High and Lifted Up

It was a windy day.

The mailman barely made it to the front door. When the door opened, Mrs. Pennington said, "hello", but, before she had a real chance to say "thank you", the mail blew out of the mailman's hands, into the house and the front door slammed in his face. Mrs. Pennington ran to pick up the mail.

"Oh my," she said.

Tommy was watching the shutters open and then shut, open and then shut.

"Mom," he said, "may I go outside?"

"Be careful," she said. "It's so windy today."

Tommy crawled down from the window-seat and ran to the door. He opened it with a bang. The wind blew fiercely and snatched the newly recovered mail from Mrs. Pennington's hands and blew it even further into the house.

"Oh my," she said again. Tommy ran outside and the door slammed shut.

Outside, yellow, gold, and red leaves were leaping from swaying trees, landing on the roof, jumping off the roof, and then chasing one another down the street in tiny whirlwinds of merriment.

Tommy watched in fascination.

"If I was a leaf, I would fly clear across the world," Tommy thought and then ran out into the yard among the swirl of colors.

Mrs. Pennington came to the front porch.

"Tommy, I have your jacket. Please put it on."

However, there was no Tommy in the front yard.

"Tommy?"

Tommy was a leaf. He was blowing down the street with the rest of his play-mates.

A maple leaf came close-by, touched him and moved ahead. Tommy met him shortly, brushed against him, and moved further ahead. They swirled around and around, hit cars and poles, flew up into the air and then down again.

"This is fun," Tommy thought.

The maple leaf blew in front of him. It was bright red with well-defined veins. The sun-light shone through it giving it a brilliance never before seen by a little boy's eyes.

"Where do you think we are going?" Tommy asked the leaf.

"Does it matter?" the leaf replied. "Have fun. Life is short."

"I beg to differ," an older leaf said suddenly coming beside them. "The journey may be short, but the end is the beginning."

Tommy pondered this the best a leaf could ponder.

"Where do we end up?"

"If the wind blows you in that direction," the old leaf said, "you will end up in the city dump."

"I don't want that," Tommy said.

"If you are blown in that direction, you will fly high into the air and see things that no leaf has seen before."

"Follow me to the city dump," the maple leaf said. "Most of my friends are there."

The wind blew Tommy and the maple leaf along. Tommy thought of his choices. He wanted to continue to play.

"Okay," Tommy said, "I will go with you to the dump."

The winds shifted and Tommy and the leaf were blown in the direction of the city dump.

The old leaf didn't follow. He was blown further down the block and suddenly lifted up high into the air.

"Hey," he called out, "the sights up here. They are spectacular. Come and see."

Tommy and the maple leaf ignored him.

"I see something. I see the dump." The old leaf cried out. "I see smoke. Come up here. I see fire."

"I see nothing," the maple leaf said.

Tommy saw the fence that surrounded the city dump. He was happy to be with his friend. They would have fun in the dump.

Suddenly, a car pulled up. It was Tommy's mom. Mrs. Pennington wasn't about to let her little boy run into the city dump.

"Not so fast," she said getting out of the car. "You are not allowed to play in there. Don't you see the smoke?"

Tommy watched the maple leaf blow against the wall and struggle to get over. He ran over to get it but was unable to reach it.

Mrs. Pennington walked over and took the leaf. She put it in her pocket.

"There," she said, "it will be safe until we get home."

Tommy smiled, ran to the car and got in. He rolled down the back window and looked up into the sky. He wondered where the old leaf had gone. Perhaps one day he would see what the old leaf had seen - perhaps.King Grisly-BeardA great king of a land far away in the East had a daughter who was very beautiful, but so proud and haughty and conceited, that none of the princes who came to ask for her hand in marriage was good enough for her. All she ever did was make fun of them.

Once upon a time the king held a great feast and invited all her suitors. They all sat in a row, ranged according to their rank -- kings and princes and dukes and earls and counts and barons and knights. When the princess came in, as she passed by them, she had something spiteful to say to each one.

The first was too fat: 'He's as round as a tub,' she said.

The next was too tall: 'What a maypole!' she said.

The next was too short: 'What a dumpling!' she said.

The fourth was too pale, and she called him 'Wallface.'

