by Tara Maya, Elle Casey, J L Bryan, Anthea Sharp, Jenna Elizabeth Johnson, Alexia Purdy (epub)
Erin's new song was like a lullaby for the mind. The words and music filled Jason with a deep, warm bliss, blanking out his brain.
Erin reached the end of her verses and starting playing harmonica again. Dred's drumming grew faster and faster—bass, toms, cymbals, snare, all somehow ringing out at once. Her eyes seemed to glow with a kind of mania as her hands and drumsticks flew everywhere. Sweat soaked the kerchief tied to her head and drenched all of her clothes.
Jason, Erin, and Mitch gave up trying to follow her. They surrendered, letting Dred tear off into a wild, loud, crashing drum solo.
The floor rumbled under their feet. Each time Dred hit the cymbal, a window shattered, or a porcelain cat exploded with a sound like a gunshot.
The house shook as Dred's tempo accelerated to an inhuman speed. Deep cracks spread up the walls. Puffs of plaster rained down from the ceiling—but she didn't stop playing, nobody stopped dancing, and the rest of the band was just as enthralled as the audience.
The house shuddered like it was caught in an earthquake. The stairway railing splintered and broke into pieces. Light fixtures and lamps blew out, and the ceiling fan swung wildly. The plaster ceiling cracked and fell in big chunks.
As Dred hit her crescendo, the entire house bucked and heaved, seeming to lift up from the ground—and then with a final crashing sound, the interior walls came tumbling down, exposing the wooden frame of the house and all the pipes and wiring.
Dred threw her sticks at her snare drum, where they bounced off and whirled away through the air.
There was a long beat of silence.
Then the entire crowd erupted, cheering and screaming their heads off, clapping and stomping and banging their fists on everything in sight. It was deafening.
It lasted several minutes. When the crowd finally died down, Erin said, “Thanks for coming everyone! We're the Assorted Zebras. Good night!”
Mitch and Dred stood up and joined Jason and Erin in a bow, and the applause reignited.
“Did you get all that?” Mitch asked Tadd.
“Oh, yeah,” Tadd said quietly, shaking his head. “We got it all.”
“Come on, let's mix the video on my desktop. I want this uploaded tonight!” Mitch led the way upstairs, past confused-looking kids who crowded the steps.
Dred sat down, leaned against the wall, and closed her eyes in exhaustion.
Jason and Erin looked at each while little bits of the house continued to drop around them.
“Uh...do you think Mitch noticed what happened to his house?” Erin asked.
“I'm pretty sure he'll pick up on it eventually,” Jason said.
“That was completely wild!” Zach grabbed Erin and gave her a long kiss. “I didn't know you could really sing.”
“I told you,” Erin said. “You don't listen.”
“Let's get out of this place before it falls on our heads,” Zach said. “We should all get going, for safety.”
Dred groaned.
“Do you need some water, Dred?” Jason asked.
Dred raised a finger without opening her eyes. Jason took it as a “yes.”
“It actually might be dangerous here,” Erin said, looking at the exposed ribs of the house, the deteriorating ceiling. “Maybe we should go.”
The crowd was dispersing. Clumps of quiet, exhausted, confused-looking kids wandered outside, not talking very much. The two cops were among them, their eyes drooping as if they would keel over asleep any second. Jason remembered the kids who'd been brought down to Faerie for the night so the fairies could drain their energy with music.
“Wait a second.” Jason hurried into the kitchen, which looked like it had been struck by a tornado. The cabinets sagged forward from the walls with their doors hanging open. The dishes inside had crashed all over the counter and floor. Two large cracks, each more than an inch wide, ran all the way across the floor, breaking it into three uneven levels.
Jason stepped carefully to the counter. He found a plastic cup, shook fragments of coffee mug out of it, and filled it with cool water.
By the time he returned to the living room and handed the water to Dred, Zach and Erin were stepping out the front door. The rest of the guests were leaving, too, with dazed, zombie-like looks on their faces.
“Hey, wait, Erin.” Jason ran after her. “Why don't you stay? We can look at Tadd's video.”
“I'm really just worried about this house collapsing,” Erin pointed to the sagging, broken ceiling overhead.
