by JL Bryan
“That’s it!” the lead singer shouted into the microphone. “You want us gone, we’re gone.”
The crowd applauded and whistled.
Programmed Chaos hurriedly broke down their gear with the help of stagehands, then stalked off the stage, glaring at the Zebras.
“Stupid kids just want to hear you,” the lead singer sneered at Erin.
“Yeah, way to ruin the gig for the rest of us. Thanks a lot,” the band’s DJ said. The three of them carried their equipment towards their small bus, and the lead singer went inside and slammed the door.
“Zis is an emergency!” Franco said, running up to them. He wore some kind of radio/microphone headset now. “You must play now!”
“That crowd’s going to eat us alive,” Erin said.
“Ze show must go on!” Franco said.
“Great,” Mitch said, shaking his head.
All the overhead stage lights went out. In the dimmed footlights, a couple of stagehands helped them set up. Grizlemor quietly appeared and disappeared when the stagehands weren’t looking, helping to bring out the pieces of the drum kits and the keyboard arrangement.
The crowd kept chanting “Ze-bras! Ze-bras!”
Jason looked out over the huge crowd, stunned by the sight of so many people eager to hear them play. Right now, he was a shadowy outline against the city lights of Minneapolis glittering behind the stage. In a few minutes, the big spotlights would come on, and he’d be looking at a sea of faces. And they’d all be looking back at him.
“What do you think?” Erin whispered beside him, looking over his shoulder.
“We’ll just do our best,” Jason said. “They’ll like it or hate it.”
“I am totally scared right now,” she whispered. Jason took her hand, and she squeezed her fingers around his for a minute. Her cheek was next to his. She was close enough to kiss, but Jason resisted the temptation.
Erin stepped back and blew a few notes on her harmonica. A slight breeze crossed the stage.
Finally, Mitch and Dred announced they were ready. The band did a quick sound check, and as usual, the instruments were perfectly in tune with each other.
“We are ready to play, yes?” Franco asked. He touched a button on his headset. “Ladies and gentlemen…you have been chanting for zem all day…ze Assorted Zebras!”
Franco dashed out of sight as the curtain opened. Ten thousand audience members screamed and cheered. The wave of sound was so loud it seemed to push Jason backwards. He was overwhelmed by all the faces—but then the spotlights flicked on, and he couldn’t see them anymore.
“Hello, Minneapolis!” Erin said into the mike, and she grinned from ear to ear when the crowd renewed its cheering.
Dred, Mitch and Jason started playing. Jason’s guitar sounded electric now, as if it already knew what he was about to play.
Erin gazed out at the lights and the wild crowd. Then she sang the first verse of “I Love Rock and Roll” by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts.
The crowd erupted again, howling and clapping. Jason felt the guitar growing warm in his hands. The strings drew his fingers toward them like iron to a magnet. He barely had to concentrate. It was almost as if he were just an audience member, listening to the music as it happened.
Jason glanced around at Mitch and Dred. Both of them wore huge smiles, entranced by the music.
When they reached the end of the song, they stopped playing their instruments, but Erin spontaneously decided to sing the chorus one more time, a capella. It was just Erin’s voice over the amplifiers, plus thousands of delirious audience members singing the words along with her.
When she finished, the crowd howled and cheered and stomped. She looked at Jason, and they shared glowing smiles.
From there, they played “Cinderella Night,” since that was the first song that made them popular. Then they continued through all of Erin’s songs. Jason could feel the audience turning somber, then sad, then cheerful, then ecstatic, reacting deeply to the music. His guitar grew hotter and hotter in his hands, and he found himself drifting towards the cool, damp air pouring out from Mitch’s keyboards.
The audience grew crazier and more excited with every song. When they hit the end of Erin’s list, she started a new song, apparently improvising the lyrics. Jason had never heard it before, but his guitar seemed to know just how to play it. It was a light, cheesy, nonsense song that didn’t sound like anything Erin would write:
Everybody wave your hands!
Everybody shake your pants!
