At her harp lesson, Melinda noticed that Christa was subdued. She was as attentive and supportive as ever, but she seemed to have something on her mind.
“You’re doing quite well, Melinda,” she said after listening to her play. “Your hands are relaxing. That’s the most difficult part of learning a new instrument: relaxing. Once you show your fingers that they don’t have to fight one another, you all can sit back and enjoy the music.”
Melinda nodded, pleased. “It’s been great. I even played for my roommate. She thinks I’m a little weird, but… well, she hasn’t met you.”
“Roommate?”
“I thought I told you. This girl I met once showed up on my doorstep. Her name’s Lisa, but everyone calls her Boo-boo. She was touring up in Montana, and her band fucked her over, so she quit.” Melinda shook her head. Lisa’s drums were still stacked in the middle of her small living room. The drummer had not touched them since she had brought them into the apartment. “She’s pretty depressed about it, but she doesn’t want to show it. You know the kind: tough as nails, heart like butter.”
“Mmm.” Christa nodded slowly, almost to herself.
“The harp seemed to cheer her up.”
“Not hard: the harp is a healing instrument.”
Christa fell silent then, staring out the window at the apple and the yew. Her eyes were troubled. Melinda was reminded of another lesson with Christa, near the middle of June. “You’re dying inside, lady. What’s wrong?”
“The band didn’t work out.”
“It happens.”
“Indeed. But it was a bitter parting.” Christa’s mouth tightened. “The vocalist had the audacity to tell me that I was leaving because I was not dedicated enough to music.”
“Asshole.” A thought was forming in Melinda’s mind. “What… what are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know, Melinda. I need a band, but I need a band that can understand me when I talk about music. I need people who are willing to concern themselves more with how they play than how they look. It might not be a particularly commercial venture, but that’s the way it has to be.” She sighed. “I’m not sure such a thing exists.”
“Maybe you should put together your own band.”
“Me?” Christa smiled sadly. “I don’t know anything about putting a band together.”
“But I do.” Melinda’s hands were shaking. Ever since she had handed Christa the green Strat, this was something she had fantasized about. “I’ve been in a bunch of bands.”
Christa lifted her head.
“A-and you’re gonna need a bass player, Christa.” The words tumbled out. “And maybe I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m willing to listen. I don’t care if it’s commercial. I just want to rock.”
“Are you serious, Melinda? This could…” Christa hesitated. “This could take us to some strange places.”
Melinda knew instinctively that the harper was not talking about Poughkeepsie or Los Angeles, but she stood her ground. “Yeah, I’m serious.”
“It could be dangerous.”
“Hey, what are friends for?”
“Do you understand?”
Melinda grimaced. “No, I don’t. I just want to play. And I know a drummer who’s just about given up—but I know she wants to play, too. There you are, Chris. Most of a band. Are you game?”
Very deliberately, Christa turned to the table that held the shrouded harp. It was as if she were conversing with the instrument, questioning it, receiving answers.
Strange places. The idea made Melinda shiver.
Christa turned back. Her eyes were bright and determined. “I’m game, Melinda. Let’s rock.”
The breeze that floats across the Realm is no more than a strengthless movement of the tepid air, incapable of stirring Siudb’s long dark hair as she sits beside the reflecting pool, practicing.
It is her own harp she holds on her lap, the one she made long ago in Corca Duibne. The joinery is crude, and the finish shows the mark of an inexpert hand, but it is dear to her: an old friend returned in time of need, a symbol both of her achievement and her sacrifice.
She does not think about singing now. Once again she is a harper, and she works methodically, eyes closed. Slowly, she finds her way through the exercises given to beginners at the school; and she fights back tears as she realizes how stiff and uncooperative her hands are. Siudb Ní Corb, a harper? Absurd. Sruitmor could sooner teach a cow to play.
But harper she must be. Somewhere, Chairiste is waiting for her, perhaps herself working to release her from the bondage of the Sidh. Siudb does not know. She can only practice.