“We have to meet Gustav and Muppet Boy at the coffee shop, like, thirty minutes ago,” Zach said.
“Just stay here,” Jason said.
“Um...” Erin looked at the broken ceiling and walls again, then at her boyfriend.
“Let's go.” Zach jingled his keychain as he walked out the door.
Erin backed out the door, still looking at Jason. “You'll let me know when it's done, right? Send the link to my phone?”
“Yep,” Jason said.
“Thanks.” Erin looked past him and waved. “Bye, Dred!”
Dred, still sitting against the wall, raised her empty cup and shook it. Jason walked over to get her a refill, but he kept his eyes on Erin.
“Bye, Jason.” She gave him a tired smile. Her blonde and green and blue hair was dark with sweat, plastered against her head. “That was a great show, wasn't it?”
“A great show,” Jason agreed, and he tried to smile as he watched her leave.
Jason watched the last stragglers stumble their way across Mitch's front lawn and off into the night. The cars drove past, each one bouncing as it hit a huge chasm that spread across the front yard and out into the street. It ended in a spiderweb crack of asphalt in the center of the street. Jason shook his head at the destruction.
Up and down the streets, neighbors had come out onto the porches and driveway, gaping at Mitch's house.
Jason ran inside and went upstairs, careful to avoid the splintered handrail, and walked into Mitch's room.
Mitch and Tadd were hunkered over Mitch's desktop, whispering excitedly to each other as they cut and rearranged the video file. Snips and snarls of music thumped over the speakers as they mixed the sound from the different microphones.
Two Claudia Lafayette posters hung over the bed. One showed her with sea-green eyes and a matching dress, soaking wet on a rock in the ocean, the green dress clinging to her legs to suggest a mermaid's tale. In another poster, she had violet eyes and a leather jacket, and leaned against a black motorcycle with an ornate violet painted on the engine.
“She must have a closet full of contact lenses,” Jason joked, pointing at the posters. Neither Mitch nor Tadd acknowledged he'd spoken.
The doorbell rang.
“What's that?” Mitch said.
“Oh, yeah,” Jason told him. “All your neighbors are probably coming over to see what happened.”
Mitch opened the door, walked down the now-crooked hallway to the top of the steps, and screamed.
Jason and Tadd ran out after him.
“What's wrong?” Jason asked.
“Look at my house!” Mitch shouted. He pointed at the uneven steps, the shattered handrail, the broken floor and furniture and walls. “What happened?”
The doorbell rang again.
“You were here,” Jason said. “It was the music.”
“Yeah, man,” Tadd said. “We just watched that happen again on the video.”
“Yeah, but this is real.” Mitch closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead with his hands. “Wow.”
“You didn't notice before?” Jason asked.
“I don't know,” Mitch said. “It just didn't seem like it was actually happening.”
The ceiling fan pulled loose from its housing and crashed into the coffee table.
“Oh, I wish I'd been shooting that,” Tadd said.
“My mom is going to kill me,” Mitch said. “Then she's going to hire a necromancer to raise me from the dead so she can kill me again.”
�
�Just tell her it was a freak earthquake,” Tadd said.
The doorbell rang several times, insistently.
“Great. Now I just need a whole construction crew to rebuild the house in the next couple of hours.” Mitch shook his head. “You guys better get out of here.”
“I'll help clean up,” Jason said.
“I don't think 'cleaning up' is really going to touch the problem here,” Mitch said. “Just go. I don't want the neighbors telling my mom I had people over. She'll go mental.”
“She's not supposed to be home for a couple of hours, though, right?” Jason asked.
“Sure. If the neighbors haven't called her yet. How did I not realize this was happening?”
“The music,” Jason said. “It plays with your mind.”
“Seriously, go on,” Mitch said. The doorbell rang yet again. “Try not to let my neighbors see you leave.”
“You sure?” Jason asked.
“Yes! Go!”
“All right, man, we's out.” Tadd held up a hand for a high-five, but Mitch was not in a high-fiving mood.
