The Woodland Instrument Store
By Ashley Gilland
The snail’s plump body oozes a spiral around the nylon string. In the same way that holistic skincare oddities are sworn by, sliming cheeks in a fogged mirror before bed, the Woodland Instrument Store builds their harps, pan flutes, and the like with the surrounding forest and nurses them with natural remedies for the quality sound. Scientific basis is not expected nor provided; customers convene for the shared philosophy that a natural thriving reawakens the organic materials, still feeling like they’re breathing and budding their past life. It is inconsequential if the snail trickles from the nylon to the smooth neck of the harp, if it carries smaller mites to terrorize the wood. The holes and blemishes, they believe, bring it closer to the original state. Instruments, while manmade, are vessels carrying the musical essence of the world, whether sung through woodwind, cello or dulcimer. It is all a window that the natural environment could open even wider, the barrier between structure and its ethereal output.
In the front corners of the store, vines twist down to reach into the violins. The flytraps of Venus snap up the irritable frequency whizzing past your ear. Birds flit around the rafters, skies crossing like a chapel. Last week, a 200-year-old acoustic guitar was sold at double price with a robin’s nest dormant in its belly. Spider-webbed instruments aren’t for the faint of heart, but their popularity swells around Halloween. A defective or cosmetically challenged instrument gains back its value when the cobweb, knowingly, covers its insecurities and begs for sympathy for its idealized lack of love. It bores a ghostly psalm into the 21st-century cravings of an eerie Gothic aesthetic.
One such fan fell in love with a web-drenched concert ukulele. It felt in her fingers like the antithesis of the sunshine and hibiscus usually associated with the lighthearted starter instrument. To her, it was a loss of childhood, a corpse of her nostalgia from first becoming acquainted with music. Its sister creation, a tenor ukulele upcycled with a swath of painted leaves, thrives on the bottom shelf with the tropics and bears a line of chrysalises that each correspond with a string. There’s a sale you must pitch to yourself; the question to ask, if you strum it before metamorphosis, would the vibrations crumble them to the inner barrel, or wake the butterflies prematurely as they stare at heaven’s trembling gate posts and listen to the angels?
There is something for everyone, if you know yourself well.
A kalimba matted with clay and stained with green tea hums low and humble. A shimmering mandolin, well-oiled by snail trails, hosts a sun-bleached tinge that beams warmth and welcome in the front window. A small vibraphone sleeps beneath on a meadow of basil and thyme. The scent follows you home and fills your rooms with green and the sound of fluttering leaves tasting sun with an imperceptible stride. Mushroom-blushed wind chimes whistle and whir in the cavernous hallway that links the xylophones and lyres to the grand pianos and pedal harps.
The lyre comes with cricket song if you grab the small blue stringed bag wriggling on the counter. There are also soft green pouches of birdseed, in case your instrument is lacking in treble. Need percussion? Popcorn kernels are the third pouch, rose gold. Be careful not to confuse these three to avoid house fires and cacophonous chirps.
Listen in the silent entryway and you will notice they are all playing—more or less in accidental relation to each other, principally to each essence being uncovered—and one in particular will call you like a siren into the sea.
Ashley Gilland is a writer, musician, and multimedia artist from Missouri. Her work is published in Dishsoap Quarterly, Haven Speculative, Patchwork Lit Mag and The Waxed Lemon, among others. When not writing poetry and philosophical flash fiction, she also loves composing music and embroidering mixed media art projects. Find her music on Spotify and Bandcamp, her art on Instagram and Etsy, and her tweets at @earlgreysnail.