There was no better way to describe the relationship Jonathan had with Yoki other than that of owner and pet. Obviously, there were differences (unlike a pet, Jonathan wouldn’t have been too upset if Yoki suddenly vanished), but the similarities were great enough that Jonathan thought of himself as a particularly smart seven-year-old boy for inventing the comparison. For example, Yoki required feeding. Not pet food, of course, but he was most definitely fond of devouring Jonathan’s ideas, only to regurgitate them later, the original ideas unrecognisable to Jonathan.

Once, inspired by the advice from his English teacher, Jonathan thought that he would like to start writing a diary. Yoki made sure, however, that the idea was quelled as rapidly as it had come up. He did this by telling Jonathan every reason he could think of for why writing a diary would not work. Only girls write diaries; you’ll stop writing after two nights anyway, so what’s the point of starting; you don’t even have a decent enough book that could qualify as a diary. Or even a nice pen. In the end, Jonathan gave up, moving on to activities that Yoki found far less worthy of attention, such as eating a snack or taking a nap.

Jonathan didn’t dislike Yoki. There were moments where Yoki’s questions saved him from making some foolish decisions. Like the time Jonathan wanted to perform a puppet show as part of his school’s talent contest. Jonathan had spent one-and-a-half months writing and practising the show in his bedroom while trying to ignore Yoki’s never-ending questions: Who do you think you are to be doing a puppet show? Are you going to change your voice when shifting from the grandfather puppet to the grandmother puppet? How are you going to act when the entire school is laughing at you? But, despite finishing the play, Jonathan never competed in the school’s talent contest. And, he was glad he didn’t. Quinn Newman walked out on the stage and blew everyone away with his mastery of the art of puppetry. The way Jonathan saw it, Yoki had saved him from a lifetime of embarrassment, meaning that he now owed Yoki. He just didn’t know when this debt would be paid off.

The day Jonathan decided to leave Yoki at home for the first time was the day of his first tennis lesson. Jonathan was riding his bike home from school one day, Yoki perched on his shoulder, telling Jonathan that he really should upgrade his bike, when they rode past two older people playing a game of tennis. Jonathan was hooked and Yoki was hungry. For the next two weeks, Jonathan had to endure a barrage of rather unhelpful suggestions from Yoki: You’re not going to be any good; the others will beat you easily; you actually like soccer better; your parents don’t want to pay for you to do yet another expensive hobby. Rather than give in – which had been the way up until now – Jonathan got dressed in his tennis uniform, picked up his new tennis equipment and went to wait outside for his mother to take him along. Just like a puppy, Yoki followed him. Unlike a puppy, however, Yoki didn’t put up too much of a fuss when Jonathan picked him up. When are you even going to practise? Another hobby down the drain! Jonathan didn’t take his eyes off Yoki as he took his shiny, new tennis racket out of its black and white tennis bag. He threw Yoki up in the air and whacked him with the racket with enough force that Yoki flew through the air, landing in a nearby neighbour’s pool.

That night, as Jonathan lay in bed, still smiling from having an enjoyable afternoon, he got a terrific idea. He asked Yoki to pass him the lined book and pencil sitting on the bedside table and Yoki politely agreed, asking if there was anything else Jonathan needed. Jonathan looked at Yoki and Yoki nodded, getting into his tiny, little monster-sized bed. Jonathan took the pencil and book, opened the book up to the first available page and wrote the words: Dear Diary.

Frolly the Frilled-Neck Lizard was always making mistakes. She was regularly getting into trouble for it, too. Once, during Frolly’s mother’s third attempt to teach her daughter how to move her body gracefully to make it to the end of a branch, Frolly slipped, sending her mother flying high into the air. Frolly watched from the branch below as her mother whizzed by overhead, landing safely in a soft patch of grass. There wasn’t much else to do except bob up and down on her new branch and wait for her mother to claw her way back to their pre-launch location.

“Oh, I worry about you, Frolly!” her mother said with tremendous concern once they were reunited. “How are you going to survive out there in the big wide world if you keep making these silly mistakes?”

Frolly wasn’t sure how to answer this question, but she set about trying to make her own life better. It didn’t work. One of the ways she tried to make fewer mistakes was by doing all of the things that a good lizard should do before starting the day. She had a large drink of water, did some exercises and stretches (much to the amusement of the nearby cockatoos) before eating a healthy breakfast of small, black ants. Little did she realise that the water she drank was the last of her mother’s own store, that the exercises she did were meant for an elephant (explaining all of the peculiar mentions of peanuts and maintaining your grey skin) and that the black ants were, in fact, fleas. Instead of making her mother proud, Frolly watched on as her mother woke up to no water, some hysterical cockatoos and houses filled with angry fleas. So many mistakes and all before lunchtime.

