Short Story: The Music Box of Forgotten Wishes

 The Music Box of Forgotten Wishes

Lindsay Fairweather's fingers trembled as she turned the tiny brass key, her breath catching in her throat when the familiar melody began to play. The haunting waltz filled her grandmother's dusty attic, each note carrying the weight of three months without hearing Gran's voice humming along. She pressed her lips together, determined not to cry again, but the tears came anyway, hot and bitter against her cheeks.
"I found you," she whispered to the ornate music box, its painted roses and golden scrollwork dulled by years of neglect. "Gran said you were special, but I never believed her."
The tiny ballerina inside spun on her single pointed toe, her porcelain face serene and unchanging. Lindsay had always thought the dancer looked sad, as if she were trapped in an endless performance she couldn't escape. Now, sitting cross-legged on the attic floor surrounded by boxes of Gran's belongings, Lindsay understood that feeling all too well.
"Lindsay?" Harmony Weatherly's voice drifted up from the ladder below. "Your mum says it's time for lunch."
"I'm not hungry," Lindsay called back, though her stomach had been growling for the past hour. Food felt pointless when everything else felt so empty.
Harmony's head appeared through the attic hatch, her dark curls escaping from their ponytail as she climbed up. At fourteen, she was only a year older than Lindsay, but she'd always been the practical one, the one who remembered to eat and sleep and pretend everything was normal even when it wasn't.
"You have to eat something," Harmony said gently, settling beside her best friend on the dusty floorboards. "Gran wouldn't want you to waste away up here."
"Gran isn't here to want anything anymore," Lindsay snapped, then immediately felt guilty when Harmony flinched. "Sorry. I just... I miss her so much it feels like I can't breathe sometimes."
Harmony's arm slipped around Lindsay's shoulders, warm, solid and reassuring. "I know. But hiding up here with her old things isn't going to bring her back."
"This isn't just an old thing," Lindsay said, cradling the music box protectively. "Gran always said it was magic. She said it held wishes that people had forgotten they'd made."
"Lindsay..." Harmony's voice carried that careful tone adults use when they think you're being childish. "You know that's just a story, right? A lovely story, but still just a story."
The music box's melody wound down, the ballerina slowing to a stop with her arms raised gracefully above her head. In the sudden silence, Lindsay could swear she heard something else - a whisper, so faint it might have been the wind through the eaves.
"Did you hear that?" she asked.
"Hear what?"
Before Lindsay could answer, the attic filled with the sound of footsteps on the ladder below. Heavy, measured steps that definitely didn't belong to Lindsay's mother.
"Girls?" An unfamiliar voice called up. "Might I have a word?"
A woman's head appeared through the hatch - elderly, with silver hair pinned back in an elaborate bun and eyes the colour of storm clouds. She wore a velvet coat despite the summer heat, and when she smiled, Lindsay noticed that her teeth were slightly too sharp.
"I'm Mrs Crescenda Nightingale," the woman said, climbing into the attic with surprising agility for someone who looked to be in her seventies. "I believe you've found something that belongs to me."
Her gaze fixed on the music box in Lindsay's lap, and for a moment, her expression shifted to something hungry and desperate before smoothing back into polite interest.
"This was my grandmother's," Lindsay said, instinctively clutching the box tighter. "It's been in our family for generations."
"Ah, but that's where you're wrong, dear child." Mrs Nightingale stepped closer, her heels clicking against the wooden floor. "That particular music box was stolen from my shop forty years ago. I've been searching for it ever since."
"That's impossible," Harmony said, moving protectively closer to Lindsay. "Lindsay's gran wasn't a thief."
Mrs Nightingale's laugh was like crystal breaking. "Wasn't she? Tell me, child, did your grandmother ever explain how she came to possess such an unusual piece? Did she tell you where it came from?"
Lindsay's mouth went dry. Gran had always been vague about the music box's origins, changing the subject whenever Lindsay asked too many questions. She'd assumed it was because the story was too sad or too personal to share.
"I thought not," Mrs Nightingale continued, reading Lindsay's expression with uncomfortable accuracy. "Your grandmother was a desperate young woman once, you know. Desperate enough to take something that didn't belong to her."
"You're lying," Lindsay said, but her voice shook with uncertainty.
"Am I? Then why don't you wind it up again? Let's see what wishes it's been hoarding all these years."
