The fog lay upon Hopeless that morning like a particularly damp quilt, muffling the cries of gulls and whatever else had been bothered to wake up. It was in this soupy gloom that Pyralia Skant strode down the lane, her sensible boots squelching with a sound that was only slightly resentful. She had never imagined herself to be the sort of woman who wore wellingtons.

Despite this, since Philomena Bucket had suggested that her attempt to “unmake” the island might require a change of wardrobe, Pyralia had discovered, to her own private alarm, that she quite  enjoyed it. The boots were just the beginning. A cardigan had followed, then a long velvet coat. There had even been a certain amount of twirling.

She’d told herself it was no more than symbolic dressing, a subtle ruse to fool the island into allowing itself to be changed, but Drury the skeletal hound, who had the unerring nose of a gossip columnist, knew better.

Reggie Upton, meanwhile, had recently developed the peculiar habit of appearing wherever Pyralia happened to be. A moustache of distinction and a sense of gallantry were poor disguises for his fondness, but he maintained them with military precision. He told himself he was merely “keeping an eye on developments.” Philomena, watching from The Squid and Teapot, translated this as Reggie being somewhat smitten, the poor fool.

It was on one such evening that Pyralia emerged in a newly acquired hat. As hats go, it was certainly impressive, being wide-brimmed, black, and decidedly brooding, causing Reggie to very nearly walk into a lamppost.

“Dashed fine-looking woman,” he muttered into his moustache, with all the subtlety of a cannonball.

Pyralia arched an eyebrow. “Reggie?”

“Pyralia,” he replied gallantly. “Splendid hat. Very, ah… authoritative.”

“It’s a hat,” she said, though she didn’t quite manage to sound disapproving.

The fog, opportunistic creature that it was, chose that precise moment to shiver with sound. A thin, wavering melody drifted from the harbour. It resembled a waltz played badly by something that remembered music rather than knew it.

Reggie stiffened. “Good lord. Is someone strangling a walrus?”

Pyralia tilted her head, listening. “No. That’s the accordion.”

The accordion had arrived on the island a fortnight earlier, in the wreck of an otherwise empty lifeboat that had washed up on the rocks. Nobody had claimed it. Nobody had played it. Nobody, in their right mind, would have kept it around. Hopeless, however, being not especially crowded with right minds, had decided to let it sit near the harbour.

At night it wept. At first softly, then insistently. Always in waltz time.

Philomena claimed it was unnerving the regulars. Drury had tried barking at it, but skeletal hounds carry limited authority with musical instruments.

Reggie straightened his lapels. “We can’t just leave a lady in distress…”

“It’s an accordion, Reggie.”

“Well, yes, but a crying one. Dashed unsporting not to investigate.”

Pyralia, despite herself, felt a flicker of intrigue. It was precisely the kind of nonsense the island liked to drop in one’s path. 

“Fine,” she said. “But if it tries anything, I’m banishing it to a peat bog.”

“Splendid,” said Reggie, who rather liked the idea of facing danger beside a woman in such an impressive hat.

The lifeboat had seen better days. It was slick with seaweed and glistened in the moonlight. The accordion sat on one of the remaining seats like a sulky oracle, its mother-of-pearl keys glinting faintly. Without being touched, it gave a low, mournful sigh and began to play a waltz: slow, deliberate, heartbreakingly polite.

Reggie approached it like a man who once fought tigers and was now trying very hard not to admit to being unnerved by a squeezebox.

“That,” he whispered, “is most irregular.”

“And this,” Pyralia replied, “is Hopeless.”

They crouched beside the thing. Pyralia rapped the casing lightly. The accordion let out something between a sob and an harrumph. A folded scrap of paper peeked out from a seam in its frame.

She plucked it free, sniffed it (she always did that), and read aloud:

“Dance with me or I will never stop.”

Reggie paled slightly. “You don’t suppose…?”

“I very much do.”

Moments later, to his mingled horror and delight, Reggie Upton found himself waltzing beneath a foggy moon with Pyralia Skant. She moved with unexpected grace; the accordion hummed along as though sighing in relief. The melody filled the harbour, wrapping itself around them like ghosts in a haunted ballroom.

When they stopped, the music stilled too. For the first time since it had been found, the accordion lay quiet.

Reggie cleared his throat.

“Well then,” he wondered aloud, “whose ghost have we just danced with?”

Pyralia examined the parchment again. Ink bled through the page, newly revealed in the moonlight:

“You remembered the steps. I can rest now.

L . Argilière,   Accordionist of the Moulin Rouge, Paris.”

“Argilière?”  Reggie blinked. “Didn’t one of Les Demoiselles mention that a chap called Argillière had disappeared when their ship floundered on the rocks?”

“The very same,” Pyralia said.

The accordion gave one last tremulous breath. A wisp of light rose from its keys, courteous and a little tragic, and drifted upward into the fog. The night fell still.

Reggie smoothed his moustache, as if arranging his composure along with his hair. 

“Dashed romantic, really,” he said.

Pyralia adjusted her hat with the cool precision of a woman aware she has just exorcised a ghost by means of interpretive dance. “I suppose it is.”

Reggie hesitated. “You, ah… you wouldn’t say no to another waltz sometime?”

She glanced at him, the faintest smile flickering beneath the brim of her hat.

“Only if it involves practical footwear,” she said.

“I do believe that I’ve got a pair of co-respondent shoes lurking somewhere in the bottom of my travelling trunk,” replied Reggie, with a twinkle in his eye. 

“Why am I not surprised?” said Pyralia, dryly. “Of course you have.”

And somewhere in the distance, faint as the echo of applause long past, the accordion gave one last contented hiccup.