When I was eleven, I started taking singing lessons. I had wanted to for a long time, but my parents had never been able to afford them. Thankfully, I would end up receiving them for free when I met Mr Vespers.

My childhood home was located on the outskirts of a larger town where houses were few and far between, surrounded by intermittently dense woodland. We had a garden where I could often be found entertaining my younger siblings. I didn't have many friends at school, so I was basically always at home. I got on okay with my little brother and sister so I often had to play the babysitter when my parents needed some time off. Ironically, they trusted me to take care of them over my older sister. I was doing just that when Mr Vespers first happened upon me.

The aforementioned younger siblings, Viola and Reed, were really giving me the run-around that day. Viola had somehow managed to climb atop our swing set and was refusing to come back down. She laughed and kicked her little legs, skillfully wrapped around the wooden bar from which the chains connecting to the swing seats hung. I didn't care to compliment her on it. All I could think of was how much trouble I'd get into if she fell down and got hurt.

Soon enough, she realized that she was in a position of great power up there. "Hey, Shir! I'll come down if you do a handstand!" she hollered.

I did, clumsily, and while this seemed to please her, she still wouldn't climb off. "Now do a cartwheel!"

I tried and failed. Reed, who was sitting beside us on the blue roof of his little white playhouse, clapped nonetheless.

"Now sing! Loud," Viola ordered.

Knowing there was no disobeying her, I filled my lungs with air and began. There's this one old song that she hated because it made her terribly sad, so I chose to sing that. I hoped it'd lead to her getting tired of her nonsense, but instead, she started crying right there on top of the structure. I was on the brink of despair and considering where to get a ladder from, when I suddenly heard the gate in the fence swing open and footsteps drawing closer. Upon turning around, I found a complete stranger approaching us. He was a bit taller than Dad and wore a pristine camel hair coat. His face was framed by sleek brown hair and a cropped beard. He looked like a pop star, but fancier.

The unannounced entrance of a man I'd never seen before should have certainly given me a start, but something about him put me right at ease. Sure, he had ventured onto our property without even asking first, but how could I be alarmed when the look on his face was this gentle?

"Hey, Sir," I said. "If you're here to see my parents, they're not home."

Yeah, I know. I was a pretty stupid kid.

"Oh, I don't know your parents, toadlet."

His voice was deep, rich and smooth, with all the resonance of a thunderclap. It was nearly enough to help me ignore the borderline-insult he'd just thrown at me. Toadlet. I bit the inside of my cheek.

"Do you need help with the noisy one?" He stepped right up to the swing set, grabbed Viola and cautiously removed her from the bar before whirling her around once, causing a smile to reappear on her face. Then, he lowered her safely back to the ground.

"Thanks, Sir," I said.

"Quite the climber," the stranger remarked. "Not the only one in the family with talent, though, apparently. Toadlet, I came because of the musical performance you gave earlier. I heard you when I was walking by. Your voice is heavenly."

"What? Nah…" I paused. "Really?"

"I so swear," he said solemnly. "Can I hear it again?"

After awkwardly clearing my throat, I meekly pressed out a few more lines of the same song as before. Viola promptly started to cry again.

The stranger's smile grew, genuine warmth filling his eyes. "It's wobbly, of course, and a tad brittle there at the end, but all in all, wonderfully harmonious. Sometimes, voices still change during a child's transition to adulthood. I hope yours won't. It's perfect."

I seldomly received praise, so this made my heart skip a beat.

"I could teach you. My name's Brio Vespers, by the way.''

"I'm Shir. And we can't afford lessons," I told him honestly.

"It'd be free. How do you like the opera? Because that's my trade. My, you're disappointed now. I understand, I can't imagine a kid like you being fond of the more classical side of music."

"Not really. I've only ever seen them on TV, though. But maybe they're cooler in person," I offered.

Mr Vespers grinned. "Or when you're the one singing them? Besides, I could teach you all sorts of other songs."

"That'd be kinda cool," I admitted, heat creeping into my cheeks. I didn't quite trust him, though. Despite the odd feeling of safety he somehow conveyed, I wasn't completely blind to how sketchy this was. "You're gonna have to talk to my parents."

"When are they due to be back?"

"An hour or two?" I shrugged. "I guess you can wait here."

"I'm in no hurry," Mr Vespers said agreeably.

"You should sing," Reed piped up. "You are a real singer, no? I wanna hear."

"Operatic bass, yes," the stranger confirmed steadily.

Reed obviously had no clue what that was, but he started clapping wildly nonetheless. I believe even Mr Vespers found it charming, as he indeed began to sing. It was in another language, and even though I couldn't understand it, each word that left his lips shook me to my core. His voice seemed to vibrate and tremble. I imagined he could have made the ground shudder beneath our feet if he wanted to. Viola started crying harder. Reed was still clapping, only slowlier.