The fifth was too red, so she called him 'Coxcomb.'

The sixth was not straight enough; so she said he was like a green stick that had been laid to dry over a baker's oven. She had some joke to crack about every one. But she laughed most of all at a good king who was there.

'Look at him,' she said; 'his beard is like an old mop; he shall be called Grisly-beard.' So the king got the nickname of Grisly-beard.

But the old king was very angry when he saw how his daughter behaved and how badly she treated all his guests. He vowed that, willing or unwilling, she would marry the first man that came to the door.

Two days later a travelling fiddler came by the castle. He began to play under the window and begged for money and when the king heard him, he said, 'Let him come in.'

So, they brought the dirty-looking fellow in and, when he had sung before the king and the princess, he begged for a gift.

The king said, 'You have sung so well that I will give you my daughter to take as your wife.'

The princess begged and prayed; but the king said, 'I have sworn to give you to the first man who came to the door, and I will keep my word.'

Words and tears were to no avail; the parson was sent for, and she was married to the fiddler.

When this was over, the king said, 'Now get ready to leave -- you must not stay here -- you must travel with your husband.'

So the fiddler left the castle, and took the princess with him.

Soon they came to a great wood.

'Pray,' she said, 'whose is this wood?'

'It belongs to King Grisly-beard,' he answered; 'hadst thou taken him, all would have been thine.'

'Ah! unlucky wretch that I am!' she sighed; 'would that I had married King Grisly-beard!'

Next they came to some fine meadows.

'Whose are these beautiful green meadows?' she said.

'They belong to King Grisly-beard, hadst thou taken him, they would all have been thine.'

'Ah! unlucky wretch that I am!' she said; 'would that I had married King Grisly-beard!'

Then they came to a great city. 'Whose is this noble city?' she said.

'It belongs to King Grisly-beard; hadst thou taken him, it would all have been thine.'

'Ah! wretch that I am!' she sighed; 'why did I not marry King Grisly-beard?'

'That is no business of mine,' said the fiddler, 'why should you wish for another husband? Am I not good enough for you?'

At last they came to a small cottage. 'What a paltry place!' she said; 'to whom does that little dirty hole belong?'

The fiddler said, 'That is your and my house, where we are to live.'

'Where are your servants?' she cried.

'What do we want with servants?' he said; 'you must do for yourself whatever is to be done. Now make the fire, and put on water and cook my supper, for I am very tired.'

But the princess knew nothing of making fires and cooking, and the fiddler was forced to help her.

When they had eaten a very scanty meal they went to bed; but the fiddler called her up very early in the morning to clean the house.

They lived like that for two days and when they had eaten up all there was in the cottage, the man said, 'Wife, we can't go on thus, spending money and earning nothing. You must learn to weave baskets.'

Then the fiddler went out and cut willows, and brought them home, and she began to weave; but it made her fingers very sore.

'I see this work won't do,' he said, 'try and spin; perhaps you will do that better.'

So she sat down and tried to spin; but the threads cut her tender fingers until the blood ran.

'See now,' said the fiddler, 'you are good for nothing; you can do no work. What a bargain I have got! However, I'll try and set up a trade in pots and pans, and you shall stand in the market and sell them.'

'Alas!' she sighed, 'if any of my father's court should pass by and see me standing in the market, how they will laugh at me!'

But her husband did not care about that, and said she would have to work if she did not want to die of hunger.

At first the trade went well because many people, seeing such a beautiful woman, went to buy her wares and paid their money without even thinking of taking away the goods. They lived on this as long as it lasted and then her husband bought a fresh lot of pots and pans, and she sat herself down with it in the corner of the market.

However, soon a drunken soldier soon came by and rode his horse against her stall and broke all her goods into a thousand pieces.

She began to cry, and did not know what to do. 'Ah! what will become of me?' she said; 'what will my husband say?' So she ran home and told him everything.

'Who would have thought you would have been so silly,' he said, 'as to put an earthenware stall in the corner of the market, where everybody passes? But let us have no more crying; I see you are not fit for this sort of work, so I have been to the king's palace, and asked if they did not want a kitchen-maid; and they say they will take you, and there you will have plenty to eat.'