In the distance, hidden among the branches of the myrtle grove, Glasluit stands guard. Siudb is not of his people, and her dark skin is gritty with the dust of mortality, but he thinks her beautiful. Willful, free, passionate —she is everything to him that the Realm is not; and though he loves her, he knows that his love will never be returned except out of gratitude.
Still, that is something, and he falls to musing about the mortal lands. Will he someday sit upon a grassy hill in the company of Siudb and Chairiste, talking lightly of these unchanging and endless moments in the Realm, living some unimaginable existence among humans? Could it be?
He looks at his hands. Mortal, with red blood coursing through his veins? Brown dirt under his opalescent nails?
Siudb practices. Glasluit muses. And Orfide…
The bard stands in an upper hall of the palace, examining a niche once occupied by a crudely made harp of willow and alder. In the light of the ruby lamp that hangs high above him, his dark garments are the color of old blood.
Beside him, Lamcrann is bathed in the same light, and the diamonds ornamenting his fingers flash with crimson fire as he reaches out and touches the empty niche. “ ’Tis true.”
“ ’Tis gone.” Orfide plays his hand on the king’s shoulder. “And I know who took it.”
“Not Siudb, surely!”
“Not Siudb. The mortal has no access to this place. There is a certain lad, though…”
Lamcrann studies the bard’s face. “She has been wasting here, Orfide. Perhaps it is no more than a gesture of kindness.”
“Kindness? You have been listening to your mortal pet overlong, my king. Siudb wishes to leave us. With her harp—” He struggles with the thought, dismisses it. No, the Gaeidil cannot master the intricate music that would free her. The gate she called up was an illusion. Chairiste managed only by chance. “I am not concerned,” he says, but his fists are clenched.
Lamcrann’s eyes are on the bard’s hands. “You are certain?”
“Glasluit and Siudb can amuse themselves as they wish. The possibility of something unacceptable being done exists, of course. If so, I recommend discipline.”
Lamcrann is still looking at the bard’s hands. “If there is discipline, dear Orfide, I will be the one to impose it.”
“Of course, my liege.”
But the bard’s face is expressionless, a mask of lurid flame, his silver hair and beard sparkling as though strewn with the dust of rubies.
Lisa hated the snare. Christa noticed that almost immediately, even while the dark, sturdy woman was still hauling her equipment into the basement. She carried the drum with repugnance, as though it embodied some failure, personal or otherwise, that she could not escape.
And when she had set up her kit, the snare, although it had the same glossy black finish as her other drums, seemed separate: a pariah among the brahmans. Lisa adjusted its stand brusquely, and she smacked the head to check the pitch as though she would rather have broken it. “Ready on the firing line.”
Christa turned her amp on. In a minute, the Laney’s hiss had joined the quiet hum of Melinda’s Marshall, but Christa watched Lisa for a moment more. The drummer’s broad shoulders were hunched. She slumped on her throne, staring moodily at a crash cymbal. “Do you want to do this, Lisa?” asked Christa gently.
Lisa regarded the snare as though she held an alligator between her knees. “Yeah. Let’s do it. What do you want to play?”
Christa shook her long hair back over her shoulders to keep it off her strings. “Melinda?”
“You’re the boss, Chris.”
“Well… There is a new Quiet Riot album out, but I don’t know anything on it yet. I do know ‘Metal Health’ though.”
Lisa looked up. “The one that goes
Bang your head
?”
“That one. Indeed.”
The drummer cracked a smile, the first Christa had seen. “Boy, you sure don’t look the type.”
Christa’s pale pink blouse matched the polish of her nails and reflected warmly in the gold
failge
adorning her left wrist. She had intentionally dressed conservatively for this first meeting to see whether Lisa would judge her clothes or listen to the music.
“That’s what I kept telling you, Boo-boo,” said Melinda. “She’s okay.”
“Yeah… whatever you say…” Lisa straightened. “You want a count, or should I just start?”
“Go for it,” said Christa. “I’ll follow.”
Lisa nodded and opened the song with a quick fill that slowed until her drumsticks hung, poised, above her cymbals, waiting…
She looked at Christa. Hoping…
Christa saw the sticks begin to descend, and as the cymbals crashed, she blasted out the opening hook, trying to put something as fragile as hope into thick, stupid bar chords.
