In a dark corner of an even darker room in a mysterious place called "The Rutledge", a crumbling old book was found (isn't discovery often creation?) by one Ghostus E. Surveilien of a travelling music carnival called Cigarette Trees. This is what is said...




TIMBRE; THE SHOCKING TRUTH

Sometime in the early 1980s, the beautiful Nymph-Queen of the forest was singing the insomniac woodland creatures a lullaby when she sang the perfect melody. Had it been heard by humans, it would have resonated so perfectly in their ear-tubes that it would have sent their brains into a steady hum, causing them to float head-first into the sky, their bodies swaying behind.
But right before the Nymph-Queen hit the final note, she sputtered and choked and a baby fairy popped out of her mouth and finished the melody with her newborn crying. And that fairy-baby was the beginning of Timbre.
Tragically, the ordeal killed the good Nymph-Queen. This was sad for Baby Timbre, but the Queen's decaying body turned into a field of moon orchids, so that was nice, I guess.
Timbre grew up in that orchid field, befriending the woodland creatures, telling her wild dreams to the waterbabies, and sitting on her toadstool, singing and dreaming of seeing a unicorn.
But then one day during the summer of 2008, Timbre was at an outdoor mall shopping for her sister's birthday, when a great wind began to blow. And with the wind rolled a boy on roller skates, arms stretched out, his enormous shirt pulling forward like a sail. And he sang this song:
[[DOOMED]]
With that, the boy sailed away on his roller skates.
"Do you know what this means?!" Timbre said to her sidekick fox, Rachel Westfall. "That was a Roller Prophet! I heard about them on the television. He made it sound like some vicious viper is planning on destroying the world. Oh, whatever shall we do?" The fox narrowed her eyes and looked pensive. "Welp," Timbre said, after a pause. "Guess I'll have to go on an adventure to save the world. We don't want anyone to panic, so I'll just tell my fans that I'm going on tour."
With that, she sat, sprinkled her fairy dust, and Rachel Westfall hopped onto her shoulder, and the whizzed across their magical rainbow, keeping a sharp eye for any diabolical types. But everyone they passed was either patting puppies or giggling with old ladies or skipping while licking lollipops. And the day waned. Timbre sighed. "You just can't find deranged debauchery around like you used to." Rachel Westfall narrowed her eyes and looked pensive. "Anyhow," Timbre continued, "One can't go about heinous-hunting with sleepy eyes. Let's see if we can find some good soul to take us in for the night." So they landed the rainbow right in a small village just outside of ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Chicago.
All the lights were off in the first house they came to, but they rang the bell anyways because they were very tired. They were about to leave when Timbre noticed a man, standing in the window, unmoving, staring at them. Timbre's hand instinctively reached for her most trusted weapon, her harp, but when she looked again, the man was gone. They had just turned to leave when they heard a weak, trembling voice behind them. "What is wanted?"
The man was at the door. Timbre curtsied. "Please, kind local of the lake village. We are travelers in need of rest. As payment, my sidekick fox is a magical sidekick fox that lays candy instead of eggs and will lay you enough for six halloweens."
The man staggered a bit, as if he were unused to his legs. "Stay?" At first he looked confused, then worried, then a small smile dented his cheeks. "Yes. Yes, I do believe I would like that." He disappeared quickly into the black. Our heroines followed. "Would you care for some black licorice tea?" The man's voice quavered from somewhere unseen. He appeared again, holding a candle. "My own recipe." Timbre politely declined. Man sighed far-off-ishly. "Very well. The world is ending soon, so what does it matter?" Timbre perked up. "What do you know of the end of the world? I am very interested in such matters." So in the flickering yellowy light of the kitchen, over mugs of black licorice tea, the man sang this song:
[[THE ELECTRICAL DEAD]]
Beg pardon, sir, but what does that have to do with the end of the world?" Timbre asked. The man pulled his knees to his chest, hugged them, and giggled nervously. "See? See? It's ending--you feel it about to spring out at us--like a toaster! You can't be two places at once for too long, or you snap." He scooted his chair closer to hers.
