The Enchanted Music Box



  THE ENCHANTED MUSIC BOX

  Copyright Lindsay Johannsen 2014

  Thank you.

  National Library Of Australia Cataloguing-in-publication data:

  Author: Johannsen, Lindsay Andrew

  Title: The Enchanted Music Box

  Cover art and design bungled by the author.

  To order the McCullock’s Gold paperback version or contact the author please visit

  www.vividpublishing.com.au/lajohannsen

  The Enchanted Music Box

  This is a story about a girl who lived in a city. It wasn’t a big city and it wasn’t a small city. It was just an average sort of ordinary middle sized Australian city. There were playgrounds and shops and buses and schools and all the things you usually find in a city, including a river and some parklands with great big gum trees.

  Tilly Hayman was her name. She had dark hair and brown eyes, was well mannered and friendly and enjoyed being helpful to others. She did well at school, too, and was good at games and athletics. Everyone in her class liked her because of her gentle nature. And she was very nearly ten years old.

  But Tilly had a very strong will. Once she had made up her mind to do something then nothing would stop her until the job was completed. Even the boys knew that. They either did what they could to help or kept right out of the way.

  The house where Tilly lived had a computer repair shop at the front. This was where her mother and father worked. People would bring their computers when they stopped working and her father would fix them.

  Her mother looked after the office work. She also ordered and sorted out any parts that were needed, and made sure they were put with the right job. And when a computer was going properly again she would work out the price.

  Tilly’s parents were also very keen gardeners. On each side of their driveway, between her bedroom window and the side fence, they had a row of different coloured rose bushes, while behind their house was some lawn and a vegetable patch. And right in the back corner of the yard under a knobbly old peppercorn tree they kept some bantam chooks in a little hen-house.

  Tilly's mother also owned a large telescope and, sometimes, if the night was clear, they would take it outside to look at the stars or the moon. But a city's bright lights can spoil the view in a telescope, so now and then they would put it in their car and drive out to a farm where some friends lived. There, when the moon was absent and the sky was really dark, they could see special things, such as the Rings of Saturn or a new comet.

  Her grandfather lived in their house as well. His name was Jake Shielby, though Tilly mostly called him "Grumpy Jake". This was a special name that came from a time when she was too little to say "Grandpa Jake" properly. But Jake Shielby was no grump. In fact, he was just the opposite to a grump, for he always seemed to be smiling about something.

  Jake was a gentle old man who was warm hearted and caring. He had a deep rumbly voice and a soft leathery face, and no matter how much he brushed his snowy-white hair it just stuck up in all directions.

  “Years ago in the outback I got caught in a whirly-wind!” he would tell Tilly. “It lifted me way off the ground! And it gave me such a fright that when I came down again my hair had lost all its colour!

  “…And would you believe, Tilly,” he would always add, “It’s colour has never returned.”

  Jake Shielby had a lot of friends and everyone seemed to know him. “She’ll-be-jake – The Clock Man” they all called him. This was because he repaired old-fashioned wind-up clocks. People came from everywhere to have their old clocks fixed.

  Chiming clocks were his favourites. Clocks that sit on the shelf and ring the hour. But he especially liked to fix big old grandfather clocks. Huge things they were, much taller than Tilly. Some were taller even than Grumpy Jake.

  Jake didn’t mind what sort of clocks they were, though. He just loved to tinker with any old wind-up clock and get it going again. In fact Jake would quite happily fix up a cheap little alarm clock if it was important to somebody.

  Now it so happened that Jake also collected old clocks. Not any old clock, of course, for Jake Shielby only collected big old grandfather clocks. And not just any old grandfather clock, either. They had to be very old and very special, because She’ll-be- jake – The Clock Man was very particular about the clocks he collected. He was always on the lookout for another, too, wherever he went.

  Sometimes he'd find one that was exactly what he wanted. This didn't occur very often, but Tilly would know when it happened because Grumpy Jake would come home all excited and chatter on about all sorts of things … except for things about clocks. While he was prattling on he would wave his hands about and rub his head and make his hair even more untidy.

  “You needn’t go on so much Grandpa,” Tilly would say. “I know you’ve found another clock.”

  “WELL!” he would say. “Whatever would make you think that?”

  “I just know all about you and your clocks, Grandpa,” Tilly would reply, “though what I don’t know is where you think you might put it.”

  The reason for her saying this was because, in some ways, Jake’s clocks were a bit of a problem, for they already took up most of the spare room in the house.

  No more clocks could fit into his corner of the shop, and there was nowhere for more in his bedroom. Two of his grandfather clocks watched over the dining room, three stood guard in the hall, two more were minding the lounge room and another two were standing in a corner of the kitchen.

  There were another five in Tilly’s bedroom!

  Tilly didn’t mind Grumpy Jake’s clock friends staying with her. Her room was quite large and they were such friendly-looking old things.

  One of them was just enormous. That was the one Tilly liked the best. “Mr Clock”, she called it.

  “Hello Mr Clock,” she would say when she arrived home from school. Or, “Well Mr Clock, you’ll never guess what our homework is today!”

  Sometimes she would boss them around and say, “All right you clocks; stay out of the way. I have to tidy my room.”

  Tilly and her parents didn’t mind Grumpy Jake keeping his grandfather clocks there, as long as he didn’t wind them up. Imagine the din they would make were they to all start chiming on the hour! No one in the house would have been able to sleep, of that they were certain. It might even have kept the neighbours awake.

  As a result Jake kept time with a small chiming clock in his bedroom. An elegant little clock it was, with bells so soft that no one else in the house would hear it ring.

  But sometimes, if the night was very still and there was no noise from wind or rain, after the traffic and other sounds of the city had died down and the house was particularly quiet, something strange would occur.

  On these rare nights the delicate chiming from Jake’s little clock would escape from his room. Along the hall its fragile song would float, then through the door that Tilly always kept open a little and into the stillness of her bedroom. And Tilly’s sleeping mind would always hear the sound … and it would always respond in the same manner.

  Ripples would drift through her dreams and they would switch across to another scene. And it was always the same scene and it was always the same event.

  Crowded and confusing it was, and rather unsettling. It seemed part of a larger affair, yet what this might have been was never revealed.

  The dream didn’t occur very often, though – just once or twice in a year. But whenever it did its images always remained with Tilly the next morning.

  “I had that weird dream again last night, Mum,” she would say as she sat down for breakfast. “You know the one.

  “It’s always the same. I’m in this crowded place somewh
ere and I have to go away. Then suddenly I notice I’ve lost something. It’s small, like a little box of some sort, but it's really precious and I don’t want to go without it.”

  “What sort of box?” her mother would sometimes ask.

  “I don’t know – I never see it. I just know somehow that it’s a little box.”

  “Do you know what’s inside it? ...Perhaps it’s a jewel box.”

  “I never find out, Mum. The dream always gets a bit scary and I wake up.”

  This dream always left Tilly feeling sad, so she would busy herself with getting ready for school. Soon she would have said goodbye to her parents and Grumpy Jake and be setting off down