Despite every instinct screaming at her to refuse, Lindsay found her hand moving towards the brass key. The moment she began to turn it, the attic around them seemed to shimmer and shift, as if the walls were made of water rather than wood and plaster.
The melody began again, but this time it was different - richer, more complex, with harmonies that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. The tiny ballerina spun faster than should have been possible, her porcelain features blurring until she looked almost alive.
"Stop," Harmony whispered, grabbing Lindsay's wrist. "Something's wrong. This doesn't feel right."
But it was too late. The music box was glowing now, soft golden light spilling from its interior and casting dancing shadows on the attic walls. The ballerina's spinning had become a proper dance, her movements fluid and graceful as she leapt and twirled within the confines of her small stage.
"Finally," Mrs Nightingale breathed, her eyes reflecting the golden light like a cat's. "After forty years, finally."
The dancing figure suddenly stopped, turning to face them with eyes that were definitely not porcelain anymore. When she spoke, her voice was like silver bells and distant thunder.
"Who dares to wake the Keeper of Forgotten Wishes?"
Lindsay's heart hammered against her ribs, but she managed to find her voice. "I'm Lindsay. This was my grandmother's music box."
"Your grandmother," the ballerina, Arabesque, somehow Lindsay knew that was her name, said with infinite sadness. "Sweet Margaret, who wished so desperately for a child that she was willing to steal hope itself."
"What are you talking about?" Lindsay demanded, though part of her already dreaded the answer.
Arabesque gestured gracefully, and the air above the music box shimmered like heat haze. Images began to form - a young woman with Lindsay's eyes and her grandmother's stubborn chin, standing outside a shop that looked like something from a fairy tale.
"Forty years ago, your grandmother came to my mistress's shop," Arabesque explained, her voice heavy with memory. "She'd been trying to have a child for years, had suffered loss after loss until her heart was breaking with the weight of unfulfilled wishes."
The image shifted, showing the young woman - Gran, though Lindsay could barely recognise her - speaking urgently with someone who looked remarkably like Mrs Nightingale, only younger.
"I offered her a bargain," Mrs Nightingale said, her voice now cold and businesslike. "One wish granted in exchange for a lifetime of service. She would have her child, but she would work for me, collecting the forgotten wishes of others."
"But she refused," Arabesque continued, and the images showed Gran shaking her head, backing towards the door. "She said no bargain was worth a lifetime of servitude. So she took what she needed instead."
The scene changed again, showing Gran grabbing the music box and running, Mrs Nightingale's furious shouts echoing behind her.
"She stole me," Arabesque said simply. "And in doing so, she stole the power to grant her own wish. Nine months later, your mother was born."
Lindsay felt as if the floor had dropped out from beneath her. "You're saying... you're saying I only exist because Gran stole a magic music box?"
"You exist because your grandmother loved the idea of you so much that she was willing to risk everything," Arabesque corrected gently. "The magic didn't create that love - it simply helped it manifest."
"Enough sentiment," Mrs Nightingale snapped, stepping forward with her hands outstretched. "The box belongs to me. Return it, and I might consider not pressing theft charges."
"No," Lindsay said, surprising herself with the firmness in her voice. "If what you're saying is true, then this box is part of my family. Part of me."
Mrs Nightingale's expression darkened. "Child, you have no idea what forces you're meddling with. That box contains hundreds of forgotten wishes - dreams that people have abandoned, hopes they've given up on. In the wrong hands, such power could be catastrophic."
"And in your hands?" Harmony challenged, finding her courage. "What would you do with all those forgotten wishes?"
Mrs Nightingale's smile was sharp as broken glass. "I would return them to their rightful owners, of course. For a price."
"You'd sell people their own forgotten dreams," Lindsay said, understanding flooding through her. "That's monstrous."
"That's business," Mrs Nightingale replied. "Dreams have value. Hope has a price. I simply ensure that both are properly managed."
The music box in Lindsay's lap grew warmer, and Arabesque's voice became urgent. "She speaks of returning wishes, but she lies. She collects them, hoards them, feeds on the despair of those who have given up on their dreams. I have been trapped for forty years, watching wish after wish flow into this box with no way to set them free."
"Then we'll set them free ourselves," Lindsay said, her grandmother's stubborn determination rising in her chest like a tide.
"You can't," Mrs Nightingale said, but there was uncertainty in her voice now. "You don't know how. You don't understand the magic."
"Then teach me," Lindsay challenged. "If you really want the box back, if you really care about returning wishes to their owners, then show me how it's done."