So the princess became a kitchen-maid and helped the cook to do all the dirtiest work. She was allowed to carry home some of the meat that was left over, and they lived on that.

She had not been there long before she heard that the king's eldest son was passing by, on his way to get married. She went to one of the windows and looked out. Everything was ready and all the pomp and brightness of the court was there. Seeing it, she grieved bitterly for the pride and folly that had brought her so low. The servants gave her some of the rich meats and she put them into her basket to take home.

All of a sudden, as she was leaving, in came the king's son in his golden clothes. When he saw such a beautiful woman at the door, he took her by the hand and said she should be his partner in the dance. She trembled with fear because she saw that it was King Grisly-beard, who was making fun of her. However, he kept hold of her, and led her into the hall. As she entered, the cover of the basket came off, and the meats in it fell out. Everybody laughed and jeered at her and she was so ashamed that she wished she were a thousand feet deep in the earth. She sprang over to the door so that she could run away but on the steps King Grisly-beard overtook her, brought her back and said:

'Fear me not! I am the fiddler who has lived with you in the hut. I brought you there because I truly loved you. I am also the soldier that overset your stall. I have done all this only to cure you of your silly pride, and to show you the folly of your ill-treatment of me. Now it is all over: you have learnt wisdom, and it is time to hold our marriage feast.'

Then the chamberlains came and brought her the most beautiful robes. Her father and his whole court were already there, and they welcomed her home. Joy was in every face and every heart. The feast was grand; they danced and sang; everyone was merry; and I only wish that you and I had been there.

