Five: Continued Some More.

Willoughby and I were left on a different bank of the lake from the one on which we had began, so had good thirty minutes worth of walking to get back to where we started. And neither of us were complaining about it: it was early evening and the air was just beginning to cool off a bit. To our right, the lake cooed and murmured, reflecting the blushing sky; to our left, the forest’s friendly tree-fringe provided a bit of shade and a choir of gleeful twilight chirping.

Coming to a particularly nice cluster of trees, Willoughby and I paused upon hearing an unexpected addition to this melody: someone was playing guitar. I looked up and directly found the origin of this music. There, on his tree-top balcony a boyish-looking hermit sat on a stool, effortlessly playing the most amazing song either of us had ever heard.

We watched, enthralled, for a moment or two, until, looking down, he saw us watching him and abruptly stopped playing, nearly dropping his guitar all together in quite a fright. To our amazement, when he stopped playing all of the birds that had been singing also stopped (it turned out that they are, in fact, a choir).

None of us knew quite what to do, so Willoughby and I just stood still, there beneath the wondering stare of his two huge blue eyes. Then, perhaps recalled to himself by the silence, he looked to either side of him (as if for an escape route) and began playing again.

As he did this, the whole (bird) choir struck back up with him. He played beautifully, and every so often looked bashfully back up to see whether or not I was still there. I was mesmerized; Willoughby just rolled his eyes.

I slumped down against a tree to listen for some time and then, realizing it was getting late, and that I was getting tired, I waved goodbye and turned to go. But there was another abrubt end to the music. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw that he had stood up and was looking after us.

I laughed. Willoughby rolled his eyes.

“Hi” I called up.

He looked hard at the ground, and stammered back a hello. It was only twilight, but had it been midnight I think I still would have been able to see the beet color that flushed his face.

“I’m Lima Bean” I said.

“Lima...er...do you want to come up for a coffee?” he managed. Willoughby nudged me.

“Have you finished...um..playing?”

He nodded.

“O-okay” I shrugged. I am not typically a very shy person, but his shyness was making me a little bashful. He was very cute, and, you know, with my focus on moving into hermithood, it had been a long time since I had met a cute boy.

His place was neat--except for the vast amounts of instruments and music books that occupied every available table-top, counter, desk and chair. And that was just the stuff he was able to transport, he said.

Once he had been a successful musician in the, so to speak, real world, but had retired at an early age to the solitude of a self-sufficient ranch that had a large garden and a gigantic swimming pool, where he was working on his musical masterpiece.

I asked if it would change the future of music. He said no, but that it might produce some nice nursery school sing-a-longs. That’s musical immortality, he said.

I had gone up for coffee, but I ended up staying for dinner. And by the time dinner was over, we were conversing like old friends. In fact, there was so much to talk about, that we talked ourselves right to sleep.


So, here you have it first: I did spend the night with the cutest hermit at the Convention. But there was no funny business, save the gentle snoring of two soundly sleeping almost-hermits.

And his name? you ask. Peter Pan.

Of course.


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