by JL Bryan
“Whoa, what’s happening?” Jason asked. “Are you seeing this?”
“That’s not possible, is it?” Erin poked at the lute. “It looks like it’s alive or something.”
“It’s magic!” Katie said.
“Let’s keep playing,” Erin said. “I want to see what happens.”
They played all the way through ‘Remember,’ while the lute grew and shifted in his hands. The enchanted instrument brought an incredible power to the song, and all three of them were in tears by the time Erin sang the last verse:
Remember the promise you never kept,
Nothing you said was ever true.
I know you’ve forgotten all about me,
But I’ll never forget about you.
Jason couldn’t stop crying. It felt like the song had ripped him open. Katie was blubbering loudly, while Erin held her hands over her face and shuddered.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Jason whispered. He patted Katie’s head with one hand. “Erin? That was really good. You write amazing songs.”
Erin kept sobbing into her hands.
“Are you okay?” Jason asked.
Erin slowly lowered her hands, revealing a face that was red and streaked with tears. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cry.”
“Everybody is,” Jason said.
“You know why I was such a spaz about that necklace?” Erin asked. “That was the last birthday present my dad gave me. When I was nine. He left like a month later. Now it’s a five-dollar bill in my birthday card, if he remembers at all. And he usually doesn’t.”
“I’m sorry.” Jason took her hand. “Is that what the song is about? Your parents’ divorce?”
“It’s stupid.” Erin pulled her hand away from him and pushed blond and green hair back from her face. “Stupid song.”
“It’s not,” Jason said.
“Can you play something happy now?” Katie asked.
Erin laughed and wiped her eyes. “That’s a good idea, Katie. Let’s play my happiest song.”
“‘Stolen Rhino’?” Jason asked.
Erin smiled and blew a few jazzy, upbeat sounds on her harmonica.
“Wait,” Jason said. He picked up the little pan pipes and held them out to her. “Play this.”
“It’s too little.”
“It might not stay that way.” Jason thumped the instrument in his lap, and Erin gaped.
The lute had transformed into a guitar. Not only was it full-sized, but it fit perfectly in Jason’s arms, as if it had been custom-built for him. The fairy runes were carved all over the guitar, giving it a strange, engraved texture under his fingers. The little amethysts were still embedded here and there in the soundboard, but they hadn’t changed size at all, so they looked tiny.
“That’s amazing,” Erin said. She took the little pan pipes from his hand and studied them. “Where did you get these instruments, again?”
“It’s just what I said,” Jason told her. “There’s a door to the fairy world in Mrs. Dullahan’s yard. That’s where I found them.”
“I want to go to the fairy world!” Katie said.
“It’s very dangerous over there,” Jason said. “And crazy. I’m not going back.”
“But I want to,” she complained.
“You really don’t,” Jason said. Now he felt like an idiot for talking about fairies in front of his little sister—of course she’d be interested. “They aren’t nice fairies like in stories. They carry big swords and they walk around threatening everyone. They’re nasty, scary fairies. You have to stay away, Katie.”
“Scary fairies?” Katie pouted. Her eyes were still puffy from crying.
“Scary fairies,” Jason repeated, nodding.
Erin held the tiny pipes to her lips and blew. The sound was haunting, and a cool breeze seemed to pass through the garage, though the doors to the outside were closed.
The pipes swelled in her hands as if she were blowing up a row of balloons. Then the instrument was large enough for her to play each pipe individually. As with the lute-turned-guitar, each pipe gave a different sound and inspired a different, overpowering emotion. As Erin blew on the pipes, Jason felt like his brain was working faster, generating lots of ideas. He was getting excited.
“Are you ready to play yet?” Katie asked.
“I’m ready,” Erin said, giving Jason a smile. She blew some bright notes through the more cheerful-toned pipes. “I’m not too sure how to play this thing.”
“Just treat it like it’s your harmonica,” Jason said. “I think it adapts to you.”
“Cool!” Erin played more notes, and the pan pipes wiggled to fit better into her fingers. Erin laughed. “It tickles.”