Performance

By Charles Etheridge-Nunn

What if it was zombies?Its not zombies.Or aliens, like in War of the Worlds.Thats just a movie.Or, maybe, Olly hesitated, to build the drama of his statement, Maybe were all actually dead and this is like, the afterlife or purgatory or something.Manny stopped and put his second-hand Eclipse bass on the cracked pavement.Dude, you need to stop doing this. Its not cool.But something big must have happened. Our whole citys destroyed. Everywhere, probably everywhere, is destroyed.Its not a conspiracy. Weve had a giant disaster and now almost everyones dead.Or were like, dead.Stop it. Its not dignified to to them. To the dead. The real dead.But who did this? Something must have happened. If my MP was alive, Id write an angry letter, Olly shook his arm with the heavily-stickered guitar case in it. Could we keep going? Im losing the feeling in my arm.Manny picked his bass back up and Olly followed him along the empty road.Why cant we just play at home? Olly asked.Mines destroyed. What about yours?Oh, yeah. I guess the studio is, too.Totally. I checked it out before I found you.Thats kind of insulting. Do you prefer the studio to me?No, Manny wanted to stop himself, but didnt. We had band practice. I was running late and Im guessing you were too.Yeah. I dont have a watch or anything.Thats when I found them, or, what was left of them.There was silence in respect for Sarah and Justin, the singer and drummer in the band, who hadnt been spoken of since the first news came. Mannys free hand went to his pocket, where Sarahs bracelet was. Hed cleaned the blood from it and decided to keep it in her memory. He couldnt find anything other than Justins shoe with his foot still in it. Manny wasnt going to take the foot out, just for the beaten lime green Converse, held together with gaffa tape and now coated in streaks of dark blood.They walked along the centre of Preston Road, away from the few large buildings which were still standing. Many creaked ominously in the light wind, threatening to drop debris on them if they got too close. Plumes of smoke were less common this far away from the centre, but an office building was burning while an ugly, abandoned, boarded up building with paintings on the windows was intact. The end had come and it wasnt selective with its choices.Were practicing in the park, Manny finally continued. Because weve not got a home or a studio or other friends any more, so why not just use somewhere public. No ones going to hear us or bother us.So whatll we do about needing a singer and drummer?Manny replied Just play without any for now. Hopefully well find someone who can fill in for them some day, but its not likely.You never know.That made them wish either of them could sing. They provided harmonies occasionally, but it wasnt pretty. Luckily the music drowned most of that out.The pair turned off the road, crossing at a zebra crossing with a Belisha beacon still flashing as if there was still traffic to watch out for. They walked onto the grass of the park. Half of it was missing, scorched and blasted into craters by the past few days events, but the rest looked just the same as normal. A large, grassy slope with small outcroppings of litter, trees lining the top end of the park and pristine greens for playing bowls. Old people would normally have been here in this warm weather, but given the recent apocalypse, the bowls club seemed like the least necessary thing to still be intact. The playground was sealed up for refurbishment, but that would never happen now.Walking towards the small terracotta-coloured clock tower which had stopped working many years earlier, Olly and Manny opened their guitar cases and started tuning their instruments.In Ollys mind, the rest of the park was full of adoring fans, just waiting for them to start playing, he held his guitar aloft and took a bow. Manny was still preparing. Olly bowed again. They owed it to the fans, after all.Finally, both performers were ready and started strumming the few tunes they had committed to memory. They only knew one original song, the rest were other peoples. Sarah wrote their music and most of it wasnt easy for them to remember. The jaunty indie chords bounced around the empty park, past the tennis courts, past the now-eternally-closed toilets and muffled through the trees. In their minds, this music would go on forever, all the way across the town, where there was no sound. No cars, no shoppers, no fire engines or trains. Just their music, punctuated by the occasional seagull, venturing in from the sea.Mannys thoughts washed away with the music and he was with Olly in the imagined concert. Party in the Park or one of the others held here. He guessed there probably wouldnt be one this year, but a disaster this big shouldnt stop their art. For Olly, it was his only skill, and Manny preferred it to his admin work at the council.The music drowned out the nearby noises of squirrels looking for food, of a fox dragging an old formerly-frozen chicken from what had once been a kitchen over the road. The fox dropped the chicken and ran when it heard a different noise Olly and Manny hadnt. A slow hop, followed by a dragging noise. Tuneless, but it had not been intended as music.Only when the birds flew away and the dragging noise was upon them, did Manny and Olly notice the bloodied form limping towards them.Zombies!!! Olly shouted, wielding his 150 guitar by the neck as a weapon.Shut up! Manny said to Olly before turning to the man who had just found his way to them, Are you alright?The question was redundant. Of course he wasnt alright, but it seemed like the default thing to ask. One of his legs was evidently broken, his fingers on one hand were all crumpled in different directions and there was dried blood down one side of his head, from an injury which must have taken place around three days ago, when the disaster struck. His eyes werent focussing and his jaw moved, trying to say something but no noise came.Olly, find a car. Find anything that can get us to a hospital.The hospital might not be there any more.I dont care!Olly sighed and ran, still with his guitar held high. Manny took a bottle of now-warm, half-drunk water from his backpack and walked up to the wounded man. Natural spring water, with a hint of raspberry.Here, drink some of this.He put one arm around the man, twisted open the bottle cap with one hand and helped pour some water between his parched lips.ThThanks, the man whispered, his throat still raw, dry and barely working.My friendll get us some wheels and we can go to the hospital. Itll be okay.Thought I was the only one.Till you heard us playing?The man nodded. Manny smiled and helped the man lean against the clock tower, leaving streaks of red dripping down the bricks. He kept reassuring the man everything would be alright, but wondered where Olly had gone. Eventually, there was the unfamiliar noise of a vehicle. It had only