One evening, Frolly decided that maybe she could help make her mother’s life better by packing up her things and moving to another burrow. But, luckily, she made a few mistakes along the way. Firstly, she had mistakenly left the door open on her way out, meaning that her mother knew very quickly that Frolly had gone somewhere. Secondly, Frolly forgot to take a map with her, meaning that her third mistake was to walk in circles around the forest and end up exactly where she had started: at her own house. Frolly’s mother was outside waiting for her when she returned and she appeared more cross than ever.

“What are you doing, Frolly?” her mother asked, shaking her head in disbelief. “You might have got yourself hurt!”

Frolly stared at the ground, not saying a word.

“Of all the mistakes you’ve made, Frolly, thinking that I don’t care about you would be the silliest.”

Frolly unpacked her belongings (only noticing then that she had forgotten to pack her toothbrush) and went outside. “Now,” said Frolly’s mother, “unfortunately for both you and I, the tastiest ants are right at the tip of the highest branches. So, let’s start climbing.” Frolly smiled and eagerly followed her mother, neither of them realising until it was too late that they had just climbed to the top of the completely wrong tree.

Jasmine entered the room, her shimmering, light-blue dress decorated with white trimmings pre-empting the day that she would become royalty. She breathed in the combined smell of numerous dishes, each cooked with passion and love. The clanging of swords against armour bounced from one stone wall to the other as the two guards on either side of the thick, wooden door worked together to push it shut, giving Jasmine no choice but to stay until the rules of the game had a chance to be heard. Jasmine already knew the rules, but no exception could ever be made against this tradition. That was the law.

In the centre of the room was a table, its four dense, hand-carved legs betrayed by a white tablecloth not long enough to reach the ground. On the table, a banquet that could feed fifty men was presented with such precision, Jasmine thought it would make the perfect subject for one of her mother’s exquisite paintings. Platters of fruits positioned elegantly on white china; warm meats and vegetables hidden under the finest of silverware and drinks of various colours waiting to be paired with each delicious mouthful. A single chair, not fit for a princess, but not fit for a commoner either, sat exposed at the end of the table. Nerves flew through Jasmine’s veins, knowing that she would soon be sitting in the chair. Glancing away from the bounty laid out on the table, Jasmine looked up and stared at the blue sky and contrasting white clouds through the only source of light in the room: an arch window carved out of the stone wall.

Jasmine’s gaze drifted back down the cobblestone walls and towards the far end of the room where the Queen and her assistant were waiting. The jewels on the Queen’s gown occasionally caught the sunlight as she bent down to whisper something into her assistant’s ear. The assistant, dressed in a traditional all-white outfit, walked with some authority towards the chair and dragged it across the polished-stone floor, the grating sound of their contrasting materials causing a palpable unease in the room. The assistant then looked over at Jasmine and waved his hand across the seat of the chair, beckoning her to take a seat.

The subtle sounds of the frills at the bottom of Jasmine’s dress brushing against the floor filled the room as she made her way over to the table. She sat down and adjusted the bulk of her dress, the assistant pushing the chair in on Jasmine’s signal. The Queen took three steps forward, standing directly in the beam of brilliant light shining through the arch window. Jasmine found it difficult to maintain eye contact given the hundreds of dots of light reflecting from the Queen’s dress and dancing around the uneven surfaces of the room’s walls. The assistant passed the Queen a scroll which she promptly unravelled while maintaining eye contact with Jasmine, her eyes dropping once she had revealed the script in its entirety.

“Jasmine Elizabeth Conroy,” the Queen began. “It has come to the kingdom’s attention that you wish to claim to be a princess and, if fate permits, to one day call yourself queen.”
Jasmine knew not to say anything, choosing to nod instead.
“Then you must follow the rules and complete a task so monumental in its demands that it will forever prove you worthy of wearing the royal crown.” Jasmine stopped herself from moving even the smallest of muscles.
“You are to eat and drink your way from one end of the table to the other. Only then can we know that you can do what is best for the people of our kingdom. You are free to leave, though doing so forfeits your right to wear the crown.” There was a tremendous pause as the Queen packed the scroll away. “You may take as long as you need. May the grace of the kingdom be with you.” The Queen and her assistant drifted towards the door, signalling to the guards that they must now open it. The two guards, the Queen, and her assistant left the room, the booming sound of the shutting door causing the silence that followed to be all the more prominent.

