Fairy Metal Thunder (Songs of Magic, #1) (20 page)

In his room, he slid the plate under the bed.
He heard Grizlemor gobble them down, and he was glad he didn’t have
to watch—the goblin’s eating habits were the most disgusting he’d
ever seen.

Jason took out his phone and looked at Erin’s
number, which had a snapshot of her smiling face beside it. He
wanted to call her, but what could he say? She’d made her feelings
perfectly clear.

He threw the phone aside and took out his
guitar. His hands played how he felt, the lower three strings,
filling the room with sadness.

Katie wandered in, drawn by the music. She
sat at the foot of his bed and listened, and she gradually began to
cry. Not sobbing or screaming like she usually did, but just slowly
leaking tears from her eyes while she watched Jason play.

The instrument factory sang and chimed with
some of the most beautiful sounds Aoide had ever heard. They
bounced and echoed pleasantly from the brick walls, where the
bricks were the assorted colors of a bag of gumdrops. Sunlight
poured in from the skylights and the huge wrought-iron windows, all
of which were open to catch the buttery breeze from the bakery next
door.

Aoide and Rhodia followed Ladon, a male fairy
with long green hair, a golden nose ring, and a serpent tattoo
snaking up his neck. He had dragonfly-style wings.

“We’ve got everything you need,” Ladon said.
“Visit the luthiers up here—” He pointed to where several fairies
carved the pieces of a violin, working with slow, painstaking care.
One of them had a violin string stretched taut between tall,
glowing geodes. She sang a single long note to vibrate the string
while it soaked in the pulsing light of the magic stones. Much of
the work took place behind a tapestry, where brightly colored smoke
rolled out while the enchanters cast their secret spells.

Neus and Skezg, the faun and the ogre,
dragged behind them, watching young apprentice fairies cast spells
over raw boughs and limbs, recently cut from trees and still
damp.

“There’s one very small issue,” Aoide said.
“Our last instruments were stolen, so we don’t exactly have the
money saved up to buy new ones.”

“How much do you have?”

“Not much,” Aoide said.

“It’s not a big deal,” Rhodia added, giving
Ladon her most cheerful smile. “We’ve been playing in the park near
Goblin Row for a hundred years, so we get the musicians’ stipend
from the Queen. Plus, we get a lot of gigs.”

“You want to buy four instruments on credit?”
Ladon stopped walking and whirled around the face them. He wasn’t
grinning anymore. “All four?”

“That’s okay, right?” Aoide smiled widely at
him. “We’re Guild musicians and everything.”

“If you weren’t Guild musicians, the security
spells would not have allowed you through the door,” Ladon said.
“Guild musician or not, you can’t buy anything without money.
You’ll have to talk to our finance department.”

“Oh, certainly,” Aoide said. “I’m sure
everything will be fine.”

Ladon almost glared at her. “This way,” he
said.

He led them away from the factory floor, up a
spiraling wrought-iron staircase to a row of arched wooden doors on
the second floor, each one of them a different color. A
wrought-iron balcony ran in front of the doors, overlooking the
fairy artisans below.

Ladon knocked on the red door, then opened
it.

“Mr. Wimwinkle,” Ladon said. “We have some
poor musicians trying to get instruments with no money.”

“That’s not a very nice way to put it,”
Rhodia said, and Aoide elbowed her to be quiet.

“Best of luck,” Ladon said icily, as he
walked away.

“Good fortune to you, too!” Aoide called
after him. Then she turned and looked into the office.

One wall of the office was full of
pigeonholes. A gnome sat at the big desk, surrounded by stacks of
scrolls, which he was sorting into the pigeonholes. From there,
pigeons took the scrolls and flew up a chimney to deliver them
around town.

The gnome wore a tall, cone-shaped red hat
and a blue jacket. A nameplate on his desk read DWOBKIN WIMWINKLE.
He stroked his long, white beard as he looked at Aoide, Rhodia, and
Neus, as well as the big, orange-haired ogre squatting behind
them.

“Well, I doubt this will take long,” the
gnome said. “Come in, ladies. And gentleman. The ogre will have to
stay out there, of course, there’s no room.”

Skezg grunted and hunkered low to the
floor.

Aoide, Rhodia and Neus entered and took the
chairs facing the gnome. Wimwinkle arched his fingers in front of
his lips and looked them over.

