The Tapped Plate

In the hill town of Verrel lived a maker of fiddles named Anselm, and in the autumn a boy came to him to learn the trade.

The boy was careful. He cut his spruce thin and braced it well. He braced it at the ends and across the middle, and again along the edge, so that nothing could warp. For two months he worked, and then he carried the finished top to the bench, proud.

Anselm took a small wooden mallet and tapped the board once, near the center.

It gave a dull knock, like a knuckle on a cupboard.

"Strong," said Anselm.

"Yes," said the boy.

"It will outlast us both. Nobody will ever hear it."

The boy said nothing. He had been raised by a father who watched every gate and every word at table, and the boy had never once been scolded for a mistake, because he had never been allowed to make one.

Anselm gave him a new plank and a single brace. "Glue it where you think it belongs. Then do not touch anything else until you have tapped."

The boy glued it. He tapped, and the board answered with a thin, bright ring. Anselm said, "Now shave the brace, a hair's width. Tap again." The ring deepened. "Again."

All winter the boy did this. He did not build a neck or cut a peg. He shaved, and he tapped, and he listened until his ears ached with it. The board told him where the next brace belonged, and sometimes it told him none belonged at all.

By spring he had one top and one brace in the whole of it, and when he struck it the room filled and held the sound.

The first board still hangs by the workshop door, braced on all sides. Customers sometimes ask what it is for.

"Keeping the wind out," says the boy, who is not a boy now.