THE STORY THAT REFUSED TO HAVE ONE NARRATOR

 

It began, as all good stories begin, in a small town and with a rumor whispered. And from the start, there was a fight over who would tell it.

"Let me begin," spoke the old clockmaker, his voice as fragile as a hairspring. "A tale begins with the precise turn of a key, the deliberate tick-tock of fate. I saw it all from the window of my store. The girl, Luna, she found it, a small box of dark, peculiar wood."

"Nonsense!" the street cleaner shouted, flourishing his broom like a sword. "A tale begins on the ground, in the earth, where truth and secrets wait. I was there first! I saw the box wasn't a box, it was a seed, a feeble, blue glow, sown in the cracks of the cobblestones."

The baker, powdering his eyebrows with flour, wiped his hands on his apron. "You're both wrong. A tale starts with a smell. The air in the morning was thick with the aroma of baked bread and something else, something sweet and wild like an unruly garden. And the girl, Luna, didn't find the box—it sang to her, a tiny tune only she could hear, a song like a lullaby."

"It wasn't a lullaby," one of the children cried out from among the group. "It was a laugh. Quiet, and playful. I was hiding from my brother, playing hide-and-seek, and I saw her. Luna didn't discover it; she just reached into the air and plucked it out, like it had been lingering there just for her."

The town librarian, a woman with a tight bun and glasses, cleared her throat. "The story, if it is ever to have any reality, begins with the facts. The box, or seed, or call it what you will, was actually an artifact from the old museum. I documented it personally. It was a puzzle, but not a mystery. And Luna, she didn't accidentally find it; she was a bright, inquisitive girl who was drawn to puzzles."

"Clever? She was a dreamer!" cried a young man with paint-stained hands. "She kept her head in the clouds. I painted her portrait—I was painting a picture of her—her face was always full of wonder. She never sought the box; the box's magic came to her, a kindred spirit."

The voices wrangled and fought, each trying to grab the story and pull it toward them. The story, which had started off as a modest rumor, was an out-of-control, wild beast, growing new arms with every new mouth. Was it a story of fate or chance? A story of magic or sanity?

The truth of what had happened to Luna and the box was lost in the hubbub, each account a tiny, distorted fragment of the whole. And so the story, unwilling to be tamed by a single voice, was a living, breathing creature, a tapestry woven from a thousand conflicting threads, each crying out to be heard.