Wolf Notes and Other Musical Mishaps (17 page)

No one had seen Professor Greenhill since the morning rehearsal, so when Dr Lermontov announced at teatime that they would be leaving at 11pm to drive to the concert venue, Helen took a risk and put up her hand.

“Professor Greenhill asked me to be her runner tonight, so she’s picking me up and taking me to the venue earlier. I won’t be in the minibus with you, but I’ll meet you there. The Professor said to let you know, so you didn’t worry.”

“You won’t be in the forest on your own, will you?” he asked.

“Oh? Is the venue in the forest?” Helen asked innocently.

He frowned. “You won’t be in there on your own, will you, Helen Strange?”

She thought about the wolves who had been watching her all week. “No, I never seem to be on my own.”

But it wasn’t the Professor who came to get her at 10 o’clock. It was Sapphire.

Helen stood at the back of the lodge and saw a jagged shape land on the track ahead of her. She ran over and leapt onto the dragon.

For the first time all week, Helen wasn’t taking
the first aid kit with her to the forest. Instead she was wearing her fiddle on her back. As they flew low along the glen, she felt the hard case press on her spine.

She loved her fiddle. She hoped it would be her violin for the rest of her life. It had a gorgeous gleam, a great sound and she knew its every foible: the notes it played perfectly, the notes you had to nurse and nurture out of it, and where its wolf note was. It was the gateway to the greatest joy she knew: performing music.

Right now, however, her fiddle felt very heavy. So heavy she was surprised Sapphire could lift it off the ground. For a moment, Helen was so scared of the night’s possibilities, she wanted to take the violin case off and drop it to the ground below. But she knew she couldn’t.

She couldn’t imagine a life without music. Wherever she had to play.

Anyway, her fiddle was no danger to her tonight. Who would want Helen Strang to play her fiddle, when Ossian of the Fianna was playing his harp?

Far to the west of their usual meeting place, Sapphire landed on a steep ridge, with trees down one slope, and bare ground down the other.

Her friends had chosen this point well. Looking down in the late evening light, Helen saw the end of the track leading along the forest edge. This was as far as the lodge’s minibus would come in an hour’s time. Behind them, over the ridge and through the trees, was the green mound.

She started to slide down Sapphire’s scales. The dragon smelt spicy and gleamed beautifully,
so Helen guessed Lavender had been nervous and had spent most of the day polishing her friend with scented oils. It made the dragon smooth and slippy, and Helen skidded down faster than she meant to.

Yann and Lee grabbed her arms to stop her
flying
down the ridge.

Yann spun her round and looked at her back. “No first aid kit? Just the fiddle?”

“There won’t be any quests, fights, or injuries tonight. We won’t need first aid.”

“You won’t need the fiddle either.”

“I hope not.” Helen swung the case off her back and laid it carefully on a tree stump.

Sylvie walked right up to her, and stood just a little too close. “What’s your plan to drive the faeries from my forest?”

Helen looked up. “It’s cloudy tonight, which is good, because we won’t have to worry about the Wild Hunt, but there’s bound to be another cloudless night soon. So when the starry hunters are hungry, if the Queen’s still here, she’ll hunt again.

“And we’ll be ready. We’ll lay a trail of aniseed, like drag hunters use instead of real foxes, and lure the hounds of the Wild Hunt to circle round and come up behind the faery hunters. So the Wild Hunt will chase itself out of the forest…”

Lee laughed. “That’s very neat! I must make sure none of my friends hunt that night, because that will take a few of your lifetimes to sort out!”

Sylvie growled. “I don’t know. Will the hounds follow aniseed?”

Helen shrugged. “Most hunting dogs do, but the most important thing is they chase running prey, so we must stay still and let the faeries do the running. You must say the same to your pack.

“So, Sylvie. Do you like my plan? Will you help us tonight?”

Sylvie grunted. “It’s just as ridiculous and unworkable as everything else you’ve done this week, so I suppose it’s just as likely to turn out all right in the end.” She nodded. “That’s your plan for another night. Let’s get their party out of the way tonight.”

