The magic of cimbalom

I live in Rosy Street, I have a sister Alice Thompson and a dog named Black. I take the bus to school and there was no difference on that special and magical day. "Bye Mom, bye Dad," I shouted as I was leaving for school. I thought that day would be as boring as any other. If I only knew how wrong I was then.

As soon as we boarded on the bus with my sister, the signs immediately started to tell us that that day was not going to be the same as any other day. First, we learned from other classmates that the lessons of math and language were cancelled, and instead we were supposed to have musical lessons almost all day. Even at school, it looked a bit more interesting today. And our teacher even allowed us to play musical instruments today.

"Children, today we will learn a little differently. Since your teachers got ill, we will have three hours of music education together today,” Mrs. Smith told us. At first we learned normally and the teacher dictated the lesson.

"We're going to talk about this instrument today, who knows how it's called?"

Alice answered immediately without hesitation. "It's guitar billiard table!!" But it was clear that she immediately regretted her answer.

"No, Alice, it's a cimbalom," the teacher corrected her. Then we talked about drums and other instruments. And then the teacher gave us another task.

"Divide into pairs according to who you're sitting at the bench with and choose a musical instrument." I was sitting with my sister, and she had already chosen our instrument.

"So children, if you already have your instruments selected, try to play something on them, in any tone," the teacher gave us further instructions.

"Alice, let me do this and I'll try to play something," I said.

But as soon as I touched the strings with my mallets, my sister and I fell to the ground.

When we landed, we were on the beach of some strange sea.

"Oli, where are we???" my sister asked immediately.

"I-I don't know," I stammered. It seemed to me that maybe if we swam the sea, we'd get home.

But once we touched the water, another strange thing happened. "Oli, don't touch the water," the sister shouted on me. But it was too late. Suddenly something appeared on the surface.

"Alice, do you see what I see?" I asked Alice.

"Yes, I see, Oli," she replied.

In the sea, barely half a meter above the surface, a note appeared and began to sing to us. "You may be wondering why you're here. And you will find the answer in time. But now your time is nearing to escape the difficulties that want to destroy the whole world and set a big trap thanks to the magic cimbalom. And you have to complete three tasks to protect this cimbalom from evil forces. "

As soon as the note finished, it disappeared.

“Oli? Did you understand him?” Alice asked immediately.

"Of course I did. You did not?” I replied.

"I only heard music."

Before I could tell her, the rock opened in front of us and our familiar cimbalom appeared. And he began to talk. "I have a first task for you. Tell me my name."

Thanks to the teacher, we knew the right answer. "You're a cimbalom," we said.

"Yes, I am. And now there is another task. You've probably noticed that I'm magical. But I'm neither the only cimbalom in your world, nor in this one. You must defeat the evil giant who imprisons my brother. To find the giant, you have to cross two hills and one musical sea,” the cimbalom told us.

Alice and I left immediately. Even though you may think, children, that we had to walk for a long time, the journey was not that far. The giant held the cimbalom locked in a cage, forcing him to play songs on and on. The cimbalom played and the giant sang and danced.

Unfortunately, I couldn't keep up and started laughing. And that was a mistake. The giant noticed us and shouted: “Ha. My lunch just arrived."

He immediately locked us in a cage with the cimbalom. We took advantage of that and told him we were going for him. Together with the cimbalom, we came up with a plan to outsmart the giant. The cimbalom said he would teach the giant to play cimbalom properly and we would escape from the cage in the meantime. Then the cimbalom began to play and the giant danced. The cimbalom was also magical and shrank on its own in a blink of time.

Our plan worked out and we returned to the sea. The cimbalom was satisfied and praised us. "I see you have completed the second task. And your last task will be more of a promise. You promise to play me and my brother and we won't be alone all the time."

We immediately replied that we were very happy. We liked the music the cimbalom played. But we started to feel sad and wanted to go back to school. The cimbalom advised us to play the same tones that got us to him. When we returned to the class, we seemed to have disappeared just for a while. Everyone acted as if nothing had happened. But since then, my sister and I started playing the cimbalom, and the cimbalom has become our favourite instrument.