by Martha Carr
“When Laura Sister Souped me at work, remember? She literally appeared in the soup.”
“Seriously?”
Laura grinned. “Gazpacho, right?”
“Thankfully, it did not change the flavor.”
Laughing, Nickie shook her head and went through the mudroom to the living room. “I’m gonna go acoustic for this, I think.”
“Excellent.” Her sisters followed suit, and Emily looked at Laura over her shoulder. “Let’s hunt down this witch-hunter, huh?”
14
With guitar case in tow, Nickie led them out of their house on Pressler Street and toward Laura’s Taurus, the only car parked in front of the house.
“Shotgun.” Emily skipped down the steps on the hill.
“Whatever.”
“Wait a minute.” Laura looked around at the empty curb and driveway. “Em, how’d you get to work?”
Her youngest sister shrugged. “Uber. But if you wanna take me back by campus after Nickie’s played her private show for the tree elves, that’d be cool.” Emily skipped down the last of the steps and stopped at the passenger-side door.
“Yeah, I can do that. And you can drive next time.”
“Sweet.”
They piled into the Taurus, and Laura drove slowly down Pressler Street to head toward West 6th.
“Did Carl tell you where to find these Tree Folk?” Emily asked, staring out the passenger window.
“Not really. Just that they live in the trees. I’d thought we’d start at something like Waterloo Park or down by the river and kinda work our way through Austin, maybe.”
Nickie chuckled. “It’s foolproof.”
“I’m working with what I’ve got, okay?”
“I know you are. That’s just a lot of space to cover.”
“Well, if these Tree Folk are so attracted to music it was important enough to add to their description in Carl’s old book, hopefully some really good music will be enough to get their attention.”
“Plenty of good music in this city,” Nickie said. “Why haven’t we heard of them before? They should be all over.”
“Uh, duh.” Emily turned around in her seat to wiggle her eyebrows at Nickie. “Not regular Austin City music, awesome as it may be. The folk want really good magical music.”
“I’ll do my best, guys. Hey, can you turn up the air?”
Laura reached for the dash then stopped. “It’s already on.”
“It’s really hot back here.” Nickie fanned her face with a hand, then saw the cause of heat with AC. “Oh. Laura, your window’s open.”
“What? Oh, right. Sorry. I rolled it down earlier when I heard the—”
“Look out!”
“What?” Laura slammed on the brakes when Emily’s hand shot out to grip the oldest Hadstrom sister’s thigh. All three of them lurched against their seatbelts, but Laura had stopped the car in time to avoid running over a massive group of grackles standing in a chaotic gathering in the middle of the street. “What the heck are they doing?”
“Not moving, apparently.” Emily removed her hand from her sister’s leg.
Nickie peered through the windshield from the backseat. “Birds normally get out of the way. This is freaky.”
Laura pressed lightly on her car horn a few times. The soft honks made a few of the closest grackles ruffle their feathers and hop back a few inches, but that was it. “This is nuts. We’re trying to get somewhere.” She slid her finger onto the automatic window button to roll it up the rest of the way.
“Wait, wait. Leave the window down.” Emily nudged her oldest sister and held up a hand. She cocked her head and stared at the dashboard. “Do you guys hear that?”
“Mm, I hear a whole lotta squawking blackbirds,” Nickie said.
“What are we listening for?” Laura asked.
“Just…the squawking.” Emily looked at her sisters. “Hear it now?”
“Come.”
“Come, come.”
Laura laughed and smacked the steering wheel. “They heard me.” Of course, it was one more thing her sisters didn’t know, so she grinned and gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I tried to find the Tree Folk earlier. Obviously, I don’t have any kind of musical talent, but I did tell a tree full of grackles I was trying to get in touch with them.”
“You ever hear one of these birds actually talk before?” Emily asked.
“Nope.”
Nickie shrugged. “Just once. A long time ago.” Her sisters stared at her. “Hey, it was just once. Summer after sixth grade, I think. I was writing music in the backyard and I got frustrated because it wasn’t coming to me, so I threw my notebook. Then this big old bird came down and told me not to give up. I kid you not.”