So they sat down to wait for their hero and bard.

They waited.

Helen looked at her watch. “It’s not eleven o’clock yet.”

Sapphire described her favourite jewellery to them all.

Lee and Lavender had a colourful conversation about silk, velvet and shoes.

Helen kept checking her watch. It still wasn’t eleven o’clock.

They waited.

Sapphire and Sylvie exchanged theories about the best way to eat sheep without getting the wool caught in your teeth.

Yann and Helen chatted about how long it would take for his dad to calm down, and when it would be safe for Yann to go home.

Helen kept checking her watch. “It’s eleven o’clock.”

They waited.

“It’s five past.”

“Remember, Ossian doesn’t have a watch,” Lee pointed out. “He might be running late.”

No one was chatting now.

They kept waiting.

They weren’t sitting down any more. They were pacing along the ridge, looking along the track for the minibus.

“Ossian has to get here before the students do!” Helen said anxiously. “It’s quarter past eleven. He’s late.”

“He’s not late,” said Sylvie. “He’s not coming. He’s let you down.” There was a tiny purr of pleasure in her voice.

“He wouldn’t let us down. He gave us his word!”

Then Helen’s whole body went cold. “Oh no. He did promise. He gave us his solemn word. And he did mean it. But he lives on Tir nan Og. Where the price of eternal life is your memory!”

She groaned, her failure suddenly clear.

“He promised … and he meant it …
but he forgot!
He’s forgotten his promise. He isn’t coming.”

There was a deep silence. It was so obvious. How could they not have realized?

Helen groaned again. “Even if Sapphire flies to Fladda-chuain to get him tonight, even if she could find Tir nan Og without a sunset to fly into, he’ll have forgotten the tasks we did to win his favour. We would have to do them all again. We don’t have time to hunt and fight and riddle again.

“We failed after all. We have no bard. We have no music to provide. Not unless I do it myself.”

Helen looked down the ridge. She flinched as minibus headlights suddenly shone along the track.

“I have to get to the mound before the rest of the summer school get here.”

“No!”
shouted the fabled beasts gathered round her.

“I have to. If I don’t, James is trapped there
forever
. I promised his little sister …” She forced the words past the panic in her throat. “I promised his little sister he would wake up tonight.”

She saw Sylvie sidle over to Yann and whisper. Yann glanced at Helen’s fiddle case on the stump.

Helen rushed over, and slung her fiddle on her back.

“Don’t you dare, Yann Smith. You are not sabotaging my fiddle any more than you sabotaged the music school. Don’t you lay one hoof on this.”

He walked towards her slowly. Every hoof beat clear on the hard ground. “I will not let you go in there.”

“Yes, you will. You’ll let me go in, you’ll watch the boy come out and you’ll take him home to his family. You will do that.”

Helen turned away from Yann, to look at the headlights getting closer.

Sylvie was blocking her view. “You will not go. We will not let you.”

“We, Sylvie? You and who else? Are your sneaking skulking spying brothers nearby?”

“Yes. In the forest below the ridge. Just waiting for my word, ready to stop the party.”

“But they can’t stop it yet. They can’t! We haven’t got James.”

“You aren’t going to get him. You have to break your promises, girl. You have to break your
promiseto the Queen to provide music, and you have to break your promise to the child to get her brother back.”

“I’m not breaking any more promises. I’m not failing any more quests.”

Sylvie shook her head, her long silver hair floating in the grey air. “If you aren’t going to break your promises, I’m going to keep mine. My promise to the pack. I have held my brothers back from attacking you all week, but I promised I would let them loose when your plans finally fell apart. I will go to my brothers and we will stop this concert.”

Sylvie turned and ran, flickering as she went, calling and howling, her voice distorting as her body shifted.

Helen leant against Sapphire, who rumbled comfortingly. Lavender, Lee and Yann gathered round.

