Archive of Our Own

Once upon a time, in a town which was memorable for nothing at all, there lived a guitar maker, his wife, and their three sons. Times were tough, as times are always tough, but they were never so bad that they didn't have food on the table and a roof over their heads. The instrument maker worked hard, and as they grew old enough to see over the workbench, his sons worked alongside him -- Kevin, the oldest, helped him select wood and sanded the finished guitars to a smooth finish that invited the touch of a hand; Joseph, the middle son, showed instruments to customers who knew what they wanted, and helped those who didn't know what they wanted find the answer; and Nicholas, the youngest, tuned the instruments that needed tuning, for he had a fine ear and a deft hand with tuning pegs. And when, in due course, there came another son named Franklin, he sat on the workshop floor and played with strings and woodshavings, for his mother had her own business to be about, and as she said, if one man and three boys couldn't look after one toddler, there was no hope for the world.

In due time, of course, the instrument maker died of entirely natural causes, and his trade passed to his widow and his sons.

"You are all free to stay, of course," the widow said, looking between her four fine sons, "But the business cannot support all of you and your families, whenever you may find them." Her portion was provided for, separate from the shop full of wood shavings and the echoes of strings, so her concern was only for her sons and their lot.

The sons looked amongst each other. In truth, none of them had thought much about that part of their futures, being still young and content to work hard, eat well, and sleep deep and easily. But what their mother said was true; they could not all stay. Besides, they had, in the way of young people, thought about the wider world beyond the unmemorable town, and if there might be a place for them in it.

"I will go," said Nick, no longer the youngest son. "I have a mind to make music, and see the world."

"Are you sure?" his mother asked, because the life of a wandering musician is not an easy one.

Nick nodded. He had always most liked tuning the instruments and strumming tunes upon them, and could play most of the airs people hummed at fair-days, and some of his own invention besides.

"I'm sure," he said.

"I'll go too," Joe said, not to be outdone by his younger brother, "I know everyone in this little town, and I want to meet new people. I'll try my luck in the wide world."

"What will you do?" his mother asked, for she was very fond of Joe, for all that he got himself into at least one complicated scrape a week.

"I hear that in the cities they pay money to see entertainers, who make the people believe for an hour or two that the world is not as it is," Joe said. "I think I could do that, and it seems a fine thing to me." For he had always loved best to talk to people who came looking for instruments to buy, and he loved watching the players at fair-days put on performances of famous scenes from history, in which the side of good and right always saved the day.

"I will go," said Franklin, but his mother cut him off.

"You'll do nothing of the sort," she said, "for you are a boy yet, and there's plenty of time for you to seek your fortune."

"Then I will stay," said Kevin, and while his words might have seemed resigned, in truth they were happy, for he had always loved how his father could take thin wood and transform it into something that made lovely music. And, of course, he had had the most time of any of his brothers to learn what he was about, and instrument making is an art not to be handed over to someone who does not know what he is about.

So Joe and Nick made their preparations to go, and took their leave, not without many sighs from the girls of the town (and not a few boys too) who would miss them sorely for a week or two and then find new distractions. The whole family walked with them to the edge of the town, and embraced them, and then Kevin and Frankie and their mother watched the pair grow smaller and smaller down the road, until they parted at a crossroads with another embrace and went each their own way.

Then Kevin returned to the small shop, where the sign over the door still said "Jonas, Fine Instruments," and he set about earning his living.

*

Kevin worked hard in the shop, carving wood and fixing joints and smoothing the finished instruments, tightening strings and tuning pegs and skins. He worked hard, but he worked happily, and at first things were all right. People bought his instruments at markets and fairs, older instrument makers said he had "good promise" and clapped him on the back, and even his brother Frankie, who now helped him in between his schooling (for their mother was determined that her youngest should finish his education), looked up from working wax into the curve of a guitar neck and said, "You're all right, you know."

But then the country suffered a wet summer, and a wetter winter, and crops failed and towns flooded. The unremarkable town stood on high enough ground that the mud didn't threaten the workshop of Jonas, Fine Instruments, but that didn't mean Kevin was immune to the effects of the bad year. With food expensive and many factories needing repair before they could return to production, people had no money for musicians, and musicians had no money for instruments. Merchants and traders managed to get by, as they usually do, but most of them weren't interested in music, or if they were they often already had musicians retained as part of their household, which still meant no money for the rest of them.

Their mother worried about Nick and Joe, out in the world with nothing to fall back on. Kevin worried as well, but he tried to reassure her. "They're talented," he told her. "I'm sure they're all right -- Nick probably has a place in some fine household, and Joe will be the toast of the town." He never specified which town, and he didn't voice his fear that Nick, like the other wandering musicians who passed through hoping for a few coppers in exchange for a song, was wandering the roads with only the clothes he wore and a thin bundle of belongings he couldn't bear to part with.

Despite his reassurances -- or maybe because of them, since they were pitifully threadbare -- his mother's face grew greyer, and she developed a permanent crease between her brows from fretting. Frankie tried to cheer her up with tales of the marvellous inventions he would make once he was done with school, and the models he had made out of scraps of wood from Kevin's workshop, and she smiled briefly, but she always returned to worrying.

Then, finally, a letter arrived from Nick, much redirected (for even the postal carriers weren't too sure about the location of the unremarkable town), with news of -- not a post in a fine household, as Kevin had imagined, but a steady engagement, and the hopes of better things. Following right behind it (maybe the postal carriers had got used to the idea of sending letters to the unremarkable town) was a note from Joe, who was working, he said, in a playhouse, which was hard but gave him a place to sleep -- and free tickets, which he seemed to think were more important. The two letters brightened the mood of everyone in the household, and the worry-crease on Kevin's mother's forehead smoothed out a little.

"And you, Kevin," she asked at last. "I've been so worried about Joe and Nick I never asked. How is the business doing? Are you well?"

"Oh, it's fine, fine," said Kevin, who had that day sold a packet of violin strings and a cake of wax. "Going well." If she asked to see the books, he was sunk, but she accepted his word.

"We should see about finding you a wife," his mother mused. "You're very good to keep me company, but you should have a household of your own."

"There's no rush," Kevin said hastily. He wasn't all that keen on the idea to start with, though he knew it was what he ought to do, and the instrument shop wasn't doing nearly well enough to support a wife and family even if he had been keen. "Let the business grow a little first."

"All right," said his mother, but Kevin could see she wasn't going to forget the conversation.

*

Time went on, as time does, and conditions did not improve. Money grew scarcer and purse-strings grew tighter, and when his mother asked after the workshop, Kevin changed his answer from, "Oh, fine, doing well," to "Not that bad, considering." The worry-crease came back to his mother's forehead, and Kevin was sure he was getting one to match.

Kevin worked more slowly in his shop -- good wood wasn't cheap, and he was running low on materials, with no notion of when he might be able to buy more. Besides, if no one was buying anyway, what was the use in having a wide stock to tempt buyers? Guitars and ukeleles and mandolins had already invaded his small quarters above the shop, and if he made many more, there would be no room left for his bed. No, there was no reason to work quickly. So he drew out the anticipation of it, and focused on the small details that might be -- not passed over, but not noticed particularly, in faster work: the exact alignment of grain, the resonance brought by curving thin wood.

He had assembled all the pieces for a new guitar, and by midafternoon of one quiet day he had them all laid out on the workbench. He stopped before beginning to fit and glue and clamp them, however, and went instead to tune one of the finished guitars hanging up. He played songs from fairdays, and some nonsense ditties that his father had sung to them as he worked, and when Frankie came in, the two of them invented more silly songs to sing. Kevin's fingers fumbled sometimes, for he didn't get as much practice as he wanted in playing the guitars he made, but he didn't mind -- after all, no one was listening besides Frankie.

That night Kevin went to bed early, in his bed surrounded by silent instruments, and he slept soundly. Perhaps it was the playing he had done that afternoon, but all night he thought he heard music in his dreams. He slept later than usual, and only made it down the narrow stairs to the shop, still rubbing his eyes, when it was already well into the morning.

He opened the shutter on the shop window, and turned around to find his broom, because the first thing he did every morning was to sweep the floor of the shop and the doorstep outside. It would all be covered in woodshavings and scraps again by the end of the day -- or it would have been in better times -- but his father had always started the day clean, and Kevin liked to as well. However, he never got the broom. When he turned around, the light from the window fell full on the workbench, where he had left the pieces of his next guitar. Now, what lay on the bench was a finished instrument, gracefully curved, smoothly polished to a deep, reddish shine. Kevin picked it up carefully and touched the strings; it was even tuned. He laid it back down on the bench.

Perhaps he had done this in his sleep? He was sure he hadn't absent-mindedly come back in and finished the guitar after deciding he would leave it until morning -- this was work that could not have been done with a half-measure of attention. And what was more, he would normally have taken several days over something like this; some steps could not be rushed, and certainly not done overnight.

Perhaps someone had gotten into the shop -- how? The door had still been locked and there was no obvious sign of disturbance -- and left this guitar in exchange for the pieces that had been on the bench, for some reason Kevin couldn't follow. But no; Kevin recognised the birds-eye grain of the wood, and when he picked up the guitar again and looked, his mark was burned into the back of it, very small, dark against the red polish.