Jasmine’s attention zig-zagged slowly across the table, her eyes settling towards the front of the table. She leant over, plucked a purple grape from its stem and delivered it to her mouth.

The sounds of the removalist truck could be heard disappearing down the road as Axel started examining every nook and every cranny of his and his mother’s new house. Axel was exploring underneath the stairs when he came across a tiny wooden door, painted cream with a brass door handle. There was enough light from the windows at either end of the hallway for Axel to see his reflection upside down in the doorknob. Axel thought about the time he had panicked when, at his old house, he had first seen his upside-down reflection in a spoon and started thinking that the whole world was now upside-down. His mother comforted him and eventually convinced him that everything was the right way up, but it was hard to shake his fascination with doorknobs and spoons as a result. Curious as to where the tiny door underneath the stairs might lead, Axel took a risk, opened up the door, squatted down and waddled through it.

Once through the door, he was able to stand up straight and scan the contents of this hidden, circular room. Doors. A vast number of wooden doors lining the curved walls – though none smaller than the one he had just come from. They all had a lock, so Axel thought it important to start making his way around the room checking each and every door. He eventually made his way back to where he had started and, although he didn’t panic, he did think it best to find a spot to sit and consider his options.

Finding a seat where he wasn’t leaning up against a door was not possible, so Axel leaned against the comfiest door he could find. He found it curious that some doors could be comfier than others and started thinking about the other differences the doors had. He noticed that the wooden panels stuck to the front of some of the doors made the shape of different letters. The panels on the door in front of him, for example, were shaped like a letter ‘A’. The panels on the door next to that, though made of a different kind of wood and of a much smaller size, made the letter ‘V’.

Axel stood up and raced back in the direction of where he had first entered the room and started piecing together each letter as he walked past it. AVERYLITTLEKEYFROMAVERYLITTLEDOOROPENSUPTHELASTOFTHEVERYHEAVYDOORS. Although he felt tricked by the doors – making him work his way around the room yet again – he was excited to finally have a way out. He opened up the tiny door from where he had entered, though this time there was nothing but darkness, and picked up the key waiting inside. He moved to the last door, presuming correctly that this was the door that the key would open. He pushed the key into the lock, unlocked the door, opened it and stepped through.

Windows. Lots of windows. Each one providing access to a different view. There were some that showed mountains and some that looked into shops. Only one, however, looked into a room where he could see his mother unpacking their possessions. Axel pushed against the glass, but it would not move. He began analysing the numbers above each of the windows. He took a deep breath, realising that it was going to be a while before he could make his way back home.

There was a sense of relief in having a collective understanding that the source of the drumming lay beneath the town. Jon had been walking to school when he felt a vibration hitting the bottom of his boots. The pulse was in time to the beat of the drums. The rhythmic sounds had dominated his thoughts for most of the morning, so he wasn’t sure whether or not the sensation was in his imagination. He explained to me that he had called out to the twins, Harriet and Sarah, while they were walking to school and they confirmed that they could feel the vibration as well. The plan was to go to school and continue to act as though we still didn’t have any answers. None of us could say why, but it didn’t feel right telling anyone until we had more information.

Despite the constant insistence from the drums that our attention be given to them, the teachers did their best to carry on as though nothing was happening. No students were absent, which was unusual even on an ordinary school day. Sarah, Harriet and I would later learn that most of the adults in the town attended a meeting that was meant to be kept a secret from the children of the town. At this meeting, Norma-Jean Hansely would tell the mayor that, earlier that morning, she had seen four school students lying on the road with their ears to the ground.
The four of us met under the oak tree on the school oval during second recess and discussed our thoughts about uncovering the source. Sarah and Harriet were not interested, as they were more concerned about the consequences of sneaking away than figuring out where the drumming was coming from or why it was here. For Jon and me, the draw of being the first to uncover some answers was far too great for us to pass up this opportunity. Before the bell rang to signal for us to go back to class, Jon and I agreed to meet behind the post office in main street just after dark.

