. I watched the split of his lip open and close as he spoke.

“How do you make that sound?”

Not ceasing playing, I merely lifted the instrument higher, showed the places where my mouth moved along it. The tone changed, upbeat tempo, a danceable trill. Even the girl’s feet stopped their ragged swinging against the wall, began to beat in time.

“I could teach you,” I said, as the music died away. “Come tonight and I’ll teach you.”

* * *

It is easiest to start on a simple, hollow instrument. One or two holes for notes. Learning how to blow, move your breath through your chest. Rise. Fall. Space. Do it again.

“Everyone should have their own instrument,” I told the boy as I leaned against the tree trunk. The boy hadn’t come alone. His sister tagged along, always far out of reach, always watching and watching. She hung around the edge of the shadows, swinging her dress around her thighs. Sometimes she popped her thumbnail in her mouth, ran her tongue along the edge of it.

“Something simple to start," I added.

“I like yours,” he said. Petulant. Wanting. You could tell he’d been well-taught, the way his fluttery hands tucked into his pockets so he couldn’t grab.

I pulled the flute forward, held it out on my palms as reward for his good manners. “You can touch it,” I said. “But only the maker can play these flutes. They’re… special.”

It was true. How else to describe to these children what they were embarking upon, what learning experience awaited them? The same as my own, once, long ago.

“Do you want to make one? One for your very own?”

How could he resist such an offer? The boy nodded, sucked his lip. Behind me, the creatures moved in the dark confines of their metal cages. They made the same sound as the girl did when she twirled, her dress rustled against her thighs.

I looked at her, a careful look, from the corner of my eye. She wasn’t moving closer. But I could tell by the pull of her face below her mole, the flicker of her gaze as it jumped from her brother to the flute to me, that she wasn’t going away either.

“We’ll make a simple one-note to start,” I said. And the boy seemed pleased with that.

I brought the creatures forth, sleek and dark in their cage, fur like hematite. Teeth exploring the cages with a nip, but not a bite. They wouldn’t bite, of course, or run. Long tails slithering in the darkness. They were the biggest ones out of all that ones that had come. I’d kept one for each of us, and set the rest free. I am many things, but I am not a man of excess, no matter what they might say.

The boy didn’t flinch and, I was pleased to see, neither did she. Merely leaned closer, bending at the waist the way girls do who wear dresses, thumbnail dragging along her pointed tongue.

The knife was tucked inside the flute case, and I pulled it out, laying the flute on the dark material, close at hand in case I needed it.

“It’s very fast,” I said, as I reached it and took one of the rats by the neck, sliding the knife across it in one, slick movement. The boy winced slightly, maybe at the blood, maybe at the rat’s final shudder against the grass before it went still. I wanted to look at the girl, but she was behind me, circled behind the tree. The sound of her footsteps was stilled, though, and I knew she was watching, learning. She could come to me in time.

I held the boy to the knife, hilt toward him and nodded as he took it. His hands shook, but he seemed determined, squatting down next to the cage, eyeing the creatures.

“They won’t hurt you,” I said. It was true. “They’re only rats.” This was true also.

He was a good student that first night. I explained the importance of quick death, paying homage to the creatures under our care. Despite his trepidation, he took the rat’s life in a single movement. I nodded, pleased. “Tomorrow, I’ll show you how to make your flute.”

* * *

The other lessons didn’t go as well. Skinning, gathering the femur from the mess. He worked diligently, but he was hesitant, his hands clumsy, furrowing his brow and sucking air through his cleft so that it wheezed through his teeth.

And through it all, the girl watched, sometimes twirling around in her ever-present skirts. Sometimes staying still, crouched, nothing moving but her eyes. I knew she could hear me and I’d raise my voice just a little, enough to carry to her ears and no farther. Even if she wasn’t going to make a flute, I somehow felt it was important that she hear the lessons, that she have an understanding of what was being done.

Finally, the boy’s flute was done. A simple one-hole instrument — I couldn’t bear to watch him try to carve anything more into the bone with his clumsy hands — but it would do. I pushed my fingers across a similar instrument of my own, but didn’t breathe into it. They’d come for me, but he needed to bring them on his own.

“You do it,” I said. “You call them.”

They came, of course. They always do. They can’t help it.

Lower forms are the easiest, of course. Rats and birds and bats make simple, boring prey. They come, seduced by the call. Enthralled. Cats and dogs are harder, but not by much. Easy enough to tame. They succumb, as they must, to the music and the music-maker. But children, oh children are the hardest of all. Such complex, complicated brains. Curious, calculating, ever-expanding. Children must be beguiled and enticed. They must be left to decide on their own whether they will be seduced, and in what form, and to what degree.

The rats, simple creatures, streamed across the grass in a low dance of moving bodies and tails. Quiet beneath the music, settling around the boy. Waiting to see what he’d do, what he wanted of them.

“What do I do with ‘em?”

I had to hold back a sigh. I’d hoped for more from this pupil. Perhaps I’d miscalculated, been swayed by their imperfect beauty, jumped too soon?

He sucked air in through his lip, and I leaned down and smiled to him, fingers playing along the pinkish flute in my fingers, but not putting it to my mouth.

“Whatever you like,” I said. “Take them through the gravestones, like a dance. Take them to the center of town and back. They’ll follow you.”

And being given permission, or perhaps just the idea, he nodded. Put his lips to the tiny, one-holed flute and played a few notes. The rats shifted, moved around him in a swarm of one. Gaining confidence, he stood, still trilling his notes, walking backwards as though afraid to let them from his sight, and stepped between the graves, watching them swarm and circle in his footsteps. The creatures followed, of course, as they had to, as they wanted to. Letting him lead them anywhere he wanted to go.