Perhaps it was a trick or a trap of some kind -- but Kevin had trouble coming up with what sort of trap would be baited with a guitar.

Well, however it got there, it was definitely there now. He found a place to hang it -- not too close to the rest of the instruments, in case it was bewitched somehow -- and tried to go about his usual business. His eyes kept straying to the curve of its neck, or the glimmer of its strings back in the corner he had relegated it to, and he found it very hard to focus on what he was doing, so hard was he thinking about the mysterious guitar. Finally he put down the fine plane he had been using at the far corner of the workbench and wiped off his hands. He lifted the guitar down from its place and settled himself on a stool before strumming a chord.

One chord seemed to turn naturally into another one, and another, and before he knew it, he was playing a tune he didn't think he'd heard before. The guitar's voice was rich and full, with overtones that Kevin hadn't known mere strings could produce, and it didn't seem capable of striking a false note -- not that Kevin was trying to do that, but he doubted his own fingers. When he flattened his fingers on the strings to quiet them, he was surprised at a smattering of applause, and looked up to find listeners hanging around the door of his shop. He smiled at them, and they smiled back, though none of them came in to buy anything. Well, that hadn't been the point anyway. Kevin hung the guitar back up, this time nearer the window, where its red polish could wink at passersby.

One of the people who had listened to the music came back in late morning. She admired the new guitar, and Kevin thought she was only there for that, but in the end she bought a whistle, one of the ones that Kevin bought from a maker in the big city. Kevin thought she was the only customer he'd see that day, but another followed her in the afternoon, and another just before he closed the shop up. None of them bought much, but it was still more custom than Kevin had seen in a while, and it cheered him so that he whistled a tune as he pulled down the shutter and locked the door.

He told his mother about the guitar over supper (though not about its mysterious appearance), and she nodded indulgently when he said it had brought him luck. "You'll have to try it again, then!" said Frankie. "See if you can make another!"

Kevin agreed, but with his slow, careful pace of work and the distraction of unaccustomed people coming to buy bits and bobs and even a ukelele, it was the next week before he had the blank pieces of another guitar laid out on the workbench, ready to be fitted together and smoothed down into a musical whole. He considered continuing to work, but Frankie's suggestion was in the back of his mind, to see what happened, and in the end he left the pieces on the bench and went upstairs to bed.

He thought he wouldn't be able to get to sleep, but he must have done without noticing, and his dreams were full of music.

When he woke up in the morning, rubbing his eyes, he almost didn't want to go into the workshop to see what had happened -- but if he didn't, he'd have nothing to do all day. Finally he tiptoed down the stairs, almost holding his breath as he opened the door into the workshop. There, lying on the bench, was a guitar, stained blue so that the grain of the wood showed through, and longer-necked than Kevin would have planned. He thought it would look ungainly, but when he picked the instrument up it had a strange grace to it, like a long-legged animal of some kind. He settled it in his hands and touched the strings -- it sounded even better than the red one. He picked out a tune on it, just a simple lullabye his mother had sung to him and his brothers, and it rose through the air, a haunting sound that seemed to resonate in the small space of the workroom. Kevin stilled the strings and looked around, half-expecting to see the shimmering ghosts of notes hanging about him, but of course there was nothing.

He hung the guitar next to the red one and went to open the door and windows and sweep the floor.

More people came in that day, such that there was hardly a time when Kevin was alone, or so it felt. Everyone admired the red guitar and the blue one, some openly standing in front of them and some out of the corners of their eyes from the opposite corner of the shop. No one asked to buy either of the new guitars, which was a relief -- Kevin didn't know how much he should charge for them, since he hadn't put them together (he was sure now he hadn't done it in his sleep), or even if he should sell them at all, though his mark was pressed into the back of the new one, just as with the first. Still, he did a brisk trade in odds and ends for instruments, and even sold one of his more ordinary instruments, a small guitar such as a child could learn to play on.

Frankie came into the shop in the afternoon to help (or hinder as the case might be) and was fascinated by the new guitar. He stroked the smooth finish and rubbed the strings, not quite daring to pluck them. "It's awesome," he whispered to Kevin. "Has it been lucky?"

Kevin just nodded, because he was busy helping a man find the right kind of strings.

"You need someone to help you," Frankie observed after the man had left, hopping up on the workbench. "Can I stop studying and work here instead?"

"You know what our mother would say to that," Kevin told him, and Frankie sighed.

"I know. But you can't be always stopping to help people. You need to be making more magic guitars to bring people to the shop!"

Kevin hushed him and looked around to see if anyone had heard that. The shop was empty, but he still glared at Frankie. "People choose to come to the shop or not. I'm not making anyone do anything." He certainly hoped he wasn't, anyway, however much a small part of him was happy at having actual customers.

"Fine, but they can choose to want to see the guitars, right?" Frankie raised his chin defiantly.

"Maybe." Kevin straightened up and handed Frankie the broom. "You're here now, so you can help while I work."

He might have worried more about whether the guitars had some mysterious influence, but the next day everything was turned upside down. Someone knocked on the doorframe during one of the increasingly rare quiet spells in the shop, and a familiar voice said, "Anyone here?"

"Nick!"

Kevin rushed around the workbench and hugged his brother. They pounded each other's backs for a minute, then Kevin pulled back so he could see Nick. "Are you well?"

"I'm fine!" Nick said. "Come with me and I'll tell you all about it. I haven't seen our mother yet, I stopped here on the way."

"Just a minute," Kevin said, and quickly locked up, leaving a note on the door that said 'Back tomorrow!' He joined Nick in front of the shop. "What have you been doing? Have you seen Joe?"

"In a minute," Nick laughed. "I'll just end up telling it all over again, otherwise."

Their mother's exclamation when she saw Nick was even louder than Kevin's. She bustled both of them inside and fussed around getting sweet cakes and something to drink, until Kevin shooed her gently to go sit and talk to Nick while he found cups. She sat in the chair opposite Nick, leaned forward so far their knees were almost touching. "What have you been doing? Have you found your fortune?"

Nick laughed. "I don't know if there are fortunes to be found, but yes, I've done well. I'm playing now in the capital. I have a patron!"

"Who?" Their mother was agog.

"The Oligarch?" Kevin asked, only half joking.

Nick laughed at him and took a sweet cake. "No, he's just a man who likes music, and can afford to pay for it." His mother tsked at him for saying such things, and he continued. "He heard me playing, and now I play at his parties when he asks me to. Who knows who could hear me there!"

He went on to tell them about the fancy parties, and the dresses the ladies wore, and the food that was made to look like jewelboxes and flowers, and how all the fine folk of the capital came and danced and listened to music.

"And I have seen Joe," he added at last. "He is well and sends his love, but he couldn't get away. The theatre keeps him very busy, but he is moving up and he's an understudy for a play right now."

"Oh, Nick, I am so glad to hear," their mother said. "And I am so proud of both of you. When we didn't hear for so long I worried."

"I'm sorry," Nick said. "I didn't want to write until I had good news, and neither did Joe. And then, well, I thought I'd come in person."

"Doesn't your patron want you?" Kevin asked. He was perhaps a little bitter that no one wanted to pay him to make instruments for them, and invite him to parties with amazing food and music. But only a little.

"He's at his country house, and said he could manage without me for a few weeks," Nick said. "And how about you, Kevin, are you well? The business looks to be agreeing with you."

"It's all right," Kevin said. "Frankie helps me, when he's not in school."

As if summoned by his name, Frankie that moment came in the door, stopped in his tracks, and flung himself at Nick. "You came back!"

"Of course I did!" Nick rubbed a hand through his hair and Frankie squirmed. "I needed to see how much you'd grown!"

"I'll start dinner," their mother said, rising. "We'll have a feast to welcome you home!"

Kevin wished that Joe could have been there as well, but the three brothers kept up conversation all through the meal, and through the neighbours coming in to see Nick, and well into the night; Nick told them more of his exploits in the capital, and how he had gotten there, and Frankie told him in turn of what had happened in the unremarkable town (for of course it wasn't so unremarkable as that to the people who lived there), and their mother told him all about friends of his who had married, or not married, or moved away, or apprenticed with potmenders against their parents' best advice. It was well past midnight when Nick yawned widely, which set off a scurry to find sheets and blankets and the pillows that weren't flat.

"You'll stay, of couse, Kevin," his mother told him. "It's much too late to be walking back to the shop."

There wasn't anything he needed to be at the shop for, so Kevin agreed, and went up to bed in the room he had shared with his brothers for years. Frankie was already asleep, out like a candle as soon as he stopped talking, but Nick and Kevin stayed awake for another hour talking about nothing in particular.

The next morning, Nick accompanied Kevin on his walk back to the shop, both of them still bleary-eyed despite the hot coffee and breakfast their mother had put in front of them. Kevin was considering asking if he could move home again, just to get breakfast like that every morning, though he knew it was unlikely.

"I've been thinking I wanted a new guitar," Nick said as Kevin unlocked the door. "My old one is starting to get cranky about staying in tune, and it looks -- well, like I've carried it all over the country in a bag."

