The afternoon sun hung in the cloudless blue sky. Hugo’s belly was full and his pockets were empty. As he pushed the cart out of the city and down toward the river, he admired his new guitar.

“Since I have no more money for lessons,” he said, “I will have to teach myself to play.”

“I can teach you,” someone said.

Hugo looked over his shoulder. There was no one there. Ahead of him, on the footbridge, two fishermen stared down at their lines which bobbed below in the trickling river. They paid him no mind.

How strange.

As he crossed the bridge, Hugo began to hear music. He stopped again to look around. But when he did, the music stopped too. Hugo frowned. He began to walk again, and whistle, and the music began again, this time echoing Hugo’s tune.

Hugo stopped in the middle of the footbridge and took the guitar from the cart and whistled once more. He was startled to see the guitar’s strings begin to move by themselves and echo the sound that he made.

“Who’s there?’ Hugo asked as he put an eye to the hole in the middle of the guitar.

The voice that replied was soft and low.

“I like the tune you’re whistling,” it said. “What is it?”

Hugo yelped and jumped backwards, almost throwing the guitar.

Composing himself, he glanced around and back at the instrument.

“I don’t know,” Hugo said, wondering who was asking the question. “I just can’t get it out of my head.”

“It’s…interesting,” said the voice.

“Are you a mouse in there?” Hugo said, looking all around the hole.

“Mice don’t speak,” said the voice.

“Neither do guitars,” said Hugo, holding the guitar closer to his eye and shaking it gently.

“Are you a spirit?”

“I’m not sure,” said the voice.

“How strange,” said Hugo. “Do you have a name?”

“When I was a man, my name was Paolo Seco.”

Hugo angled the guitar into the sunlight. There, in the shadow of the hole, beneath the strings, he saw one side of the face of an old man. The old man’s one eye was kind, his ear full of hair, and his beard long and white.

“How did you get in there?” Hugo asked.

“It’s a long story,” said the old man.

“It’s a long walk home,” Hugo said.

The old man sighed. “A witch put me here.”

“A witch?”

“She cursed me.”

Hugo wasn’t sure about any of this.

He told the guitar, “Perhaps I should take you back. I have enough problems already.”

“No!” the voice pleaded. “Don’t do that! I’ve been trapped for so very long…”

“How long?”

The voice didn’t answer right away, but a minute later he quietly said, “I’m fading away… It’s been so long and I don’t have much time left. Soon I’ll be gone forever.”

Hugo couldn’t take him back. What if he could help?

He asked, “Do you want to come out?”

“I do.”

Hugo turned the guitar over and shook it from side to side. Then he looked again into the hole.

“Are you still in there?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Hugo began to shake the guitar a bit harder. The fishermen who held their poles over the side of the bridge began to look at Hugo with puzzled expressions as he spoke to his guitar.

“I know! I will remove the strings,” said Hugo.

“It’s not the strings that hold me in,” grieved Paolo Seco. “If only it were that simple. I fear there is only one way to free me from the prison of this guitar.”

“How?” asked Hugo.

“I must teach a child to play it.”

“What child?” asked Hugo, his heart leaping for joy.

“Any child,” Paolo said. “But it must be a certain song.”

“What song?”

“A very difficult song. One called “Duende.””

But he was just learning… Well, he had yet to start. Still…

“Could the child be . . . me?”

“Do you know any other children who are already very good at playing guitar?”

“I’m the last child in my village,” Hugo said.

“Then I hope it’s you,” Paolo said softly.

“How hard can this song be?” he asked, heart sinking.

“Listen . . .”. Again, the guitar began to play itself. At first, just the sound of a single string being plucked, and then two, and then all the strings were strummed at once at once.

Twang.

The sound pierced the air.

“That doesn’t sound very good,” Hugo said.

“I need to be tuned.” Paolo explained to Hugo how to turn each of the knobs at the top of the neck just so, until he began to make a little melody and then a rhythm which became louder and louder, until the fishermen took notice and cheered from across the bridge. “Bravo!” they cried.

Hugo gave them an awkward smile, then returned to Paolo. “And if I learn to play it, you’ll grant me three wishes?”

“Three wishes? No, no, you’ve got this wrong. I’m not a genie, just an old man cursed to be stuck inside a guitar. All I can do is teach you to play.”

“That would’ve been my fourth wish,” said Hugo, his voice dejected.

“And the first three?”

Flamingos crossed the sky above them in the shape of a V. They honked and grunted as they flapped their pink wings. Their thin black legs stretched out behind them as they passed over the muddy, trickling river.

Hugo knew they were returning from the South to nest at the lagoon and that this meant the weather would start to grow warmer. Soon the last hope for any rainfall this season would be gone.

“My father. . . my friends . . .” he finally said. “And rain.”

Hugo watched the flamingos grow smaller in the distance. It was too much to ask for.

“Do we have a deal?” Paolo asked.

“A deal?” he asked. “You can’t grant wishes. What do I get from this?”

“I’ll teach you to be a great guitar player, and you’ll get me out of here.”

Hugo had to think. If this was magic, then there was magic to help the drought, and his family’s orange grove, and perhaps his father.

“Yes,” said Hugo. “You will teach me to become a great guitarist. Play the song for me again.”

The guitar began to play itself and soon the fishermen took notice and once again cheered from across the bridge.

“Bravo, bravo!” they cried.

Hugo’s cheeks warmed.

