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Tarot Card Music Box -- Torna a Surriento

This item sold out on 8.14.2009

Tarot Card Music Box -- Torna a Surriento

Description

I do not know where this box came from, nor can I tell you what the key inside unlocks. It was in Haiti the music box came into my possession—1850, I believe, though my airship has never read the time-streams correctly. My obliging captain had taken me there in search of an obscure cure for consumption I had heard rumor of, though I suspect it was the promise of beautiful women more than my request that moved him. We were directed by the locals to a particular village near the center of the island—he to the throng of dancing bodies by men with knowing looks and piecemeal uniforms and myself to the house in the trees. The witch woman there, they said, could help me.

We traded trinkets for knowledge, back and forth for hours until finally she passed this box to me over lukewarm tea with a gold flecked smile. “It is time,” she told me with absolute certainty, “the key moves on.”

I have never found the lock this key will open, nor the name for the tune the box plays. But the picture inside on the tiny wooden card bothers me. The Wheel, it calls itself—a bastardization of the Wheel of Fortune—and represents, as far as I can tell, some element of both Fate and Chance.

Strange then, that the card should be painted with a machine

~~!~~

The music box measures 5.5 x 4 by 1.5 inches (not counting the feet). The surface and wooden Tarot card have been sealed with beeswax while the inside lid has been painted to resemble red leather. The key measures 2 and 2/8 inches. There is a crack by the music-gears and some of the lid’s wooden inlay has disappeared. I did not make the box—only painted it—and don’t know exactly how old it is, though appears to be vintage and would like to pretend it's Italian despite the music-maker reading LADOR Switzerland.

It plays the song Torna a Surriento.

Added on Aug 14, 2009