Hope? Lisa was hoping, and Christa was hoping too. Midsummer was only a little over nine months away, and rock bands were unstable, vaporous things that ordinarily came together and fragmented with terrible regularity. But Christa could not afford the ordinary. This band would have to stay together. It would have to work.
She played, supported by the drums and the driving bass. Melinda’s black Fender Precision made the small blond woman seem even smaller, but the sound she produced belied her stature. She knew what was wanted, and she supplied it: a firm, punchy rhythm that reinforced the drums and contrasted with a fiery syncopation of the guitar. Christa grinned at her. Three women making noise, making music, making magic.
And it was working. Christa felt it, and Lisa, she was sure, felt it too. The drummer had been playing with strength, but when Christa took the lead break, Lisa laid the groundwork for her with a high-speed fill that pounded from one side of her kit to the other in a moment, crashed through her cymbals, and left the air shivering as Christa’s first note screamed out of her amplifier like a fat blue spark.
Pink blouse and nails, golden bracelets, long red hair, Christa piled flash and technique into the break, adding wild bends and pick scrapes to an already pungent solo; and she finished it off by jamming the Strat’s headstock against the side of her amp until the feedback eclipsed even the wall of percussion that Lisa had raised.
And without losing a shred of momentum, she fell back into the rhythm hook. She cycled through the chord progression twice, held the final chord, and let her volume fall until only the bass and drums were left.
She looked at Melinda with pursed lips. In the next section of the song, the vocalist and the guitar entered into a call-and-response pattern. But there was no vocalist present today. This was a first meeting, a tentative joining of musical energies to see what might happen.
Melinda gave her a wink, went to the microphone, and screamed out the lyrics. She was not a singer—her voice was hoarse and it shattered on the high notes—but the spirit was there.
Bang your head!
Wake the dead!
“Do you hear, Orfide?” Christa said to herself. “Do you hear? It’s a hard time of it you’ll have sleeping through this.” And, answering Melinda, she snapped out short, angry blues licks, her strings shrieking with hostility.
The chorus came back then, and Christa let the final chord ring until Lisa, her mouth turned down at the corners as though she wept, smashed through a last fill and a flourish, whipping at her cymbals until the sound was a taste of metal at the back of Christa’s throat.
Silence backwashed into the room, smothering the hiss and whine of electronics. Melinda grinned. “Far out.”
Christa wiped her forehead on her sleeve. Lisa’s eyes were closed, her half-open mouth seemingly caught in mid-sob.
“Lisa?”
Lisa’s voice was a whisper. “My friends call me Boo-boo.”
“All right. Boo-boo?”
Lisa shook her head. “God, that felt good.” And when she at last looked at Christa, her brown eyes were indeed filled with tears. “You are… utterly fantastic. You want me?”
“Indeed,” said Christa. “You have a great heart.”
Lisa turned to Melinda. “Does that mean yes?”
That’s the breaks. That’s the way this crazy business works.
But Christa was putting together her own band, and that also was the way the crazy business worked. And if the quiet harper-turned-guitarist could do something—and whatever it was, Kevin was not going to ask, because it still scared the hell out of him—to heal his hand, if she had that much (he had to say it)
magic
in her, then this crazy business might not turn out to be quite so crazy for her… or, rather, it might just be crazy enough. Whatever.
He pulled into the parking lot of the Proshop and ran for the door with his collar up. The thin denim jacket did little to keep out the October cold, but he wore the garment more for its looks than for its warmth.
The store was quiet. The woman at the front desk waved at him. “Hi, Kev.”
“Howdy, Barb. Did my tubes come in?”
“You’ll have to ask Scott down in Guitar. He was taking care of it. The truck dropped off a bunch of stuff from the warehouse yesterday afternoon, but I didn’t see the paperwork.”
He started for the guitar department, but Barb spoke again.
“Wait a minute.” She checked a blackboard on the wall. “Scott got that Taiwan flu that’s going around. Sick as a dog. Devi’s covering for him. She’s usually in Keyboards, but she knows her stuff.”