been three days, but since then there were only two instances where either Olly or Manny saw traffic, and they were heading away from town. The noise of a motor, of exhaust, of tires on any kind of surface, they sounded positively alien, especially this close.A van with a painting of a unicorn smoking a spliff on the side rumbled down the uneven ground and over the grass near the clock tower. Olly waved from the window as he went, nearly hitting a tree before the remembered to brake.He ran out of the van and opened up the back doors.I found this travelling man van down the road, the keys were still in it, he called through the trees.Travelling man?Manny started dragging the wounded man across the grass and towards Ollys voice.Pikey didnt sound right. They just looked like hippy vans rather than pikies. And gypsy didnt seem right either. Is it not PC to say gypsy?It doesnt matter, no ones going to get offended if theyre all dead. Just help me get this man up there.Sure, Olly ran and lifted the man by his legs, making him cry out in pain. Theres, like a mattress in there and everything. And a kettle, but I had to unplug the gas generator thingie.It took two tries, but Manny and Olly managed to raise the man and place him gently inside the van, where he crawled to the mattress with little aid. Manny clambered up with him and Olly went back into the drivers seat.There was a small gap between the front of the van and the home section of it, which had wood panelling, pictures, cups, a kettle, fire-building equipment, two fold-up deck chairs and a little cupboard.Olly started the van up again and they rumbled down towards Preston Road, back where they came from.Be careful of craters and broken things, Manny advised. We dont want to burst a tire.I know what to do, he sensed Manny wasnt convinced and said, Put your hand up if you can drive.Olly kept one hand on the wheel and raised the other. The wounded man tried to raise his, but Mannys hands stayed down. He fumed, quietly.See? Im in charge when it comes to driving. Now wheres the hospital?Manny sat with the man on the mattress, trying to keep him from sliding around while he gave directions to Olly, who protested that of course he knew the way to the hospital. Theyd driven there after the drumstick incident two years back. Simultaneously their best and worst performance, according to their Facebook group.The trip was longer than expected, most of the roads were damaged and unusable, forcing an erratic route to be travelled slowly around the streets, triumphantly ignoring the one-way system. Eventually, they made their way towards the road which led directly to the hospital. The building, an old workhouse, was visible and ominous from most of the city. It looked more like a background prop in a horror movie that a real place. Moreso now that a pillar of black smoke was rising from the stacks.Olly signalled Manny to come into the front of the van, which he did with great difficulty, squeezing his lanky frame through the gap and landing head-first in the passenger seat.What is it?Olly pointed at the black column rising into the sky and shushed Manny from saying anything, nodding back to their injured colleague.He spoke anyway, Cant still be burning. Its been three days. Keep going. Everythingll be fine.Olly nodded and Manny just about made it back to where their bloody cargo had passed out.Eventually, they pulled into the hospital. The area in front was conspicuously empty of ambulances, but plenty of abandoned cars from people with the same idea. It was intact, a fact which would be so mundane a few days ago. Now it seemed miraculous, like some white-painted, stark-looking Mecca.Two men and a woman ran out to greet them. One looked like a doctor, in a bloodstained white coat. The others just looked like normal people. Uninjured, but still with harrowed, dedicated looks to them.Weve got a guy in the back. Hes pretty badly hurt.Hes got, like, blood everywhere, Olly added.The pair opened the vans back doors and helped the two assistants drag the man into the hospitals reception.Can you help him? Manny asked the doctor, who was following the others.Possibly. Were short on supplies, weve got no electricity and the back of the building was badly hit.But youve helped other people?Weve tried. Only a few this bad. Could you both stay out here? You really dont want to go any further indoors.The man was taken by the assistants and led through a set of doors into what was once a waiting room. For a moment, Manny could see blood spattered across the floor, patients slumped on seats being seen to by overworked doctors. The door swung closed and the pair were alone. One of the assistants walked out a moment later.Dont worry, the doctor will look after him.But, theres loads of people back there. Loads of badly wounded people.And well do our best for as many as we can. There are four doctors and about ten volunteers working in there.Wow.Yes.I dont have any first aid knowledge, it felt terrible not being able to join in and help, but Manny needed to justify himself.Well could you leave please? Weve got work to do.Olly had left part way through the womans sentence, Manny followed, letting them get back to work. They sat on the back of the van, Olly picked at his bass while Manny realised that he had left his guitar in the park. They would have to go back and get it. The monstrosity (his name for it) wouldnt be of any value to looters.Dyou think hes okay? Olly asked.No idea.The building didnt look on fire.No.What dyou think the black smoke is?Id rather not know. Should we wait for him?Olly nodded and leaned back on the mattress, having turned it over so he didnt get blood on him.An hour passed. Then two. The road, despite normally being busy, was completely empty. From here it was possible to survey all of the devastation which had taken place over the city. So many buildings were gone, just rubble now. Only a small amount were left and there was no sign of life. As the sunlight started to dip, the light pollution which the pair had become so familiar with was gone. None of the orange glow from street lights, permeating every corner. Just darkness.The assistant who had made them leave walked up to the vans door and looked in, Hi.Hey, Manny said.Just thought youd want to know, weve seen your guy. Greg, I think it was.Oh?Hell spend a lot of time recovering, but at the moment hes okay. Apparently he thought he was the only one left alive and was trapped under a wall for days. He couldnt move far and had given up hope until he heard you two.Manny smiled.What?We saved him.Thats pretty much what I was saying.Our music saved him.I guess it did.The assistant excused herself and walked back to into the building. Unsure where to go and what to do, the pair just sat in the van, the moon rising above them. The city started to show signs of life, little lights where fires were being lit by survivors.Manny started playing his guitar again

