Fairy Metal Thunder (Songs of Magic, #1) (18 page)

“I’m sorry,” Jason said. He wasn’t sure he
liked the idea of a goblin living in his room, but Grizlemor’s
troubles really were Jason’s fault. “Are you sure you want to stay
down there?”

“I like it very much.” Grizlemor fluffed the
straw pillow and lay back against it, crossing his legs. He took up
a small leather-bound book and a tiny pair of half-glasses that
looked like they’d been swiped from a grandma doll somewhere. He
wore them low on his nose. “Now, if you’ll leave me to my
reading…”

“Wait. I need to know how the instruments
work.”

“Not being a musician, I wouldn’t know,”
Grizlemor said.

“But you know some things. You know they
drain energy from kids, and you said that helps power the magic in
the fairy world.”

Grizlemor sighed and looked up from his book.
“What do you want to know? I’ll share what little bits of knowledge
I have, if it’ll help you avoid trouble.”

“Where do the kids come from? How do they end
up in Faerie?”

“Fairy rings,” Grizlemor said. “Remember the
ring of mushrooms within which the young people dance?”

“Yes…”

“Here in man-world, such rings grow around
the edges of soft spots between the worlds. Man-whelps can be lured
into them by the faintest notes of fairy music. Once inside the
ring, they fall through into the Faerie.”

“So they’re doorways. Like the one we
used.”

“Not exactly.” Grizlemor sighed again, as if
he found it ridiculous that Jason didn’t already know these things.
“A soft spot with a fairy ring is like a fishing net cast by the
fairies. It’s meant to lure people in. Fairies can create and
remove them at will, with their magic. But they can’t close the
major doorways between our worlds, because those are holes that
were left when the Folk cut their favorite places out of this world
and moved them down to the elfland.”

“You mean fairy-land, right? Faerie?”

“Let’s not get off on a historical tangent,”
Grizlemor said. “It was the elfland then, but it’s fairy-land
now.”

“I don’t get it,” Jason said.

“Do you want to know about the instruments or
not?” Grizlemor was looking impatient, tapping his book with a
green thumb.

“Yeah, tell me about those.”

“As we were saying, the fairies create and
control the soft spots. Their purpose is to trap human children so
they can be drained of energy. The soft spot takes them directly to
one of the little music parks in Faerie. There, in my world, the
ring of mushrooms acts as a barrier—the human pups can’t just
wander outside the dancing-circle and do as they please. Not that
they often try. They notice very little but the music.”

“And when they’re drained, they go back where
they came from?”

“Correct,” Grizlemor said. “Usually. They may
pop up in a fairy ring in the wrong part of man-world, but back to
man-world they go, in any case.”

“That doesn’t seem right, trapping and
draining people like that.”

Grizlemor snorted. “As if you aren’t doing
the same with your music.”

Jason didn’t know what to make of that, so he
asked, “Grizlemor, the music almost destroyed my friend’s house.
How can we stop the instruments from being destructive?”

“Don’t play them.” Grizlemor began leafing
through his book, as if he’d lost his place.

“Other than that.”

“How should I know? It takes seventy-seven
years of conservatory training before the Guild certifies you as a
professional musician. I’ve had…let me consider…zero years of
such training.”

“But we don’t want to wreck everything each
time we play.”

“Then play softly, I suppose.” Grizlemor
shrugged. “I’d prefer you didn’t play them at all. You’ll only draw
the fairies’ attention. And they’ll be quite vengeful.”

“How vengeful?”

“Have you ever been pecked to death by a
vulture? Or slowly eaten from the inside by slime-worms? Or ripped
apart by a blunt-toothed brainbug?”

“No…”

“Well, you might be.”

“Great.”

“Ask yourself if fame and fortune are worth a
horrible death for you and your friends,” Grizlemor said. “I know
it’s a difficult question.”

“Are the fairies really that evil?”

“Evil? You’re the thief. You’ve brought this
on yourself.”

Jason thought about that.

“Now, if you don’t mind, it’s been a long
day. I’d like a bit of pleasure reading before sleep.”

“What are you reading?”

