War For The Oaks Part 29

"I don't like it," he said finally. "I've never seen anything like what happened on May Eve. I don't look forward to seeing it again, and sitting around waiting for it doesn't make it any better." He rose suddenly and walked away, went to the edge of the stage to unpack his guitar.

The phouka watched him go, looking thoughtful. Hedge had arrived sometime in all that, and was watching as well, slouched and silent. His chin was tucked-a protective pose-and his eyes followed everything from behind the veil of his ragged brown hair. There was hurt in the lines of his body, and fear.

Eddi wondered what the battle at the Falls had been like for him. But before she could go to him and draw him aside, he shuffled away to set up his ba.s.s.

They did Rue Nouveau's "I'm Not Done Yet" for a sound check; the phouka alternately adjusted the mixing board and paced the room to check the results. The first chord startled the few bystanders in the room. But none of them left, and by the end of the song all of them were tapping feet or swaying in place.

w.i.l.l.y plugged in his fiddle, and they did some blues improv in A. People began to acc.u.mulate in the room, multiplying from nowhere in the fas.h.i.+on of crowds-to-be.

At last the phouka gave Eddi a thumbs-up, and she called a halt. "Showtime in five, troops," she told the band.

Eddi stepped off the stage and turned to study it, ticking things off mental checklists.

"You're fretting," said the phouka over her shoulder.

"Was that supposed to be a pun?"

He smiled. "I refuse to say. But I'll repair the damage: You're worrying."

"Of course I am. It's my job. Keeps everyone else from having to do it."

"I'd spare you it, if I could."

Something in his words, so lightly spoken, sounded like more than merely band matters. "When I'm so good at it?" she said with a little laugh.

He let the subject turn, and Eddi told herself she wasn't sorry. "As long as your heart's set on worrying, then, tell me how you think it will go tonight."

"I think... good. We'll be a little raggedy in places, but not much. And we'll be a little cautious, maybe, but not as much as some bands that have been together for two, three times as long as we have."

He looked pleased with his thoughts. "Tell me-does the reaction of the audience affect your performance?"

"Hugely. Why?"

"Curiosity, sweet. What sort of effect does it have?"

Eddi frowned. "Well, about what you'd expect. You feel better in front of a crowd that's enjoying what you do. You work harder. Playing for an audience that hates you is like wading through swamp water up to your chin."

The phouka made an appreciative face.

"And sometimes," she continued, "on a good night, there's a... I can't explain it properly. Something that happens between the performer and the audience at the best times. Both sides get a little wired." She flourished her hands. "I really can't explain it very well. But you can feel it when you get it, and it makes you crazy."

He watched her intently through all this, a little smile at the edges of his mouth. "May you get it often,"

he said at last, and touched a forefinger delicately to her chin. "Now, go call your band-I believe it's time."

The band came on without fanfare or theater. Eddi slid the Rick over her shoulder and wiped her hands surrept.i.tiously on her jeans. Carla snapped out four counts of rim shots on the snare, then four more seasoned with the sharp tsk of her high-hat cymbal. Eddi and Hedge began to pound their low strings, and Dan swelled the synthesizer up under them in a growl almost too low to hear. Dead stop, then Carla swatted her big drums. w.i.l.l.y flung out a trail of high guitar notes like stars-not cold points of light in the dark, but suns, the burning and beginning of everything.

They sailed into Richard Thompson's "Valerie" and Eddi could almost see the sound of it, a broad arc of light that unrolled over the crowd, wound around and under them....

It was a good opening song. Eddi would tell herself that when the night was over, and she could look back and be rational. But now the music had her, and the playing of it. She traded wild low notes and vampy looks with Hedge until he, by G.o.d, laughed. She posed and danced with w.i.l.l.y like his short blond shadow. They all leaned into their microphones at once, and Eddi heard in their voices the same open- throated power that she felt in her own. As they split into harmonies, she climbed for the top one, until she was an octave above w.i.l.l.y's tenor, out on the edge of her own range.

