Gossamer Axe (7 page)

As a girl, she had traveled to Corca Duibne on foot with a small, fat-bellied harp under her arm and Siudb Ní Corb by her side. Anything had been possible then, for the world was new and her fingers were talented. It did not seem in the least bit unrealistic to believe that, in twelve years, she and her lover would leave the cluster of houses and outbuildings by the lake and make their way through the five provinces of Eriu as master harpers.

But the plans for the future that she had made in Corca Duibne had collapsed, fallen into a timeless ruin; and today, to all appearances little older, she drove to Guitar Tech in her car, parked in the steaming lot in front of the modest office building, and climbed the steps with an electric guitar in her hand… alone.

She padded along the beige carpet until she came to a door with a small sign on it:
Guitar Tech
. Faintly, she heard a record playing: the blues.

Years before, when she had lived in New York and the Ninth Avenue El was still news, she had heard something similar one evening as she walked past the closed door of a black tavern: the sound of steel strings plucked and stretched in a bleak, minor pentatonic scale that somehow managed to sound joyful, as though even the deepest sorrow might be surmounted with the aid of a guitar and the will to make music. But she was white, and that door in New York had been closed to her.

This door was not. She turned the knob and found herself in a small lobby with an old sofa, two chairs, and walls that were light blue where they were not covered with posters of rock stars. Straight ahead, an archway opened into a large classroom containing a blackboard and a row or two of folding chairs. A short hall led off to the right. The blues seeped out from a closed door to the left: a scratchy, off-key guitar wailing alongside a near-unintelligible singer.

“
Gonna buy this whole goddam town
—

Put it in my shoe
…”

A young man with a guitar was leaning against the wall, his fingers firing off licks and scales. He looked up when Christa entered and stared at her from beneath a shaggy mop of hair.

“Good afternoon,” she said.

“Uh… in.”

“I have an appointment with Kevin Larkin.”

“Uh… he’s in the sound room right now.” He nodded at the closed door. “He’ll be done in a few.” He was still staring. “You’re…”

“I’m here to study rock and roll.”

“Yeah…” His fingers buzzed for a few seconds, then: “What are you into?”

Christa’s long hair rustled across her crepe de Chine blouse as she eased the guitar case to the carpet. “Heavy metal.”

He blinked. “You sure?”

“My spandex pants, which I don’t have, are in the wash today. So is my leather jacket, which I also don’t have.”

“Uh… yeah…” He went back to his scales, concentrating on his hands considerably more than he needed to.

A head stuck itself out of a doorway in the hall. It peered at her from behind thick glasses. “You’re Christa?”

“I am, surely.”

“
Aha
. I’m Dave Thomas.” The head looked at the sound-room door. “Hey, Kev,” it shouted. The stereo shut off. “Christa’s here. Mind what I told you: keep your hands to yourself.” The head disappeared, but from the open door came the sound of a nasal tenor:

“
Wheeen Irish eyes are smiliiing
…”

Christa felt her face grow warm. This was a music school? Well, she would show them what a harper from Corca Duibne could do.

The door to the sound room opened and a tall, darkhaired man came toward her, offering his hand. “Hi, Christa. I’m Kevin Larkin.” He stopped short and stared. “Hey, you’re the chick with the harp—” He caught himself. “Uh… sorry.”

She smiled as she clasped his hand. “I’m Christa Cruitaire. And I am a harper, true.”

He was still embarrassed. “I saw you on the street the other day. You had a little harp with you. I… uh… didn’t think anyone played those anymore.”

“Some do,” she said. “I teach harp.” Kevin reminded her of some of the warriors who had now and again stayed at her parents’ steading: tall, sturdy men who were more comfortable with weapons than with people, who cast themselves into the middle of frenzied combat but stood ill at ease before women.

“My grandfather had a harp something like that,” he said. “I suppose it’s up in my dad’s attic now.”

“A sad fate for a harp… or for any instrument.”

“Yeah.” For a moment, he seemed to be elsewhere, but he came to himself and gestured at the case by her feet. “Why don’t you pull out your axe and come on back to my room. We can start your torture.”

