The forgotten music box
Locked away from the world for half a century by an act of love, she was now free to love again
In a crooked attic at the top of a slanted townhouse in Amsterdam, an old music box creaked to life. The little girl who’d brushed off the dust and cobwebs and wound it up clapped her hands in delight. It was a shiny red music box with a porcelain ballerina in a real velvet gown, who spun to a tinny piece of music.
Curiously, the ballerina’s eyes seemed to move, staring wildly around the attic. The little girl shivered when she noticed and pushed the music box away, running to play elsewhere.
She didn’t spot that the music box hadn’t closed. Night fell. When the grandfather clock downstairs chimed the witching hour, a moonbeam lanced through the attic window and landed on the ballerina.
The ballerina stirred. Her joints clicked painfully as she slowly clambered down from her music box, swelling back to her human size. How long had she been here? She stumbled downstairs, stealing through the halls and staircases until she’d reached the grand front door. With a deep breath, she opened it.
Strange, horseless carriages roared along the streets, passers-by were bundled up in winter coats and nobody was wearing a dress like hers. A fine snow was falling like lace and the canals had nearly frozen over.
Yet the ballerina had been encased in a music box for longer than she could remember and the cold failed to touch her.
A deep loneliness took root in her as she tottered along, her beloved city now a stranger. Nobody noticed the lonely ballerina in her lovely evergreen gown, threading her way through Amsterdam, but the old city streets were like a distant dream and she did not lose her way.
Leidseplein Square was much changed.
But there – De Stadsschouwburg, the theatre housing the National Ballet and Opera, still stood. Or did it? Its classical facade with sculptures was gone, replaced by a different grand style. With a flash of heat, the ballerina’s memories came roaring back.
It was a winter’s night in 1890 and Christine had just finished the greatest performance of her life as Coppélia, pirouetting to a finish as the audience gave her a standing ovation, tossing roses at her silk-slippered feet. Changing quickly into her favourite evergreen velvet dress, she’d rushed into the mirrored Rotunda, past the waiting line for carriages, and into Hans’ arms.
“You were a delight!” He spun her around.
“How did you watch me?” she laughed. The ballet had been sold out for months, since before she had fallen in love with the charming man who worked on the door and gave her the sweetest smile each time she passed by.
Hans grinned and stepped back, throwing out his arms and muttering something under his breath. Christine gasped; it was like he had pulled a cloak of night around himself. He looked like a shadow.
“I’ve been working on my tricks,” he said, shimmering back into view. “I met a man with silver hair and pale eyes who has been teaching me the most wondrous things, just wait until I show you. This will be how
I pay for our wedding…” He stopped.
Fireworks were exploding outside, like glittering starlight. A crowd gathered. Christine thought it was the most magical sight until the sighs turned to screams and the beautiful windows of the theatre shattered down on them. It was on fire.
“No!” Christine turned to run back to the other dancers, but Hans wrapped his arms around her.
“We need to leave!” he shouted as fire crackled above them and panicked people stampeded through the Rotunda, pushing Christine and Hans apart, her black hair falling loose as she screamed his name.
When he fought his way back to her, he was muttering something she didn’t understand, in a language she did not speak.
“I will keep you safe,” he told her as she turned cold and rigid, her joints fusing together, the chaotic, fiery theatre rushing up around her as she plummeted down, down and down until Hans reached down and picked her up, tenderly placing her inside a red music box. “This is just for tonight,” he whispered, closing the lid.
Now, Christine stood in an unrecognisable square, alone with the creeping realisation that she had spent years and years trapped inside that music box.
“Christine?” a long-lost voice asked.
She slowly turned.
Hans’ hair was the white of the falling snow, his face lined with sadness, but his eyes were as blue as she remembered, alive with hope. “Can that really be you?” He walked towards her in a daze. She flew into his arms.
“I’m sorry,” he sobbed into her hair.
“I lost you that night before I could free you.
I’ve searched the city over and again, returning to this square every single night for the past 50 years, waiting for you.”
A terrible accident, a cruel twist of fate.
But love does not yield easily.
“I’m here now,” she said. “And we can be together at last.”
She climbed down, swelling back to human size