Dagmars Daughter by Kim Echlin Page A

the calling from home, drawn to Moll’s hole as a wanderer is to the morning ship.
    Nyssa! called Dagmar.
    Weather’s misky, said Moll. A man with a ring on his little finger thinks he’s the jinks. Seen one on a fishing man? On a sailor? Mainlanders have ’em.
    Moll reached between her legs, pulled out a small ring, and handed it over to Nyssa, who held it up in front of her, and asked, Is this a pinkie ring?
    Moll nodded and with a whoop Nyssa stood up in the hole and threw it as hard as she could over the edge of the gaze.
    Moll’s cracked lips twitched and she waved her naked hands in front of her face. All gone, all over, girl. I’m hungry.
    Nyssa handed her some biscuits from the nightgown’s pocket. Moll stuffed the whole package into her mouth, spitting out the paper as she chewed, crumbs spraying down her chin. A fine rain began to fall.
    Moll pulled a tattered rabbit pelt from under her heap of rags. She draped it over Nyssa’s head against the rain, pulled off her own thick and filthy sweater and buttoned it around Nyssa.
    In the drizzle Moll held up her hands to Nyssa as if they were a mirror and said, Where’s the girl?
    There is no more girl, said Nyssa. Only a hare.
    She made the sound of a hare by closing her lips and squeezing air between her tongue and her palate. I will write down this song and play it on my fiddle.
    Writing makes the spirit lazy, girl, said Moll, tapping her long fingers on her hairless head. A fixed word risks becoming a dead word. Hold it in your ear.
    Nyssa did not understand. She scrambled away and headed down to the shore and Moll called after her, The girl is as the girl does.

    B y the time she was eighteen Nyssa had absorbed all the music Colin had to give her. He wanted something new for her birthday and chose Bach’s “Chaconne in D.” He handed it to her and said, A chaconne makes much out of little.
    Picking up her fiddle and nimbly playing at sight, adding her signature drone, she said, But, Daddy, I want to dance!
    Colin laughed. Bach is the essence of all that can be made in music. Will you get rid of that drone. It’s making us all mad.
    She shrugged. I like it. I want it to be like the sea always there. To speak of the sea is to refuse to speak of yourself.
    Colin shrugged. Can’t tell you anything. Like your mother. Here, I have something maybe you will like.
    He went to his junk drawer in the kitchen, pulled out some old screws, a couple of erasers, some nails and a bottle cap. He dropped them into Nyssa’s cupped, waiting hands, led her back to the old piano and lifted the front off. She smelled the musty insides of dry wood and metal, saw for the first time the guts of the whale. Eighty-eight felt-covered hammers were lined up imperfectly, waiting to be plunked against the rows of strings. Inscribed on the coppery pin-block were pictures of nine prizes and the words of a craftsman’s pride: Above Medals of Merit Awarded to Us at Exhibitions Throughout the World. It was piano number 19407 stamped in black on the upper-left-hand side and inscribed along the curve of the back was Heintzman & Co. Toronto, Canada. Agraffe Bridge Patented March 10 1896. From the vantage of Nyssa’s four-stringed violin, the row of musty hidden strings was exotic. Colin lifted out the piano’s action and turned it over. The very first tuner had scratched his name into the wood: Bob 1900 . Nyssa ran her fingers over the dead man’s mark and her father watched.
    It’s nothing but a big drum, he said, putting it back together. Here, hand me a screw.
    She watched him choose objects from her hands and squeeze them between the clean row of strings until it looked like a rag mat.
    Play, he said.
    She sat down and looked at the piano’s insides. She placed her fingers on the ivory keys. She played a simple C major triad. There was a clank and a thud, a note and a cluck. She sped it up, changed keys and syncopated the rhythm to hear the drumming clanks of screws and thuds of