Mr Vespers finished with a little bow. Reed yelled for an encore while Viola ran to hide in the playhouse.

"Ignore her, that was awesome."

"I don't blame her, toadlet. I can be awfully frightening." There was a twinkle in his eyes I couldn't quite interpret.

He wound up perching atop Reed's playhouse and partook in our playing, pretending to be a dragon, hissing and roaring at the squeaking children from up above. When my parents returned from their day out, they were more than a little confused. Still, it seemed that Mr Vespers' uncannily soothing aura was working on them as well.

"What would those lessons look like?" Dad asked as we were later sitting together in the living room. He was holding the business card Mr Vespers had handed him, not actually reading it. "Would you teach her here at home?"

"I absolutely could, if that works best for—"

"I meant could you take her somewhere else? Because I really don't want that noise around here," Dad interrupted him.

Mr Vespers frowned. "No problem."

"And you're doing this for free? What are you getting from it?"

"I'm a kind soul who appreciates talent," the singer replied without hesitation, a lion's grin curling his lips. "Besides, if your daughter were to make a career off of her voice, that'd be beneficial to me as well."

"I guess it's fine, then. Gonna get her out of our hair for a bit."

"You're awfully kind," Mom agreed, casting a sparkly-eyed gaze at an uneasily squirming Mr Vespers. "And you're really a professional?"

"If you didn't think I was, wouldn't you have thrown me out by now?"

My parents exchanged puzzled glances. "What do you mean?"

"Nevermind."

From that day on, Mr Vespers became a firm constant in my life. He'd pay us house calls every other day. Sometimes, he'd take me on field trips to the opera or the ballet, though any interest in these plays on my end was only ever feigned. It was kind of nice though, sitting side by side with this odd fellow who despite his eccentric nature and brusque ways seemed to somehow care about me. He paid for my tickets, intermission snacks and post-show meals of my choosing, trying so hard to excite me for the plot and the history of works such as "tosca", "die walküre" and "la traviata". To me, they were all either dreadfully boring or depressingly dark. It didn't help that the screens on which the surtitles were shown sometimes merely displayed the Windows error message.

His biggest success on that front was to get me semi-excited over "die zauberflöte". I told him the music was sorta catchy and he was smiling over that all night.

"I think the cheerful fantasy plays are better," I explained to him across the dirty McDonald's table we were sitting at for our traditional dinner that night. "I love fairy tales, so I appreciate a bit of magic. Plus, all of the others are just so sad. I want something… something…" I fumbled for words.

"Life-affirming?" Mr Vespers offered, and I nodded eagerly. "Well," he went on, "that's an understandable preference, but all things considered, aren't you kind of… drawn to dark themes? Sometimes?"

"I guess I like creepy myths and horror stories. But no sad stuff."

"Toadlet, please close your mouth when you're chewing. I'm a patient man, I can wait for your answer 'til you've swallowed." He pulled a face. "Anyways, it's good you're such a mirthful soul, but it's also quite surprising. I mean, your parents clearly don't care all that much about you, you're constantly being burdened with the responsibility of caring for your baby siblings—"

"They're not babies," I contradicted him. "And Mom and Dad care! They just don't show it sometimes. It's okay though, they have a lot of work on their hands 'cause of us."

"If you ask me, it's still their work, not yours." He fell silent, tilting his head at me. A forced smile curved his lips. "Nevermind. Eat your garbage."

Sometimes, when we were walking side by side, I'd puff my chest, lift my head and pretend I belonged with him. I'd call him "Dad" in my head. Sure, he was always a bit condescending. His nickname for me stuck, even though I'd told him a dozen times to drop it. His confidence in my skills, his patience with me… I felt more validated by that than by any decent grade at school. God, how I wished he were my family.

I think he could tell.

Of course, we weren't always out and about. When we actually practiced our singing, we did it in the woods, of all places. At first, this rather confused me, and I was hesitant to follow him each time he tried to lead me past the treeline. Now, I know how this sounds, and no, nothing like that ever happened. Mr Vespers never did anything to make me feel uncomfortable. He understood my concerns, and thus, we stayed around the forest's edge in the beginning. I didn't get why the woods were so important to him anyways. He attempted to explain it to me multiple times, but it was always so weird and cryptic. Something about the trees needing to hear us.

I'd find out soon enough, though. The day I followed him into the woods for the first time would go down as one of the weirdest and most wonderful of my entire life.

