AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“We have music,” Owen said.
There was a murmur among the gathered creatures, and then the dryad said, “That is acceptable. We will listen.”
Owen nodded to me, and I picked up the flute. I was fairly sure I could still play “The Star Spangled Banner” from memory, but the flute part to that was mostly high trills, so on its own it wouldn’t be very effective. Teddy had made me learn to play “Princess Leia’s Theme” from Star Wars, but that seemed wrong to me, somehow. As I’d told Owen, about the only thing I was sure I could still play was the school fight song. After four years of playing it for every pep rally, at the start of every half of every football game, after every score, at the end of the game, and at random times when the team needed a boost, it was forever drilled into my psyche.
I took a deep breath and played a test note to make sure I could still play at all, then adjusted the alignment of the instrument. I made the mistake of looking out at my audience before I started playing, and it made me even more nervous than chair tests had back when I was in school. As scary as my band director had been, he was nothing like hundreds of magical creatures, and the outcome hadn’t been nearly as important as the fate of this corner of the magical world.
The sound wasn’t as bad as I’d feared once I started playing. Because “The Washington and Lee Swing” wasn’t the sort of thing you’d think of for placating magical creatures, I slowed it down to give it a haunting, plaintive sound. That was also the only way I kept my fingers from getting tangled as they remembered nearly forgotten fingerings.
When the last note had died away, there was silence, except for the sound of running water. I had to resist the instinct to shout “C! H! S!” at the end of the song, as we had always done at football games.
Then a series of clicks and whistles rang out. “Very nice,” the naiad said. “We accept your offering.
How may we help you?”
“I need you to be ready to come into the town when I summon you,” Owen said. “I will bring our enemies to you. I don’t want them killed or seriously hurt. I just want the apprentice wizards to be taken out of the equation so I can deal with their master without their interference.”
“We will protect you and your lady,” she said with a bow. With a sidelong glance at me, she added,
“Though your lady needs no protection from magic. And when we have done as you asked, we would like more music, unless you have another gift for us.” She batted her eyelashes meaningfully at Owen.
“Yes, of course,” I hurried to respond. I could even practice something, now that I knew I needed to.
“Then we have an agreement. You may leave now, and we give you safe passage.”
Owen broke the circle with his foot as I put my flute away. I would have preferred that he wait until we were ready to go, but it appeared to be a show of trust. I felt as though tiny hands were touching my hair and clothes while I waited for him to gather his things, but when he took me by the hand to lead me away from there, all the pinpricks of light parted, leaving us a clear path. The pixies followed us all the way to the car, keeping a respectful distance, which generally meant running in circles around us as we walked.
“I meet the most interesting people when I’m with you,” I said once we were safely in the car and on our way home. I hoped the quip covered up the fact that I was shivering. I knew it wasn’t from the cold, but I wasn’t sure if it was a reaction to having been surrounded by all those creatures or if I was still feeling the aftereffects of that kiss. He’d barely touched me since he’d been here, so being hit with a kiss like that out of the blue had really done a number on me.
“I just hope we can count on them,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road as he drove. “Spirits like that are notoriously unreliable. For one thing, they’re very old, so time means little to them, and matters that are important to us look trivial to them. They get comfortable where they are and become less inclined to stir themselves. But they might show up to hear more music.”
“I guess that means I need to find more music.”
“What you did tonight was perfect.”
“What I did tonight was play my school fight song at a slower tempo. Can’t we just bring a CD player and give them something really good?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s the act of creating music that has the effect on them. A recording doesn’t work.”
“I hope you actually have a plan for dealing with Idris working in that crazy genius brain of yours.”
“Nothing elaborate. I’ll merely give them what they want.”
“Which is you.”
“Exactly. And then I’ll lead them to the creek area, where I’ll have reinforcements.”
“So your brilliant plan is to use yourself as bait.”
“Sometimes there is brilliance in simplicity.”
“And is the boss likely to go for that?”
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
He went with me to work the next morning, against my objections. While the would-be wizard army hadn’t yet made it to the feed-and-seed store, I didn’t like him being out and about. He wouldn’t even take the baseball cap I offered him. I wore the necklace that alerted me to magic in use, and I could tell he wasn’t using an illusion to hide his appearance. That would have been a waste of power, but it might have kept him safer. At one time, I’d wondered if he was maybe a little too perfect, but as I got to know him better, I was learning that he was as flawed as the rest of us, one of his major flaws being that he was stubborn. Since I was a real prizewinner in that category myself, I supposed it took one to know one.
I was able to convince him to stay back in the office, where he was somewhat hidden from anyone who wandered into the store. Dean showed up for work on time, for a record-setting two days in a row, and came back to the office to talk to us. “You’re driving them crazy, staying out of sight like that,” he said to Owen. “After a whole day of searching, they haven’t seen you yet. Some of them are starting to wonder if you really exist. One group went home this morning. I’m not sure if they were discouraged or just not feeling well. They were all complaining of headaches.”
