#inspired by devil went down to georgia by charles daniels

[iceeckos12]

the rising sun

Johnny wins a golden fiddle from the devil. The devil’s not finished with him yet, though. 

inspired by devil went down to georgia by charles daniels. 

Johnny stares at the golden fiddle at his bare feet. He is pale and shaky, auburn eyes bright under the broad brim of his straw hat, and he is slowly but surely coming to terms with what he has just done. 

(He is a fiddle player, the same way a human breathes air, the same way a fish swims through water, naturally and inevitably. He’s been a fiddle player since he was five years old, scraping his knees on the trash heaps near his house. He’d found the instrument, wood old and scuffed, its bow a pile of scraps and horse hair beside it, and had felt something like a siren call at the sight of it.

The fiddle was too big for him, his arms neither long enough nor strong enough to hold it comfortably beneath his chin. But he found another bow, and sanded and oiled the the instrument until it was smooth as silk to the touch, and he’s been lost ever since. 

Or found, perhaps.) 

He is a fiddle player; the whole town knows that he is a fiddle player. He plays as he walks the roads into town, plays as he nods a polite hello to the passersby, plays as he meanders through the farmers market for fresh vegetables, and only stops playing when the local policemen shout that he’s disturbing the peace with all that racket! But as sure as the sun rises in the east, when the police leave Johnny is playing again. 

The whole town knows that he is a fiddle player, and have tolerated their most musical child with the sort of exasperated patience that comes from the knowledge that they cannot get him to stop. But if they look at this golden fiddle, if they hear the sacrilegious moan of the devil’s tone rise from the strings, their exasperated patience will transform into something more sinister. Because there is no way this fiddle could be mistaken for anything than what it is, with its raucous howling and its mournful keening. 

If nothing else, Johnny is self-aware. He knows his flaws as intimately as he knows every imperfection in his fiddle, knows that he is far too rash and far too reckless for his own good. Case in point, taking a bet with the devil. 

But those flaws are also his strength. He does not waffle or sit on a decision which must be made. He knows that he is keeping this fiddle; he knows that if he does, he will be run out of this god-fearing town, perhaps stoned to death. 

Johnny opens his sack, empty except for a couple of coins, some extra strings, and wood polish, and reverently places the golden fiddle inside. Then he kicks up his bare, cracked feet, chucks his chin with his wooden fiddle and places the bow to the strings, as familiar as an old lover, and heads West. 

-0-

A banjo player stops before Johnny as he plays in the street, his instrument tied across his back. They are of a kind, Johnny thinks, watching the dusty man from underneath his broad-brimmed hat. They look nothing alike, but they were both hewn from the same stone, then given an instrument to sing of the land from whence they came. 

The man, tall, skinny and dark, a slip of shadow, realizes it too. He shudders into movement again, but his path has changed; he folds himself into the crowd that surrounds Johnny with an ease that suggests experience. 

Johnny pauses in between one sound and the next 

(and Johnny does not play tunes, he does not play the reels and folksongs that most fiddlers know. He has never taken lessons, could not tell you the difference between Galway Girl, Red is the Rose, and the Parting Glass. He plays what he likes, strings one sound to the next with the same casual grace as an artist painting an abstract picture, and it is both repels and draws people in equal measure.)

and meets the deep, black eyes of the stranger. He does not speak, merely gestures, calls a silent call that is more compelling than it has any right to be. 

The banjo player slowly pushes his way to the front, slinging his instrument from his shoulder as he walks, does not attempt to tune it because he knows it is still perfectly in tune from this morning. He stands beside Johnny, a short young man with freckled cheeks, bright auburn eyes, and a plain fiddle that sings as sinfully as any demon, and begins to play. 

Mack takes Johnny back to his home and introduces him to the other two members of his group; a tall man with tanned, leathery skin who plays a wicked bass, and a quiet percussionist with oddly slanted eyes, who’s rhythm is steady as a rock. 

They teach Johnny how to play with a group, how to build off another person’s sound like bricks being laid on a foundation. They teach him the jigs and reels he should’ve learned years ago, how they lead into and play off of one another. They teach him how to put the melodies bouncing around in his head to paper, and how to read music, for that matter. 