The drums had become background noise by dinner time, barely noticeable and in concert with the sound of the wind and animals from the forest surrounding our town. This helped relax my nerves as I peered out of the window, watching the sunset with great interest. At night, the drums appeared louder, though we knew they hadn’t changed their volume. This made sneaking out to the shed easier, and I was able to make it to the town square with my father’s pickaxe without feeling as though I would be leaving Jon alone for too long. We both carried a torch and a digging tool of our choice. Jon tried laughing off his shovel by saying that the last thing he expected was for a girl like me to bring along a pickaxe. We didn’t have much time, so we agreed to make our way out into the street and start digging.

It was easier to move the dirt to the rhythm of the drums. Somehow it made the time pass faster. We took turns to shift the soil. Jon, then me. Jon, then me. The sound of the shovel and the pickaxe driving into the soil added to the sounds coming from below. It was Jon’s shovel that revealed the hole under the earth where we were standing, the dirt falling so far that the light from our torches was unable to follow it all the way down. Once the hole was revealed, the drums became considerably louder. We didn’t have long to process what we were seeing before a series of flashlights forced us to put up our arms to shield our eyes. A deep voice told us to drop whatever was in our hands. My heart was racing too fast for me to consider any other option, so I threw my pickaxe on the ground in front of me. I hesitantly turned my head towards Jon. He was staring down into the hole with a curious look on his face. The voice reminded Jon to comply with the instructions. Instead, he looked up at me before jumping into the hole. I yelled to try to get him to stop, but I was too late. I looked back up at the flashlights that were now heading towards me, my breath trying to catch up with my thoughts. As the adults and I stood around the hole, it took several moments before we realised that the air was now silent. The drumming had stopped.

In the years that followed, I was never sure if it was just a memory replaying itself or if I could occasionally hear the sounds of drums playing in the distance. Either way, no one in the town ever spoke about the drums again. Until now.

The sounds of drums filled the town throughout the day before Jon and I set out to discover their source. The first time I heard them was when the sun woke me up by beaming directly into my room. I lay in bed, listening to the hypnotic rhythm, expecting them to stop. But, they didn’t. Some of the townspeople said the drums started at midnight, while others said they didn’t start until early morning. They didn’t bother me at all. In fact, I enjoyed the novelty of not waking up to the sound of my four-year-old brother, Jack, banging his toy cars together and crying for someone to assist him when the wooden wheels fell off.

Jack had woken up early, but had forgone playing with his wooden toys and instead was inventing rhythmically inspired dances in the living area, bending down on one beat and standing up straight on the next while stomping around our wooden floors. My mother and father, however, were complaining about how they were unable to think with that “incessant noise.” I sat at the kitchen bench, eating jam on toast, thinking about how different our reactions were to the same event. Trying to take advantage of their distaste for the drums, I asked my mother if the drums meant we had to go to school. Apparently, she despised that idea even more than the drums, scolding me for wasting her time with such frivolous questions. My brother didn’t have to go to school, and he was sure to take time out from stomping around the house to let me know before I walked out of the house.

The rhythm was different. I wouldn’t have been able to put into words how it had changed, but there was a distinct shift in the overall mood of the drums since I had woken up. If you asked me to describe them to you, I would have said tribal. Without knowing much about drumming, I would have been surprised to discover that the sounds were all being made by anything other than hand drums. I gave in to the urge to walk along the gravel path so that my boots landed in time with the beat echoing across the town. It took me longer than it should have to realise that the sound of the drums appeared to be the same volume no matter where I was, and that this should have been my first clue regarding their location.

The gravel path gave way to the dirt lining the main street, and I tried unsuccessfully to gauge the mood of the town. The shopkeepers had congregated near the town’s centre, shrugging their shoulders and throwing their arms up in the air, cursing the drums for making their days that much more unpredictable. There was something concerning about the fact that they did not have any answers as to where the drumming was coming from or who was causing it, as the shopkeepers were usually the ones who knew these things before anybody else. I walked past them, altering my walking pattern so it didn’t look as though I was enjoying the drums.

The post office lady, Norma-Jean Hansely, quickly stopped tapping on her counter when she saw me walking past her shop on the way to school. Usually, she would wave to me but, today, she stared at me with a look of concern. I was going to be late for school if I stopped to discuss this recent phenomenon with her, so I continued walking down the main street. Six or seven steps later, I froze. In the middle of the road in front of me, three of my classmates were kneeling down, each one with an ear to the ground.

