Fairy Metal Thunder (Songs of Magic, #1) (9 page)

“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.

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.

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 River 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.