"Can you feel how everything here responds to you?" Mr Vespers asked, voice husky with excitement. "These are my woods, never forget that."

"What do you mean, your woods?"

He let out a soft chuckle. Then, he set his voice singing. A light ballad that lingered in the air with a soft reverence I hadn't thought his dark tones to be capable of. To my utter bewilderment, the branches of the trees around us started bending down, fanning out as if to try and get closer to him, to touch him. Flowers suddenly sprung from the ground where he stepped, the grass stretched to reach him and vines slithered down their respective tree trunks in greeting.

I was dumbstruck. I followed him until we reached a sunny little grove, where he discarded his coat and placed it on the ground for us to sit on. "The soil would never stain my belongings," Mr Vespers explained casually, like that was what I'd been wondering about.

"What is this place?"

"Why, you've known it for a while, haven't you? Your house isn't far from here."

"Yes, but…" I couldn't find the right words.

Mr Vespers seemed rather pleased with my reaction. "These are my woods, toadlet. I keep them alive, I make them grow."

"With your voice?"

He nodded, his eyes sparkling.

"So, what are you? This isn't exactly normal, is it?" I asked, trailing my fingertips along the soft material of the coat. I was too nervous to meet his gaze. Our normal familiarity mixed with the primal fear of a soft, vulnerable child in the presence of a force beyond understanding. Every fiber of my being told me to run, but Mr Vespers' fatherly gaze gently asked me to stay.

"It's not normal, no," he chuckled. "And as for what I am, I'm human enough to walk and work among you. So that's all you really need to know. Are you afraid of me now, toadlet?"

"Yes," I admitted.

"But you know I'd never hurt you, right?"

"This is still a lot."

"I understand. And I have to make another little confession. Where I'm from, we love artists. Especially aspiring ones, such as yourself. We want to bless you. We want to see you thrive. Look at me, Shir. Do you see now?"

I whipped my head up. It suddenly made sense; so much about him made sense now. His pacifying aura, his sharp tongue, his mesmerizing voice. I felt a thrill unlike any other. This was what my love for the unusual and the mythical had amounted to. "You're a—"

Mr Vespers interrupted me by quickly laying a finger over my lips.

"A fai—"

"Shush!" he hissed, pressing his finger in a little harder. There was a mirthful smirk tugging on his face, though. "Don't you say it!"

For some reason, I started giggling, a lot.

This made Mr Vespers laugh, too. "Don't say it, you hear!"

"Why not?" I gritted out. "It's so cool!"

"Sure, you little freak," he snickered, finally removing his hand. "So you're not afraid anymore, huh?"

"No," I answered steadily.

"Still want me to teach you?"

"Absolutely."

So that's how we carried on. I soon learned not to prod my teacher with too many questions about his nature. We actually avoided the topic a lot of the time. It went unspoken, but never forgotten. He taught me to sing to flowers, to motivate bugs and birds to dance along and to make vines and branches bend my way. Most of the time, we only practiced simple songs and ballads that didn't require too big a range. I just couldn't pull off the arias he tried to teach me. My favorites were the lullabies, though. I know, a little underwhelming, but they always came easy to me. To practice them, Mr Vespers would fetch us a bunny and I would have to sing it to sleep. That was quite difficult in the beginning. Mr Vespers and I sometimes sang duets. My voice, being generally high in pitch, mingled beautifully with his booming, rich bass.

Those were the good years. Mr Vespers soon offered to call him Brio. I think by then he knew how important he'd become to me. He indulged me, in fact. He'd even comfort me whenever someone made fun of me at school. That happened quite often, seeing as I always stayed the ugly duckling. Yup. They say you grow out of it, but I didn't. I still look like a whole mess. Brio said it didn't matter. "Shir, you have an angel's voice, you can't have one's looks, too! That'd just be unfair," he'd always tell me in that winning way of his. That was all it took for me to cheer up. His was the only opinion that really mattered. As long as he was pleased with me, so was I.

Life was good, and it remained that way until the day of the concert.

When Brio asked me to sing in front of some of his friends, I was flattered. He'd sort of let on that the people listening wouldn't be "normal". I assured him I'd be on my best behavior, and he said he knew. The concert was in the woods, on a lovely afternoon in early fall. The leaves had already started turned brown, but the air was still pleasantly warm and rich with the scent of dewy grass and flowers. When Brio led me to the location of the concert that day, the audience had already arrived. Six people were lounging in the shade cast by the tall trees around us. They greeted Brio with hugs and handshakes and examined me with the same interest an entomologist might regard a newly discovered bug with.

"So you're the little lady we've been hearing so much," a remarkably tall and pale woman said as she gently took my hand in hers. "What's your name, sweetheart?"