“Axe?”

“Your guitar.”

“Oh. Of course.” Bending, she unsnapped the catches and opened the case.

“Never seen a Strat that color. Was it a custom job?”

Christa straightened. “I don’t know. A friend gave this to me.”

She leaned the empty case against the wall and followed him into his office. There was just enough room in it for a desk, a filing cabinet, and two chairs.

Christa had spent most of Sunday examining the Strat, feeling out the relationships between hands and fingerboard and frets, the subtle curve of the neck and the height of the strings above it, the density of the body and the sound that the guitar made unamplified. She was a harper, but she came to her first lesson with the groundwork for her guitar technique already laid. Her left hand wrapped itself easily about the neck of the instrument as she sat down in Kevin’s office, and the feel of a pick in her right was no longer totally foreign.

“Have you studied before?” said Kevin.

“I have not.”

“You want to learn…”

“Heavy metal. I was at the Malmsteen concert Saturday night, and I liked what I heard.”

“Electric guitar isn’t harp, you know.”

She nearly laughed. “I’m well aware of that.”

“Okay then. Let’s get started. We’ll go easy until you get used to it and your fingers callus up a little.”

He showed her basic chord formations and scales, added some standard blues licks. That would have been enough— more than enough—to keep most beginners busy for several weeks. But Christa was a musician who had been trained in the exacting methods of the Corca Duibne school. If she played a melody or a chord twice, she knew it. If she listened to the sound of a scale, she was instantly aware of its harmonic interaction with any accompanying chord.

Not satisfied with basics, she asked for more, methodically pressing Kevin for whatever he could give her. She noticed that he was suddenly scrambling to keep up with her demands.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stop with this?” he said at last.

“Are we out of time?”

“No… but, hey, this is a lot of rock for you to absorb.”

“Kevin,” she explained patiently, “I have an entire week to work on this. What I’ve got now will take only a night or two.”

“At least let me write some of this down.”

“Write it down?” The idea seemed outlandish. She wrote out music for her students, but that was because they were students.

“You can’t tell me you’ll remember all of it.”

“I certainly will.”

He stared at her, then shook his head. “You’re out of my league, Christa.” He seemed almost afraid.

“Nonsense,” she said softly. “It was not a part of your training. It was of mine.”

“Yeah? Where did you study?”

She hesitated. “In… Ireland.”

Kevin leaned back in his chair, rubbing the back of his neck. “You must have had one hell of a teacher.”

Gently, she deflected the conversation. “Is there something by Malmsteen that you think would be suitable for me? I’d like to explore those sounds.”

Kevin looked at her guitar, at her hands. “I’ll tell you, Christa, I wouldn’t dream of giving something like that to a beginning student. But if you’re a beginner, I’m damned scared to think of what you’ll be like when you’re advanced.”

She smiled thinly, hoping that she would also frighten a certain Sidh bard. “How about ‘Black Star’? That had some wonderful harmonies in it. Very ppowerful.”

“Let’s see.” He searched through a folder and came up with several scrawled pages of tablature. “I pulled it off the record a few months ago. It’s tough.” He handed her the sheets. “The lines are the strings,” he explained, “the numbers are frets.”

She looked, understood. “Do you have something I can listen to?”

“We can go into the sound room. There’s a stereo there. You want to try it?”

“Please. If I may.”

Guitar in hand, she followed him to the sound room. The student was still leaning up against the wall, and he eyed Christa as she went by. “How’s it goin’?”

Kevin nodded at Christa. “Eddie Van Halen better move over, Jeff. This lady’s fantastic.”

Jeff snorted softly and went back to his practicing.

“Hey, remember,” said Kevin. “You heard it here first.”

“Yeah, sure.”

The sound room contained a stereo, albums, tapes, and two very large speakers. Christa drew up a folding chair while Kevin flipped through the records. “It’s in here somewhere.”

“Is this any trouble for you?”

“No trouble at all. I do this all the time. There isn’t much that’s actually written down in rock and roll, so almost everything I teach has to be pulled off a record.”