“There’s a spirit trapped in this guitar and I’m going to set it free!” Paolo called back to them.

“That’s a good way to think about it!” the fishermen shouted. “You’ll be as famous as The Desert Lark one day!”

Imagine that! But he’d be happy if he could just help his father.

By the time Hugo got home, darkness had fallen on the grove. His mother was putting his father to bed. This bought him time. He was nervous to show the guitar to her. What would she think after he spent all the money on it?

But his mother didn’t seem to notice.

“Good night,” his mother called to him. “Sweet dreams.”

Exhausted from the long walk, Hugo went to bed with the guitar leaning into the corner of his room and fell quickly asleep. He dreamed again about playing guitar on a stage in a square in the center of Seville, surrounded by a faceless audience who cheered him and called his name and threw flowers at his feet.

Again the Mayor called him the greatest flamenco guitarist who had ever lived. As famous as The Desert Lark. Again, the faceless girl spoke to him in words he could not understand.

But now she had a face! One with eyes as big and white as hardboiled eggs. She waved her arms and shouted nonsensical words as Hugo’s friends joined him on the stage and laughed and danced and clapped in the rain…

The next morning Hugo woke early and went out to the barn, where he climbed the step ladder and sat in the hayloft atop an empty orange crate and began his lessons with Paolo.

“We’ll start with the Andalucían cadence,” Paolo said.

“The Andalucían what?”

“The Anda-. . . No? Hmm . . . OK. Well, first of all, we need to see how half-steps create tension. You see? They’re like questions that need to be answered.”

Hugo squinted. “What are you talking about?”

“What am I talking about? I’m talking about desire for resolution. That’s the thing.”

Hugo frowned. “Just tell me where to put my fingers,” he said in exasperation.

“Ah,” Paolo said. “Yes. Do you know any scales?”

“What are scales?”

Now Paolo frowned as he stared out from the guitar. “Do you know any chords? A minor, G major, F major, E?”

“Um, I don’t think so . . .”

“Have you ever held a guitar before?” Paolo asked him hopefully.

“Not until today.”

“Well, then,” Paolo said with a hint of disappointment. He sighed deeply. “I guess we’ll have to start at the beginning. As per usual… hope is so frail, so thin…”

Paolo taught Hugo to cross his legs and hold the guitar on his top thigh. To rest his right hand behind the hole and then to strum it up and down. To place his left hand at the neck and even with the ground.

This felt just like holding up a branch and twisting back and forth on an orange. When Hugo was comfortable, Paolo taught him a few notes.

“It’s like hopscotch,” he said. “The fingers of the left hand hop in certain patterns. The patterns make scales, and the scales can make chords. You see?”

“This is boring!” Hugo said. “Just teach me “Duende.””

Why did he agree to this? It was all slow work and they weren’t making progress. Didn’t Paolo want out there sometime soon?

“First things first,” Paolo said with a groan. “You must first master the fundamentals before you learn to play anything at all, let alone “Duende.”

That afternoon, after Hugo had practiced notes and scales and chords for hours, his mother came out to the barn to fetch a bucket.

“You seem very fond of your new guitar,” she said with a smile.

“There’s a spirit trapped inside it and I’m trying to set it free,” Hugo called down to her from the hayloft.

“That’s a great way to think about it,” his mother said over her shoulder. “You’ll make a fine guitarist one day, my son!”

By the end of that week, Hugo learned how to pluck the strings with each finger and with his thumb, and when to strum harder and when to strum softly. His fingers were sore, and he still needed to work in the orchard, but he was happy with his progress.

Paolo decided Hugo was prepared to learn some slow and simple songs.

“I think I’m getting it,” said Hugo. “Now teach me ”Duende.””

“You’re coming along,” Paolo said softly. “But you strum too fast.”

“It's just like twisting an orange.”

“And you knock the top of the guitar with your thumb between strums.”

“I’m pulling up to snap the stem.”

“And you slap the bottom with the pads of your fingers.”

“I’m dropping the orange in the basket.”

“Hmm…Well, don’t do that.”

“When will I be finished learning?” Hugo sighed.

“You’ll never stop learning.”

“Then when will I ever be able to play this song?”

“You’ll need much more than plucking and strumming for that.”

“What will I need?”

“Only when there’s enough of you to put a piece in the music, will you be able to play it.”

“I don’t understand,” Hugo said. “Just tell me what to do.”

Paolo looked out with one eye from the strings. “What do you hear when I play the song?” he asked.

Paolo played and Hugo listened.

Hugo thought for a moment. Finally, he told Paolo he heard the swirl of the water by the banks of the river that would flow in circles when the river was high. And the sound of the horses that came from the village when their shoes clattered on warm cobblestones.

“Interesting,” Paolo said. “And what do you see?”

Hugo said he saw long shadows stretching out from the trees and crossing the grove in the late afternoon.

“I see,” said Paolo. “Tell me what it feels like.”

Hugo said it felt like the shirt that stuck to his back after he’d worked a whole day digging wells.

“Hmm,” Paolo said. “Can you smell something too?”

Hugo said the song smelled like the food stalls down at the market - the ones with prawns wrapped in slices of ham, and slightly burnt tips of octopus tentacles, and chocolate sauce warmed and dripped in fried dough.

“Now play it that way,” Paolo requested.

Hugo thought about this for a moment and stared blankly. “I don’t know how.”

“Not yet,” Paolo said. “But you’ve given me hope.”