Mrs Nightingale's eyes narrowed. "You would trust me to teach you? After everything I've told you?"
"I don't trust you at all," Lindsay admitted. "But I trust her." She looked down at Arabesque, who was watching the exchange with growing hope. "You know how to free the wishes, don't you?"
"I know," Arabesque said softly. "But it requires sacrifice. To release the wishes, someone must take my place as keeper. Someone must be willing to dance forever, holding the magic in balance."
"No," Harmony said immediately. "Lindsay, you can't. There has to be another way."
But Lindsay was already shaking her head. "There isn't, is there? That's why Gran never told me about the box. She knew that someday, someone would have to make this choice."
"Your grandmother was a coward," Mrs Nightingale spat. "She took the power but refused the responsibility. She let wishes pile up for forty years, growing stale and bitter, when they could have been returned to bring joy."
"She was protecting me," Lindsay said quietly. "She knew that if I learned about the box too young, I might make this choice without understanding what it meant."
She looked around the attic - at the boxes of Gran's belongings, at the dusty memories of a life well-lived, at Harmony's tear-streaked face. Then she looked down at Arabesque, who had been dancing alone for forty years, holding hundreds of forgotten dreams in her porcelain heart.
"I understand now," Lindsay said. "And I choose to dance."
"Lindsay, no!" Harmony grabbed her arm. "You can't give up your whole life for this!"
"I'm not giving up my life," Lindsay said, though her voice trembled. "I'm choosing what to do with it. How many people do you think have forgotten their wishes over the past forty years? How many dreams have died because no one was there to nurture them back to life?"
She stood up, cradling the music box carefully. "Arabesque, what do I need to do?"
The ballerina's porcelain features softened with gratitude and sorrow. "Place your hand on the music box's heart - the golden rose in the centre. Speak your intention clearly. The magic will do the rest."
"This is madness," Mrs Nightingale hissed, but she made no move to stop them. Perhaps she was curious to see what would happen, or perhaps she knew that some choices, once made, could not be unmade.
Lindsay placed her palm flat against the golden rose at the centre of the music box. The metal was warm, pulsing like a heartbeat, and she could feel the weight of all those forgotten wishes pressing against her consciousness.
"I wish," she said clearly, "to free every dream that has been trapped in this box. I wish to return every hope to the heart that first dreamed it. And I wish to take the place of the one who has danced alone for so long."
The music box exploded with light.
When Lindsay's vision cleared, she was standing inside the box itself, wearing a flowing white dress that moved like water around her ankles. The attic looked enormous from this perspective, and she could see Harmony's shocked face peering down at her like a giant.
But she wasn't alone. Arabesque stood beside her, solid and real and smiling for the first time in forty years.
"The wishes," Arabesque said, gesturing upward. "Look."
Lindsay looked up to see hundreds of golden lights streaming out of the music box, each one carrying a whispered dream. She saw a middle-aged man suddenly remember his childhood desire to learn the piano. A teenage girl felt her abandoned dream of becoming a veterinarian rekindle in her heart. An elderly woman recalled her wish to travel to Paris and decided it wasn't too late after all.
"They're going home," Lindsay whispered in wonder.
"They are," Arabesque agreed. "And now, so am I."
She began to fade, her form becoming translucent as the last of the wishes departed. "Thank you, Lindsay Fairweather. You have given me the greatest gift of all - freedom."
"Wait," Lindsay called out, but Arabesque was already gone, leaving only the echo of silver bells and a whispered blessing: "Dance well, little keeper. Dance with joy."
Lindsay looked up at Harmony, who was crying openly now, and at Mrs Nightingale, whose expression had shifted from anger to something that might have been respect.
"The box is yours now," Mrs Nightingale said quietly. "As is the responsibility. New wishes will come - they always do. People will forget their dreams, abandon their hopes, and those forgotten wishes will find their way to you."
"And when they do?" Lindsay asked.
"When they do, you'll dance them back to life. You'll keep them safe until their dreamers are ready to remember." Mrs Nightingale's voice softened slightly. "It's not an easy burden, child. But it's a necessary one."
She turned to leave, then paused at the attic hatch. "Your grandmother... she wasn't a coward. She was a mother, protecting her child from a choice she knew would break her heart. I hope you can forgive her for that."
After Mrs Nightingale left, Harmony knelt beside the music box, her face level with Lindsay's tiny form.
"I can't believe you did this," she whispered. "I can't believe you're really in there."