People in the crowd were starting to dance, more of them as she watched. That, too, was an observation she would examine only later. There was no time now for anything but the music. That was a train that wouldn't wait for her. Doors open, closed, gone-no. The music wouldn't wait, because she didn't want it to. She was herself the power to the wheels.

They spun another song from the threads of the last, one Eddi had written. The dancers would quit, of course-it took more dedication than most people had to dance to a song they'd never heard. But she couldn't stop now, even for them.

Drinking coffee, Have to stay awake and think of you.

Aching awfully, Knowing my perceptions aren't true.

If you were what I've made you Not as your acts betrayed you How could I keep away?

But things still lead me on, A word, and then it's gone.

What lives here, and what's stray?

Tell me, please, what's signal and what's noise?

A brown-haired girl near the front of the stage spun like a ballerina; Eddi saw delight in her open mouth and closed eyes. Her partner, a blond boy in a painted T-s.h.i.+rt, grinned and bit his lip, dancing with narrow-eyed concentration.

She spotted the phouka near the mixing board, the glow from its meters adding underlight to his dark face. He watched the crowd, and his eyes moved in quick, restless patterns. She knew what he was doing.

Give it up, phouka. n.o.body can touch me now. Not now. His gaze, in its travels, met hers, and he smiled as if her thoughts had reached him.

Dan played crackles and pops with one keyboard, a string quartet from s.p.a.ce with another. Then he grabbed a fistful of bra.s.s, and w.i.l.l.y made his axe chatter and whine. Eddi went back to the mike with lyrics swelling in her throat.

Her lyrics. They weren't just sounds to be made; they were a sliver of experience, with photographs in her memory for ill.u.s.trations. If she wanted, she could summon back every emotion. But it was her audi- ence she wanted to give them to, once she'd called them out.

Interference Or is that the broadcast that I've got?

Your appearance Renders me incapable of thought.

Here's your voice on the phone.

Your sweet and sullen tone, What am I to believe?

Did you blow me a kiss Or was that just tape hiss?

When I hang up, will you grieve?

Have pity, now, what's signal and what's noise?

Here's your photo, I found it cleaning out my bottom drawer.

When you wrote, oh, I couldn't keep from wondering what for.

Through the gray, through the grain, A picture taken in the rain, That doesn't show your face.

Connected dots don't make a line, You confuse me every time, Confusion has its place, But just this once, what's signal and what's noise?

Yeah, like that. She let the band pause for breath between songs, but not much more. Then they swept on, like heroes in search of glory and plunder, and those who watched and danced followed after.

It was the end of the first set before Eddi discovered how her band worked.

The revelation came with their cover of a Nate Bucklin song, "She's Getting Desperate." It opened with Hedge's galloping, grumbling ba.s.s notes and w.i.l.l.y's lead vocal. Eddi stepped back and let them take the spotlight. She turned to Carla and Dan, to gather them up with her eyes and launch them into the second verse. Carla was half dancing on her drummer's throne, sticks poised, barely contained. Dan's dark fingers hovered twitchy over the keys. They were ready.

Eddi leaned into the harmony vocals on the last two lines of the verse, and gathered Hedge and w.i.l.l.y as she had the other two. Hedge rocked contemplatively over his axe, unruffled but not unmoved by the rhythm. w.i.l.l.y sang strong and crisp and clean, biting off each word. His left hand curled over the chord on the neck of his guitar, and his right hung above the strings, prepared to strike. His hair had fallen over one eye; the other eye blazed.

They'd practiced the transition from first verse to second until it was flawless, until she woke up two days in a row with it running like a loop through her head. Last word of the verse, and three beats. Then the rest of the band would come in like the end of the world, just when the audience thought it was safe.

That was exactly what happened. Not with the offhand perfection of a long-rehea.r.s.ed band; it sounded like the hot improvisation of a solo artist. One with ten hands. Eddi knew, with a rush of warm and cold, that she was responsible. Four people watched her for cues, relied on her to keep them together, counted on her to let them run amok when it was right and leash them when it wasn't. Four artistic, anarchic personalities had placed themselves under her rule.

She nearly forgot her harmony part.