Classic Short StoriesA Haunted HousebyVirginia WoolfWhatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure--a ghostly couple.

"Here we left it," she said. And he added, "Oh, but here tool" "It's upstairs," she murmured. "And in the garden," he whispered. "Quietly," they said, "or we shall wake them."

But it wasn't that you woke us. Oh, no. "They're looking for it; they're drawing the curtain," one might say, and so read on a page or two. "Now they've found it,' one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. "What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?" My hands were empty. "Perhaps its upstairs then?" The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass.

But they had found it in the drawing room. Not that one could ever see them. The windowpanes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the ceiling--what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed the carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound. "Safe, safe, safe" the pulse of the house beat softly. "The treasure buried; the room . . ." the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure?

A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare, coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burned behind the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us, coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs. "Safe, safe, safe," the pulse of the house beat gladly. 'The Treasure yours."

The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still. Wandering through the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.

"Here we slept," she says. And he adds, "Kisses without number." "Waking in the morning--" "Silver between the trees--" "Upstairs--" 'In the garden--" "When summer came--" 'In winter snowtime--" "The doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.

Nearer they come, cease at the doorway. The wind falls, the rain slides silver down the glass. Our eyes darken, we hear no steps beside us; we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern. "Look," he breathes. "Sound asleep. Love upon their lips."

Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long they look and deeply. Long they pause. The wind drives straightly; the flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.

"Safe, safe, safe," the heart of the house beats proudly. "Long years--" he sighs. "Again you found me." "Here," she murmurs, "sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure--" Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. "Safe! safe! safe!" the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry "Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart."