Everybody do it, do it, do it,
Everybody do the sugar dance!
The sugar dance! Yeah, yeah…
The sugar dance! Yeah, yeah…
The entire crowd danced together, suddenly synchronized as if they’d all practiced the dance together before coming to the show. It reminded Jason of that bizarre moment in any musical when suddenly everybody broke into song and choreographed dancing. He’d sometimes wondered what that would be like in real life, if you could just be at school or work and everybody stopped what they were doing to sing and dance together.
When she finished, the crowd roared so loud Jason thought he could feel the stage rumble beneath his feet. It was exhilarating. It was frightening.
The band members looked at each other, confused. Mitch covered his microphone with his hand.
“What the heck was that?” Mitch asked.
“I don’t know,” Erin said. “It just came to me.”
“Can we just do the last song and get out of here?” Dred asked. “That crowd is freaking me out. Nobody should like us this much.”
“Yeah, let’s hit the finale and go,” Mitch said.
Mitch played a synthesized sitar on his keyboard. Dred and Jason joined in, and then Erin sang the opening words for “Paint It Black,” another song they’d toyed around with in Mitch’s garage, though they’d never really played it very well. Jason thought it sounded amazing with a female vocalist, though, especially if that vocalist happened to be Erin.
For the first time, they played the song in perfect sync with each other, without a misstep. They reached the instrumental part, where Erin hummed instead of singing. Jason usually bungled this, but tonight it flowed like water, his fingers knowing exactly where to touch the strings.
Then the guitar seemed to take over, running away with him. Jason couldn’t stop playing, and the sound grew faster and louder and more complex all at once. The other instruments gradually faded and stopped as the band left him to his runaway guitar solo.
The air around him thrummed with power, as if all the energy put out by the crowd was flowing right to him. The guitar was searing hot in his hands now, and the strings burned his fingertips, but he couldn’t stop playing. He wondered if this was how Dred felt just before the earthquake. He was afraid it might be.
The air shimmered and rippled like heat waves from the hood of a car. He was dripping with sweat, all of his clothes soaked, his socks squishing inside his shoes. And still his guitar grew hotter.
The heat waves thickened into a scorching bubble that surrounded him, distorting the whole world. Sweat poured into his eyes and the salt stung, but all he could do was close his eyes and keep playing.
Then, after what felt like years, he reached the end of his solo. His hands dropped away from the guitar, and he stumbled backwards, on the verge of a heat stroke.
He watched the thick bubble of rippling heat float up and away from the stage, out over the crowd. It was as tall as Jason himself.
The crowd was watching, too.
Jason stared, unable to look away, horrified that something terrible was about to happen.
When it floated above the center of the crowd, the huge heat bubble ignited, lighting up the entire audience like a blinding solar flare. Plumes of fire arced out in every direction. The flames billowed down toward the crowd—all of whom stood and watched, their mouths gaping open. Fire was about to rain down on everyone, and nobody was getting out of the way.
<
br /> Jason wanted to grab the microphone, warn everybody of the danger, tell them to run, but he couldn’t move. He felt like he was in a dream, one of the ones where a monster was chasing you, but your feet wouldn’t budge.
Then the flames turned to a cloud of red smoke.
After a moment, the entire audience exploded in cheers, applause, stomping, screaming and howling. They surged toward the band, reaching out their arms. Jason and Erin, near the front of the stage, stumbled back from the roaring outburst. Erin stumbled and caught his arm, and he somehow kept her from falling. He wasn’t sure how he hadn’t fallen over himself.
“Is that it?” Erin whispered.
“I think we’re done,” Jason said.
Erin let go of his arm and walked back to the microphone.
“Thank you, Minneapolis!” she shouted, and the crowded roared back at her. “Good night!”
The four of them got offstage as fast as they could. In Jason’s case, this meant a slow stagger, and he was the last one to escape into the wings.