"I'm not sure I follow," Timbre said, beginning to feel unease. "I'm talking about the destruction of the planet--"
"Planet shmanet! There are more important destructions! Passions that cannot forever be denied!" The man got excited with this last part and stood quickly. But he hit his head on the chandelier, thus interrupting his speech to mutter frustrations to himself. He sat down sheepishly. "I'm--I'm just going to spill it. I love you. I was just trying to impress you with that end-of-the-world stuff. I've loved you since the first moment I saw you. I knew then that once I'd you came into my heart, I'd never be able to let you go." Then he lunged for her. Timbre dodged him, grabbed Rachel Westfall, and ran for the door.
The man sat sadly on the floor. "You're making me do it the hard way. I didn't want to. But you leave me no choice." He crawled to his organ and played a very scary chord and Timbre and Rachel Westfall fell down a trap door and splash into a dark dungeon full of water. "Hrumph!" Timbre muttered, annoyed. "What a phony. He didn't know anything about the end of the world." She looked around the dungeon. "And he'll have to do better than this if he wants to stop us!"
But then--something in the water brushed past her leg. They weren't alone! "Who's there?" Timbre called out.
"Don't be frightened," a voice replied. And up a swam a dolphin. "We are trapped down here same as you."
"We?" Timbre asked. Rachel Westfall laid some glow-in-the-dark candy, and the dungeon was illuminated, revealing about twelve dolphins.
"What happened?" Timbre asked.
"We are women he fell in love with, same as you. And he will turn you into a dolphin in the morning, same as he did to us."
Timbre grinned. "Oh, no he won't. He picked the wrong fairy to fall hopelessly in love with." She pulled out her harp. "Now unfortunately, ladies, the harp is too wet to do magic powerful enough to turn you back into women, but it can make you fly."
"Oh, we don't mind," replied the head dolphin. "We'd much rather be flying dolphins than humans anyhow."
And so, before you can say "Winter Comes to Wake You," Timbre, Rachel Westfall, and their team of flying dolphins burst first out the trap door, then out the front door, then into the night sky, leaving the creepy man to his tears and sighs.
Though our heroines were not able to revive their sleepy eyes, the excitement of new friends woke them up sufficiently. And! It is not commonly known, but dolphins are able to fly much lower than rainbows, so Timbre was able to put a more scrutinizing super-slueth eye on the people of the world. And with results! Just as dawn came, Timbre spotted one man that she thought before had been patting a puppy was actually only patting a puppy statue, cleverly disguising his evil heart. (For no puppy of any breed will allow an evil man to pat it on the head.) And Timbre knew straight-off that this was the maniacal madman they were searching for, because he was singing to himself this song:
[[MYSTERY CURTAINS]]
As he finished his song, Timbre hopped off her dolphin. "Aha! We meet at last, vile villain."
"Well well, my dear Timbre," sniveled the dehumanizing demon. "The only hiccup in my plan for planetary extinction. Pleasant to make your acquaintance . . . though I do not think that it will be as pleasant for you." With that, the abominable adversary picked up his puppy statue and pulled off its head, revealing it to be a gravity ray. Under the gravity ray, Timbre, Rachel Westfall, and their flying dolphin team fell helplessly to the sidewalk, suddenly unbearably heavy. Great mounds of candy poured out of the poor sidekick fox, the gravity was so strong. She squinted and clamped her teeth. If you had seen it, your heart would've swelled up until it popped on your ribcage.
As the mischievous maltreater was not the laughing type, he picked up some gum from a nearby candy mound and chewed it loudly to celebrate his victory. "Soon, my dears, a black hole of darkness will form on this here sidewalk," he said, rather gloatingly. "And your dead girlish bones will be smackled into the size of a penny-whistle and vacuumed into an alternative universe." He then noticed that Timbre was struggling to pull her jaw off the concrete enough to say something. "Last words?" He asked.