Music Tonight?by Stephen Policoff

Music today? Anna asks me.It is only the second time this morning she has asked, so I do not sigh as I occasionally do, after a fourth or fifth time of asking.Not today, Sweets, this is Tuesday. Music is Wednesday. Tomorrow.Tomorrow, she murmurs. But she is not convinced and somewhere between the huge fistful of pills she must consume every morning and our anxious ritual of staring out the window at Bleecker St., willing her school bus to appear, she is almost certain to ask again, Music today?It is not that she doesnt remember my previous answer nor that she does not believe what I say. It is that, in the blur of Annas life, music is the single distant star by which she steers. Her school, her sister Jane, her cat Ruby Bridges, her beloved Mom (Kate), her beloved Dad (me) these are the parameters of her constricted life. But music alone seems to lift her over the wall. In her mind, music should be every dayso why isnt it today?Anna, now 16, was adopted from China, the loveliest and sweetest 6-month old anyone had ever seen. Though she was slow to walk and talk, she was always beguiled by music. She could sing along with Beatle songs before she could speak sentences. At 5, after a fluke accident landed her in the emergency room (followed by seven stressful visits to seven doctors in seven months), she was diagnosed with Niemann-Pick C, an extremely rare, extremely terrible, progressive neurogenetic disorder. More than a decade later, there is still no cure for NPC, and no real treatment. It will almost certainly snuff out her little light before she reaches adulthood.Even at the Mayo Clinic, where we dragged her in 2001, hoping her diagnosis might be proved wrong, Annas love of music ameliorated the overwhelming sadness my wife and I felt. On the bus from the hotel to the neurology center, Anna belted out one of her favorite songs. Oh, Susanna! Susanna dont you cry! she sang, unselfconsciously, over and over. Even the stricken men and women who rode the bus with us smiled that morning.Though she struggled in school and with simple, everyday tasks Anna never struggled to sing. She would make up little songs about her life My hands are soap, my hands are soap, I dont know what to do because my hands are soap and once, on a visit to Florida, she amused and amazed her grandmother and aunts by picking up a ukulele, strumming and blaring a collage of song lyrics and nonsense words for over an hour.When she was 7, we signed her up for the Childrens Chorus at NYU, where I teach. For 4 years, she proudly performed in their annual Winter Concert, even if the intricate words to Sleigh Ride occasionally slurred into nonsensicality. As her walking and standing became increasingly shaky, she still managed to teeter onto the stage and sing her beautiful heart out, causing her little sister to bounce up and down in her seat, shouting, Yay! Anna!But when Anna turned 12, as in some disturbing fairytale, the black cloud of seizures descended on her, pushing her already precarious life closer to the edge. We decided she could not perform that December, shuddering at the imagined image of her seizure-stiff body toppling off the stage. The following spring she went down like a tree in our apartment hallway, her face skidding on the floor, giving her 2 black eyes and rug burns on one porcelain cheek.She was supposed to be the lead in a Singing in the Rain ensemble in her special ed schools end-of-the-year talent show. Did she feel embarrassed by looking like a piece of bruised meat? Hesitate to show her wounds to the audience? No way. Her adored theater teacher simply pulled a yellow rain hat down over one of Annas swollen eyes to minimize the impact. Anna sat in a chair while her classmates did their dance, and she was singing, just singing in the rain.But once she began having seizures, Annas school which, in theory, welcomed children with neurological conditions could barely contain its eagerness for Anna to be gone. We spent much of that dismal year slogging around New York trying to find an appropriate school for Anna.At the Hebrew Academy for Special Children in Brooklyn a school I was pretty sure was inappropriate for my Chinese Catholic daughter I watched a woman distribute bells, drums, and horns to a class of severely impacted special needs students.Music therapy, she told me, when she saw me staring. Our children love it. You know the old saying, music has charms Anna did end up attending HASC (she triples their diversity just by showing up), where she is content and appreciated. And the idea of music therapy stuck with me. Anna, once a giggling, happy child, often was quiet and sad now. Was this merely a side-effect of her many meds? A recognition that the busy social life she had always savored after school Girls Club, play dates and sleepovers with her more neurotypical buddies was slipping away? She seemed to crave a companion, or an activity that would lift her spirits and act as a doorway into more hopeful possibilities.So, when a neighbor noted that his autistic son was doing music therapy right here at NYU, I flinched, as if he had just transmitted an electric shock.Why didnt I know about this? I demanded.Its a big place, he shrugged.At NYUs Nordoff-Robbins Center, Anna was given an assessment session, where she banged on gongs and a keyboard, strummed a guitar and a harp, blew a horn, responded to questions and mimicked the therapists movements. We think shes a natural, the therapist told us. We think we can help her.For the past 3 years, Anna has gone once a week to the Nordoff-Robbins Center, a few blocks from our apartment. For the past 3 years, she has looked forward every day to that one day. There, nudged and nurtured by one therapist on the piano and one who sits next to her to facilitate therapy, Anna listens, moves her often immovable body, plays and sings, and lights up like a firefly.If, as Walter Pater once observed, all art aspires to the state of music, perhaps all therapy should aspire to the state of music therapy. Although her therapists are trained educators, and make use of skills akin to those of psychologists and MSWs, music therapy embraces an improvisational component which allies the therapists