Jason began playing “Stolen Rhino” on his guitar. It was a fast, peppy, simple song.
Erin accompanied him on the pipes. The guitar vibrated in his hands, tuning into the pipe sound and harmonizing with it. Hot wind tousled his hair, but he couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
Erin lowered the pipes and sang:
You took me for a date at the zoo
Said my love left something to prove
So I did all I knew to do
I stole a fat rhinoceros for you!
Stolen rhino, in my car
Stolen rhino, now love me more
Stolen rhino, I did it for you
Stolen rhino, don’t make me steal two!
Katie was laughing her head off. Erin played a musical interlude. The pan pipes shifted and molted in her fingers, and finally settled into the shape of a wooden harmonica carved with fairy runes.
After the fun song, the whole room seemed to glow, as if everyone and everything were infused with a warm, golden light.
“I love that song!” Katie shouted. “Play it again now!”
Jason and Erin’s eyes met, and they both burst into uncontrollable giggles, and then full-blown hysterical laughter, as if they’d both had nitrous oxide at the dentist’s office. It was a few minutes before they could calm down enough to talk again.
“Wow,” Erin said. She looked at her new harmonica, Jason’s guitar, and the little drum and harp still in the box. “Wow, wow, wow. I’m starting to believe you really got these from fairies.”
“I wasn’t kidding.”
“We have to call Mitch and Dred!” Erin said. “Like, tonight. We have to get together and jam with these new instruments and see what they can do.”
“I want to come!” Katie said.
“I can’t go anywhere tonight,” Jason said. “I’m grounded, plus I have to work at my new job. My dad could check to make sure I’m there. He does that.”
“Where are you working?” Erin asked.
Jason looked down at the floor. “Buddy McSlawburger’s.”
“You’re working at Bloody McSlobberbooger’s?” Erin laughed. “Do you wear the funny hat?”
“Everyone has to wear the funny hat.”
“We have to do this soon,” Erin said. “I’m dying to see Mitch and Dred’s faces when they see this.”
“Then it’ll have to be during the day when my parents are gone,” Jason said.
“I wanna come, too!” Katie said.
“And it’ll have to be a day I’m not babysitting Katie.”
“I’m not a baby.”
“Okay,” Erin said. “Let’s call them and figure out a time. I’m so excited, Jason!”
Erin hugged his neck tight, and Jason wished he wasn’t sitting in a chair, and that there wasn’t a guitar between them.
Chapter Twelve
In Mitch’s garage, Mitch sat at his keyboard and Dred sat behind her drum kit. They stared as if Jason and Erin had lost their minds. It was Thursday afternoon, the first time all four of them could get together.
“I’m serious,” Erin said, holding up her new, rune-engraved harmonica. “Magic instruments.”
“Right,” Dred said.
“There are two more.” Jason took the two remaining toy-sized instruments out of the cardboard box he
’d brought over. “Dred, obviously you get the drum. So that leaves you with the harp, Mitch.” He gave Mitch the little silver harp, and Mitch just looked at it, puzzled.
“How am I supposed to play this thing?” Mitch asked.
“You’ll see.” Jason held out the muffin-sized drum to Dred, who just stared at it like it was a dead fish. He set it down on her snare drum.
“This is really sad, you guys,” Dred said. “How can you both go completely insane on the same day?”
“Let’s just play a little,” Erin said. “Watch.”
Erin started the tune to “First Road Out of Here” on her harmonica. A cool breeze passed through the hot garage, stirring some magazines stacked next to Mitch’s keyboard. The Claudia Lafayette poster on the wall billowed out at the bottom, since it was secured only by thumbtacks at the top.
Dred and Mitch looked at each other while the gentle breeze tossed their hair.
Jason joined in, and the breeze became hotter. The guitar was warm.
The little wind stopped when Erin lowered the harmonica to sing the lyrics. The song conjured intense feelings in Jason, a combination of loneliness and wanderlust and a touch of nostalgia, a stronger reaction than he’d ever had to it before.