Emily grinned. “It was 'Something Deep”, wasn’t it? The song.”
“Yeah! “Something Deep”. Good call, Em.”
Laura’s jaw dropped. “Wait, you’re telling me your debut single was inspired by one of these things?”
“No. More like encouraged.”
They shared a laugh until Emily looked back through the windshield. “Oh, hey.” She flapped a hand at Laura’s arm. “They’re moving. Follow those birds!”
Laura snorted. “Already on it, you goon.”
Emily smirked and sat back in the passenger seat. “I’m feeling a Wizard of Oz joke in here somewhere.”
“Don’t.” Nickie and Laura said it at the same time, and Emily burst out laughing. Still, it didn’t keep her from shouting out the general direction of the grackles moving in front of them. Half the birds hopped across the asphalt while the other half flew ahead, playing a kind of rotating leapfrog with wings until they came to Springdale Road. Then, the entire flock lifted at the same time and took off flying.
Laura came to a stop sign and braked.
“What are you doing?” Emily gestured toward the massive cloud of grackles. “You have to follow them.”
“It’s a stop sign. I can’t just drive wherever I want after a bunch of birds.”
“Yeah, I think we’d have a hard time losing track of them like that.” Nickie nodded through the windshield, where the grackles were darting and flapping around in the air over the other side of the street. “Or maybe they’re waiting for us to follow.”
“That would be convenient, wouldn’t it?” Emily laughed, and the birds’ caws beckoning the Hadstrom sisters to follow didn’t let up. “Let’s hope the birds don’t end up leading us to a huge neon sign that says, ‘You’ll never fix this.’”
Laura slowly turned her head to stare at her sister. “That’s not even a thing.”
“You don’t really know that, though, do you?
Nickie cracked up in the backseat.
“I’m kidding, okay?” Emily nudged Laura’s shoulder with a playful fist. “Boy, Laura. You look like…like you just saw your sister’s face in a tub of gazpacho.”
“Okay, I get it. I won’t call you at work.” Pressing her lips together through a smile, Laura rolled her eyes and crossed the intersection.
The grackles were hard to miss. Some traffic slowed to watch the blackbirds acting crazier than usual. Pedestrians stared, but nobody saw the flock led a silver Ford Taurus along the way.
Laura followed the birds through the other side of downtown Austin. They took her to an area she didn’t visit much anymore. She snorted. “Of course.”
“Yeah, of course.” Emily tossed her hands up and chuckled. “What did you just realize now?”
“Of course these crazy magical messengers would take us to the East Side. Where else would the Tree Folk get exactly what they want all the time?”
Emily smacked her lips a few times, thinking. “Oh!” She snapped with both hands and shot Laura the guns. “‘Cause of all the musicians we were talking about. Guess they like mundane music after all.”
Nickie shook her head. “You guys are ridiculous. I wonder how close these Tree Folk live to Dad. Hey, did you ever call him about our little Gorafrex problem?”
“No. We’re not telling Dad.”
“Why not?” Emily wrinkled her nose. “He was literally one of the prison guards. All the way up ‘til Nickie put on the black ring.”
“Laura, I agree. Dad might know something that could help us.”
“Okay, sure. Dad probably knows a lot about the actual rings. Maybe even how to use them. Why they do things without warning.” Laura glanced into the rearview mirror and nodded at Nickie. “But our family’s been telling the same story for who knows how many generations. And who knows how many times the facts have been diluted? I bet a bunch of stuff’s been left out. The Gorafrex was captured so long ago, I don’t think Dad, Uncle Mark, or Aunt Julie were told anything about what could help us. I even asked an elf in the magic room at the Austin Library, and she had absolutely no idea what a Gorafrex even was.”
“Huh.” The corners of Emily’s mouth pulled down. “The perils of living indefinitely on a massive spaceship.”
Laura just shook her head.
“You don’t think Dad would be a good resource at all for this?”