"I'm still me," Lindsay said, and she was surprised to find it was true. She felt different - lighter, somehow, as if she were made of music and moonlight - but she was still herself. "I'm still your best friend. I'm just... smaller now."
"But you're trapped," Harmony said, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks. "You'll never grow up, never fall in love, never have children of your own."
"I'll never grow old, either," Lindsay pointed out. "I'll never get sick, never lose the people I love to time. And I'll spend my days surrounded by the most beautiful dreams in the world."
She began to move, and found that her body responded like water, like wind, like music made manifest. The dance came naturally, as if she'd been born knowing the steps.
"Besides," she added, spinning gracefully on her toes, "who says I'm trapped? This is just where I am now. This is where I choose to be."
As if to prove her point, she spun faster, her dress billowing around her like captured starlight. With each turn, she could feel the music box's magic flowing through her, connecting her to every dreamer in the world who had ever wished for something beautiful.
"Will I be able to visit you?" Harmony asked, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
"Every time you wind the key," Lindsay promised. "Every time someone needs to remember their dreams. And Harmony?"
"Yes?"
"Don't let anyone tell you this was a tragedy. Gran spent forty years feeling guilty about stealing this box, but she gave me the greatest gift imaginable. She gave me the chance to choose my own purpose."
Over the following weeks, something remarkable happened in the small town where Lindsay had grown up. People began remembering dreams they'd abandoned years ago. The baker decided to enter his recipes in a national competition. The postman started writing the poetry he'd given up in university. Children who had stopped believing in magic found themselves building fairy houses in their gardens again.
Harmony visited every day, winding the music box and talking to Lindsay about everything and nothing. She brought news from school, gossip from town, and most importantly, she brought new stories - tales of people whose forgotten wishes had found their way home.
"Mrs Patterson from the flower shop says she's going to art school," Harmony reported one afternoon, settling cross-legged beside the music box. "She's sixty-three and she says she doesn't care if people think she's mad. She remembered that she always wanted to paint."
Lindsay smiled as she danced, feeling the warmth of another dream fulfilled. "That's wonderful. What about Mr Jenkins? Did his wish find him?"
"Oh yes," Harmony laughed. "He's learning to play the harmonica. Badly. Very, very badly. The whole street can hear him practising."
"Music doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful," Lindsay said, executing a particularly graceful leap. "It just has to come from the heart."
As the months passed, Lindsay discovered that being the Keeper of Forgotten Wishes was more complex than she'd imagined. Not all wishes were pure or selfless. Some were born from jealousy, others from greed or spite. These she had to handle carefully, transforming them through her dance until they became something better, something worthy of being returned to the world.
She learned to recognise the different types of dreams by their colours and sounds. Childhood wishes sparkled like glitter and sang like wind chimes. Romantic dreams glowed soft pink and whispered like silk. Dreams of adventure burned bright gold and roared like distant thunder.
But it was the broken dreams that challenged her most - wishes that had been shattered by disappointment or loss. These came to her in fragments, sharp-edged and painful, and it took all her skill to dance them back into wholeness.
One evening, as autumn painted the world in shades of amber and rust, a particularly damaged wish found its way to the music box. It arrived like a wounded bird, all jagged edges and muted colours, and Lindsay could feel the pain radiating from it like heat from a fever.
"What is it?" Harmony asked, noticing Lindsay's sudden stillness.
"A broken dream," Lindsay said softly, cradling the wish in her hands like something precious and fragile. "Someone's given up on love. The pain is... It's overwhelming."
She began to dance, slowly at first, her movements careful and gentle. The wish responded gradually, its sharp edges softening, its colours beginning to brighten. But this was different from the others - this wish fought against healing, as if it had grown comfortable in its brokenness.
"It doesn't want to be fixed," Lindsay realised, pausing in her dance. "It's afraid of hoping again."
"Can you force it?" Harmony asked.
"I could," Lindsay said thoughtfully. "But that wouldn't be right. Healing has to be chosen, not imposed."
Instead of dancing the wish back to wholeness, Lindsay simply held it, offering comfort without demanding change. She sang to it - not words, but pure emotion, understanding, acceptance. She let it know that it was safe to stay broken for as long as it needed, but that when it was ready, healing would be waiting.
Hours passed. Harmony fell asleep in the chair beside the music box, but Lindsay continued her vigil, holding the wounded wish with infinite patience. Just before dawn, she felt it shift, not healing, not yet, but opening to the possibility of healing.