Timbre could feel the concrete cracking under her. But she managed, with grunting and pain, to turn her head on its side and move her mouth slowly, weakly: "Are . . . ughhh . . ." She struggled. Her ribs were beginning to break. "You . . . r-ready . . ." Several of the dolphins started crying--rather, the tears were squeezed out of them. But Timbre continued: "For this . . . h-harp magic?" The grotesque ghoul looked at her, confused. But then, with all the strength she had left, she pulled out her harp, and played. As the strings broke, she played, as the fire hydrant next to her exploded, she played, and then the force of it's beauty overcame the gravity, pushing it back at the impious imp, and he and the puppy statue imploded into a tiny black hole on the sidewalk that had to be roped off so that no curious children would lose their fingers.
So Timbre went back to her orchid field (with, of course, her trusty sidekick fox and her faithful league of flying dolphins), thinking it was all over. But the next day, in the mail she received a cassette tape. It was a recording of that profane pervert. This is what it said:
"My dear Timbre, by now you must have killed me. But alas, I had already factored that into my evil plan of evil. I knew that I was no match for your harpish magic. But I must regret to inform you--except I don't actually regret it--that you lost and I won. Because my plan marches on! You probably didn't know, but I have lived for years in the secret passages of the Nashville music-ish place known simply as "The Rutledge," or by its intimates as "The Magnificent Rutledge". I kinda considered myself the opera ghost to that place. But I left them a little suprise. Yes. I contaminated their drinks and air vents, so that on August the twenty-nineth, at the stroke of midnight, every person in the Magnificent Rutledge will sing this song:
[[LOVIEDOVIE]]
"Yes!" the sinister sin-dabbler continued. "They will all transform into soul-hungry zombies that will promptly exterminate the world. I wanted you to know. Because . . . I mean, as you are my slayer, I wanted to zing you, I guess. So. Consider yourself zinged. Yes. Goodbye now. I couldn't figure out how to do the self-destructish thing, so if you could just throw this tape into a pit of lava or something you would have my gratitude. Yes, I can give you my gratitude now that I've zinged you and we're even. Okay. Goodbye now. For real. Goodbye--"
Timbre turned the tape off. "What are we going to do?" The head dolphin asked.
"Don't worry." Timbre replied. "We'll think of something."
But in spite of her own advice, Timbre did worry. She sat on her toadstool, (which was also her thinking spot,) and thought. But she was at a complete loss. But just then, she felt something cold on the back of her neck. And in her hair. She shook her hair and white powder floated out. She looked up. It was snowing. White covered the orchid field. And Timbre met some new friends in the snow, which is a terribly good place to do it, if you ask me.
They were a group of heroes in pink ties known as the Knapsack Heroes. And the littlest of the Knapsack Heroes (sometimes called Pegleg Pete) hobbled up to Timbre and took her hand. "Sweet fairy princess, we heard of your fame and power and your predicament and have traveled from a distant land to make you a gift. Then they all bowed, making an isle, and up the isle strode a unicorn, glowing majestically in the snow-light.
"But unicorns can't be given as gifts like cattle," Timbre said confusedly. "They must be free to just run around and be beautiful." Rachel Westfall narrowed her eyes, suspicious.
"Who gives cattle for gifts?" The head dolphin asked.
"Farmers, actually." Timbre replied. "On Christmas sometimes."
"Well this unicorn does that running around free and all that, too," Pegleg Pete said. "But she chose to come here to you. Your life has been watched tenderly by the unicorns, and you are their beloved unicorn fairy-child of moon-orchid-lit magic."
Then the unicorn sang Timbre this song:
[[THE SNOWS]]
Then the unicorn spoke: "Oh delight of the unicorns, all you need to do is play a show at the Magnificent Rutledge. And if your harp magic is tender, and your fairy finger-plucks true, then the music will swim through their bodies and break the zombie shell around their hearts, and the white will cover the red. That is our only hope of breaking the spell."



.... p.s.- there are magical tunes at cigarette trees that somehow fit into the spaces of this ancient story...