“
Gobbligan’s Wake
. It’s a stream of
conscious meditation on the nature of goblinness. You wouldn’t
understand it.” Grizlemor pulled the comforter down like a curtain,
closing off Jason’s view of him.

Jason lay back on his pillow.

“I’ve got a monster living under my bed,” he
said.

“Goblin,” Grizlemor corrected. “’Monster’ is
an offensive term.” There was a cracking sound, then something
thunked into the underside of Jason’s bed. Jason could feel his
springs rattle at the impact.

“What are you doing?” Jason asked.

“Clipping my toenails.” Another crack,
another thunk that rattled the bed. “Problem?”

“No.” Jason listened, his lip curling a
little as the goblin’s next toenail clipping buried itself like an
arrow into the boxspring. And the next. And the next.

Tuesday afternoon, Jason was getting ready
for another exciting day at Buddy McSlawburger’s when he got the
call from Mitch.

“You have to check it out,” Mitch said. “It
looks so good. I posted the link on your Facebook wall.”

“The video?” Jason asked, running to his
computer. His computer was running sluggishly, so it took forever
for the video to load.

Over the phone, Jason could hear the current
#1 hit song in America:

Alllllll day

And all night, too,

You dream of me

Yeah, you know you do…

“Are you listening to Claudia Lafayette?”
Jason asked.

“No!” The volume turned down until Jason
couldn’t hear the song anymore.

“You were!” Jason said. “It’s that stupid
‘You Love Me’ song.”

“It just came on the TV. It’s off now.”

“Right.”

“Are you looking at the video yet or not?”
Mitch snapped.

“Oh, it’s starting to load.”

The opening credits appeared over Jason
playing “Learning to Fly”:

starring the Assorted Zebras:

Jason Becker

Erin
Kavanagh

Mitch Schneidowski

Dred Zweig

Then those words disappeared, to be replaced
by the words:

“It’s epic,” Mitch said. “Tadd sliced it into
a different video for each song. You have to watch the last one,
though. The cops coming in and dancing instead of busting the
party. Dred’s drum set transforming. The house shaking down all
around the crowd.”

Jason skipped to the final video in the
series. The recorded music entranced him again—not as powerfully as
playing the instruments live, but the effect was very strong.

“It looks like we spent a million dollars on
special effects,” Jason said, watching the walls crack and the
windows shatter behind Dred, while her drums morphed into fairy
drums.

“Right?” Mitch said. “And look at the
pageviews.”

According to YouTube, the video had been
watched over 200,000 timessince it was uploaded at 6 AM. Jason
glanced back at his Facebook page. Hundreds of people had “liked”
the video, and it seemed like half the school had shared it on
their pages. Jason had also been tagged in a number of videos
uploaded from people’s phones, showing the event from different
angles, and those videos were getting a lot of views too.

On top of this, the Assorted Zebras page had
six thousand fans, and Jason himself had hundreds of new friend
requests.

“This is crazy!” Jason said.

“It was that first video, the one the kid
made,” Mitch said. “It’s got like ten million views now.
Everybody’s looking for more stuff from us. A couple bars in
Madison already emailed to offer us a gig.”

“Are you serious?”

“But I’m waiting for more offers. I think we
can do better.”

“Don’t get too cocky…” Jason said.

“I’m not. I’m just sitting back and letting
the universe provide.”

“Right. Anyway, I have to get to work. Text
me if anything happens.”

“You don’t have to sling burgers at Bloody
McSlobberbooger’s anymore,” Mitch said. “We’re gonna be huge, man!
This is just the beginning.”

“When we get from the beginning to the part
where we’re getting paid, then I’ll quit McSlobberbooger’s. Until
then…” Jason shoved the uniform and ridiculous hat into his
backpack. “It’s slawburgers, hold the slaw, a thousand times a
day.”

“I don’t think you’re seeing the big picture
here.”

“I don’t think you’re seeing the small one.
What’s happening with your house? Are they going to fix it?”

“Claims adjuster was here yesterday—that’s
the person the insurance sends to investigate, I guess. He seemed
mostly confused about how we managed to have a tiny earthquake in
Chippewa.”

“Are they going to help?”

“We still don’t know. He took a bunch of
pictures and said he’d be in touch. But I’m still in deep trouble
for having that party. So worth it, though. Have you seen the
videos yet?”