"Surely they have instrument makers in the capital," Kevin said. "You could have gotten one there."

Nick bumped his shoulder as they went through the door. "Yeah, but you're my brother."

Kevin felt warmed by the statement. "Well then, have a look around." He bustled about doing the usual opening tasks. Nick helped by sweeping the floors, and then did as he was told, drifting through the shop and looking at everything that was new.

"Oh, wow." Kevin heard, and looked up from the strained violin neck he was repairing (Joey Finstock was a good fiddler, but he had terrible butterfingers when he wasn't playing). Nick was standing by the window, looking up at the red and blue guitars still hanging there. "You made these?"

"I made all the pieces," Kevin said. "I'm not quite sure how they got put together."

Nick looked over at him. "They have your mark on them."

Kevin shrugged. "I'm not sure about that either."

Nick's eyes went wide. "You didn't steal them, did you?"

"What? No!" Kevin tossed a curl of woodshavings at Nick. "How could you think that!"

Nick spread his hands. "You're being awfully cagey about them, is all." He looked back up. "They're really beautiful."

Kevin joined him by the window. "It's complicated, is all. But they were made in this workshop, I am sure of that much."

Nick reached up, then paused. "Can I try them?"

"Of course!" Kevin lifted the blue guitar down as Nick got the red one.

Even more people gathered outside the door to listen to Nick play. Kevin could see them through the window, pausing on the street to tap their feet or nod their heads and hum along. Nick played the red guitar for a while, then the blue one, then switched back to the red one, and when the last song came to a close he held onto it, running his fingers over the curves of the edge. "I want to buy this one. How much is it?"

"Nick, you're family," Kevin protested.

"All the more reason I should pay a fair price." Nick stared him down, and Kevin gave in.

"All right. But I don't know if I should ask money for it -- it's complicated."

"So do something complicated with the money, like keep half and do -- something else with the rest, I don't know," Nick said. "But I can't just take it for less than it's worth, and it's a really nice guitar."

"Fine."

"Good." They stared at each other for a few seconds until Nick laughed.

"Most people don't have to have their arms twisted to accept money, you know."

Kevin shrugged, grinning back. "I just have to be different, I guess."

"Definitely." Nick looked around the rest of the shop. "Will I be in the way if I stay for a while?"

"You're fine." Kevin looked around automatically to see what needed doing, and picked up a scrap of wood from near his shoe.

"Then I'll stick around." Nick tilted his head towards the door. "You have customers."

Kevin looked around; a few people had come in, either part of Nick's audience or new faces, Kevin wasn't sure. He went over to see if he could help them, while Nick took his new guitar and settled on the stool by the small desk where the ledgers were still kept.

More customers kept coming, making the shop even busier than it had been before. Finally, Nick nudged him aside and sent him back to the work bench. After that, there were a few questions from Nick and from customers, but for the most part he was able to work, finishing the repair to the violin and setting it in clamps for the glue to cure. It was only when Frankie arrived that he realised Nick had left at some point.

"Are you out of school already?" he asked Frankie, a while later.

Frankie rolled his eyes. "Do you even know what time it is? School's been over for ages."

"Oh." Kevin looked out the window at the sky and then looked around for the clock. "I guess I lost track of the time."

"You did that." Frankie picked up the broom. "Mother's expecting you for dinner again, so you'd better wash the glue off your hands while I close up."

He was already pulling the shutters into place. "Yes, boss," Kevin said, and went to rinse his hands. How had he lost track of so much time?

When the smell of his mother's roasted potatoes hit his nose, he realised he was starving -- and when his stomach rumbled, everyone else did too. "You didn't stop for lunch, did you?" his mother asked.

"It was very busy?" Kevin offered.

She shook her head at him and passed the potatoes. "You need someone else there -- all the time, I mean," she said over Frankie's protest that he was someone. "It's not good for you to be rushing around all the time and missing meals."

"Missing lunch once in a while won't hurt me," Kevin said, but Nick was already nodding.

"If you had someone there to help customers and do sales, you'd have time to work. It doesn't say, 'Kevin Jonas, Salesman" over the door, does it?"

Kevin made a face at him. "No. Fine, I'll think about it."

Nick opened his mouth to make another argument, but Kevin managed to actually glare him into silence. "I said I'd think about it." It had been helpful having Nick there, but it wasn't usually so busy. Besides, he didn't want to concede the point.

Nick shrugged. "Good."

Talk turned to Frankie's schooling, and what their mother had heard in the market and around the town that day. Kevin didn't stay so late as the night before, excusing himself a little after Frankie brought out tea and some of the little almond-flavoured cakes that were Nick's favourite.

"You're welcome to stay here again," his mother said.

Kevin was tempted by the memory of breakfast, but shook his head. "I should be there," he said. "It's a short walk, and not too late. I'll be fine."

He declined company from Nick on grounds that Nick would just have to walk back on his own, and took his leave. When he got to the shop, he went to where his stock of wood was kept and sorted through it absently. More and more people had been coming in looking for something that could be learned easily, and he had so many guitars and stringed instruments hanging up already that he had no space for more. He was thinking of something else, something different... he spotted a corner of leather sticking out of a cubbyhole and pulled it out. It was much too small to do anything with, but it was a step in the right direction. He left the leather and the wood pulled out on the workbench and went upstairs, still thinking furiously.

Nick didn't put in an appearance the next morning -- he had mentioned wanting to go and see old friends -- so Kevin had to help all the people who came in looking for this or that. He didn't mind it, not as such, but after the previous day with someone else to just handle all of that, he was very aware that he could have been working on making something. By the time Frankie arrived, his fingers were practically itching for wood to shape.

"You stay out here," he said abruptly, and dove into the back work room, where he had managed to fuel and light the small wood-steamer. It was just getting hot -- perfect. He planed down several long, narrow pieces of wood he had picked out to thin strips, and set them in the steamer to start curving into the shape he wanted, and went back to the shop. "Um, thanks," he said, to Frankie, who was rubbing rosin onto a bow. "Can you stay? I need to go out."

"Of course," Frankie said. Kevin had the feeling he was amused, somehow, but he didn't stop to ask. He had a mission, and he needed to be back before the wood had steamed too long. He set out towards the leatherworkers' section of town.

What he wanted, really, was more parchment than leather; his father hadn't worked on drums much, preferring stringed instruments, but Kevin remembered a little. The first place he looked only had thick leather, much of it already stamped with patterns -- that wasn't what he wanted. The next shop had soft leather, which felt lovely but again, wasn't what Kevin wanted. The third shop, picked at random, had what looked like a wider variety, and when Kevin explained what he was looking for, the shopkeeper nodded and pulled a bundle out from a shelf. "This might be what you need."

The laether pieces were supple, but didn't feel as if they would tear if he pulled them. The shopkeeper laughed at him when he said that. "It's tougher than you think." She explained that the leather was from goatskins, and she knew it was used for drumheads, though she didn't have any knowledge of how to do that herself. Kevin picked a skin that he liked the look of and paid for it, promising to let the shopkeeper know how his experiment went.

Returning to the shop with his bundle under his arm, he hoped he was right in remembering a box of seldom-used tools tucked away somewhere in a drawer. If not, he'd have to improvise, or go back to his new friend for help finding someone who might know what he needed.

He stayed awake as the steamer worked, setting the strips of wood into tighter and tighter curves and returning them to the steam chamber, topping up the water as needed, until he had three hoops of wood, curved all the way around into circles. He let the fire in the steamer go out and left the wood there, clamped into shape, to cool and harden. The leather he left on the workbench; it was just big enough to cover all three circles of wood, unstretched.

He climbed the stairs ot his bed, yawning, his mind busy with figuring out how to stretch the leather over the small drums without tearing it. Well, this was an experiment, and he could only see how it turned out. Maybe he could find a drum-maker and go study with them for a while. He shuffled himself into bed and fell asleep almost immediately, his dreams full of music and rhythms.

He woke up some time later, so slowly that he wasn't sure he was awake or asleep. He still dreamed he heard -- no, he definitely heard music. And voices! His heart pounded. Had someone come to rob the shop? They wouldn't find much of value other than the instruments, but what if -- they could break them in anger that there was no money. Kevin slid out of bed and picked his way to the door, avoiding the floorboard that creaked. He tiptoed down the stairs towards the workshop -- light leaked out from a crack under the door. He hesitated; was it better to see what the intruders were about, or to burst in attempting to frighten them away? He told himself that he needed to know where they were, and bent to put his eye to the crack where a piece of timber had fallen away.

What he saw inside made him gasp. He knew there was someone in there, but he had expected the intruder to look -- human. In the slice of the room he could make out through the crack, an immensely tall, thin person -- creature? -- was reaching up to the ceiling, brushing spindly fingers over the instruments hung there for storage. A small man, not much more than knee-high if he had been standing, Kevin guessed, perched on the corner of the workbench, next to another, larger one who was bent over something on the surface. The last member of the party leaned against the wall with arms folded, looking almost normal apart from being covered in spikes. They rose from his shoulders almost to his pointy ears, sprang from the backs of his arms -- when he shifted, Kevin saw that his fingers continued the trend, ending in long, straight claws. No, there was another one in there -- the light in the room shifted, as if someone out of sight had moved a lamp or a candle.