“I have failed, haven’t I? Right from the start.”

She stood up straight. “But your King, Lee … he said I should finish this quest the way I began and it would all end happily. So let’s keep on failing.”

“What?” said Lee.

“I’ve got to keep on
failing
. That’s what I have been doing all week. I’ve got to make a total, utter, complete mess of this.

“But first let’s get to the students before the wolves do.”

She started to run downhill towards the end of the track.

As she ran, she tried to think of the right words to persuade Sylvie that she finally had a workable
plan, and the right words to persuade the other musicians to play along.

She saw the minibus stop, and the inside lights flare as the doors opened.

Everyone jumped out, all dressed in white shirts, dark skirts and dark trousers. Helen groaned once more. She was wearing her mankiest jeans again. She wasn’t getting anything right this week.

She wasn’t running now, she was creeping, trying to be quiet.

She saw Dr Lermontov’s heavy body squeeze out of the driver’s door. “Stay where I can see you. We are to wait here until the Professor’s front of house staff come to guide us to the venue.”

She heard a boy’s voice say, “How will we see to play? It’s so dark here without streetlights.”

Someone else made a wavering ghosty “Oooh Ahahahaha!”

A girl’s voice said, “Dark forests are
really creepy
…”

The same ghosty voice challenged, “I dare you to go in!”

“Don’t be daft, that’s how horror movies start,” the girl laughed. “Some idiot going into the forest on their own.”

A fiddler started to play slow eerie music.

There was laughter. “See! Never go into the forest when there’s spooky music playing. Everyone knows that!”

Helen, sliding down to the foot of the ridge, heard a howl behind her.

She leapt up and yelled, “Get back in the bus! The Professor says the arriving audience aren’t to
see you! Get back in the bus!”

There was a confused scramble as people climbed back in and slammed the doors. Dr Lermontov looked round, then hauled himself back into the driver’s seat.

Helen called to her friends over the noise of the doors closing. “We have to get between the wolves and the bus.”

She heard Yann’s hooves thudding on the ground, and saw the bulk of Sapphire flying overhead.

“But don’t let the students see you!”

Helen reached the minibus at a sprint, then stumbled back out of the light cast by the bright windows, and stood in the shadows near the rear of the bus.

Yann ordered in a low carrying voice, “Helen, stay there. Lee, to the other back corner. Sapphire, block the path to the forest. I will take the front. Lavender, stay safe on the roof of the bus.”

Helen glanced round. “Can the people in the minibus see us?” She really meant, can they see a dragon and a centaur?

“No,” answered Yann calmly. “They are in brightness and we are in darkness; if we stay on the edge of the light they won’t see us. But we’ll keep our fire and glamour and light balls dark, if you don’t want them to know we’re protecting them.”

“Can they hear us?”

“Are you kidding? Listen.”

Helen calmed her breathing and listened. The students were playing theme tunes of horror films. Helen smiled.

Lee called, “Helen, do you have a weapon?”

“Of course I don’t have a weapon. You’re the only one with a weapon, Lee.”

“No, Helen. Sapphire has fire, Yann has hooves, the wolves have teeth. We all have weapons except you. Here.”

Something rattled at her feet, and Helen bent down to pick it up. She could feel the shape of the hilt. “This is
your
sword, Lee. Now you’ve nothing to defend yourself with.”

“That’s my old sword. The one I damaged last night. I won a new sword today, but even though that old one won’t win any more duels, it could still hurt a wolf. Don’t be afraid to use it.”

Helen stood with the sword heavy in her hand and waited for the wolves.

It was hard to tell when the wolves arrived.

Helen couldn’t see them, she couldn’t hear them, but the hair on the back of her neck bristled, and her skin felt cold.

“Sylvie?”

There was no answer. But she was sure they were there.

She couldn’t see her enemies. She couldn’t see her friends. Just darkness in front of her and yellow light behind. She couldn’t step into the light with a sword in her hand. She must not let the wolves past either.

“Sylvie?”