“Nickie, I don’t wanna get him involved, okay? They passed the legacy to us. It’s our responsibility now. Not anyone else’s. There’s a reason the rings stayed in our family. We’re the ones meant to do this, and we will. Plus, I don’t want to make Dad feel like he has to swoop in and save the day every time we hit a snag, you know?”
Nickie stared at her sister’s reflection in the mirror, but Laura kept her eyes on the road and the birds. “You know,” Nickie said, “asking for help doesn’t mean you’ve failed at something.”
“Yeah, I know.”
The car was silent for the next few minutes until Laura followed the grackles into the parking lot of Bogey Creek Greenbelt. The Taurus rolled slowly across the asphalt, and the birds landed in a giant swarm on the grass in front of them. Thankfully, they were the only people here on a late Sunday afternoon. The birds would’ve drawn a crowd for sure. They parked and Laura turned off the engine. The three witches unbuckled and got out.
The grackles hopped about, cawing and yelling. The minute Laura stepped foot onto the grass, the entire flock burst into the air, shrieking and whipping up a gust of wind. They fluttered into the trees and disappeared.
Nickie and Emily stepped up beside her. “Looks like we’re gonna have to find the Tree Folk on our own from here,” Nickie said.
“I mean, at least the birds narrowed it down for us.” Emily gave them a shrug.
“Maybe I can narrow it down the rest of the way.” Nickie lifted her guitar case and nodded toward the trees where the grackles had vanished.
“Let’s go.”
15
“Man, it’s so much better in the shade.” Emily closed her eyes and tilted her head back, letting the soft breeze wash over her as sunlight filtered onto her face through the flickering leaves.
“Oh, yeah. Now we’re getting comfy.” Nickie set her guitar case on the warm grass and kicked off her boots to walk in bare feet.
“What are you doing?” Laura asked.
“Gettin’ comfy.” Nickie squatted beside the case to take out her Gibson acoustic, then she closed the latches and picked it up by the handle. “You mind carrying this for me?”
Laura blinked. “Yeah, sure.” She took the case, which wasn’t actually that heavy when empty, and caught her sister staring at her still. “What?”
“What about my shoes?”
“Ew. No. You don’t even wear socks.”
“They don’t stink or anything.”
“I got ‘em.” Emily skipped toward Nickie and grabbed both brown leather boots in one hand. “Let’s hear it then, Pied Piper Hadstrom.”
“Ha, ha. I wouldn’t be comparing these Tree Folk to rats right now, if I were you.” With a devious grin, Nickie looped the guitar strap over her head, took a few seconds to tune the strings, then pulled her favorite lime-green Fender pick from the front pocket of her skinny jeans. With an exaggerated first step, she moved through the trees and strummed something light in a minor key.
Emily sidled up to Laura and leaned toward her. “They won’t be able to resist.”
Laura smiled. “I hope there aren’t any people out here right now who can’t resist it, either. I don’t think the Tree Folk are gonna show themselves if there’s a crowd trailing after her.”
“Don’t worry. I’m great at distractions.”
The oldest Hadstrom sister snorted. “Can’t argue with you there.”
If it hadn’t been almost ninety-five degrees, it would’ve been a pleasant stroll through the park with their own private concert. Nickie’s gentle playing filtered through the trees; branches bent and swayed above her, as if her music touched the leaves as she passed. Laura studied the branches, looking for movement that might reveal the Tree Folk, but even the grackles had fallen silent. That or they’ve already left again to deliver someone else’s message.
Emily swung her sister’s boots back and forth as she swayed with each step. Nickie’s strumming picked up, taking on her trademark bluesy tone that had taken her places. She hummed with the music, then her humming grew louder. She belted out some wordless tune and rocked out barefoot in the middle of the woods. Eventually, she stopped walking and just stood, pounding one bare foot into the grass as she bent over her guitar and played her heart out.
Her sisters watched her. “Man,” Emily muttered. “Even in the middle of nowhere, she sounds amazing.”