In return, Johnny is the best fiddle player that’s ever been for them. He draws crowds by the hundreds, packs every tavern they play in, lines their pockets with more money than they know what to do with. And when the mood is right, when the crowd is teetering into blackout drunkenness, Johnny will lift the golden fiddle from his sack and touch the bow to the strings. 

He plays like the devil, People say, shaking their heads, disbelieving that a sound like that could come from such a child, who never wears shoes and is perpetually covered in dirt. But with none of the temptation. 

Not that Johnny cares what they say. He is a fiddle player, and he will play the fiddle, regardless if his crowd likes it or not. 

-0-

It is dark in the tavern, and they have just finished playing. Johnny has just polished off his third free beer and is wandering around the dimly lit tables, absentmindedly pressing the calloused pads of his fingers to the strings of his fiddle. Mack, Jason, and Kai have all gathered at the bar, but Johnny is feeling oddly restless, unable to place his feet down. 

“Johnny,” A voice rumbles beside him, dark and familiar. 

Johnny turns to see a man, as beautiful as he’s ever seen, with thick eyebrows and high cheekbones and black hair that curls raucously about his ears. Johnny has never been aware of his plainness before, but now he is, and he smiles a sheepish grin. 

The man drums his fingers against the table, unreadable. “Sit.”

Johnny stills, and realizes where he’s heard this voice before. “Devil?”

“Sit,” The devil says, an order. Johnny does as he is bid, does not dare look away. 

Then the devil says, a snappish accusation, “You are not playing my fiddle.”

Johnny shrugs, a flush rising to his cheeks. “Wrong crowd.” 

And it had been. There had been a man in the second row who’d had frightful dreams of the war last night, of his dead friends, who had been staring down his breaking point. There had been a woman in the back whose husband had just died of some sickness that the doctor’s hadn’t been able to name. Johnny had gotten through two stanzas of The Parting Glass before the man had broken down into great, heaving sobs, had gotten through one more before the woman had to leave. It had been the good kind of pain for the both of them, though, the soulful kind that every human needs to feel, and the kind only his wooden fiddle could produce.

The devil does not understand this, though. He sneers. “Wrong crowd? As though my fiddle could not play for any crowd.”

Johnny’s fingers tremble, even as they continue to press against the fingerboard. “Wrong crowd.”

The devil is quiet for a few maddening seconds, his eyes gold like the gleam of sun off desert sands. Then he says, “I did not give you my fiddle so you could sit on it.”

And Johnny is aware of his flaws; he is aware of his rash and reckless behavior, and how it will get him one day. He wonders if that day is now when he says, “Come to the tavern in three days, if you like. I’ll play your fiddle then.”

There is a moment of shocked silence, those pale, bloodless lips parted in surprise, golden eyes wide. Then there is a sound like rocks being ground together, which grows until it’s the gravelly slide of boulders down a mountain. Johnny does not realize it is laughter until he sees the devil’s wide grin. 

“Care to make a bet?” The devil asks, sly as a fox and twice as mischievous. “Make another bet with the devil, boy. You’ve beat me once. Let’s have another, Johnny.”

“Sure,” Johnny says agreeably, without pause. Because he gets it, he does. If he gave away his precious fiddle

(When he was thirteen he finally hit his growth spurt, and he grew and grew and grew, but he was not happy about it. His fiddle was not a very large fiddle, made for a person of average height, and if he grew much larger playing would become cramped and uncomfortable, and then he would be forced to get a larger one. And he did not want that; he had rescued this fiddle from the trash heaps, had sanded it and polished it and toiled over it until it was a piece of his very soul.

He did not have much use for any gods—they had never done him much good—but he prayed for the first time, then. That he would not grow tall, that he would remain short enough for his fiddle to be comfortable. 

Ever since that time, when his growth had abruptly halted in its tracks, Johnny has made sure to be respectful of the holy men, and never, ever plays the golden fiddle when he spies them in the room.)

then he would be furious to find out that the person he gave it to was not playing it. It is the devil’s right. 