Then she saw, ahead of her, a shining nose and a black muzzle, pushing at the edge of the darkness.

“Yann! Lee! They’re here! At my corner of the bus!”

Another long muzzle and huge paws, inching towards her.

Yann called back, “They’re here too, Helen. Use the sword!”

Helen lifted the sword. She looked at the advancing wolves.

But what if one of them was Sylvie? She didn’t want to hurt Sylvie.

She didn’t really want to hurt Sylvie’s brothers either. She would rather bandage animals than injure them.

She didn’t want to hurt them, but it looked like they wanted to hurt her.

The first wolf, its muzzle getting nearer, bared its teeth and wrinkled its nose, snarling silently at her. It was big, and dark-furred. It definitely wasn’t Sylvie.

Helen blew the hair off her face. What should she use? The edge or the point of the sword?

The wolf got nearer. Helen could hardly make out its night-dark back as it slinked towards her. She lifted the sword and crashed it down.

The sword missed the wolf and hit the ground, jarring her wrist.

There was movement to her left. She heard Lee’s sword whistle efficiently through the air. There was movement to her right. There was no one to defend her there. She slashed out again with the sword.

She didn’t hit anything, and the wolves, four or five of them now, kept coming towards her. Probably they could see she was the weak point in the defence. She had to look serious with this weapon; she had to feel serious.

Helen gritted her teeth and lunged forward. The wolves all slid backwards.

Then they rushed forward together. She swung the sword in an unwieldy circle. The wolves slowed down, but kept advancing.

This time she jabbed the sword forward, and caught one on the nose. The wolf snarled and leapt back.

“Sylvie! Sylvie!”

She could hear more sword swipes from Lee’s corner, and the drumming of hooves on the ground at the front of the minibus. Past the strains of nervewracking horror music from the bus, she could even hear the fizzle of sparks from Sapphire’s nostrils. All around, she heard snarls and whines, as her friends beat the wolves back.

But no one howled and no one shouted. No one threw fire or swirled light. They fought quietly in the dark, so those they were protecting didn’t even know they were there.

Helen felt the hot breath of the wolves getting nearer.

She jabbed again, then whirled the sword in a fast arc.

Behind the wolves threatening her, she could see, very dimly, more low-slung shapes. More wolves, circling, like sharks round a shipwreck.

“How long can we hold them off?” she panted.

“Until the Queen’s guard come to take the
musicians
to the mound?” asked Lee.

“That’ll be too late!” gasped Helen. “I need to talk to the students
before
the faeries get here, or my plan won’t work. We need Sylvie. She’s the only one who’ll understand.” Helen swung the sword again, and peered into the gloom. Which slinking shape was Sylvie?

“Sylvie?”

She lowered the sword.

“Sylvie, answer me!”

Lavender’s voice called urgently, “Helen! To your right!”

A wolf was sneaking towards the doors of the minibus.

Helen raised the sword and drove it towards the wolf without thinking. There was a moment’s dull contact, then a whine. The wolf ran off.

Helen felt sick.

“Sylvie!
Sylvie!
Listen to me!”

“Sylvie isn’t with you any more,” said a deep voice. “She has shifted. She is with us now.”

The darkest wolf had flickered into a tall boy, dressed in elegant black.

“Who are you?” Helen asked almost calmly, much keener to talk than wave a sword about.

“I am Sylvie’s big brother and I am here to drive you away. All of you. First the musicians, then the faeries.” He took a step towards her.

Helen lifted the heavy sword and pointed it at him. The first time she had pointed it at a person. It wobbled in her hand. “Don’t come any closer.”

He looked at the sword and smiled cynically. “You’re more afraid of that sword than I am! It’s useless in your hands.”

He looked over her shoulder at the laughing
students
squashed in the minibus, and grinned more widely. “Like baby rabbits in a burrow. Easy prey, trapped in a small space.”

“How are you going to drive them away?” Helen wanted to keep him talking.