“I know. You think they’ll hear her? This isn’t exactly Gruene Hall.”
“Oh, they’ll hear it.”
The music cut off, followed by a sharp, “Oh!” from Nickie.
“You okay?” Laura called, dropping the case to go see. “What hap—oh.”
Nickie stepped back for a better view of the dark face peering down from an upper branch. “I didn’t know you were there.”
The face was both human-looking and resembled a spider monkey. Tufts of gold hair bristled outward from the male’s cheeks; his ice-blue eyes lined with lighter skin than the rest of his face. The same golden hair fell down around his shoulders, and hairless, well-tanned arms and legs protruded from a dark-green bodysuit. His bare feet dangled off the side of the branch, where more gold hair sprouted from their tops just behind his toes.
The first of the Tree Folk to reveal themselves smiled down. “That was quite good.”
“Well, thank you.” She grinned. “I can keep playing, if you want.”
Laura opened her mouth to protest, but the tree-dwelling elf shook his head. “Another time, perhaps. There’s a conversation to be had and a mistake to correct, I believe.” He dipped his head toward Laura and smiled. “We know what happened.”
“I can explain what I—”
“No need.” The elf rolled sideways off the branch and caught himself on another below it. “We hold no ill will against you, witch. Ignorance is not a crime. An unwillingness to set things right might be considered punishable, but…” He scratched his head. “You are obviously willing. We appreciate that.”
“We?” Emily asked, punctuated by a small, short-lived giggle.
The elf tilted his head and blinked. “Of course.”
Branches rustled all around, and Tree Folk emerged from hiding places within the forest at Austin’s Bogey Creek Greenbelt. Hundreds appeared in the branches, their coloring varying only a little, but all of them barefoot, with golden hair, and wearing the same dark-green bodysuits.
“The messengers brought us here,” Laura said.
“Yes.” A female elf, her features softer and less ruffled than the male’s, peered down at Laura from the next tree over. She lay on her stomach along the branch, her arms folded and her chin resting on top of her hands. “We sent them to find you.”
“Did they tell you we wanted to speak with you about the Gorafrex?”
“No.” The female elf giggled, shaking the branch. A few leaves fluttered down to the grass below. “They saw you release it yesterday.
We’ve been watching. And waiting.”
Nickie turned in a slow circle, holding the neck of her guitar in one hand and waving slowly with the other. “We know it’s on us to find it and put it back,” she said. “And we will. We were hoping you might point us in the right direction.”
“We watched your ancestors build that prison,” the male elf continued. “We saw them contain the Gorafrex. And we know what it can do. The rest, of course, is up to you.”
“Anything you can tell us would be incredibly helpful. If there’s anything you want in return for sharing what you know, we can—”
“Your sister’s music is enough,” the female said.
“And you’re welcome to play for us again whenever you like,” the male added.
“Sounds like a decent gig.” Nickie grinned.
The male elf put a golden-tufted fist to his mouth and cleared his throat. “The Gorafrex spent some time last night reacquainting itself with the ship. I imagine it’s a bit confused.”
“But not discouraged,” the female added.
“No. It seeks a human host. Has it found one?”
“I think so.” Laura nodded gravely.
The male elf leapt to his feet on the tree branch, bringing a round of poorly stifled laughter from the other Tree Folk sharing the tree with him. “This is what we know. The Gorafrex is rather harmless in its ethereal form. Inside a host, however, both Gorafrex and human are impervious to harm. Invincible, some might say, until the Gorafrex abandons said host. There are complications as a result of this; whatever damage the human sustains while infested, they will experience quite viscerally the moment the Gorafrex takes its leave. Do you understand?”
“They get hit with everything all at once,” Nickie said.
“Correct.” The female elf leapt from her belly and caught the branch above with both hands, swinging back and forth like a gymnast. “The Gorafrex’s only apparent weakness is pure iron. Unmixed. No. What do they call it now?”
“Alloys,” the male offered.
“Yes. No alloys. Newly mined iron is best, but anything will do, really.”