“Those are amazing,” Mitch said, when Erin stopped singing for a harmonica interlude in the middle of the song. Mitch strummed the little harp with his fingertip. “Great sound, but how do I play it?”
“Turn it on its side,” Jason said. “Pretend it’s the strings of a piano.”
“It won’t work that way,” Mitch said.
“It will in a minute.”
Mitch rolled his eyes and turned the harp on its side. He tapped at the strings, as if his fingertips were the hammers inside a piano. The harp expanded and reshaped itself, growing more strings in between the existing ones. A keyboard grew out of the side facing Mitch, the black keys made of onyx, the white made of opal.
“Whoa!” Mitch stood up and backed away. “That’s all kinds of messed up. What’s happening?”
“It’s adapting to you,” Jason said. “You have to keep playing so it’ll finish changing.”
“Changing into what?”
“Whatever works best for you.”
Mitch played the keys, and the strings vibrated as he did it, though there weren’t any hammers tapping them. A gleaming silver lid unfolded from one edge of the harp and closed over the strings. Buttons made of gemstones blossomed across the top, imitating his synthesizer keyboard.
Mitch shook his head, but he kept playing. The keyboard’s sound was deep and rich.
Dred just gaped. She hadn’t touched the little drum Jason had given her.
They reached the end of the song.
“This must be some kind of weird dream,” Mitch said. “I’m dreaming, right? This can’t happen.”
“Let’s do another song,” Erin said.
“How about ‘Nuclear Morning’?” Mitch suggested. “I want to hear how that sounds on these things.”
Erin started with the harmonica part, and Jason and Mitch joined in. Dred sat back, arms folded, shaking her head.
The keyboard sprouted silver wires that snaked around and plugged into Mitch’s other keyboards, as well as the small laptop he kept connected to increase his range of sample and sound options. The old keyboard and the laptop turned silver, and the fairy runes etched themselves all over the surface of them, as if the magical instrument was infecting them like a virus.
“Whoa, whoa!” Mitch backed away again. “That is crazy.” Jason and Erin stopped playing.
“Keep playing!” a voice yelled.
The elementary school kids from Mitch’s neighborhood who sometimes watched them practice, two boys and a girl, were standing in the driveway. All three were watching the band intently.
“Mitch, the audience demands more,” Erin said with a grin. “Are you ready?”
Mitch looked at Dred, who still had her arms folded. “Dred?”
“I think you’re right, Mitch,” Dred said. “I’m the one having a crazy dream. I’m just going to sit here until I wake up.”
“It’s not a dream,” Jason said. “These were made by fairies—”
“No, no, I heard the story,” Dred said. “It’s nonsense. This is all just…nonsense.”
“Play some more!” another kid demanded. A fourth kid, one Jason hadn’t seen before, who had just arrived on a skateboard.
“Something for the skater kid,” Erin said. “Which song do you think, Mitch?”
Mitch looked between Erin and the kids. “Um…Cinderella Night? Fast?”
“Fast,” Jason agreed.
They played, and the kids danced to rapid tempo, though Dred still hadn’t joined in on her drums. During the song, more kids showed up dancing in the driveway and the front yard, including middle and high schoolers, as if the music had drawn them all out of their homes and down the street. It was turning into a semi-outdoor concert.
With three of the fairy instruments going, the guitar in Jason’s hands really started to buzz and cast off heat. Fortunately, the keyboard seemed to turn the hot wind circulating inside the garage into something wet and cooling, like the breeze off Lake Wisota.
Energized by the growing audience, and unregulated by any drummer, Jason, Erin and Mitch kept accelerating the song, playing an extended instrumental version of it. The dancers moved faster with them, colliding with each other and laughing. One of the girls in the audience waved her iPhone around, capturing images of the band and the dancing crowd.
Mitch went wild on the keyboards as he grew familiar with his new instrument. Erin and Jason stepped back and let him have an extended solo. He played as if possessed, his tongue sticking out of his mouth, his hands a blur across the keys, the assorted gemstones on the keyboard case glowing brighter and brighter.