“Faeries can’t dance to slashed pipes, splintered fiddles, ripped drums and bent flutes. Children can’t play with bitten fingers and mangled hands. I will use my teeth and my claws to kill your concert.”

He walked forward.

Helen swung the sword at him clumsily.

“Sylvie!” she called again. “Sylvie! I have a plan!”

In the circling pack, a wolf laughed.

“Sylvie, please listen to my plan!”

“Sylvie is not listening to you.” The boy took another step. “Now, human girl. Which hand do you play with?” He licked his lips. “Which hand do I bite to stop you playing ever again?”

“I need both my hands to drive the faeries away.”

He raised his black eyebrows.

“I need both my hands, and all those hands in the minibus, to drive them away forever.

“If you send us away, scared and bleeding, the faeries will just find more musicians. You know they will. You can’t injure every fiddler in Scotland, not without someone noticing.

“But if I drive the faeries away completely, then you can enjoy your forest again.

“Sylvie! Listen to my plan!”

Yann’s voice came breathless from the other side of the bus. “Helen, just tell everyone your plan! Sylvie’s listening, even if she isn’t answering.”

“Alright. This is what we do. The wolves back off and let me talk to the students, then we get safely out of the bus and into the mound, and James leaves the mound.”

“No. I will let none of that happen.” Sylvie’s brother smiled with all his long white teeth and shook his shaggy dark head.

“Yes,” Helen insisted. “You let us in, and him out. Then we fail.”

“You what?”

“We fail. Just like we have all along. Sylvie will understand.”

“How do you fail?”

“We play really badly. We embarrass the Queen, we annoy her guests, we drive them away … with dreadful music. If they’re the best audience in the world, then they must hate bad music as much as they love good music. The Professor even said they would leave the revels if we didn’t make a good impression.”

“I like it,” said Lee, who was breathing lightly in the welcome break as everyone round the bus listened to Helen. “Faeries are an audience worth playing to for a hundred years, because we are so sensitive to good music. But we are just as sensitive to bad music. Her plan could work. Let her do it, fur-boy.”

The wolf boy snarled.

“I don’t like it,” called Yann. “How do you get out?”

“We use iron to stop the door closing behind us, and when the faeries leave in disgust, so do we.”

“No,” said the wolf brother, stalking towards her. Running his long fingers though his black hair, pulling it forward over his forehead and cheeks. “No musician goes in there tonight. Not with all their fingers and ears.” He began to flicker.

“No!” said Sylvie suddenly, walking into the dim edge of the light. “The human girl could be right. If we drive away these few musicians, the Queen will find more; if we humiliate her and drive away her guests, she won’t come back for years. Let the human girl try.”

But the wolf was on all fours now, stalking low to the ground, towards Helen.

Helen couldn’t back off, she’d fall into the bright light round the minibus, and it seemed very
important
to keep this terror private. So she stood still and tried to hold her gaze steady on his green eyes.

He moved closer, and lower.

Then Sylvie leapt on her brother. She knocked him to the ground as a girl, but by the time she got her teeth round his muzzle, she was a wolf.

They wrestled for a moment, then both leapt up. They stood stiff-legged, ears up and hackles bristling, with their two tails, one silver, one black, curled right over their backs. They stared at each other, battling silently and unmoving for dominance. Sylvie was much smaller than her brother, but she refused to cringe to the ground in front of him.

Helen took her chance. She spoke to the
darkness
, to the rest of the pack. “Sylvie supports me. Listen to your sister. Let me talk to the musicians and tell them how to defeat the Faery Queen.

“While I talk to them, you keep to the shadows. If you scare them, it will be harder to control them.”

“Like sheep or deer, you mean?” the wolf boy sneered, as he flickered back up onto his human legs, still glaring at his sister.

“No. Like ordinary people, who don’t expect to find wolves or faeries or dragons on their
door-steps
.”

She stared at him, waiting for his agreement. He licked his lips, then nodded.

Helen moved into the light, and opened the door of the minibus.