“Oral tradition?”

“Kind of.” He found the album and cued it up on the turntable. “You just have to remember it all. There’s no score, and it’s always changing.”

Absently, Christa picked at her guitar. The Sidh did not change. “It lives, then,” she said.

He blinked at her choice of words, but he nodded. “Yeah. I know some players who never repeat a solo.”

The music started then, and she opened herself to it, listening with concentration, mentally cataloging the melodies, the harmonies, the rhythms. Theme, countertheme, variation, free improvisation—she might have been sitting at Sruitmor’s feet as he worked magic, or in the shadows of the Sidh palace as Orfide wove his timeless spells.

“Once more, please,” she said when the cut had finished.

Kevin set the tone arm back to the beginning. When the music was done, Christa nodded and stood up.

“I’ll have it ready for you next week,” she said, handing back the sheets of tablature.

He stood as though struck. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I’ll have it.”

Blankly, he looked at the pages. “All right, if you say so.”

There was fear in his voice, though she could not understand why. Silently, she cased her guitar and picked up her purse. Kevin watched, his face drawn.

“Do you happen to know any of the Ossipanic ballads?” he asked suddenly. “My grandfather used to sing them. I was trying to remember one the other day, but it just wouldn’t come.”

“The songs of Oisin, son of Find Mac Cumaill? I do. Which are you thinking of?”

“It’s a hymn to the Virgin. It starts off:
Sturad me dod mholadh
… something or other.”

“It is a hymn, surely,” she said. “But not to the Virgin.” She thought for a moment, picking up the thread of a mnemonic, then began to sing, her untrained voice reedy and thin:

“
Stiurad me dod molad

Cia nac ollam me am eígis,

A gnúis ainglide, gan loct!

Tug sugad t’ucta dom réigteac
.”

When she finished, there was silence in the school. Jeff had stopped his practicing. Kevin had his eyes closed as though trying to hold onto some inner vision.

Dave’s head was sticking out of the doorway again. “What was that? German?”

“Gaeid—” She caught herself. She had given the words the sounds they had had when she was young, when they had still possessed the corners and edges that passing centuries had worn away. “Irish.”

“Never heard Irish like that before.”

“It’s… my dialect, perhaps.”

“You sing well.”

She smiled uneasily. “Not really. It’s not natural to me. But…” She thought of Judith, of her incredibly pure, incredibly strong voice. How often had she heard it after they had begun their studies? “But I had a friend once who could sing…”

She suddenly wondered what Judith had given up in order to remain with her. Her voice? Something so important?

Troubled, she picked up her guitar and left.

“Well, Kevin-me-lad,” said Dave. “How did it go?”

Kevin’s eyes were still closed. He sighed, rubbed at them.

“Well?”

Again, he looked at the sheets of tablature in his hands. “She’s fucking scary, Dave.”

Close to midnight, Christa’s studio was dark save for the dim glow of the city that filtered through the backyard trees. Ceis, unveiled, stood pproudly, silently. If it had any opinion about the strange instrument of plastic and steel that had intruded into this sanctuary, it said nothing.

Under Sruitmor, Christa had spent twelve hours a day in utter darkness, alone save for her harp. Derived of sight, restricted to a world of touch and sound, she had learned to let her hands guide themselves through the intricacies of polyhonic technique, and the notes that had chimed from her instrument had grown in meaning and weight until she had come to understand not only the subtle energies generated by her playing, but also the massive powers that those energies could control.

Suantraige. Gentraige. Goltraige
. Sleeping. Laughing. Crying. But these traditional abilities of the harp were only a beginning. There was more to music, much more: powers to heal, to change, to create. And in her fourth year of study, Christa had begun to unlock those also. Her fingers were quick, her mind receptive, and the skills of the
Cruitreacha
had come to her almost effortlessly. Too effortlessly, it seemed, for she had decided that she could learn from Sruitmor and the Sidh both, and that arrogance had cost her everything.