The devil pauses for a second, blinks, then continues. “I’ll come in three days. If you do not give me a good show, then I’ll have your soul.”

Johnny thinks about that, then nods solemnly. “Alright. And if I give you a good show, you have to play with us.”

The silence is so profound, so absolute that one could hear a pin drop. Whatever the devil had been expecting in recompense, that obviously had not been it. “You want me to...play with you?”

“You’re good. Almost as good as me.” Johnny says honestly, and raises an eyebrow. “Haven’t you ever wanted to play with someone else before? It’s fun.”

“Fun,” The devil says, rolling the word around in his mouth like he’s just tried a new food and is unsure of the flavor. Then his expression clears and he says, dismissive, “Whatever. I’ll be back for your soul in three days.” 

Johnny smirks back, and blinks. When he opens his eyes, the seat before him is empty. 

-0-

Let us speak of the golden fiddle. 

Let us speak of its golden body, which is shaped so naturally and fluidly that it seems to have been formed from a molten pool, so liquid that it looks like it could melt back down again at any second. Harps of gold would not be so fine, heavy rings with gaudy jewels not nearly so opulent. Gold water off of old stones, ancient and tangible as the earth.

Let us speak of white-gold strings, so pale they are almost translucent and can only truly be seen in darkness, strings which do not so much as resonate as they do shimmer against the bow. The strings of the fiddle are normally made from catgut, sheep’s intestines, stretched, dried and twisted into a shape which is capable of producing song. The strings of this fiddle are not catgut, are no more catgut than quartz is diamond, twisted from the land from whence the devil came, hot and dry and bathed in fire. 

Let us speak of the sound, of the siren’s call which it produces, a demanding shriek which the human mind cannot truly comprehend. If the listener were a demon, or an angel, or anything but a human, they would be able to hear the layering of inhuman tones, the melodies of far off worlds and stories long lost to time. But a human cannot understand it, so a human cannot hear it, and instead finds themselves lost in the sound. When they finally return to themselves they have no memory of what was played, only the wistful feeling left behind, that they have lost something irreplaceable and must follow it to its source.

In Johnny’s hands, the fiddle’s body sits obedient and solid. The strings shimmer like the petals of an African violet, and the sound that they emit is loud and raucous and human and soulful, and the listeners take a little piece of that sound home with them. Well, take is perhaps not the correct word. Johnny gives it to them freely, without strings attached, lets them cradle it close to their hearts. They hear it in their dreams, make a space for it in their memories to look back on when they’re feeling wistful and lonesome. 

He plays like the devil, they say, knowing it to be true but unable to explain why.  But with none of the temptation.

-0-

The devil does not get Johnny’s soul that day.

Johnny finds him after the performance, splayed in his chair, looking as dazed as confused as the rest of the crowd. He grins and says, “Guess you’re playing with me, aren’t you?”

The devil looks up at him, not angry in a furious way, but angry in a confused sort of way, the way a person who does not know what to do with an emotion turns it into something they can understand. “How did you do that?”

“Do what?” Johnny asks, mild but not meek. 

“That is not my fiddle, I know how it plays,” He snarls, rising to his feet. Shadows larger than they should be sink into the wood behind him, suggesting the outline of wings. “That has—it—”

The devil is trying to say, it has a soul, although he does not know it. He has never had a soul, has never loved his fiddle. It had been a necessary tool, a way to bring people  to him, but he has never played simply because he wanted to. 

Johnny has never been anything but a man who loves to play the fiddle, who lives to play the fiddle, who loves every broken, beautiful sound that it plays. He does not know how to do it any other way. And that is why the golden fiddle sounds as it does, all of the inhuman ringing side-by-side with the all-too-human soul of a fiddle player. All of the beauty but none of the siren’s call. All of temptation with none of the strings attached. 

But neither of them know this, and even if they did, they could not put it in words. So Johnny only shrugs and says, “You’ll join us tomorrow, then?”

A deal is a deal, and the devil does not renege upon his. So after a moment of furious, confused silence, the devil nods. 