The tiny one on the workbench, whose hair stood out like a dandelion, said something to his companion, and the larger one straightened to answer. His face was fearsome, more beast than man, with a mouth of sharp, red-stained teeth, and his hands were stained with red to above the wrist as well. Kevin couldn't stifle a whimper at the sight.

All the creatures' heads turned towards the door, and Kevin quailed but didn't dare run back up the stairs -- they'd hear him for sure, then. Then a long, spindly hand came across Kevin's crack in the door and turned the knob, pulling the door open.

All was still for a moment -- Kevin staring at the creatures, they watching him -- until the tiny one shouted something and the light went out as if snuffed. There was a tremendous crash and then silence.

Kevin clung to the side of the doorway for a long moment, but nothing else seemed to be happening. He crept forward into the room, and got a light by feel, turning to look around.

If he hadn't seen them, he'd never have known anyone was there. The workbench was in order, nothing was disturbed -- except, on the workbench, the hoops of wood had been taken out of the steamer. They had all been pinned into shape with neat wooden pegs joining the ends, and one was already covered with the stretched hide. Kevin picked it up; the wooden sides were covered with designs burnt into the wood, twining vines and faces and animals teeming around the small space. The leather was stretched tight, and when Kevin tapped it, it had a resonant sound, surprisingly loud for something so small. A second one had the hide laid over it, but not yet stretched and fixed into place. The third one was just the hoop of wood.

Kevin turned the finished hand-drum, or tambourine, or whatever he should call it, around in his hands, and found, there on the bottom edge hidden among the vines, his mark, just the way it had been left on both of the quitars that had appeared. Obviously these creatures -- whatever they were -- were the same ones who had left the guitars so beautifully finished.

"Sorry," Kevin muttered, then said it louder: "I'm sorry for disturbing you." He waited a moment, but nothing happened. He debated the point for a few seconds, but finally decided he might as well go back to bed; if they did come back, he might hear them, and if he didn't -- well, they hadn't been doing any harm. He replaced the hand drum on the workbench and went back upstairs, closing the door carefully behind him. It felt like it took a long time to get back to sleep, and he didn't hear any music at all.

Everything as as he had left it in the morning, not a single woodshaving out of place. The finished drum was even more beautiful in the morning light, the designs on it seeming almost alive. Kevin hung it on the wall, not wanting to risk warping it by leaving it in the sunlight in the window, and went about his work, though he couldn't help stealing glances at the pieces on the workbench now and again.

He didn't have much time to work on instruments; more people came by to purchase instruments or just look at them, and without either Frankie or Nick about, Kevin had to stay in the shop room to keep an eye on them. There might be something to what Frankie and Nick had said about hiring someone else to be there. The problem was finding someone who knew enough about instruments to be able to explain them, and someone Kevin trusted, and someone Kevin liked -- he didn't think he wanted someone in the shop all the time that he didn't get along with. Frankie was all those things, which was why Kevin paid him (not much, but still) to help outside his schooling, but -- he had his schooling. And while Kevin had grown up loving the work, and knowing it was what he wanted to do some day, maybe Frankie wanted to do something else.

Kevin spent the breaks in between customers worrying about who he could ask, and coming up with only a very short list. Maybe he could find someone and keep an eye on them until he decided if they were trustworthy and likeable and knew what they were talking about -- having to do that seemed to cancel out the whole point of hiring someone, but maybe it would be worth it in the long run.

He mentioned his problem over dinner with his mother and brothers, and got a list of possible candidates from Frankie immediately. "Or Declan, he hates working in the butchershop, he'd be great for you."

Kevin wasn't convinced. "Everyone you know is in school, Frankie. I need someone who can be there all the time."

Frankie wasn't deterred. "Gina's not."

"But she's still thirteen. That's the other part of the problem."

"She's fourteen!"

"What about Marie, Sovent's daughter," their mother broke in gently. "She was in service, but her employer moved and let her go. Mrs. Sovent told me she's at a loose end and wants something to do."

"Is she more than fourten years old?" Kevin asked cautiously.

"She's about Joe's age, I think, not much younger than you." Their mother nodded at Nick. "You might remember her."

Nick shook his head. "I wasn't paying much attention, I guess."

"Of course not." Their mother rolled her eyes indulgently.

"I'll try it, I guess," Kevin said. "I suppose I can always tell her it's not working out?"

His mother's smile made him a little uneasy, but she only said, "I'll ask Mrs. Sovent to send her along if she's interested, how's that."

Kevin nodded, against the background noise of Frankie muttering about Kevin ignoring all his suggestions.

"Ar you sure you have to leave tomorrow, Nick?" their mother asked.

Nick swallowed and nodded. "I'm afraid I do. But now that I have a good position, maybe I'll be able to come back more often."

"I'd like that. Tell your brother to write, I wonder what he's getting up to."

Frankie nodded vigorous agreement. "He said something about flying, and then he didn't say anything else!"

"I'll try," Nick promised. "I might even be able to bring him home with me next time I come -- whenever that is."

The talk turned to other things, Nick's journey and what he'd do when he got back to the capital, and whether the threat of bandits on the road was just a way to get merchants to pay for bodyguards or something Nick needed to be careful about, and before Kevin knew it, he was yawning over his teacup.

"I'll walk back with you," Nick said, and this time he wouldn't be put off by the argument that then he'd be walking back alone. The two of them strolled down the road, Nick leaning into Kevin's shoulder now and then.

"Are you going to be all right?" he asked. "Really, I mean. The business and all."

Kevin shrugged. "More people are coming in again now. Not all of them buy anything, but enough, and if this Marie person works out, I can spend more time making instruments."

Nick hummed agreement. "Let me know if you need help. Like -- I don't know if I could do much, but I might know people who could."

Kevin laughed. "Nick, you're miles and miles away! You don't have to worry about what's happening back here; I thought that was why you left."

"You're still family," Nick told him, and Kevin didn't have anything to say to that.

Nick left the next morning, and Kevin and Frankie and their mother all waved him off, very much as they had the first time. Nick was all alone this time, though, just one small figure disappearing down the road, and Kevin caught his mother dabbing at her eyes as she turned back to the house.

"He's doing all right," he said quietly.

"I know, I know." She sighed. "It's just so far. But maybe he'll come back soon." She wiped her eyes again and tucked the handkerchief away. "Hurry up, Frankie! You still have to get to school!"

Frankie made a face. "I'm going."

"I'll get back to the shop," Kevin said. He hugged his mother, and added, "I can't let Nick be the only wildly successful one."

She swatted at his shoulder. "Go on, then."

He wanted to look more closely at the finished hand-drum and the abandoned pieces from two nights previously, but there was no disappearing into the workroom when the shop was open (and he was awaiting the arrival of this Marie person). Kevin brought them out onto the counter, where he could look at them in between having to do other things -- not so many other things, today, as the flood of customers had thinned a little.

The longer he looked at the finished one, the less he could understand how it had been finished so quickly. The decoration alone should have taken hours! But then, he reflected, you shouldn't be able to make a guitar out of scattered pieces, lacquered, strung and finished, in six or eight hours, either. Amazing speed with tools (if they even used tools, he thought suddenly) was the least mysterious thing about the group he had seen in the workshop. Those spikes had looked very uncomfortable, and the little one had been so tiny...

He realised he had drifted off into thinking about the odd creatures, and someone was trying to get his attention: a woman about his own age, cheerful-looking, dressed plainly but neatly, and calling his name.

"Sorry, sorry, I must not have slept well last night," he babbled, excusing himself. "How can I help you?"

She smiled widely enough to show dimples. "I'm Marie Sovent; I heard you wanted some one to help in the shop."

"I, er, yes," Kevin stammered. "That is -- I need someone to stay out here and look after things, so I can be in the workshop." He spoke more confidently as he outlined what he needed. Marie nodded along with him, asking a few questions about how things worked, or were kept. When he explained about wanting to take her on on a trial basis (the stammer returned), she just nodded again, not seeming to worry at all that he might find her unsuitable.

With her in place, Kevin had the perfect opportunity to supervise her in the shop while he looked more at the drums. He tucked himself mostly out of the way on a stool, and let Marie get on with things like dusting the instruments, sweeping the floor, and finding where he'd left the ledger the last time it was out.

At the end of the day, the floor was very clean and there were three new entries in the ledger (guitar strings, and Joey Finstock's payment for the repair), and Kevin didn't know much more about the drums than he had before. He did know that the fasteners holding the wood together were in very tightly, and he couldn't tell exactly what they were made of, and that some of the faces on the finished drum looked like people he had seen in the street, but other than that he didn't have a clue how the work had been done so quickly.

Perhaps it was magic after all, as Frankie had suggested.

Since Marie had been straightening things all day in between customers and drifters-in, there was nothing to do to close the shop but lock the shutters and the doors, and nod to Marie as she went home. She agreed to be back the next morning when Kevin opened the shop -- he wasn't going to give her keys yet, and besides there was hardly a need, with him living just over the place.