Jason watched the crowd, amazed at how they’d come from nowhere.
Erin nudged Jason, and he looked back at Mitch. Blue steam erupted from the gemstones, forming into a cloud around Mitch, but Mitch either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
The cloud grew larger and drifted through the garage, passing over Jason and Erin. It was cool and refreshing, not hot. No wonder Mitch didn’t mind.
It drifted out, with a trail of cool blue steam still feeding into it from the keyboard. The cloud expanded as Mitch’s solo continued, and it rose above the crowd.
Mitch hit a crescendo and leaned back, dropping his hands in his lap. He was drenched in sweat and gasping for air.
The cloud rumbled, and then dumped rain all over the dancing kids.
The audience shrieked and scattered, all of them dripping wet and laughing. Jason watched them spread out through the neighborhood, jostling each other as they ran.
“Did that really just happen?” Erin asked.
“Which part?” Jason asked her.
“Any of it. That was unreal.”
“Oh, man,” Mitch said, wiping his face with his T-shirt. “I love this keyboard.”
“This is too crazy for me,” Dred stood up, tossing her keys in the air. She left the little fairy drum where Jason had placed it, on top of her snare. “I’m going for a milkshake. Anybody coming?”
“Why don’t you stay and try out your drum?” Erin asked.
“It’s not my drum,” Dred said. “And I don’t believe in magic.”
They watched Dred climb into her van and drive away.
“Man…I love this keyboard,” Mitch repeated. He was staring at it with a crazy grin.
Chapter Thirteen
Aoide flew over the bright green Poisoned Forest, far south of Sidhe City. She’d been flying all day, from dawn until nearly dusk, and every muscle in her back ached. Fortunately, she’d just caught a hot south-moving breeze, and now she could spread out her wings and drift for a while. Rhodia floated alongside Aoide, her long pink hair twisting in the wind, her face looking tired and miserable. Aoide felt the same way.
The dark waters of the Acheron Ri
ver flowed wide and sluggish through the forest below. The forest itself was known for its impenetrable tangles of plants with sharp spines and deadly venom. It was also home to carnivorous plants that camouflaged themselves in the jungle foliage until a jumping deer or a duck-billed bear stepped within snapping distance.
The Poisoned Forest was too dangerous to cross on foot or on beastback, so they flew. Neus the faun and Skezg the ogre couldn’t fly, so they hadn’t come along. Lucky guys.
Icarus of the Queensguard flew ahead of them, leading them southward along the great river. He’d roused Aoide and Rhodia from sleep before dawn to make this journey. He didn’t seem tired at all, despite his heavy black armor. The armor must have been enchanted to make it feel weightless, Aoide thought. He occasionally glanced back with an annoyed look, as if he felt the two musicians were flying too slowly.
“Are we there yet?” Rhodia gasped.
“I hope so,” Aoide replied.
Below them, the Acheron River grew wider and shallower, eventually spreading out into a dark marsh that stretched from horizon to horizon, full of swampy little islands. Stalk-shaped plants, giant sugarcanes, grew from the swamp, some of them taller and thicker than city watchtowers. Their foliage overlapped, concealing most of the ground beneath them.
Aoide sighed in relief when Icarus began to spiral down from the sky towards the swamp. Aoide and Rhodia followed.
He landed on a small, marshy island, where Aoide and Rhodia’s bare feet splashed into the wet mud. Icarus’s black boots sank even farther. The thick towers of cane overshadowed them, and they were walled in by dense stands of smaller canes, which were still four times taller than Aoide.
The entire swamp smelled sweet, as if they’d landed in a confectioner’s shop. The humid, syrupy air was dense with flying insects.
“This place is so gross,” Rhodia said. She lifted one foot, which was covered in gloppy, sticky mud.
An insect landed on Aoide’s arm and pressed its big, trumpet-shaped snout against her skin. It began to suck, and the sensation was painful. She slapped it away, but its mouth left a coin-sized circle of itchy red on her arm.