If they hadn't scheduled a break after that, they would have had to take one anyway. They'd worked themselves up to an emotional peak that was hard to abandon, and they needed night air to cool the sweat off their faces and blow the crazies away.

So it was out the doors behind the stage once again. Carla plucked a cigarette and lit it with a trembling match. "Holy s.h.i.+t," she said on a mouthful of smoke. "That was kinda fun."

Dan laughed. "Yeah." He said it again, softer, and tapped a beat against his thighs. w.i.l.l.y leaned against the white stone wall, hands in his pockets, head back, eyes closed. He was smiling.

Hedge was the last one off the stage, the last out the door by a long minute. When he came into the night, it was with his head down, and no attention paid to any of them. He sat down on a lip of stone, a little removed from the group.

Eddi felt her elation weighted down with something in the region of her stomach. She debated the issue for a moment, then she went to sit next to Hedge. She tried not to look too purposeful about it.

For a little while they sat in silence, and Eddi watched his knuckly hands ma.s.sage each other. Then she asked, "You okay?" Not profound, but to the point.

His smile was not the one that sometimes lit his face; this one looked hard to do, and fragile.

"Can I help?" She knew better, at least, than to ask if he wanted to talk about it.

Hedge shook his head and made knots with his fingers again. "'S too good," he muttered after a moment. "Nothin' so good lasts."

"Oh, come on," Eddi grinned at his bent head. "That's not true. Why shouldn't it last?"

Hedge looked up again, and this time he made no pretense of smiling. "'Cause it won't. Nothin' so good c'n last."

There was something almost oracular in the intensity of his voice. His eyebrows pulled together, as if some idea or lack of one frustrated him. Eddi understood suddenly what prompted grownups to promise impossible things to children.

"I'm going to try to make it last," she said. "I know what the odds are, and I know what I'm up against, and I'm still going to try."

He gave her an impenetrable look from the covert of his hair.

"But it would help... well, if you believed in me. Hokey as it sounds."

He blinked, looked down again, and after an oppressive bit of time, nodded once.

"Good enough," Eddi said. She wondered if she should pat his shoulder or hug him or something. But she didn't feel quite comfortable about it. Instead they sat for a minute or two in what became a com- panionable silence.

Eddi broke it at last with, "Have I told you lately that you play great ba.s.s?"

This time his smile was brilliant and genuine.

"Five minutes, ladies and gentlebeings," said the phouka, poking his head out the door. Then he grinned.

"And the dancers need every second of it, poor things."

w.i.l.l.y's eyes grew round. "Hazel and Thorn. I forgot."

"Forgot what?" Eddi demanded, alarmed by his tone.

It was the phouka who replied. "Have I told you about the Faerie rings? No? Well, now is certainly the time. We are fond of music and dancing, as you know."

He smiled benignly, and Eddi fastened on a warning glare.

"On occasion, mortals have, knowingly or inadvertently, crashed the party. They quickly discover one of the most notable characteristics of Faerie music: it makes one dance."

"So?" Eddi said.

"You don't understand," w.i.l.l.y interjected. "It makes you dance."

Carla frowned and raised a finger as if to question that. Then she stopped, her mouth open and eyes wide. Dan got it at about the same time. "s.h.i.+t. I mean... you mean..." He stared at w.i.l.l.y and the phouka. "s.h.i.+t."

It made a certain appalling sense. The crowd had danced to the first song, they'd danced to the originals-in short, they'd shown a remarkable willingness to dance, even under the worst conditions.

But...

"What makes this Faerie music?" Eddi asked.

The phouka c.o.c.ked his head. "Two of you are fey. One of you is closely tied to the Folk. The other two"-and he grinned at Carla and Dan-"have picked up an uncanny lick or two out of sheer proximity.

Oh, the effect isn't perfect yet. It's possible to resist the urge to dance, and possible to stop when one is wholly exhausted. But try to have a little mercy on the poor things in the second set, won't you?"

Dan stared at the phouka, then turned his now-what-do-I-do expression on Eddi. Carla looked at her hands and started to giggle. Then she began to laugh. She staggered over to the wall and slid down it until she was sitting in the gra.s.s, still laughing.