"There," she whispered, releasing the wish back into the world. "Go gently. Take your time. Love will wait."
It was moments like these that reminded Lindsay why she'd made her choice. She wasn't just returning forgotten dreams - she was tending them, nurturing them, helping them grow strong enough to face the world again.
One year after Lindsay had entered the music box, Mrs Nightingale returned. She climbed into the attic where Harmony was doing her homework beside the music box, her expression unreadable.
"How is she?" Mrs Nightingale asked without preamble.
"See for yourself," Harmony replied, winding the key.
The melody began, and Lindsay appeared in her flowing white dress, spinning with a grace that had grown more ethereal over the months. But there was something different about her now - a luminescence that seemed to come from within, as if she were made of captured starlight.
"You've grown into the role," Mrs Nightingale observed with something that might have been approval.
"I've learned that every dream matters," Lindsay replied, never pausing in her dance. "Even the small ones. Even the impossible ones. Especially the broken ones."
"And you don't regret your choice?"
Lindsay considered this as she moved through a particularly complex sequence of steps. "I miss some things," she admitted. "I miss hugging Harmony properly. I miss the taste of chocolate. I miss feeling rain on my skin."
"But?" Mrs Nightingale prompted.
"But I've gained so much more than I've lost. I've seen dreams come true that people thought were impossible. I've helped heal hearts that were broken beyond repair. I've learned that hope is the most powerful force in the universe, and I get to tend it every single day."
She spun to face Mrs Nightingale directly. "Why are you really here?"
Mrs Nightingale was quiet for a long moment. "To apologise," she said finally. "And to offer you a choice."
"What kind of choice?"
"I've found another keeper. Someone is willing to take your place. You could leave the box, return to your normal life, grow up as you were meant to."
Lindsay stopped dancing for the first time in months, her feet settling gently on the music box's tiny stage. "Who?"
"A young man whose sister died in an accident. He blames himself, thinks he should have been the one to go. He wants to spend eternity making amends by caring for others' dreams."
"That's not healing," Lindsay said immediately. "That's self-punishment. He'd poison every wish that came to him with his guilt and grief."
"Perhaps. Or perhaps caring for others' dreams would help him heal his own heart."
Lindsay resumed her dance, but her movements were thoughtful now, contemplative. "What would happen to the wishes that are already here? The ones I'm still tending?"
"They would transfer to the new keeper."
"Even the broken ones? Even the ones that are just starting to trust again?"
Mrs Nightingale nodded.
Lindsay danced in silence for several minutes, considering. Finally, she shook her head. "No. Thank you for the offer, but no. These dreams are my responsibility now. I won't abandon them to someone who can't love them properly."
"Even if it means staying here forever?"
"Forever is a long time to spend doing something you love," Lindsay said simply.
Mrs Nightingale smiled - the first genuine smile Lindsay had ever seen from her. "Your grandmother would be proud."
After she left, Harmony leaned closer to the music box. "Do you really not regret it? Not even a little?"
Lindsay paused in her spinning to look up at her best friend. "Harmony, do you remember what I was like before? How lost I felt after Gran died? How empty everything seemed?"
"Yes."
"I'm not empty anymore. I'm full - full of purpose, full of hope, full of the most beautiful dreams in the world. How could I regret that?"
As if summoned by her words, a new wish arrived - bright and eager and sparkling with possibility. A child's dream of flying, pure and uncomplicated and shining like a star.
Lindsay laughed with delight and began to dance it into being, her movements joyful and free. Through the music box's magic, she could see the child, a little girl lying in a hospital bed, her eyes closed as she dreamed of soaring through clouds.
"Fly, little one," Lindsay whispered, sending the wish spiralling up and out into the world. "Fly as high as you dare to dream."
The wish found its mark, and somewhere in a children's ward, a little girl opened her eyes and smiled for the first time in weeks, her heart suddenly full of the absolute certainty that someday, somehow, she would touch the sky.
Lindsay continued to dance, surrounded by the music of forgotten dreams and the endless possibility of wishes yet to come. She had found her place in the world - not the place she had expected, but the place she was meant to be.
In the music box of forgotten wishes, where dreams came to be healed and hope never died, Lindsay Fairweather danced on, keeper of the most precious magic of all: the unshakeable belief that every dream, no matter how small or forgotten, deserved a chance to come true.
And in the attic above, Harmony wound the key and smiled, knowing that her best friend had found not just a purpose, but a joy that would last forever.