Jason packed up his guitar and walked out the back door with Tadd. They circled around to the front of the house. Jason had to get his bike from the garage, and he saw several of Mitch's neighbors on the front porch. An old man in a bathrobe was punching the doorbell again and again.
“When did Dred leave?” Jason whispered. Her van was gone.
“Probably when everyone else did.” Tadd pointed towards his car, a rusty sedan. “Want a ride?”
“Thanks,” Jason said. Tadd opened the trunk, and Jason loaded the bike inside. They drove past several outraged-looking neighbors, who approached the car and tried to wave them down, but Tadd ignored them and drove on.
He could barely keep his eyes open on the drive home.
Chapter Eighteen
It was dark over the town of Glastonbury, the deep, brooding clouds smothering the light of the moon and stars. From the top of the lone hill, the dark plains of Somerset stretched away into the night. The only sound was a drum circle of hippies near the base of the hill.
A roofless rock tower, three stories high, sat atop the hill, with two doorless archways facing each other so wind and people could pass right through. The floor was worn stone, the tiles cracked and aged with time. One of these tiles had risen up and tilted back like the lid of a trap door, revealing a squarish hole in the floor.
The elf named Hokealussiplatytorpinquarnartnuppy Melaerasmussanatolinkarrutorpicus Darnathiopockettlenocbiliotroporiqqua Bellefrost raised his head out of the floor hole and gazed out at the dark expanse beyond the archway. He looked up at the dark sky above the tower, then back at the archway behind him. So far, there was no sign of a guardian, but appearances could deceive.
He climbed out onto the floor of the roofless tower. The unicorn's pink horn and mane rose from the hole behind him, and she turned her head from one side to the other, taking in the scene with watchful, chocolate-drop eyes.
“Stay there, Buttercake,” Hoke whispered. “I'll check for a guard.”
Hoke walked out through one archway. A single ribbon of concrete stretched from the ruins of the tower down to the lowlands beneath it. The rest of the hill was blank, covered in grass.
Hoke shook his head as he walked a complete circle around the tower. The place had changed a great deal since the last time he was here. It looked uninhabited, maybe even unguarded, but Hoke kept his hand on his belt anyway. Pouches of combat herbs and a sharp, sheathed flint blade lay within easy reach.
He stepped back into the archway where he'd begun.
“Come along, Buttercake,” he said. The unicorn emerged cautiously, swishing her pink tail, and eased toward him. “Don't forget to shut the door,” Hoke added.
Buttercake snorted. She walked back and kicked the stone tile, and it moved back into place.
“Good girl,” Hoke said. He scratched her mane as she joined him in the doorway. She turned her head to nuzzle his hand.
They walked out onto the concrete path and started down the hill at an easy pace.
“I don't suppose you've been to man-world, have you?” Hoke asked.
Buttercake neighed.
“And you're too young to remember the wars,” Hoke said. “You wouldn't believe me, but this very place where you're clomping was once a large city of fairies. Maybe the largest.”
Buttercake made a blowing sound and shook her head.
“Oh, yes,” Hoke said. “Down there, those grassy terraces? Each one was a street more crowded than any thoroughfare in Sidhe City. All manner of Folk were welcome here—fairies, elves, ‘chauns and gnomes, all in peace together. It was called Ynys yr Afalon. In time, just 'Avalon,' because everyone likes to shorten things. That was in the time of Mad Mab's grandfather, the good fairy king Gwynn ap Nudd. Many thousands of years gone,” Hoke sighed. Seeing the place so empty made his heart ache. The world had once been very different, and kinder.
Buttercake stopped and sniffed the grass by the walkway.
“Smell the residual magic everywhere, don't you?” Hoke asked. He looked out over the lowlands again. “The hill used to be an island in the sea. Then a lake. ‘Course, the fairies took everything after the Iron Wars, took the other layer of this hill, the whole city, Avalon—that's the Old Town Quarter in Sidhe City, now.”
Buttercake gave him a questioning whinny and resumed walking. The path ran along a shallow slope of the hill, so it was a longer route than if they'd walked down one of the steep sides.
“It's hard to explain,” Hoke answered. “Humans and Folk lived in peace for as long as anyone remembers. Then the humans began attacking us with iron, taking our land, so we all fled together.”