Things continued on in that vein for a few days. Kevin had more time to work, and eventually he went back to the workshop, leaving Marie in the shop alone, though he left the connecting door open for fear of seeming rude. Frankie still came by after school was over, and gossiped about what he'd seen and heard during the day. After a couple of days he also had a direction for Kevin to come to supper, since their mother wanted to see him.

Kevin had feared something was wrong, but it turned out that all his mother wanted was to hear about Marie. "Mrs. Sovent says she's happy there," she said, passing Kevin a plate. "What do you think of her?"

"She's keeping the shop very neat," Kevin said, "And it is easier with two people. Or three," he said to Frankie.

Their mother hmmed, and cut open her baked potato. "But what do you think of her?" she asked. "Is she nice? Pretty?"

"I suppose so?" Kevin said, bewildered. He hadn't been paying all that much attention, to be honest; he'd been busy with other things and hadn't had much time to chat. "She's very friendly."

Frankie broke out into coughs across the table and their mother shot him a look. "Well, that's nice," she said. "I hope she keeps helping you."

Kevin muttered something generally agreeable, and ducked his head to his plate.

The next day he tried to pay attention better, and he noticed that as much as Marie smiled at people who came in, she smiled just as much at him, and whenever she had to ask him a question, or ask him to come out to help someone with an instrument, there were always dimples. It was a creeping realisation in the middle of fitting tuning pegs: he rather thought he was supposed to end up marrying her. Not that he had any particular objections to that, he had always assumed some day he'd marry someone as his parents had, just as he ran the shop as his father had done. He just didn't have any particular enthusiasm for the idea, either. When she took her leave that evening by saying he ought to come to supper with her parents some time, it only cemented his certainty.

Kevin kept his head down after that and focused on his work. He couldn't bring himself to be rude to Marie, but he tried not to encourage her, making out that he was more interested in the instruments he was working on -- which was, after all, pretty much true, so he didn't have to feel bad about lying. He was still studying the drums, and had tried to make a second one. He didn't have the trick of stretching the skin yet, though, because the sound was dull and flat; he took it off and tried again, and it was a little better, though nothing like the resonance of the one the frightening creature had finished and left behind.

He half-hoped the creatures would come back, and he left half-finished instruments out several times, when he could, but the pieces were still lying there in the morning when he came downstairs. He found himself trying to remember the music that he had heard at night, but he couldn't quite capture it.

The shop continued busy enough that it still made sense for Marie to be there, with a good number of people coming in. Marie got more confident in dealing with them, learning more about the instruments, so it surprised Kevin when she called him out of the workshop to talk to a customer.

The customer was more finely dressed than Kevin was used to seeing, and his face wasn't remotely familiar, either.

"Are you Kevin Jonas?" he asked. "I'm looking for him."

Kevin nodded, as there didn't seem to be any point in denying it. "I am he."

The man looked him up and down. "I want to buy some of your guitars," he said. "Half a dozen, at least."

"Of course," Kevin said, his mind racing. Half a dozen guitars? Was he outfitting some kind of guitar orchestra? "Which ones did you have in mind?"

"Oh, any of them," the man said, looking around. "Ones that look nice."

Kevin bit his tongue, because all the guitars looked nice -- as far as he was concerned, it was part of a guitar's whole shape that was pleasing to look at. Still, he moved around the shop, taking instruments down from hooks and laying them out on the bench by the wall.

"Do you like these?" he asked the man politely.

The man looked them over. "They look all right. But I want that one." He pointed to the blue guitar hanging up near the window, still.

Kevin didn't know why he felt uneasy, but he just said, "That one isn't for sale."

The man frowned. "If it's a commission, I'll double whatever they're paying for it."

"I'm sorry, but I can't go back on my word," Kevin said. "What about this one?" He picked up a guitar that had decorative painting around the soundhole; it seemed the sort of thing this man would like.

The man made another try or two at the blue guitar, but finally agreed to leave it. He declared that his 'people' would be along to fetch the guitars he'd selected that evening, and they should be packed up for travelling. He put down the price that Kevin asked on the counter, barely bothering to count it. The he swept out of the shop, a man Kevin hadn't noticed falling in behind him as he turned down the street.

"He must have been a merchant," Marie said. "He'll sell them all over, and you'll be famous!"

Kevin was still frowning after the man. "I just wish I liked him better," he muttered to himself, then went over to the window. "I don't think this one needs to be hanging up any more," he said, and reached up to take down the blue guitar. He took it upstairs to his chambers and propped it up against a chair -- there being no hooks empty to take it -- and found a different one to hang in the window. Then he and Marie busied themselves with wrapping the guitars in padding to protect them, and covering them with leather cases. Kevin wasn't sure what to do about packing for travelling, but it turned out that when the people arrived to collect them, they came prepared with a large wooden crate, into which all six of the guitars, plus more rags for padding, fit neatly. Kevin watched them go, as well, and still felt uneasy.

Marie came up beside him and touched his elbow. "Is everything all right?"

Kevin startled and tried not to jerk away. "Fine, fine," he stammered. "I guess we'd better do something with all this money, then." He went over to the counter and started counting it out of the box into a bag. Having so much money in the shop made him nervous.

Explanation came the next day, in a letter from Nick.

Dear Kevin, it started,

I may have done you a disservice. A few nights ago my patron gave a party for a wider circle than usual, and I was requested to play and entertain the guests. I took the red guitar I bought from you, as I have become even more fond of it in the short time since I brought it back.

I confess it has in fact become a bit of a sensation. I could almost be jealous at being upstaged by my own instrument, except that the tone is so rare and lovely I cannot resent it. Many people have admired it, and asked whence it came, and one guest in particular at this party started out the same way.

He asked increasingly searching questions about me, my origins, and especially the origins of the guitar. Not knowing better, I answered him, and told him of your location. I have since learned that he is a man who will abandon many scruples in order to turn a profit, and he was last seen leaving the capital, heading towards the town in which you and I both have our origins and you have your shop.

If he arrives on your doorstep, you will know him thus: (here followed a description of the man who had demanded half a dozen guitars). I will not tell you not to sell to him, as your name deserves to be more widely known, but I beg you, if you do, complicate your maker's mark so that it is more difficult to replicate, and do charge him above the usual price. He will turn a profit regardless, I assure you.

I hope he is the most trouble you encounter as a result of my thoughtlessness. I will endeavour next time to find out who I am talking to, before I share such details with them, but it may already be too late to contain this gossip.

Yr loving brother,
Nick.

Kevin turned the letter over in his fingers a few times. He felt less guilty, at least, about giving the man a higher price than he might have to someone he knew -- their father had done much the same thing, and called it a rudeness tax. He was also glad that he had refused to sell the blue guitar, and taken it out of the shop. And he was sure that all of the guitars he had sold had his mark on the back. Nick was correct -- his mark wasn't all that complicated, and it wouldn't be hard for someone to fake, supposing they wanted to do that. (Kevin still had some trouble with why they'd want to do that rather than make their own, but Nick considered it enough to worry about, so.) So Kevin sat down with a charcoal pencil and some scrap paper, and tried to come up with something.

Several hours later, he had a lot of charcoal-covered, screwed-up scrap paper, messy hands, and no new mark. There was only so much he could do with his initials, he didn't want to make it to complex to recognise easily, and since he wanted to start from what he already had, he was further constrained there. And after all his scribbling and sighing, he had an ache in his neck from bending over the counter.

At least the rude man had not come back. Kevin hoped he wouldn't.

He told Marie he was closing the shop early, when there was a quiet spell late in the afternoon, locked up and stuck a note to the door, and retreated to his rooms upstairs. He'd been there only a little while, picking at one of the extra guitars stored up there (not the blue one; the first one he had completed entirely on his own and kept out of sentiment) when he heard a knock on the back door. He was prepared to tell whoever it was to come back the next day, but it turned out to be Frankie, alternately banging on the door and scowling up at Kevin's window.

Kevin went down and unlocked the door for him. Frankie directed the scowl at him, and said, "Is there a reason you're beng a hermit?"

Kevin led him upstairs and showed him the letter from Nick. Frankie's face brightened as he read it . "This is great! You'll be able to sell lots of guitars, and make more."

"But it's not--" Kevin tried to explain his misgivings. "It's just to make money, not because they care about the instruments or anything."

"Sure they do. Okay," Frankie conceded, "The guy who wanted six guitars, any six, probably didn't. But the people who buy them, they do, even if it's just that they want a guitar you made. They care about them."

"I just don't like the thought of them going to places where they won't be played," Kevin muttered. He thought about it for a few seconds. "No, I guess I can't know what people will do with them once they have them."

"Maybe they'll learn how to play because they have one of your guitars," Frankie encouraged.

"Maybe you're right." Kevin squared his shoulders.

"So what've you been doing up here?" Frankie nodded at the paper and pencils Kevin had brought upstairs but hadn't been able to bring himself to touch again. "Designing?"

"Sort of. Trying to make a more complicated mark."

"Huh." Frankie stood up and clomped down the stairs to the workshop. There were some thudding noises (Kevin winced) and then Frankie's voice floated back up. "Are you coming or not?"

Kevin sighed and followed him down the stairs.