I was about to respond when Brio cut me off. "You may call her Toadlet, like I do. She has no obligations towards you; you don't need to know her name."

The woman smiled frostily. "I have no ill intentions towards the child."

"I believe you, but I'm afraid I must insist," Brio replied with a strained grin. Bending down to whisper into my ear, he told me, "I'm just being careful. No need to worry."

"I thought they were your friends. Why do you need to be careful?" I asked in a low voice.

"The concept of friendship is flexible where I come from. Still, you don't have to be alarmed. Just sing, and give it your all."

We had prepared several pieces for this esteemed crowd, among them The Ballad Of Tam Lin, Erlkönig (which by the way was what Brio had sung the first time we'd met, though my rendition of it was hardly comparable) and Greensleeves. They were incredibly well-received, but more than any of the applause, I appreciated how my teacher was beaming with pride.

"Well?" he asked loudly, turning to face the audience with a smug grin. "Is she all I talked her up to be or what?"

"She certainly is," one of the gentlemen replied, paying me a nod. "She'd do nicely at court someday."

"Court?" I inquired.

Brio waved me off. "That'll be her decision to make when she gets older. For now, I want you to omit mention of the court, and of the King and Queen. Let's cherish her art for what it is and not pressure her with future prospects," he commented pointedly.

Despite this, I was already getting kind of excited. Court. King and Queen. I had an inkling of what they were talking about.

The tall woman, too, appeared to be impressed. Knowing she was about to give praise, I looked at her expectantly.

"Why, she's perfectly adorable. A trill like a bird's. How she can go from such a cheerful warble to these sorrowful tones she treated us to when presenting Greensleeves is beyond me… You are a great teacher, dear Brio. Then again, I'll bet she's drawing from experience as well. Tell me, toadlet, have you ever experienced heartbreak? Not melancholy, nor glumness, but true, genuine heartbreak?" She leaned forward, a glint in her eyes.

Brio frowned in confusion, eyes darting between her and myself. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to answer or not. The woman's stare made me nervous, though. I had to say something, I had to break this alien silence.

"No, ma'am."

She smiled that same icy smile. It widened when she turned to face Brio. "Well, I think your student is a wonderfully talented young lady. With a little more training, she'll surpass you in no time. I believe she has already! Her voice is so youthful and lively."

I watched my mentor's reaction closely. I might not have paid a comment like this any mind at all, it was an odd comparison but a compliment nonetheless. Brio's face however changed at these words. When he met my gaze, his eyes had hardened. The pride within them had been replaced by something else, something that frankly sent shivers down my spine.

He didn't walk me home that evening like he usually did. He didn't come to pick me up the next day, or the day after that. As a matter of fact, I never saw Mr Vespers again.

I was sick for weeks afterwards. I could barely eat, and whatever meager contents my stomach did have left inside, I threw up. My belly simply hurt that much. I cried myself to sleep every night that followed, not just sobbing, but full-on wailing, but that stopped when my big sister came to bang on my door, yelling at me to shut the fuck up and that I was keeping the entire house awake.

Nobody noticed when I started skipping school. The only class I ever showed up to was Mrs Langtree's—my music teacher. She was the one who eventually caught on that something wasn't quite right with me. She sent me to the school counselor, who asked me whether all this acting up was a cry for attention.

I said it was, but not for hers.

I ended up dropping out. Mrs Langtree however introduced me to her musical theater group. They took me on, and soon enough, acting and singing for them became my job. That was the one thing I was grateful for, the one thing that went right. When I wasn't on stage with them, I earned a living with gigs in live music bars and pubs. I moved out of my parents' place and into a shared apartment. Life wasn't always comfortable, but it was good enough.

I never meant to leave the woods behind, though. I'd still take the bus to the outskirts of town nearly every weekend to wander the forest in search of my old mentor. I called out for him. I even sang for him, all by myself. The vines and branches still bent and stretched towards me, though. Sometimes, I heard his voice booming through the trees in the distance, but though I chased after it, I could never find its source.

I refused to give up, though. He had to be there, he had to come see me eventually. Our connection couldn't possibly have been erased entirely by his pride, right?

That notion changed one night when I was home alone. I had visited the forest earlier that same day and was now wallowing in my disappointment once again. I'd been fixing myself a snack in the kitchen when the sound of glass shattering had me whirl around. I was instantly on high alert, grabbing both my phone from the counter and a large kitchen knife—just in case. The weather outside was frightful, so there was a possibility that a window had been somehow broken by the storm. I had a bad feeling about it, though.