She climbed in, closed the door, then realized she was still holding a sword. She pushed it hastily under a seat, with a familiar jarring clang.

“Was that a playground joke, primary girl?” Zoe said. “Trapping us all in this smelly bus while you wander about outside?”

Helen shook her head. “The Professor’s venue staff are on their way. We’re nearly ready.

“First, I have a message from the Professor. Tonight, she wants us to play our absolute worst.”

“What?” a dozen voices asked in surprise.

“She knows we can play well, so tonight, she wants us to play our worst.”

“Why?”

Helen took a deep breath.

“She has a theory. Anyone can play music badly. If I picked up your flute, Juliet, I could miss notes, fumble a melody, play out of tune, and it would be bad, but it would be unspectacular and uninteresting. The Professor has a theory that the best players can play the absolute worst. If we put our musical minds to it, we can play really badly; painfully and ear-rattlingly badly. So she wants us to play our worst this evening.”

Helen thought she’d explained her plan convincingly and persuasively, but from the shocked faces and shaking heads around her, it was clear she had failed.

“She can’t have meant that.”

“You must have misunderstood, Helen.”

“She wants us to play our best, not our worst, primary girl.”

“We can’t throw away all that rehearsing!”

Some of them started to get off their seats, picking up their instrument cases.

Helen rubbed her hands nervously on her dusty old jeans. What else could she do?

Then she remembered what was in the pocket of these jeans.

She half stood up, so she could fit her fingers into the tiny pocket, and pulled out the one remaining thread of the Fairy Flag.

She looked at it. Pale and very fragile, it had worked, briefly, on her eyes. Did it have any other powers?

She opened her mouth and laid the thread on her tongue.

She felt an immediate fizzing behind her teeth.

She spoke again. “You are the best musicians the Professor has ever heard.”

Her voice rolled round her mouth, it bounced round her skull, it echoed round the minibus. All the students turned to look at her.

“You are the only musicians she would challenge to do this.”

Everyone sat down, eyes wide, mouths closed, listening to Helen’s voice.

“You are the only musicians she would trust to give their best skills to playing the worst music ever.”

They were nodding, smiling.

All except Zoe at the back, who was frowning, and struggling to speak. “No. Just because you
didn’t get to play a solo … you don’t get to ruin it for the rest of us.

“Dr Lermontov,” Zoe appealed in a faint voice, “Dr Lermontov, you won’t let her do this, will you?”

Helen turned round, to see a puzzled Dr Lermontov in the driver’s seat, pulling a furry hat down over his ears.

He looked hard at Helen, and at the bus full of smiling students. “I’m not sure. But I do know that I heard noises tonight, just before we got back in the bus, which I haven’t heard since my childhood in Russia. I remember that my
grandmother
believed if strange little people give you strange advice on the edge of the forest, it is wise to follow it. So I think we will indeed see how badly we can play. I shall conduct you in the worst concert of our lives!”

The rest of the bus cheered, but Zoe still shook her head.

Helen ran her tongue over the roof of her mouth, and aimed a warm stream of words at the back of the bus. “Zoe, you can play a solo if you like. Improvise your own answer to the Professor’s challenge.”

Zoe smiled and nodded, slowly.

Helen grinned. “We can all come up with our own ways to play the worst music ever. The Professor is interested in our original ideas. She will be listening very carefully!”

“We could all play different tunes at once,” suggested Alice.

“We could use different tempos, starting and
finishing separately,” offered Amelia.

“Or play a tune backwards?” Catriona wondered.

There were giggles at that suggestion, then lots more students started having ideas.

“Play in the style of an old man farting, or a baby burping,” Tommy laughed.

“Or play your wolf note, Helen,” offered Juliet.

“Yes! Play the notes you know your instrument hates,” agreed Zoe.

Now everyone was laughing, and everyone had ideas of the best ways to play horrible music. All shouting out at once.

Helen sighed in relief. The students might be enchanted, but at least they were having fun …