Frankie was flitting around the workroom and the shop, looking at the backs of guitars where Kevin had left a mark. "So here," he said when Kevin came through the door, "why don't you just sign them?"

"What?"

"Sign them," Frankie repeated, almost patiently. "Like painters do on pictures, so everyone knows it's their picture. You could sign the guitars."

"But I'm--" Kevin made a face. "My writing's terrible."

"I'll help you practise," Frankie said cheerfully. "You brought the paper, right?"

After he'd gone back up to Kevin's rooms to fetch it, Frankie sat him down at the workbench and made Kevin write out his name a few times. He didn't say anything, but he made a face.

"I did tell you," Kevin said awkwardly. He'd been to school the same way Frankie had, but he'd left earlier, eager to join their father in the shop. He could figure numbers well, and he'd always thought that was more important than making words be pretty as well as more-or-less legible.

"No, you can write, at least, that's good." Frankie pulled over another bit of paper. "Let's try just your first name."

By the time Frankie was satisfied, Kevin's fingers were cramping and he never wanted to see his own name again, but even he was willing to admit that the signature looked nice enough that it wouldn't spoil a piece of work just by being there. "So now I just have to put this on every instrument in here," he said. "On wood. With a hot poker."

Frankie looked at all the hanging instruments. "Maybe we can take it in stages."

"Well, I'm not starting now," Kevin said. "It's late and I'm going to bed. And mother will wonder where you are."

"Oh, I told her I'd be here," Frankie said. "You won't make me sleep on the floor, right?"

Kevin sighed. "Fine, fine. Go wash the charcoal off."

Upstairs again, Kevin went back to his guitar, trying to do something else with his fingers so they could uncurl from their unaccustomed position. "What's that tune?" Frankie asked sleepily.

He'd been trying to recreate the music he'd heard at night again, Kevin realised. "Just -- something I'm trying to remember."

"I like it. Keep going?" Frankie asked.

Kevin nodded and bent over the guitar again.

He still wasn't sure he had the tune right -- something about it slid out of his grasp every time he thought he had it recalled -- but playing soothed him -- and put Frankie out like a candle, as he found when he turned around. He leaned the guitar against the corner of the wall again and dropped onto the edge of the bed that Frankie had left him, dousing the light. He just hoped he wouldn't roll off the bed in his sleep.

The next day was a rest day, so the shop was closed, and Kevin spent the morning burning his name onto scraps of wood, coached by Frankie. Before they stopped for lunch, Kevin braced a finished guitar on the workbench, heated the narrow poker one more time, and signed the guitar in one unbroken line, charred into the back. Frankie cheered.

"Now you can do the rest of them!" he said.

"No," Kevin said firmly. "Now I'll stop so I don't mess it up, and after we eat I'll do some of the rest of them. And you're going to do your homework so you don't get in trouble."

Frankie made a face, but he pulled out his books once the crumbs had been swept off Kevin's table upstairs, and he stopped hovering so at Kevin's elbow -- Kevin thought the work went better without Frankie's supervision, but he wasn't about to say so out loud.

In the end, he was able to sign more than a dozen guitars before his hand started cramping from the unaccustomed fine movement, and he felt that to go on would just cause trouble. Instead, he accompanied Frankie home for supper, and found that his mother's cooking was an excellent cure for stiff muscles.

It turned out to be just as well that Kevin had spent his Sunday so, because the next day brought not one, but two merchants looking for instruments to buy and sell on. Neither of them took as many as the first man -- one bought three, the other four -- but they were both more polite, and Kevin felt better about sending instruments away with them.

He had still overcharged them, though, as he found when he checked what Frankie put in the ledger.

Frankie just shrugged when Kevin pointed at the entry. "They were willing to pay it. And from what Nick says, they'll have no trouble recouping the cost in the capital."

"But it's --" Kevin gave up, and went back into the workshop, to try to fill some of the holes left on the walls after so many guitars were taken away, and continue putting his new mark on what he already had in stock. He thought about bringing the blue guitar down from his rooms again, but in the end, left it where it was.

The attention from the capital continued -- a few more merchants arrived at the store in person, and two of those who had already bought instruments sent messengers back, to buy more. One even bought other instruments besides guitars, which was a nice change and let Kevin work on something else. (Not that he didn't love guitars, but he felt mandolins were underappreciated by most people.)

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't quite replicate the tone of the two guitars that had been made for him. Still, he was good at what he did, and he was proud of the instruments he made and knew they could stand on their own merits. The next letter from Nick confirmed it; he reported seeing Kevin's work in several shops, and that he had been offered increasingly ridiculous sums of money to sell his guitars, not only the red one but another Kevin had made that Nick had bought in the capital. (He hastily assured Kevin that he had turned it all down, but Kevin had already been pretty sure of that.)

The attention from the capital (and other noteworthy towns) seemed to remind the people in the unremarkable town that they had a skilled instrument maker in their midst, and sales to familiar faces increased as well. Kevin didn't charge them in the inflated prices -- which might have been to his detriment, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Frankie told him he was hopeless, but he wrote down the right numbers in the ledger, which was what Kevin cared about.

"Are you all right, Kevin?" his mother asked one Sunday night. He'd been invited for supper as usual on Sundays, and Frankie had been packed off to finish schoolwork for the next day; it was just the two of them lingering over coffee. "You don't look like you've been sleeping."

"I haven't, much," Kevin admitted. He'd been working hard to keep up with the demand for instruments -- the Midsummer fairs were approaching, and all the merchants who made orders from him wanted more, more, more. One who had made several orders -- one of the first ones who had ordered, in fact -- wanted a dozen guitars, just for her. Kevin no longer had the backstock to fill orders like that, and while he was happy that he'd sold so much, promising to deliver so much meant he was working late into the night, every night, and was up again early the next morning, back in the workshop.

"Maybe you could take on an apprentice, now that the business is doing so well," his mother commented.

"I don't have time to teach an apprentice anything, I'm so busy," Kevin said. "What good would that do?"

"Well, you'd have someone else to stay up late with," his mother said. "Marie's still there, isn't she?"

Kevin nodded. "She's very helpful dealing with people, and she keeps the books really well. I mean, Frankie does too, of course," he added, but his mother didn't seem to mind the possible slur on Frankie.

"Maybe you should think about formalising the relationship," she hinted, and Kevin had to stare at her for a long second before he got it. Heat flooded his cheeks.

"No! I mean -- she's very nice, but I -- she'd never see me, what kind of marriage would that be?"

"Some women might prefer it that way," his mother muttered, but went on more loudly, "It would be good for you to have someone taking care of you, and maybe she'd get you to stop staying up until all hours. And she's a good cook, you know; Mrs. Sovent told me she makes excellent fruit pudding. Don't think I don't know you live on bread and cheese most of the time."

"Yes, but -- she's very nice, she really is, but I don't want to marry her," Kevin said.

His mother sighed. "At least think about it? It'd be good for both of you. And if you decide against it, do be sure she knows it."

Kevin nodded frantically, eager for this conversation to be over.

"And consider getting an apprentice. If you run yourself ragged, you won't be able to fill orders anyway."

"Yes, mother," Kevin murmured.

She seemed happy to let it go, at least for then, after that, but Kevin was still happy to escape home, even if it was already late at night and he still had an incredible amount of work to do.

Things came to a head two days later, in the early afternoon. Kevin looked at the unfinished guitar on the workbench, the one that still needed the neck fitted, and then tuning pegs and strings and all the rest of it, and he couldn't bring himself to look at another guitar, almost the same as all the rest, for even a second. He put the body of the guitar, and the rest of the pieces, to one side, and stared at the workbench, trying to think of another project -- any other project -- but all of the things he needed to do involved strings, and he just -- he couldn't do it. He opened some drawers and peered into shelves at random around the workshop, looking for inspiration, or maybe just motivation, and happened on a bundle of wood and leather, stuffed into a cubby that was otherwise empty.

He pulled it out -- it was the unfinished hand-drums from months earlier, the one that he'd meant to work on and then not had time for. He laid them out on the workbench and fetched down the finished one that had been left to put next to it. The he sat down at his stool again and started studying the finished drum, trying to see how it was put together, exactly how the round-headed nails held the stretched skin, the tension and tone of the head.

He tapped it. It made the same resonant sound that he half-remembered from the morning he'd found it -- when he'd surprised the creatures, and they'd left so hastily. He turned back to the empty hoop of wood and the loose hide on the bench. Well, he could only try. Everything else in here had strings on it.

He was sure he was going about it wrong, having forgotten everything he'd read about drums back when he had come up with this idea, but he made shift. He stretched the hide one way across the frame and held it in place, then the opposite direction, then kept working, around and around. Holding onto the hide was hard, but the only tools he had were small and sharp, and he was afraid they'd tear the hide, so he just grabbed hard with his hands and pulled. The frame kept sliding about on the bench, which made it harder, and he needed more hands to drive the nails in. How had that frightening creature done this, since it had seemed to be working alone? Of course, Kevin didn't know that, and of course there was something magical about them in any case.

His first attempt, when he had finished it, was awkward-looking, with the nails not in a straight line and the whole thing looking lopsided. When he tapped it, it made sound, but it was dull and flat, nothing like the musical sound of the finished drum.