The noise had come from my own bedroom, I was sure of it. I drew closer to the door with bated breath, my legs moving much slower than I wanted them to. My knees felt like jelly. I was only being paranoid, I told myself. Pulse throbbing in my ears, I reached for the door handle. That same moment, the door flew open and a figure lunged at me, knocking me down. My head connected painfully with the hardwood floor and I let out a sharp scream. I found myself face to face with a young, watery-eyed man. Before I could make a sound, he'd wrapped his fingers around my throat, hesitantly starting to apply pressure. Panicking, I started thrashing around, frantically trying to stab him with my knife but failing to land a hit.

"Stop struggling! Please!" the boy gritted out, struggling to keep his grip on my neck.

"Let go," I whimpered, horrified at feeling the strain of not being able to breathe in. "I need air! I need—"

"I'm sorry!" he wailed. "I have to do this… Please just stay still!"

Like hell I would. Gripped by wild, naked terror, I started kicking my legs, causing him to land on top of me. He made an attempt to get back up, but I rammed my knee into that delicate soft spot between his legs. He cried out, and I managed to roll him off me. Fueled by pure adrenaline, I scrambled into a crouching position and placed one foot on his stomach, mercilessly pressing down.

"Who are you? What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"I owe Brio Vespers!" he yelled out, grunting in pain.

My face fell. "You what?" I asked breathlessly.

"I owe Brio Vespers," he repeated, squirming beneath me. "He made me come here. He said I had to get rid of you."

"He told you to kill me?"

"I'm sorry! But I have a debt to pay…"

"I don't care about your kind's debts," I said. How my voice came out so steady, I'll never know. I felt like someone had stabbed me in the gut with a maypole. "Did Brio watch me when I came to his woods?"

"Everytime."

I took a deep breath. My head was spinning, twisted by a ton of washed up pain, grief and, weirdly enough, frustration.

"Please don't kill me," the boy begged in a brittle voice. "I swear I'm not a murderer! But I had to do what he said; he was forcing my hand!"

"Is this something you can control? If I let you get up, will you come at me again?" I asked sharply.

"No, mistress!" he whined. "You have my word, mistress!"

I let go of a deep sigh, staggering to my feet and reaching up to massage my throbbing temples. "Why does he want me dead?" I asked.

"You've been singing in his woods. The trees… were listening. They still know you. Brio's getting on in years, though he tries not to show it. It's not just that he's jealous, he's scared of being replaced. He's scared that the trees want you now."

"And that warrants a death sentence."

The boy looked at me like he didn't rightly know how to respond.

"Tell you what, I'll let you go, if you do me a favor."

He leaned forward, eyes wide.

"Go back to Brio," I said. "Tell him if he wants me dead, he'd better come and get his soft-ass hands dirty. Can you give him that message?"

"Absolutely! Anything else?"

"Tell him I don't want his goddamn woods. I would have never begun to compare myself to him. I was a kid, and I fucking loved him, and I would have done anything to do him proud. If he wants to go on like Snowwhite's evil stepmother, he can be my guest, but I'll burn down the whole lot of those trees if he chooses war. As for me, I won't go back there. So he'd best just leave me alone."

The boy blinked. "Uh… Could you write that down for me?"

That's basically the note we said our goodbyes on. I sent him off with the letter for Mr Vespers and haven't heard back since. I guess that's a good thing. It's been nearly three weeks since. I was about ready to forget the whole thing; lay the past to rest once and for all. But the band and I had a gig yesterday night at this huge open-air event. It's still pretty warm out right now where I live and there were some other bigger names performing, so there was an enormous crowd. I could only see the people up front clearly; all the others melted into a mix of shapes and colors in the background. I was more focused on my singing anyways. I've found that when I'm in front of a lot of people, they turn into a single entity in my eyes. I like this entity. I want to please it. But I don't take the time to concentrate on the individuals among it.

And I didn't yesterday. Everything was fine and great, until we finished our last song and got ready to go off stage. I cast another glance at all these people, and that was when I noticed that one of them stood out. He looked like he didn't belong. He looked like he'd feel more at home in an opera house.

Brio Vespers stood still as a stature between shouting, shoving, moving people. He met my gaze despite the distance between us. It was a mere moment. I was frozen. Our bassist, noticing something was off, hastily came over to me and pulled me along with her. If it hadn't been for her, I'd probably still be standing there, just staring.

Before he disappeared out of view, I caught one last glimpse of my old teacher. He raised his hands to clap.

Despite my better judgement, I went for a visit to the woods this morning. Fog was still hanging in the air and the sun hadn't yet come out. I didn't venture in, merely staying by the forest's edge with pricked ears.

I could hear him.

His voice was booming through the thicket. I'd never realized how eerie it truly sounded.

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