James sat on the porch his father built six years ago. A lot of the planks had started to rot, and there were fewer places to sit comfortably than there were some years earlier. Finding a spot to sit at the edge of the stairs that was still relatively smooth, James leaned the side of his body and head against the support pole to his right. The sounds of his father chopping wood echoed through the forest surrounding their house, and James’ eyes were forced to blink with each swing of the axe. There were families in their village that didn’t have to chop wood. Smart families who had filled their homes with gadgets and tools allowing them to complete some of these basic tasks much more easily. From his position on the porch, James admired the grit and determination involved in splitting logs for their nightly fire while simultaneously harbouring resentment for the act. He vowed to make sure that his own family never had to live such primitive lives.

Eventually, they gave in and bought the gadgets James had demanded for so long. James’ father spent a great deal of time assembling their new possessions over the course of two days and, as a consequence, didn’t spend any leisure time with James or his mother. When everything was assembled, and the family were finally able to sit down and enjoy the warmth and other comforts the gadgets provided, James’ father was so exhausted that he went to sleep earlier than usual. In the morning, while James lay in bed, enjoying the warmth contained in his bedroom, he heard his father wake up early, get his jacket on and leave the house for work. Although the house was now warm, the water boiled more easily and there was more time for James and his mother to spend together, the home felt colder and lonelier than before.

If the warmth stopped, someone would have to be called to fix it, adding to the hours that James’ father had to be away from home. The axe, left out in the yard for many seasons, had a brittle handle and a rusty head. James and his mother struggled to enjoy their time together, so James had taken to putting on his hooded jacket and walking through the forest. Once, while exploring the many tracks branching out from their yard, James rediscovered a swing that his father had built for him. It hung from the outstretched branch of the tree with two ropes. The seat was made from a short, thick plank of oak with two holes carved out on either side to tie the ropes through. After a long while, James realised he had been watching the swing gently move in the breeze. He walked over and ran his hands along the knots in the rope before sitting down and pushing himself back and forth. If only there were a gadget that would push me on the swing, James thought. In an instant, he felt a surge of energy through his body, and he ran back to his house. Rain started to fall on his jacket, and James tilted his head back to feel the fresh droplets on his face. He bent down to pick up the axe, testing its weight in his hands. James decided that any logs around him were no longer suitable for their fire and that he would need to chop down a suitable tree if he wanted some wood for the fire.

Just as his father was walking up the road in his black and red jacket, James swung the axe into the tree with a tremendous crunch, forcing his father’s eyes to blink.

“Where did you see it last?” Pia asked, her hands resting on her hips as she raised her left eyebrow.
“Yeah,” continued Mia, “You can’t just tell us that the ball went ‘over there’ and expect us to know what you’re on about.” She threw her hands up in the air and let them drop by her side to emphasise her point.
“Well put, Mia,” said Pia, nodding as she spoke.
“Thank you, Pia,” replied Mia. The two girls folded their arms.
“You want to know where it went?” Reggie asked, attempting to get the girls frustrated by having to repeat themselves. Instead, they stared at him until he finally gave in.
“Behind the shack, OK?” The smiles on the girls’ faces vanished and their faces fell.

The shack was the last place anyone in the town of Quairading wanted to go. No one had maintained it for years, and the neglect was obvious. In fact, the distance anyone was willing to travel around the shack was directly related to the number of nasty rumours being spread about it, and, lately, there were a significant number of rumours to choose from.
“Oh boy, you are in strife!” Pia announced to the audience of two. “Once Mrs Squiers finds out that you’ve lost that ball, it’s going to be detention for a week!”
“Well, at least you’ll have some company,” Mia replied cheekily. Pia gave her a tap on the top of her right arm with the back of her hand, playfully expressing that she was not at all happy with the comment.
“I can’t lose that ball,” Reggie explained, his eyes almost pleading with the girls. “I can’t be in that detention room for a week. Not again.”
“Well, we’re not going past that fence, let alone over to the shack,” Pia insisted. “You’re definitely on your own there.”
“Yeah,” continued Mia, “I heard there were all sorts of mutant bugs coming out from under the doors and living in the sand around it. They flew out after the light show and forced Ella off her bike, and that’s how she broke her arm. You couldn’t pay me enough to go there just for a ball.”
Reggie made a clicking noise with his mouth. “What about two ice-creams from the canteen? Would that do it?”

The shack was already the most potent source of rumours for the quiet, country town, so being anywhere near the place was never considered a smart move. “This is such a terrible idea,” said Pia as the three of them peered through the wire fencing separating the school from the shack.
“Couldn’t agree more, Pia,” said Mia. “Why were you, Laqueena and Wazza playing football down here, anyway? And why aren’t they down here helping you retrieve your little soccer ball?”
“They said I kicked it over, so it’s my problem,” replied Reggie. The three of them tightened their grip on the wire fencing and stared at the shack.
“This is such a terrible idea,” repeated Pia.