Well, he knew he had a lot to learn, and at least he had a second frame and more hide to try this with.

Marie stuck her head into the workshop. "What are you doing back here?"

"Working," Kevin said, and waved the failed drum at her. "I'm trying something new."

"You can't!" she cried. "We need more guitars to sell!"

Kevin hunched over the workbench. "I'll get to them," he said. "I can't work on them right now."

"Come on," she chided. "You promised you'd deliver."

"I know, I know. Just -- I will." He looked up at her. "Shut the door behind you, will you?"

Thankfully, she took the hint and withdrew, but now Kevin felt naggingly guilty at not working on what he was supposed to. He eyed the unfinished guitar on the end of the bench -- nope, he still couldn't bring himself to work on it. He shoved the guilt down and went back to the drum.

This time, he hit on setting the frame upright in the clamp of the bench, which held it in place and made it easier to stretch the hide. He found a pair of blunt pliers, which he was sure weren't the proper tool, but were able to grab the hide more tightly to pull it. This was also the piece of hide he'd scraped so it was thinner, more like what was on the finished drum, so he was hopeful for better results.

When he was done, the drum he held was nothing like the first one -- not least because it was so plain, and still looked like it had been made by someone who wasn't sure what he was doing -- but it didn't sound flat. It sounded all right, he thought, a quiet, low sound when he tapped it with his thumb.

He straightened up and stretched the knots out of his back. It was late, he could tell that much, but he wasn't sure how late. He looked over at the pieces of the guitar again -- he could stand the thought of working on it more, but it was late and he was tired. It would be better to start fresh in the morning, he knew. So instead he just put the drums away again -- the finished one and both his sad attempts -- and doused the lights, finding up the stairs by touch.

It must have been later than he thought, because the morning light and noise from outside woke him up much too soon. He yawned his way through his morning routine and thumped downstairs, bracing himself to get through his work and end the day significantly closer to the goals he had promised.

Instead of the unfinished guitar on the workbench, though, he was met with Marie's smiling face. "Kevin! I'm sorry I doubted you; the guitars look great!"

"Guitars?" he almost said, but he glimpsed the bench over her shoulder and bit his tongue. "I'm glad you like them?" he said instead.

"I don't know how you finished all of them, though. You must have been up very late."

"Um, well, it was a late night second wind or something, you know how it is. Hey, is that the door?"

"Oh, another customer!" Marie whisked out of the workroom and back into the shop.

Kevin sank onto a stool and stared at the guitars on the workbench. Guitars, plural -- three of them, two of which had hardly even been pieces the night before. They were polished and gleaming as if they'd taken weeks to make, not one night -- and all three of them carried a perfect replica of Kevin's mark and his signature, scorched into the wood with a careful hand.

The mysterious creatures must have come back for some reason, since Kevin didn't know of anyone else who broke into his workshop at night to leave him exquisite guitars. He didn't know why they'd chosen to come back, when he had been sure they were gone forever, but he was grateful all the same. There was no sign of anyone in the corners of the workshop, but he still whispered, "Thank you" -- just in case they could hear him.

A gift of three guitars took a bit of the pressure off of him to complete that order, and he could get a little bit ahead instead of always playing catch-up. He hung the three guitars -- all of them uncoloured, just sleek, varnished wood -- and found himself whistling as he collected the materials for more.

By the end of the day he had one guitar mostly assembled and clamped so the glue could dry, and another one halfway completed. Even better, he wasn't exhausted just by the thought of continuing to work on them. He thought that was an improvement over the previous day, at least, and went upstairs to put together a solitary dinner.

He must have been more tired than he thought, or the previous late night had finally caught up with him, because he fell asleep with his head pillowed on the table and a breadcrust still held in his fingers.

When he went downstairs, absently chewing on the breadcrust, sure enough, the guitars he had left half-finished on the bench were lined up, shining and polished. They weren't identical to the last set; these had patterns painted on the bodies, under the varnish holding it all in place. Both of them had Kevin's mark on them, and both sounded true as bells.

And so the pattern continued. Kevin did as much as he could during the day, and his mysterious helpers finished it overnight. He assumed it was the same group he had glimpsed before, though he didn't try to see them again, and he didn't know why they would have come back after fleeing so precipitately. He didn't breathe a word to anyone about them, even Frankie, though when he was praised for his industry he tried his best to shrug it off.

Before he knew it, it was only a week to Midsummer, and he had not only completed all the guitars he had promised merchants, he had a stock for the shop as well. He had even been able to sleep in the meantime.

"How do you thank someone?" he asked Frankie that afternoon.

Frankie looked at him funny. "You say thank you?"

"Yes, but what if you don't talk to them?"

"You can still say thank you." Frankie frowned. "I guess you could give them something as a thank you. Who do you want to thank?"

Kevin shook his head, ignoring that part. "How do you know what's a good thank you, though?"

"You get something you think they'd like!" Frankie said. "Look, if this is about Marie, get her flowers. She likes red ones."

"What? No!" Kevin blinked at Frankie. "Er, should I get her flowers?"

Frankie stared back at him. "I guess not. Um, I'm going to go catalogue things and make sure we have everything sorted right." He pointed over his shoulder and disappeared through the door into the shop.

Kevin nodded to himself. He had a plan; now he just needed to work out the details.

Production of guitars slowed down that last week before Midsummer. The merchants arrived and took away the guitars they had ordered, wrapped carefully in crates, and there was room to move in the shop again. The weather was warm and calm, and everyone was more cheerful. Kevin kept leaving unfinished guitars in the workshop, but only one each night or two, mostly as reassurance that his helpers were still around. He was busy working on a different project, one that he cleared away each evening and brought upstairs with him for safety.

"What is all of this?" Frankie asked. He held up a piece of scraped-thin hide. "You're going into shoemaking or something?"

"It's a new thing," Kevin said, retrieving the hide and rolling it up carefully. "It's secret," he emphasized.

"It's weird. You know, you can just take fewer orders, if you need a break from all the guitars."

"No, that's fine, and they won't want so many at once again until Winterfest, probably," Kevin said. "This is just -- something I'm doing."

"I can see that," Frankie said, eyeing the small table piled with carefully sorted pieces and half-constructed instruments. "Do you want a hand?"

"Thanks, but I think I need to do this myself."

"Okay. I'll tell Mother you're working on a project, then. She'll probably send soup or something. Or come fetch you herself."

"Maybe don't tell her about this?" Kevin waved a hand at the table. "She'd just want to come clean up."

"My lips are sealed." Frankie grinned and did some kind of complicated salute. "Don't work too hard." He clattered off down the stairs.

Kevin stayed awake late into the night, and kept the shop closed the next day on the grounds that it was Midsummer's Eve. He went with Frankie and their mother to the party around the bonfire in the town square in the evening, and danced with two people he didn't recognise at all, but then he came home early, while the music was still playing and most people were only getting started on their partying.

He only had a few finishing touches to make, thankfully, before he laid out his work on the bench in the workshop. Each instrument had a colourful ribbon, as was proper for a Midsummer gift, and each one had a card that said "Thank you." Then he retreated up the stairs, but he didn't sleep -- he sat on the top step, listening hard to hear over the general background of merriment in the town.

He might have dozed off, but at some time past midnight he heard the familiar music drifting up out of the shop, this time accompanied by chattering voices. Kevin crept down the stairs and put his eye to the crack in the door.

The strange creatures were back, and seemed to be having an argument about the presents Kevin had left. The skinny, stretched one and the one covered in spikes in particular seemed at odds, glaring at each other across the bench. The tiny one with the hair that stood out was trying to make his opinion heard, or at least that was what Kevin guessed from the thin, piping voice he could barely make out. He watched for a minute or two, as more voices joined the argument and the glaring across the table only grew more heated, then closed his eyes and opened the door.

"I'm sorry if I've caused trouble," he said, still keeping his eyes firmly shut. "I wanted to say thank you for all your help, and I hope these are appropriate, since I don't know anything about you. And, um, I know you vanished last time I saw you, but I hope you stayed long enough this time to hear me say thank you. So I -- I'll just leave you alone now. But thanks."

"You can open your eyes," a voice said from right in front of him.

Kevin cracked open one eye, then the other. The spiky person was squinting at him suspiciously, which looked even more fearsome with the protrusions he had.

"What do you want from us?" the spiky one asked.

"I don't want anything!" Kevin babbled. "I just wanted -- want -- to thank you for all the help with the guitars, and I thought you might like these to keep! If you don't want them, I'll take them away, and I hope you aren't offended."

"He meant well," said the long, spindly one, bending over the bench. "Stop scaring him."

"Haven't we all learned about gifts with strings attached?" the spiky one asked. "Next thing you know, he'll be demanding we follow him around in a band or something."

"That could be interesting," the tiny one said, hitching himself up on the edge of the bench so he could see the instruments. The terrifying one with fangs boosted him up onto the top. "Thanks, Butcher. Besides, I think these are cool." He picked up the tiny bass guitar Kevin had made and struck a pose (and a chord). "Check it out!"