He immediately peeled off his black t-shirt and tried to mop up his face with it, but the shirt itself was dripping sweat. A stagehand gave him a Spoon and Cherry Festival t-shirt, and Jason mopped what felt like a gallon of sweat from his hair, face, and neck.
“Wow,” Erin was saying. “Wow.”
“No kidding,” Mitch said.
Dred was just shaking her head, a smile burned into her usually impassive face.
The audience’s howling and screeching gradually fell into a steady pattern, a single repeated word echoing again and again through the theater: “En-core! En-core! En-core!”
“Oh, we can’t,” Jason said. He was out of breath and close to collapsing.
“Please, you must play one more,” Franco said, arriving to meet them. “The crowd, zey will tear ze entire place apart wizzout an encore! And for me. I want to hear encore, too.”
“We don’t have any more songs,” Dred said. “Unless Erin wants to make something up again.”
“We could do another cover,” Mitch suggested.
“Wait,” Erin said. “We do have one more song.” She gave Jason a sly smile. “Will you get the lyrics from the tent for me?”
“Oh, no, wait,” Jason said. “We haven’t practiced that one at all. I don’t even know if it’s ready. Or if it’s any good.”
“It’s good,” Erin said. “I like it.”
“Really?” Jason blushed. “I kind of did work out something on the guitar for it…”
“Fine, you guys lead, I’ll follow, whatever,” Mitch said. “Let’s just give this crowd something before they riot.”
“Let’s go,” Dred said, jogging up the steps to the darkened stage. She looked eager to play more.
When they were on the stage, Erin took his hand.
“I want you close when I sing this,” Erin whispered. “You’ll do some of the vocals.”
“I’m not any good at singing,” he said.
“Maybe that’s what you thought before,” she said. The spotlights lit up again so the big crowd could see them, and the Sculpture Garden filled with cheers and screams. “But look. You’re a rock star now.”
Jason looked out at the mass of ecstatic people, and he couldn’t help smiling.
“Do you guys want a little more?” Erin asked into the microphone. They roared back their assent. “How about a new song nobody’s ever heard?” They cheered again. “This one is called ‘Angel Sky.’ It was written by our guitarist, Jason Becker.”
Erin took Jason’s hand and raised it high, and the crowd went wild.
“Hey, let’s hear it for our drummer, Dred Zweig, too!” Erin said, and Dred tapped out a quick rhythm, to more applause. “And the guy who put this band together, our keyboardist, Mitch Schneidowski!”
“Mick,” Mitch said into his mic, but his voice was drowned under the tidal wave of screams and cheers. He looked out on the crowd, blushed crimson, and then waved. “Forget it.”
“Jason, get us going,” Erin said.
Jason started to play the guitar part he’d practiced for her song. It came out smoothly on the fairy guitar, not hesitant or choppy at all. He repeated the opening a few times, letting Erin and the others hear it and get used to it.
Instead of singing, Erin spoke into the microphone again.
“You know how the sky looks when a storm is over?” she asked. “Those golden beams of light ripping up the dark clouds? My grandmother told me that was the angels coming back to chase away the darkness. She called it an angel sky.” She turned from the audience to look at Jason, but she kept her mouth by the microphone. “I told Jason about it before rehearsal one day, when a storm had just ended. I showed it to him. I guess he was listening.”
Jason gave her a smile.
He played the opening again, and Erin sang:
After the storm,
You bring the light
I saw the angel sky
In your green eyes…
Jason’s guitar knew just how to play the song. This time, the guitar wasn’t overpowering him—he was putting himself into the instrument.
The rest of the band joined in softly. Jason sang the chorus parts along with her.
By the end of the song, half the audience was in tears, and half of them were kissing each other.
“Thank you, Minneapolis,” Erin whispered again into the mic. She was crying, too. “Good-bye.”
They left the stage to softer, gentler applause.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Ze coordinator is horrified about ze pyrotechnics,” Franco said in the hospitality tent. Everyone was relaxing, having pops or Yoo-hoos. Grizlemor had hidden himself somewhere. He’d spent the show eating every morsel of food on the table. “But I tell her: no, zis was not planned…but yes, no one was harmed, and ze audience is going home happy.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Jason said. “We should have, uh, mentioned it was going to happen.”