“What kind of loan do you need?” he
asked.

“We need to replace our four instruments,”
Aoide said. “My lute, Rhodia’s harp, Neus’ pipes and Skezg’s
drum.”

The gnome whistled.

“That’s a lot of silver,” he said. “What do
you have for collateral?”

“Not much,” Aoide said. “The Queensguard is
holding our savings for, um, security while they search for our
lost instruments. But we play at parties and clubs all over the
city, and during the day we have the park by Goblin Row. So we have
income.”

“And the Queen pays you the usual stipend for
musicians who entrance the man-whelps?” the gnome asked.

“Every month,” Aoide said.

“But this month, you’ll receive nothing,” the
gnome said.

“Unless we have our instruments,” Neus said,
blinking his goaty eyes.

“And would you please explain to me what
happened to your last instruments?” Wimwinkle asked.

“They were stolen!” Rhodia said. “Can you
imagine? What a horrible thing for someone to do!”

“How were they stolen?”

“From the park,” Aoide said.

“You saw it happen?”

“No, we were having a drink at the cafe,”
Rhodia said. “Right across the street.”

“And you left your instruments at the
park?”

“We do it all the time!” Rhodia said. She put
her face in her hands, and her pink wings wiggled. “Nobody ever
bothers them.”

“But this time, somebody stole them,” the
gnome said. “So you want us to extend you a loan to buy
instruments, knowing that you carelessly leave instruments out in a
park near Goblin Row, where anyone who comes along might steal
them?”

“We won’t do it anymore! We promise,” Aoide
said, and Rhodia and Neus nodded.

The gnome sighed and shook his head. “Given
all you’ve told me, we couldn’t possibly extend a loan for the full
amount of the instruments. You’ll need to come up with at least
half, which I calculate to be…” He moved several beads on an
abacus. “Five hundred silvers.”

“Where are we going to get five hundred
silver coins?” Rhodia gasped.

“If we don’t have instruments, then we can’t
earn the money to pay for them,” Aoide said.

“It’s a real conundrum,” the gnome agreed.
“Happily, it is not
my
conundrum to solve. Have a lucky
day.”

“We’re done?” Aoide asked. “Just like
that?”

“Unless you have five hundred silvers, we
have nothing left to discuss,” the gnome said.

“But…can’t we just rent them?” Rhodia
asked. “We have somebody searching for ours. We only need these for
a little while.”

“Instruments cannot be rented!” the gnome
gave Rhodia a stern look. “You should know that is against the
rules of the Musicians’ Guild. Each instrument adapts to its user.
They cannot simply be passed from one player to another.”

“But some instruments can adapt to new
players,” Aoide said.

“Take it up with the Guild,” the gnome said,
waving them away. “Again I say, have a lucky day.”

“Have a lucky day,” Aoide mumbled. She stood
up, her eyes stinging. She missed her lute terribly. She missed
playing music. “Come on, everyone.”

They shambled out of the factory and down
Queen Boulevard towards Goblin Row. Nobody spoke.

When they reached their usual park, Rhodia
gasped. Another band had already moved in, fairies with flutes and
bells and a banjo. A group of young humans danced inside the ring
of mushrooms, their energy pouring out to recharge the magic of
Faerie.

“That’s our spot!” Rhodia said.

“We can’t claim it if we don’t have our
gear,” Neus said. “If we stop playing there, another band can take
it. That’s the law.”

“Let’s get a drink,” Skezg grumbled.

They took a table at their usual cafe. A
golden-haired fairy fluttered to their table and took their orders:
rose nectar for Aoide, honeysuckle dew for Rhodia, thistle tea for
Neus. Skezg ordered a cup of poison ivy broth.

“What are we going to do?” Rhodia asked. “We
can’t play, we lost our spot. That elf and his unicorn better come
back with our instruments, or we’re sunk.”

“If I ever find that thief…” Neus made a
fist. “Pop! Right in the nose holes.”

“I have to pay rent soon,” Aoide asked. “I
don’t know how I can make it.”

“Guess what? They’re hiring here!” the
golden-haired fairy chirped as she delivered their four drinks in
bell-shaped lilies. “All you need is a great attitude and a quick
pair of wings! Oh, and the ability to work your tail off all day
for practically nothing! Let me know if you want refills!” She
fluttered away again.