As the strings sounded, the guitar got smaller. Or no -- the other way around, the person holding it was getting bigger. He grew and grew, until his hair brushed the ceiling, and the top of his head wasn't far below that.

"Sisky!" the one with fangs exclaimed.

"I'm okay, I'm okay," the previously tiny one -- Sisky, Kevin supposed -- said. He looked down at the rest of them. "Things look different from up here. I'd forgotten. And look, tiny bass ukelele!" He strummed the tiny bass again, though it was now barely bigger than one of his hands.

"Get down before you crack your head open," the fangy one said.

"Right, sorry." He hopped off the bench and bounced up and down on his toes a few times. "I can see over things again!"

"I think," said the stretched-out one, "This one must be for me." He rested his fingers on the elegant, long-necked instrument Kevin had based on a description and a picture he'd seen in a book. He hadn't been sure what it was meant to sound like, but he'd made a good try, and thought the oddly-tuned, metal strings sounded pleasant when they all went together.

This transformation was the opposite of the first one; the stretched-looking creature shrank down, not as far as Sisky had grown but down to the height of a tall person rather than a beanpole, and his arms and legs filled out, looking more like limbs and less like knotted string and sticks. He held one hand up and wiggled the fingers. "You know, I hated looking like I had spiders on the end of my arms," he said conversationally.

The spiky one folded his arms and scowled. "We still don't know what he wants for these things," he said.

"I'll risk it," Sisky said. "Whatever it is, if I don't have to be knee-high to do it, I'm okay with it."

The spiky one scowled harder, but any response he was going to make was forestalled by the one with fangs looking over at the ball of light. "I think this one's for you," he said, and slid the ordinary, though carefully decorated, guitar across the bench. (Kevin had run out of ideas, and hadn't gotten a good look at the fifth mysterious benefactor before.)

There was an answering burst of noise, and the light somehow rolled the hand drum over in return -- Kevin's last effort, and one that he considered actually successful. It wasn't as lovely as the one that had been left for him, but the sound was good, and it had a longer body for more resonance. The one with fangs caught it and promptly sat down on the floor, bracing the drum between his knees and tapping out a rhythm with his thumbs. With each repetition, his fangs shrank, and the blood smearing his forearms vanished as if it had never been there, until he was just a normal-looking person sitting there. His skin was still covered with colourful designs, but his face was friendly when he looked over at Kevin. "You've been practising."

Kevin gave him a jerky nod. "I hope it's okay?"

"It's good, I like it. Hey, Michael," he called across the room, "Looking good!"

Kevin looked over as well, to find that the ball of light had turned into a person while he wasn't paying attention. No longer glowing or floating, the fifth creature -- or person, since they all clearly were human -- was so intent on his guitar that all Kevin could see was the fall of his blond hair.

"You don't have to, Mike," said the one who had been so stretched-out and skinny.

The spiky one didn't seem to think that was acceptable, either, judging by his frown. "Well, I'm not being stuck this way on my own," he snapped, and looked over at Kevin. "This isn't a trick to get us to be your servants or something?"

"No!" Kevin said. "I wouldn't even know how to do that."

"Right," said the spiky one -- Mike -- and picked up the last guitar, a squarer, more boxy shape than the usual smooth curves. He took a deep breath and played a chord. "If this goes wrong, I'm blaming all you idiots," he muttered, and played a few more.

The spikes covering his skin faded away, smoothing out as if they'd never been there. He examined his arms. "Well?"

"I think you're as spiky as ever," Sisky said, and sputtered out a laugh.

Mike glared at him, but he looked like he was fighting down a grin. "Thanks."

"So, um," Kevin said, and qualied when everyone's attention focused on him. "What happened, that you were all -- like that?"

"There was a thing," said Sisky. "With a witch and a banjo."

"She didn't like it," Butcher said.

"Or us," added the tall one Kevin hadn't gotten a name for yet.

"She said we could make instruments until we learned to carry a tune," Michael said. He was still looking down at his guitar, stroking his fingers across the strings like he was holding a purring cat.

"But I think we would have been okay if Bill hadn't tried to argue with her," Sisky finished, indicating the tall one.

"It's been a while," Mike said, rubbing at one arm like he couldn't believe the spikes were gone. "So -- thanks, I guess."

"No, thank you, you all saved me," Kevin said. "I would have had to close up shop without you helping."

"So what are you going to do now?" Bill asked.

Kevin blinked. He hadn't thought about that. "I guess I won't promise anyone huge numbers of guitars at once," he said. "It's okay, I don't think I like being famous anyway."

He wasn't sure why all five of them burst out laughing at that, but they didn't seem to be laughing at him, so he smiled back.

"Thanks for the presents," Bill said, waving his guitar at Kevin, "But I think we'd better be going."

The rest of them echoed his thanks, and it turned into a sort of circular thanking cycle, until Mike finally said, "All right, are we going or what?" Then they all finally took their leave, and slipped out the back door into the street just as the sky was starting to get light.

"You have places to go, right?" Kevin asked. He couldn't help worrying about them a little.

"Oh, yes," Butcher said, and Kevin thought he heard Sisky mutter, "Anywhere but here," but he wasn't sure.

"Goodbye, then," he said. "And, um, good luck."

"You too," Michael said, and then they were gone, melted into the shadows lingering around the neighbouring buildings.

Kevin shut the door and looked around the workshop. It looked awfully empty, no longer crammed to bursting with people and with the bench not covered in pieces of instruments.

But there wasn't much he could do about it, so he made sure the door was locked and trudged up the stairs to get a few hours of sleep.

He considered keeping the shop closed again, on grounds of it being Midsummer's Day and who cared if anyone thought it was strange, but Marie arrived at the normal opening time, so he let her get on with it. He wasn't much use, sitting in the workshop and yawning, mostly, without foolishly big orders to fill or repairs to make. He started sorting the bin of wood scraps, tossing aside any that were really too small or awkward to use, despite what he'd told himself when he put them in there, but he found even that hard to focus on.

After a couple of days of this, Marie was starting to get worried, and even Frankie sounded concerned when he asked, "No, really, what happened?"

"It's nothing," Kevin said, because really, it wasn't anything he could explain easily, to anyone. He had turned down the messengers sent by the various merchants, asking for more guitars after they sold so well at Midsummer, sending notes back explaining that he would only be selling one or two guitars at a time from now on. There had been a letter from Nick, exclaiming over his success, and Kevin hadn't managed to reply to that yet. He'd found it difficult to settle on any one project; at the moment he was settling the frets on a guitar neck, which was fiddly enough that he didn't need Frankie's interruption.

"It's not nothing, you're moping," Frankie said, and when that didn't get him a reply, he threw his hands up in the air. "Fine, it's nothing." He huffed back into the shop and Kevin could hear him talking to Marie.

He was back in a few minutes, though, and before Kevin could say anything, he said, "There's someone looking for you out front."

"For me?" Kevin looked up.

Frankie shrugged. "I didn't recognise him. He looks -- angry?"

Kevin brushed past him in the doorway and looked into the shop. Mike was leaning against the doorframe, holding the angular guitar Kevin had made for him. His eyebrows were drawn down in a scowl, but they lifted a little when he saw Kevin. "Hi."

"I didn't think you'd come back!" Kevin blurted out. "I mean, hello." He could feel himself blushing fiercely under curious looks from Frankie and Marie, both. "How are you?"

Mike shrugged. "I'm all right," he said, "But I wondered if you might be in need of an assistant making guitars." His eyes flicked to the empty hooks by the ceiling. "I have years of experience."

"Why?" Kevin asked. "I didn't think you liked me much."

Mike shrugged. "You seem okay. Maybe I was wrong. So?"

"Where did you work before?" Frankie asked suspiciously. "I've don't know you."

"It's okay," Kevin assured him. "I know him."

Frankie gave him a look that expressed what he thought of that, but he let it drop.

"I could use some help, if you want to stay," Kevin said. "Um, with a week's probation, of course," he added with a quick look to Marie.

"Suits me," Mike said. "I can start straight away."

*

Of course Kevin was still happy with Mike's work after the week's probation, since it turned out that experience gained while spiky and under a spell from a witch carried over to being not spiky. At first, having nowhere in particular to go, Mike slept on a pallet in the shop, but after supper upstairs one night in autumn (still sandwiches, but at least Kevin had started making more interesting sandwiches), Kevin asked if it might not be warmer upstairs. After that Mike slept on a pallet in Kevin's rooms over the workshop, until at some point he started sharing Kevin's bed, which was even warmer than that.

Kevin did end up buying flowers for Marie, and apologising a great deal, until she admitted she'd known it was unlikely he'd marry her, and went off to work for a baker two streets over who wanted someone to keep her shop during the day, with whom she was very happy.

The merchants didn't get any more enormous quantities of guitars to sell, but Nick reported from the capital that Kevin's signature on a guitar had become a mark of great cachet, and the rarity of such instruments was only to their benefit.

Frankie finally finished his schooling and went off to find even more fortune than any of his brothers.

Kevin's mother unexpectedly adored Mike, though she never did sort out entirely to her satisfaction how he and Kevin had met.

And they all, of course, lived happily ever after.