“I’m looking at them.” Jason clicked on the
video for “Remember.” It alternated between Erin singing and Katie
wandering alone on the playground, as if Katie was the childhood
version of Erin. It was actually a powerfully sad video. “Tadd
doesn’t suck,” Jason said.

“He might be a nut roll, but he knows what
he’s doing,” Mitch said. “Of course, the magic music doesn’t
hurt.”

“Have you told Erin about all this?”

“Yeah, she’s all over her Facebook page
answering comments about it.”

“Oh.”

“Maybe you should call her, though,” Mitch
said.

“I don’t think so. I’m off to work. Keep me
updated.” Jason hung up.

The Buddy McSlawburger’s was packed wall to
wall with kids from school. They erupted in cheers when Jason
entered, as if they’d all been waiting for him.

“Jason,” Mona said, approaching him with a
hard look in her eyes.

“Hey, sorry I’m late. My friend wouldn’t get
off the phone.”

“You told me there was a CD. I’ve been
searching the internet for two days.”

“Oh. Um…I’m sure we’ll get something
together soon, okay? I’ll have Mitch burn you one.”

“For free?” She embraced him in a tight,
uncomfortably long hug. “Thank you, Jason.”

“Sure.” He patted her back. “Long line, huh?
I’d better get to work.” He managed to disentangle from her
embrace, even though she tried to cling to his arms, then his
hands, as he pulled away. He attempted to make his way through the
crowd to the EMPLOYEES ONLY door.

“You don’t have to do that!” Mona said. “Why
don’t you sit at this table and sign autographs?”

“You want me to sign autographs?” Jason
asked, with a tremendous amount of disbelief.

The crowd applauded.

She led Jason to the first dining booth,
telling people “Move aside, move aside.” The crowd tried to crush
in around him.

“This is crazy,” Jason said. “All we did was
put up a video.”

“A great video!” shouted a girl he didn’t
recognize.

“I’ve watched it a hundred times!” somebody
else yelled.

“I’ve watched it a thousand!”

In a daze, Jason sat at the table. People had
him autograph napkins, except for a few who’d brought either
notebooks or printed images of him.

“Where did you get this?” Jason asked a teen
girl who handed him a picture of himself.

“It’s a screenshot from you playing ‘First
Road Out of Here.’ I
loooooooove
that song!” she said.
“You’re the best guitarist ever. I couldn’t believe it when Kelsey
told me you worked at McSlobberbooger’s!”

“Who’s Kelsey!”

“I am!” shrieked another girl. “He said my
name!”

“So, do you guys go to McDonell?” he asked.
He didn’t recognize them, but maybe they attended the Catholic high
school instead of the public one.

“Yeah, but I’ll transfer to Chi-High if you
want me to!” the girl called Kelsey said.

“Uh, that’s okay,” Jason said. “Thanks,
though.”

Jason spent most of his shift signing
autographs and talking to fans, some of whom had come from the town
of Eau Claire just to see him. He was in a daze. He knew the music
was good, and it was literally magical, but this was too much. It
scared him. The first video, the one taken by Mitch’s kid neighbor,
had only been circulating for a week or so. The music wasn’t just
entrancing, it was addictive, and everybody who heard it seemed to
lose their minds a little.

Mitch was absolutely right, he realized. This
was only the beginning of what promised to be a very wild ride.

Over the next couple of days, he continued
going to work, but Mona treated him like a celebrity. So did the
kids who came from increasingly far away—Sheboygan, Oshkosh, even
college students driving up from Madison. All of them asked when
they were doing a concert or where to buy their music. Lots of them
took pictures of themselves with Jason. One group showed up with
full-print posters of the band, which a girl who worked in a copy
shop had made. Jason signed it next to his own face.

Mitch called periodically with updates. They
were getting bigger and bigger offers for larger and larger venues.
Apparently, even nightclub and theater owners weren’t immune to the
power of the Assorted Zebras.

On Thursday, when Jason was again at work and
not working, Mitch called again.

“Forget all those little clubs. We’ve been
invited to play at the Spoon and Cherry Festival on Saturday
night,” Mitch said. His voice was awed.