Buttercake gave a sad, soft blow.
“It is unfortunate,” Hoke agreed. “But humans are about as trustworthy as fairies. That's why I like the swamp, just me and you cornhorses. Nobody bothers us.”
They were halfway down the hill now, slowly approaching the ring of humans beating their drums.
“We'd better get out of sight,” Hoke said. He hopped on the unicorn's back, stroking her neck. Thousands of little sparkles gleamed in her pink horn, and then the elf and the unicorn turned invisible together. Buttercake stepped off the path to walk quietly in the grass, so her cloven hooves didn't ring on the concrete.
The humans in the drum circle were a mingling of males and females, a range of ages. They all had quite long hair, many of them twisted into thick braids or dreadlocks. Some of them were singing.
They reminded him, strangely, of the primitive, friendly humans from the Age of Flint, before the horrible Age of Iron. Of course, you couldn't believe anything you saw among the humans. Their world was full of illusions.
One of the drummers stood up and stretched. He had thick gray dreadlocks, a grizzled beard, tired-looking eyes. His airbrushed t-shirt read “Ask me about Glastonbury Tours!”
Hoke touched the back of Buttercake's neck. She stopped walking and stood still.
The dreadlocked man staggered away from the group of drummers as if drunk. Once he was several paces away from them, however, he stood up straight and walked with purpose. His eyes scanned along the concrete path, up the rocky hill to the tower at the top. Hoke held his breath.
The man's eyes turned solid black. His jaw opened, revealing teeth that were suddenly long and sharp, almost too big for his mouth. Then a forked tongue uncoiled between his teeth and reached out until it was longer than his arms. The tongue swirled in the air, tasting it like a snake.
It had to be the guardian, Hoke thought. And he didn't have the hexagonal gold and black medallion to indicate he was on official business for Queen Mab. He was on unofficial business, so he couldn't reveal a thing to the guardian. The Queen clearly wanted the missing magical instruments kept quiet. That was probably why she'd hired a solitary elf like Hoke, who wouldn't be spreading the story to anyone, except maybe some giant sugarcane trees.
Hoke felt Buttercake tense benea
th him, afraid. He rubbed her between the shoulders to try and calm her.
The Queen enforced the Supreme Law, or at least the part forbidding anyone from Faerie from crossing into man-world. To this end, she appointed darkfae to guard the doors between the worlds. These were fairies who'd been twisted into evil, wicked things, usually by too much exposure to black magic. Trolls, boggarts, dullahans...nasty things.
The creature currently approaching him was known as a boggart, known for being unstable and very violent. Apparently, it kept itself disguised among the humans in order to keep an eye on the gate.
The boggart spun its long tongue through the air again. Then it sucked the tongue back inside, and its teeth shrunk a little, though they remained much longer and sharper than a human's.
“Who's out there, then?” the boggart asked.
Hoke and Buttercup remained still and quiet.
“The Glastonbury Door is closed,” the boggart with gray dreadlocks said. “Queen's Law. No Folk out, no tallboys in.” He stalked up the hill, sniffing the air with his tongue again. “Who's being naughty? Goblin? Elf? Smells like elf to me.”
Hoke tapped Buttercup's right side. She turned to the right and started down the slope, away from the concrete path where the boggart was walking.
“I am the guardian of the gate, appointed by the Queensguard,” the boggart hissed as he climbed. “You go back as you came, or we'll give you the iron.” He drew a long dagger from inside his high leather boot.
Hoke gave Buttercake three quick taps, and the unicorn hurried down the slope.
The boggart continued up the path, past the point where Hoke and Buttercake had turned away. It stopped after a few steps and unfurled its tongue to its full length, tasting the air again.
“Oh, aren't we a clever one?” the boggart asked as he backtracked. The tips of his forked tongue brushed the grass near his feet, just where Buttercake had stepped off. The boggart followed, moving directly toward them now. He'd picked up their scent.
Hoke took a pouch from his belt and opened the drawstring. It held sneezewort leaves, dried and crushed into a powder. Unfortunately, it was even drier and older than he expected, and a small puff of dust curled out and floated up to his nostrils.