more closely with jazz musicians and artists. It is, in every sense, action therapy, in which both therapist and client respond to the mood, emotion, and ambience to create a musical moment, a collaboration which enables the client to express emotions or transcend a difficult experience.Considerable research exists to suggest that music therapy is especially effective in helping autistic and emotionally troubled children push their way out of the cell of the imprisoned self, and touch upon feelings and thoughts they may not have been aware they had. Each child is urged through music to become an active partner in a musical relationship, observes Michele Ritholz, who works with Anna and is one of the directors of the Nordoff-Robbins Center. Because of this relationship, developmental goals emerge, and are worked through over the course of many months. In my experience, it is a therapy that clients love to be involved with, even as they are working hard.For Anna, working hard at something has often led to frustration and discouragement. Music therapy allows her to accomplish, to create, to complete simple experiences which most of us take for granted, but which the cruelty of her enervated condition often does not allow her.Watching her sessions, I have been struck by how strongly Anna responds to musical suggestions. This is a kid whose disease makes her speech clumsy, at times all but inaudible. Provide her with a song to sing and suddenly she is belting it out like a nightclub chanteuse. When she enters the studio, and her therapist begins to sing and play the piano, Anna will join right in, even if she was nodding out seconds before. She picks up the beat, she bobs along, sometimes rhythmically moving her body in the wheelchair where she is often slumped for most of the day. Despite the serious weakness of all her muscles, she will even try pounding the piano keys, banging a drum, shaking bells. She nearly always senses the next note and approximates it.Anna loves to sing. I should be clear here that her voice is downright weird. Sometimes, she sounds like she has smoked too many cigarettes (her whiskey voice, Kate calls it). Sometimes she sounds like shes deaf, has never heard normal speech; other times, she lapses into an almost falsetto chant. Yet there are few sweeter sounds to us especially if we have spent the past half hour trying to extract from her even a single phrase about her day.Ask her a direct question and you will get a stammered word or two at most. Play a song and shell begin to shout out the words even if she has never heard them before.Occasionally, this creates a cognitively dissonant moment, as when I put on Amy Winehouse for background music while I assembled dinner, only to hear Anna bellowing, I told you I was trouble / You know that Im no good! Sometimes, I even have to ask her to stop singing when shes taking her many pills, for instance, or desultorily trying to chew her dinner (which can take an hour). If its a song she especially loves, she gives me such a look; she is a teenager, after all.Surreal and occasionally disconcerting, Annas passion for singing is also clearly therapeutic in a variety of ways. She becomes motivated to use her intact physical skills, to use her voice more dynamically, and to push past challenges, her therapist points out.And sometimes when she sings, it is so clear to me that music is the one true balm to the sorrow of her life, a way to express that which she cannot express has never been able to express in any other way. Not once in all of her life has Anna said she didnt feel good; rarely has she even said that she felt upset or angry. Is this just her stoic personality? An inability to find the right words? A neurological deficit which keeps her from feeling pain? We have never been sure. Now that her disease is nibbling away at all of her functioning and she is less able to speak at length, we will probably never know. Yet music therapy sometimes acts as a slender bridge into Annas inner life.A few months ago, I met her school bus as I do most days, and pushed her wheelchair the few blocks to the NYU building which houses the Nordoff-Robbins Center. She seemed grumpy, though, and did not say Yay! as she often does when I tell her were heading to music.It was a day on which her mother was away. Kate travels on business and has since Anna was a baby. Anna is used to this. When her sister Jane was younger and whimpered for Mommy, it gave Anna a big sister thrill to say, Dont cry, Jane, Mommy is just in Minneapolis. But something about her mood that day made me wonder. As we rode up in the elevator, I offhandedly asked, Are you sad about Mommy not being home tonight? Suddenly, just as we arrived at the Center, Annas face contorted, turned red; tears began streaming down her lovely face. She misses her Mom, I sighed, as she was wheeled off to the studio for her session.Taking her cue from Annas tears, her therapist played a few mournful notes. Are you sad today? she sang.Anna nodded, bobbing her head to the music. Sad. I miss my Mom, she said, voice rising a little in song.I miss my Mom, the therapist played, I miss my Mom. As she played the simple but melancholy notes on the piano, she sang the words that Anna had just spoken. Anna replied in song too, I miss my Mom, I miss my Mom, she sang out, louder, fuller, more passionately.And then and this is one of those musical moments it is so hard to put into words the therapist ever so slightly altered the tune. The chords changed from minor to major. She sang, But its OK, shell be back soon, shell be back soon Anna lifted her head. The faint suggestion of a smile seemed to cross her face. As the song continued to build, she sang, clearly, strongly: Shell be back soon, its OK, its OK.When she came out of the studio, the tears were gone, and she was still singing, Its OK, its OK.Later that evening, I put on a cd; it was a Beach Boys compilation, one of Annas old favorites. Music / When youre alone / is like a companion / to your lonely soul, the Beach Boys warbled.Thats true, isnt it? I said. Is music your friend?She nodded. My buddy and pal, she managed.So, for now, as long as we can, as long as she can, the answer to Annas question is: music today.