Franco looked at the stripped-bare refreshment table. “Do you require any additional hors d’oeuvres?”
“Anyone?” Mitch asked.
“I think we’re good,” Erin said. “Thanks.”
“I should tell you, your music…” Franco began to weep. “Your music!” Franco bawled and threw his arms around Mitch, who stood near him. He cried into Mitch’s shoulder.
“Uh, glad you like it,” Mitch said, patting his arm and giving Jason a puzzled look.
“I am such a fraud!” Franco said. “In truth, I am from Joliet, Illinois. I am not European. But I have faked zis accent for zo long I cannot make it ztop!”
“Sorry to hear that, guy.” Mitch tried to pull away, but Franco hugged him close, crying harder.
“I can no longer live a lie!” Franco said.
“It’s okay, dude, seriously.” Mitch pulled away.
Franco wiped his eyes and nose on the sleeve of his turtleneck.
“I apologize for ze strong reaction your music made in me,” Franco said. “Zimply notify me when you are ready to depart for ze night, if you wish ze stagehands to assist. Thank you for such…ah! Magical music.”
Grizlemor appeared in a puff between Jason and Erin’s chairs. His green stomach was swollen to three times its usual size, bulging out between his shirt and his trousers.
“Why didn’t you ask for more food?” the goblin demanded.
“Why didn’t you leave some for other people?” Jason asked.
The goblin belched. “You eat what you can, when you can. That’s my philosophy.”
They hurried to pack up their instruments, feeling both exhausted and giddy.
They slipped across the street toward they alley where they’d parked, while the crowd was still stomping and demanding yet another Assorted Zebras encore. Grizlemor again carried a precariously tall stack of black instrument cases.
“Can you believe that crowd?” Mitch asked. “We’re going to have every big music label knocking down our doors after that.”
“This whole thing is out of control,” Dred replied.
“In a good way,” Jason said, but Dred just frowned.
As they approached her van, both of the back doors opened from the inside, but the van’s interior lights remained dark. The five of them stopped in the middle of the alley, staring.
“Uh, Dred?” Erin asked. “Who’s in your van?”
A small man, about three feet high, stepped out onto the van’s back bumper. He had gray and black beard stubble, and he chewed what looked a piece of stiff pink straw. He wore a battered old gardening hat and a long horsehair coat over mud-stained leather boots. The coat was open, and Jason could see part of a belt with several drawstring pouches and a sheathed knife.
“Who are you?” Dred asked, putting her drum case down.
“I am Hokealussiplatytorpinquarnartnuppy Melaerasmussanatolinkarrutorpicus Darnathiopockettlenocbiliotroporiqqua Bellefrost.” The little man hopped down to the asphalt, eyeballing the five of them like an old gunfighter.
“An elf!” Grizlemor whispered.
“I come on behalf of Her Majesty Queen Mab, Empress of Faerie, Conqueror of the Elflands,” the elf said. “Not to mention some awfully sad-looking musicians. Buttercake here says you have the four instruments of high magic stolen from the realm of Faerie, which violates the Supreme Law and all of that.”
“Our instruments are not stolen!” Dred said.
“They are kind of stolen,” Jason whispered.
“What?” Mitch said. “You never told us that.”
“I thought it was kind of obvious,” Jason said.
“You will return the four instruments to me,” the elf said. “Or Buttercake and I will be forced to take them from you.”
Behind him, the smallest horse Jason had ever seen, even smaller than a miniature pony, jumped out of the van. It floated gently to the ground beside the tiny man. It had golden fur, a pink mane, and a pink horn the color of rock candy jutting from the center of its forehead. Its eyes were huge, the color of chocolate.
“He’s got a unicorn!” Grizlemor squealed. He disappeared in a green puff, and the stack of equipment he’d been carrying crashed to the asphalt.