Fatima, street-performer and musician, is approached by an enigmatic stranger to play a single concert. Although she needs the money, something about this man makes her wary …
Alice is a (long) short story. It’s an introduction to The Dancing Princesses – a new, exciting series. I’m offering it FREE to my readers – you can download it here:
(Just for fun, Alice also comes with a Spotify soundtrack – Scheherazade Dreaming)
Excerpt:
“In Hollywood, the pavement held the names of stars: Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley. But here in Berlin, the sidewalk marked the dead.
Small bronze plaques, set into the cobbles, remembered those that had once lived on the street, before they had been taken by the Nazis. The plaques said little about the people, only their names, ages and where they’d died. Dachau, perhaps, or Treblinka, or Auschwitz.
Fatima set up her violin and laid her empty case, open for stray coins, near the Kessler family: Mama, Papa (Rachel and David) and their three children (Solomon, Rebecca and Hanna). They had been murdered in various camps in 1943. At first Fatima had felt a strange guilt for playing beside them, but later she came to think of the Kesslers as her own, and as autumn turned to winter she often forgot her living patrons and played solely for the dead.
Usually, when she played light classics, Debussy and Chopin, Hanna appeared, glasses glinting and her fingers caught between the pages of a heavy-looking book. Hanna had been a bookworm. Solomon and Rebecca, who were both musical children, preferred Hayden or Beethoven.
Mozart usually brought the whole family out in force, and once when she played Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, she was sure she heard Frau Kessler performing an accompaniment.”