“Would she know about my order?”
Barb shrugged. “I don’t know, Kev. Sometimes I think she knows everything.”
The woman behind the guitar counter was thin and pale, as though a young sorceress—coaxed away from a midnight desk strewn with old palimpsets and grimoires— had been persuaded to mind a music store for a time. Black hair, black eyes. “Are you Devi?” Kevin asked. “I’m Kevin Larkin.”
He offered his hand, but she did not take it. Her smile, he noticed, was insubstantial, thin—like butter that had been scraped across too much bread.
“Yeah, I’m Devi.” She eyed him for a moment. “Wait a minute. Weren’t you in the Violators a few years back?”
He blinked. “A few years back? More like ten. Where’d you see me?”
“Herman’s Hideaway up on Broadway.” For all her intensity, Devi seemed fragile. A strong wind might snap her. “I was underage, but I sneaked in with a girlfriend. You were great. Are you still playing Hendrix that way?”
“I…” As far as Kevin could tell, he was not playing anything that way anymore. The years of sterility had intervened, and now, with Christa’s influence, his playing had changed again. “I don’t know. You’ll have to listen sometime.”
“Are you gigging?”
“Not for now. Maybe…” Outside, snow began to fall, hard and pebbly. It hissed against the plate-glass windows. The cars on Colorado Boulevard had their headlights on. “Maybe sometime soon.”
“I’ll look forward to it.” Again the insubstantial smile. “This time I’ll be legal.” She pushed aside a stack of service manuals. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m retubing my amp. Paul ordered some 12AX7s for me.”
“Hang on. I think they came in, but I’ll have to climb around in back for a few minutes.”
While she searched for the tubes, Kevin poked through the department, examining the guitars and the amps. When he had bought his Strat, a tobacco sunburst was thought to be high style indeed, but compared to the peacock hues of the instruments hanging on the wall— the intense pinks and blues, the tiger stripes and the iridescence—its brown and amber finish was subdued and drab. Still, it was the sound of an instrument that mattered, not the appearance. Christa had once told him that she had made her first harp herself, and that, though the workmanship was painfully crude, it had the sweetest tone of any mortal harp she knew.
Mortal harp. Strange that she had put it that way. What could she have meant by that?
He was still pondering her choice of words when Devi came back and handed him the tubes and the ticket. “Anything else, Kevin?”
“That’s it, thanks. How come they’ve got you covering guitars?”
She laughed a shallow laugh. “I made the mistake of showing that I knew something. A girl came in a few weeks ago and they wanted to sell her a POS special. I could tell she wanted something better, so I took over. She went out with a Laney and a couple of Roland delays.” She shook her head wonderingly, and her eyes flickered as though she remembered something almost frightening. “Damn, she could play.”
“Yeah?” He was studying the tubes and the receipt, but something jogged his memory. “Wait a minute. Long red hair?”
“Down to her waist.”
“That was Christa.”
“You know her?”
“She went to my guitar school for a while.”
Devi’s eyes flickered again. “How well… how well do you know her?”
“Christa?” He stood with the tubes in his large hands, thinking. “She’s hard to know. I mean… it’s like she goes back a long way.”
“Does she ever… do anything… with music?”
Do anything? “I’m not sure. She’s pretty incredible. She’s scared me a few times.” His left hand, cupping the tubes, was sound and whole. Not a mark on it. “What do you mean?”
Devi was staring at the wall hung with guitars. “Uh… nothing, really. Just wondered.”
Devi had seen something, and Kevin’s hand tingled as it had on that afternoon when Christa had told him to sit back and close his eyes. “Yeah. Okay.”
For an instant, Devi’s gaze flicked down to his hand. “What’s she doing now?” she asked casually.
“Putting together a metal band.”
“What does she need?”
“Keys. Vocals. They’ll have to be some pretty incredible people to keep up with her.”
“Yeah.” Devi looked at the wall. Her black eyes were intense, hot, and they reminded him of Christa. “You know her phone number?”