-0-

The devil slips, unnoticed, into the band that day, and decides not to leave. 

Mack, Jason, and Kai either do not notice the otherworldliness of the new man, or do not care enough to point it out. Either way, when Johnny hands the devil a fiddle (and it differs depending on the day, depending on the mood of the crowd, which one the devil plays and which one Johnny plays)  they shrug and continue playing. They are musicians before they are moral people, and this new musician is almost as good as Johnny, so why ask questions?

The devil does not come every day—he is a busy man, after all—but when he does, the whole town knows about it. His and Johnny’s duets are legendary, the kind that can make a grown man weep like a baby, or a crotchety crone jump up and dance. 

The devil could not say why he returns, only knows that he is looking for something, has been looking for something since that first day when Johnny made the golden fiddle sing. And more and more he finds it enjoyable to play with the young man with auburn eyes and bare feet and a soul made of polished wood and catgut. 

It is this feeling that makes him look at Johnny one day, several years after their first meeting. It is this feeling which makes him take in the wrinkles about Johnny’s eyes, the spots of gray amongst his sandy hair, and finally parse out what it means. It is what makes him frown, deep and unhappy, because that is simply not acceptable. 

“You know,” The devil says carefully, “The fiddle is the devil’s instrument.”

“Of course,” Johnny says agreeably, his ankles folded on top of one another, plucking a reel with long, clever fingers. He does not argue with the devil, has never argued with him, just listened to his infernal opinions and nodded agreeably. Not in agreement, just agreeing that they are there and exist in some capacity. 

The devil frowns. “They don’t let you play the fiddle in heaven.”

Johnny scoffs at that, unconcerned. “I’ve been playing the fiddle for as long as I’ve been alive, devil. I don’t think I’m going to heaven after this.”

The devil thinks about a careful, gentle respect for the holy men that cross the threshold, and about a man who will sometimes sit, though he prefers standing when fiddling, so that the small, wide-eyed children can crawl into his lap and feel every resonant tone in their breasts. He thinks about men who find bright, innocent joy in music, who play selflessly and selfishly as only a musician can. 

He says, uncharacteristically gentle, “Playing the fiddle is not a sin.”

Johnny pauses for a second, his clever fingers frozen above the strings, and then starts up again. The tone of the piece is maudlin now, though, so the devil knows that Johnny is thinking.

“I see,” He says, neutral and unhappy. 

“Fiddlers are welcome in hell, though.” The devil adds as though it is an afterthought. “And someone who can fiddle better than the devil himself! Well. He might as well be a prince.”

“A prince,” Johnny repeats dubiously. 

“Yes,” The devil says, so earnest that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. And then, “A prince who could play fiddle all day long. However long he wanted, with whoever he wanted.”

Tempting. Like the golden fiddle when Johnny was not playing it, like the extended hand of a lover. He knows exactly who this is, exactly what this creature is doing. He also knows that the devil does not lie, and he always keeps his promises. 

And more than that, he knows the extent of his flaws, knows that he is reckless and rash. 

And he knows that he is a fiddle player. 

“Devil,” Johnny says, his words like the thick drops of rain just beginning to fall. “I’d like to make a bet with you.”

The devil’s eyes light up. He knows he’s won, that he will have this fiddler’s soul and his clever fingers and his sanded, polished wood fiddle. And he also knows that Johnny faces him with eyes wide open, that he knows what this means, and that he and the devil will make music together until the end of time, and even beyond that. 

“If I win, you get my soul.” The fiddler says, chucking his chin with the fiddle, grinning his wide, cracked grin under bright auburn eyes. “If I lose, you can keep my fiddle.”

The devil laughs, the grinding of boulders down a mountain, the cracking of the tectonic plates as they rub against one another. He has found what he is looking for: a soul to call his own, who plays his instrument like a human breathes air and a fish swims through water. Who has made human a fiddle of gold, has given meaning to a sound which he’d previously thought could only be appreciated by the heavenly host, or the crowds of the damned. 

And he places his fiddle beneath his chin, and prepares to lose one 

last 

time.