I watched him lead the rats away, drawing my curled fingers along the length of the instrument, listening to her rustle in the grass behind me. I paid her no mind, just began wrapping my flute up, nesting inside the soft fabric.

“Mister,” she said, from far off, still on the edge of shadow and light.

“Mister,” she said again, and this time, she came closer still, squatting in front of me, the hem of her dress whispering against the grass. She touched my arm, and I looked up at her, looked at her squarely for the first time. Her eyes, in the deepening dark, were a steely blue, almost purpled against the dusk, and the mole at the side of her eye took on a shadow all its own.

We waited in silence, my hand falling still on the flute, only my thumb sliding over the very end of it, the sound a soft swash of skin and bone.

“I don’t want to catch dirty old rats,” she said, her nose wrinkled so that her mole bobbed against her eye. I felt a sudden, sharp catch in my chest that pushed my breath out in a near-laugh. Ah, girls. So hidden and yet so wanton in their desires. The ones that always surprise you.

“What do you want to catch?” I asked.

She fell silent. She wasn’t used to be asked about her wants, I could see it in her face as she considered this new thing, tongue flickering along her thumbnail. She shifted her eyes to the place where her brother had disappeared, and back to me.

Then she leaned in and whispered her soft girl voice in my ear.

A stir of pride rose through me at her request, so strong it nearly knocked my breath out. Me — someone whose every breath mattered, whose every exhale made a note, a sound, a sound.

“Let’s begin,” I said when I could catch the air to speak again.

*

She’d learned a great deal listening to me teach her brother, just as I’d hoped she would. I made her create a rat flute just for practice and her movements were quick and sure. She never hesitated, or questioned. Merely moved the knife as though she’d done such a thing a hundred, a thousand times before.

“Now you can play it,” I said when it was done.

But she only shook her head and tucked the tiny flute into her pocket, as though she knew it would do her no good to charm rats. As though she wasn’t willing to waste the breath.

Her brother was back by then anyway, playing the creatures as a puppeteer plays his puppets. Forcing them to follow and back. He wasn’t a master of creating his instrument, but it was clear he was learning how to control it and play it, as well as the creatures who followed.

“Now?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Another night.” I wanted her to be sure. She was so young, after all.

* * *

“Will it hurt him?” she asked.

“It will,” I said.

But that didn’t stop her. “I’ll make it quick,” she said.

And she did.

* * *

She learned to play her bone flute so well. Better than I ever did. Better than I ever will.

Her instrument was beautifully made, bearing five holes down the long, pink-hued bone. She inlaid the end with a few pieces of tooth, their off-white gleam shining as she moved. She played to the children in the cemetery, and of course, they came to her, swirling and playing, curiosity glazing their eyes. The space was filled with the noise of children, and parents were happy for it, thinking them safe. Thinking them unspoiled between the graves of their loves ones, unmarked by the music that swelled and wheeled around them.

* * *

“What can I do now?” She’d taken to sitting on my lap while she played. I found that I didn’t mind. She had become in my mind, if not daughter, then student, protégé. I had grown both fond and proud of her. She was ever-curious, ever-learning. Writing new songs that made the children do things — tear the wings from butterflies, snarl like wild dogs, hold hands and disappear off into the forest without a thought. Children were the hardest, the hardest to enthrall, and yet they did it for her. They practically begged.

“What do you want to do?” I said. My hands traced her dress as it lay flared over my thighs, but I was thinking nothing of the action. I was thinking it was time to move on. To leave her to her studies, to see what she will do on her own. I was itching for a new student. My fingers ached to play again, to tame something new and wild. I missed that movement, that movement of first note, of first rapture. The patience of waiting. She had surpassed me, and there was nothing more for me to do here.

“Watch,” she said. She lifted the instrument to her lips, a few soft notes. A boy stepped forward, a girl too. They were watching her, their hands entwined. That was her new song, making them touch. Hands. Fingers. Hips.

She played, and the children turned, mouths pressing together, such soft, tiny mouths. Perfect rosebuds. She played and their small bodies move together, remove the air between them.

“Stop!” I had to push her off my lap so hard that her music flared and then faltered.

“But…” She pushed her lip out, near tears. Her mole slid, as though it was melting against her skin.

I took a softer tone. I didn’t mean to scare her. I didn’t mean to scare myself.

“You can’t make people do those things,” I said. "There is a line, a line of..." Of what? I didn't know.

She bit over her lip, nodding. I could not see her eyes, and I knew there was something in there. Something I should have been wary of.

“Do you understand?” I asked, even though I wasn't sure I did.

She was still nodding. Chin up and down. The flute tucked behind her back like a secret.

“Good.” I kneeled before her, looking up into that blue gaze, the pale lashes, the mole that perfected her beauty.

“I have to go away for a while,” I said.

She would not meet my eyes.

* * *

The new flute is beautiful. More so than the last. Even I have to admit it. She made it all by herself, without any help from me. Seven holes, not five. Long and pinkish, starting to be worn smooth by her constant playing. A startling green gem, as if from a man’s ring, inlaid at the end.

Leaning against the tree at night, her fingers fly, fly over the holes. Her music swells through the cemetery, between the graves, slides along the shadows and deepens them.

She makes me do things. Things I would never do. Things I should never do, not to a child, so soft, so pale, so perfect. But I cannot help it. She plays me, and I am hers.