Aoide put her elbow on the table and rested
her hand in her chin.

“We don’t get to play no more,” Skezg
grumbled.

“That’s right. Everything depends on that
crazy old elf,” Aoide said.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Then
Aoide stood and walked inside the cafe building, up to the front
counter, where the golden-haired fairy waved cheerfully.

“Can I have one of those job applications?”
Aoide asked.

“Certainly!” the fairy chirped. She handed
over a scroll.

“Mind if I borrow your quill-and-ink?” Aoide
asked.

“As long as you don’t carry it away! I hate
when people steal my pen. It makes me violent!” the golden-haired
fairy giggled.

“Thanks.” Aoide picked up the long plume of
the feather quill pen, dipped it in the little oyster-shell inkpot,
and began to fill in the blank lines on the scroll.

On Saturday, Jason dressed in a black t-shirt
and his most comfortable jeans and shoes. He spent an unusually
long time checking his hair in the mirror. The largest crowd for
which he’d ever performed was a crowd of one hundred, and that had
been as an extra in the high school production of
The
Crucible.
He couldn’t imagine facing ten thousand people. It
made him almost as nervous as the thought of seeing Erin again.

Grizlemor appeared next to him. The goblin
removed his hat and smoothed his knotty, stringy hair, then spread
his mouth open and inspected his dark yellow teeth and lumpy green
gums in the mirror.

“What are you doing?” Jason asked.

“Getting ready for the show.”

“What show?”

“Do you really think I’m going to let the
four of you run off with those instruments unsupervised?” Grizlemor
asked. “Somebody has to watch out for wicked fairies.”

“I’m sure we’ll be fine,” Jason said.

“I’m sure you won’t. If the fairies figure
out what happened, they’ll kill me. Then I’ll haunt you.”

“Very funny.”

“It’s not funny.” Grizlemor sniffed his own
armpit. “Clearly, you’ve never faced a goblin ghost. We can get
pretty ugly after we die. Go grab me a snack, would you? Whipped
cream and Spam on rye, please.”

Jason looked the goblin over. His clothes and
hat were filthy, and he gave off a smell like rotten sausages.

“Are you sure you don’t want to bathe before
you go?” Jason asked. “Or wash your clothes?” He couldn’t recall
the goblin doing either thing in the week he’d been living under
Jason’s bed.

“Nope. I’m ready.” The goblin disappeared in
a green puff. A row of green puffs appeared, leading away to
Jason’s bed. Grizlemor reappeared on the edge of the bed, next to
Jason’s guitar case. “I don’t see any snacks yet.” He held out an
empty hand.

“Do you really have to come? How will I
explain you to everyone else?”

“Same way you explained the magic
instruments,” Grizlemor said. “They seem happy with those, don’t
they? Tell them I come with the instruments.”

“Like a roadie?”

“What’s that?”

“Someone who helps load and unload the
gear.”

“Whatever you want to tell them.” Grizlemor
took off his shoes and sniffed between his green toes.

“Change your mind about the bath?”

“I think I’m good for another five or ten
years,” the goblin said. “Food, please.”

Jason shook his head and went downstairs. He
walked into the kitchen, feeling annoyed, but then he froze when he
saw who was at the kitchen table.

Both his parents were there, having mugs of
coffee. A third mug cooled on the table, untouched. Behind it sat a
withered old woman with hair like a mat of gray cobwebs. Her eyes
were very dark, her mouth a narrow gash. She wore a black silk
scarf around her neck, and where it drooped, Jason could see that
her neck was swaddled in discolored bandages under the scarf. She
sat in a wheelchair that looked antique, made of dark, polished
wood and brass wheels.

Jason gaped. He could guess who she was.

“Jason,” his mother said. “This is Mrs.
Dullahan.”

Jason gaped a little more.

“Where are your manners?” Jason’s mom
asked.

“Oh! Uh, hi, Mrs. Dullahan.” Jason’s heart
sank like a stone in a cold pond. She’d figured it out, he thought,
and she was going to take back their instruments before they ever
got to play a show.

“She has a few things to ask you,” his dad
said.

“Okay.” Jason’s throat knotted up. The lady
was scary. The air felt unnaturally cold around her.

“You are the young man who came to my house,”
she said, and he recognized the harsh, scraping voice from the
intercom.