They took it in turns to lift the wire so that they could crawl through to the other side. Pia and Mia spent more time than necessary dusting themselves off and the three of them started making their way through the overgrown grass. They were no more than five metres away from the shack when the sound of the shack’s door opening caused them to freeze. Their eyes followed a disturbance in the grass. They were about ready to run when they noticed Reggie’s blue and black soccer ball rolling towards them.
“Well, that’s freaky,” commented Pia.
“That’s more than freaky,” replied Mia. “That’s downright scary.”
Just as they were getting their heads around what they had seen, the shack started shaking. Lightly at first but getting stronger and stronger, as if it were being blown about by a strong wind.
“Give me back my ball!” a deep voice from within the shack yelled. This was enough to cause Pia and Mia to scream so loudly that several crows abandoned their posts and flew towards the tree line in the distance.

The girls made their way back under the fence and were running across the school oval so fast that Reggie was surprised by how quickly he lost track of them. “You can come out now! The job is done and the coast is clear!” Wazza and Laqueena emerged from the shack, laughing harder than they had ever laughed before. “Now that’s how to spend a lunchtime!” commented Wazza.
“We better get back before Mrs Squiers finds out where we are,” suggested Laqueena.
They were walking back towards the fence, laughing and giving each other high-fives when they felt some movement in the brown dirt under their shoes. One by one, several large bugs were coming up out of the ground.

By the age of four years, three months and 26 days, Eddie Feeney was able to play 16 songs on the guitar his grandparents had bought him shortly after he was born. Each time Eddie was placed on the rug in the middle of his living room, he flipped himself over and cried for his guitar, his eyes only drying once it was safely in his possession. Then he would play a song, and everyone would cringe, asking him to stop playing while they ended their conversations or “just to get some peace and quiet”. Which was simultaneously understandable and a tremendous shame because, as they were about to learn, the guitar was Eddie’s voice.

In the first two weeks of owning the guitar, Eddie invented his communication rules. Nobody else knew these rules, however, because he was only very young and unable to tell anyone about them. So, if his parents heard a particular pattern being plucked on his guitar, they would presume Eddie was just being difficult and request he be quiet immediately. Since he was trying to communicate that he was hungry or tired, he wouldn’t stop and, as a consequence, would have his guitar taken from him and hidden away, causing the unfortunate cycle of despair to continue. He knew if he was going to get his family to understand anything he wanted to say, then he was going to have to get much, much better at the guitar.

Only being able to practise in between bouts of having the guitar taken from him, Eddie struggled to make any real gains for the first few months. But, strum by strum and note by note, Eddie was allowed to keep his guitar for increasingly longer periods of time. The day his family celebrated his first year since being born, Eddie was able to play himself his own birthday song. The adult guests attending his first birthday party were so impressed and so full of praise that, from the following day, everything changed. His parents no longer took the guitar from him and, in fact, encouraged him to play and practise, even stopping midway through their conversations to prompt him to continue playing should he want to stop to take a rest. He was asked over to friends’ houses, not to play, but to entertain the other boys and girls as they ran around their backyards playing hide-and-go-seek or tag. As his talent grew, so too did the demand for his music. Unable to speak, Eddie attempted to communicate his pain in the songs he was writing, but that just led to more demand on his time. No matter what he did, Eddie appeared destined to be thanked and congratulated for sharing his pain and despair. Until one day, he stopped playing altogether.

If he couldn’t use his voice, maybe not playing would speak volumes. And it did. Four years, three months and 26 days after being born, Eddie Feeney quit playing the guitar forever. His parents and friends were furious, but Eddie knew it wouldn’t last. He knew that they just needed time to appreciate what he had given them and no longer take it for granted. They even tried taking him to the music store to see if another guitar might encourage him to play again. It didn’t. Eddie had played too much, stayed up far past his bedtime on several occasions and had travelled to too many friends’ houses to miss playing the guitar. He needed a break. For one year, he rested. Not speaking, not playing, just resting.

It wasn’t until early primary school that Eddie found his voice again. This time, in an instrument known as the recorder. With this instrument, Eddie found no one pressured him to play and no one demanded he play for them. For once, he believed, the people around him genuinely appreciated just how beautiful his guitar had been.