But in the darkness of her studio in Denver, she was relearning music, relearning magic, preparing to win back from the Sidh what she had once lost; and as she had once practiced the harp, so she now practiced the guitar: in the dark, incessantly. Eyes closed, ears straining to hear each nuance of sound that came from the fretted and plucked strings, she explored the personality of a new instrument, the yearning earthiness of the blues, and the coruscating fire of harmonic minor. She had no amplifier, but no matter: there was time for volume later on. For now, she learned notes and scales, and she felt with elation the strange but potent energy that washed down her arm when she stretched a string up and shook it with a gentle vibrato.

Among the frets of the Strat, she found old songs and melodies from her training with Sruitmor, the straightforward modal airs of the Corca Duibne school. Layered throughout the familiar, though, were chromatic potentials: the sharps and flats that play between the strings of her harp, unthought of by ancient harpers either mortal or immortal. With the addition of those extra notes, a familiar melody could suddenly explode in unexpected directions, modulate in surprising ways.

By day she was a harp teacher. At night she struggled with the guitar, her shoulders aching, her fingertips blistered from fretting the taut steel strings. The Malmsteen solo was easy to play, but playing did not imply understanding, and she fought her way through the lightning scales and arpeggios, striving to comprehend the flashes of blue and violet and emerald that erupted from the music.

At her next lesson with Kevin, she played “Black Star” note for note. Kevin watched, listened. He showed her how to pinch a note by striking the string with her pick and immediately muting it with her thumb. The resultant harmonic shrilled even without an amplifier. He listened again.

“Hang on a second, Christa,” he said. He stuck his head out the door. “Hey, Jeff,” he called into the lobby. “Come here a minute, will you?”

The student who had been lounging against the wall lounged up to the door. “Yeah?”

Kevin folded his arms. “Play ‘Black Star,’ Christa.”

She played it. The pinched notes rang perfectly, the feeling and nuance were exactly right. She saw flickers of energy around her guitar and was careful to keep them unfocused, for as yet she had not penetrated very deeply into their use and control. Kevin Larkin could teach her rock and roll, but she would have to discover the magics on her own.

Sliding her hand down the neck, she fluttered the tremolo bar for a moment, then allowed the guitar to fall into silence. “Too faint it was to hear after that,” she said, absently rubbing her smarting fingertips. “ Twas not overly interesting, either.”

Jeff was pale. “How… uh… long you been playing?”

“A week.”

He paled even more.

“I told you,” said Kevin. “You heard it here first.” Jeff walked away, shaking his head, and Kevin closed the door. “That’s fantastic, Christa. You must be some kind of natural guitar player.”

“I’m a harper, Kevin.”

But Kevin looked a little pale himself. “Yeah, well…” He leaned forward suddenly. “What’s wrong with your fingers?”

Christa’s flesh was less durable than her desire: blood was trickling down her left hand. “I broke a blister.” She could play a healing spell on Ceis in less than five minutes, but she had been running late that day. “I’m all right.” She reached into her purse, pulled out a handkerchief, dabbed at her fingertips. “ ’Twill stop in a moment.”

“Uh…” Kevin’s brow was furrowed. “How much have you been practicing?”

She shrugged. “Six, perhaps seven hours a day. I have harp students.”

“What are you doing, Christa? You’re—”

“I’m learning rock and roll, Kevin,” she said firmly. “If I can’t put up with a little blood, what kind of musician am I?”

“You don’t have to cut up your hands.”

Twelve hours a day of harp had injured her fingers almost as badly. She could not understand what was upsetting Kevin. “The old harpers used to mark the first and fifth strings of each octave with their own blood. It gave life to their harps. I’m well within the tradition.”

Kevin did not reply. He was looking at the wall above his desk where from a piece of red twine hung a battered guitar.

The blood stopped in a minute, and Christa put the handkerchief away. “I’ll not be able to play anymore this afternoon, Kevin,” she said softly. “Maybe you could show me something and let me listen to your records again?”

Kevin was still looking at the old guitar, as though he sought advice from the mute strings. Christa sensed that he was afraid.