Gossamer Axe (15 page)

Across the room, her Strat answered the gleam of Ceis’s wires with its own strings of steel. Her axe, Kevin had called it. She laughed softly at the term.

Something about harps. Indeed, that was a good idea. And though the thought of naming the band had seemed premature when she had sat down to write a song earlier that evening, now it was almost urgent. She had her vocalist. She was sure of that.

Ceis and the Strat glittered at one another across the darkness, and the name came together, holy and appropriate both.

Gossamer Axe.

Good. Very good. Let’s do that again. And this time, Melinda, can you bring up your treble during the lead break?”

“You sure you want that, Chris? That’s going to load the midrange a lot.”

“It will, but your overtones will mesh with mine and I’ll have more energy to work with.”

Christa approached heavy metal with the same care and effort that she expended on the harp. Every note counted. Every rhythm had to be right. The quality of sound had to be weighed against the eventual effect upon both a human audience and the immortal Sidh. But for all her planning and arranging, she left ample opportunity for her bandmates to express themselves freely, for without spontaneity, magic would be impossible. She guided, and she suggested, but she entrusted the final interpretation of her ideas to her fellow musicians.

“Lovely, Devi. That hissing quality you’re getting out of the MKB-1000—it’s rather hot in the top end. Can you bring it down just a trifle? I really liked what you did with your solo.”

“It wasn’t like the record.”

“That’s quite all right. If I wanted the record, I could go out and buy it. Is there any chance you can work a major-sixth feeling into that A chord in the third measure of the break?”

“I think so. Say… that’d sound hot, wouldn’t it?”

Monica’s voice was out of condition, and it failed midway through her first two rehearsals. But Christa was right: the remedy was practice. Every evening after work, Monica was downstairs in the basement with microphone, stereo, and PA, working on the difficult sections of songs, smoothing and polishing the easy parts.

Christa did not begrudge her the time. Monica had moved back into her own apartment, but she was still afraid of Ron, who, shouting and threatening, had attempted to bother her at work several times. Christa’s home was a refuge for the singer, a place where she had found a friend and a defender.

Day by day, Monica was relaxing, regaining her voice and her stage moves; and at her third rehearsal, she startled them all with a performance of “Metal Health” that might have melted steel. In contrast to the thin, vulnerable receptionist, Monica the singer turned out to be all fire and brass.

I got the boys

To make the noise,

Won’t ever let up,

Hope it annoys you!

She strutted, sneered, bared her teeth; and Christa thought of Orfide as he fingered the golden strings of his harp—his second-best harp—musically savaging her in Cornwall and in Scotland.

“Nastier on that last chorus, Monica?”

“Sure.”

And Judith… giving up her song…

“Jump out of that fill just a tad quicker, Boo-boo. We’ll cut their measure short. The unexpectedness will be worth it.”

Though the music they played was raw and angry, the evening’s end would invariably leave Christa with a good feeling, a satisfied fullness in her heart. Gossamer Axe had become a band, and, moreover, it had become a family in which the members cared for one another and knew each other’s ways.

Devi was razor sharp, pained and impenetrable, a wizard with sounds and electronics. Lisa was slow and steady, at times almost taciturn, but she worked out at the local Y three nights a week so that she could hit like the boys. Melinda was brash and sensitive at the same time, with a head full of dreams that repeated disappointments had not banished. Monica was cheerfully unsophisticated, almost childishly grateful for any kindness. Christa…

Christa waved good-bye as Devi’s van pulled away from the curb. How did they see her? Though she wore the mask of modern America, she came from a different place and time. She might don Tshirts and jeans, play rock and roll, tie a bandanna about her ankle, but she did so formally, carefully, hiding behind yet another mask.

Masks had been her life since she had left the Realm. The quaint little harper kept as a novelty by a nobleman of France had become the governess and music teacher of nineteenth-century London. America had made little difference in her life: she was still quiet, still polished, still hiding. Despite the occasional outbursts of the Gaeidil, she had, over the course of the years, grown almost innately conservative. It had been a matter of survival.

But the matter of Judith’s rescue demanded that she drop her reticence. Gossamer Axe: it was going to be quite a band. It
had
to be quite a band. The masks would have to come off. All of them.

*change*

“Indeed, Ceis,” she said, closing the front door. “The ladies may well flee in terror. And I might also.”

“You know,” said Melinda, “I’m going to be glad when I can give up this nine-to-five shit.” She squeezed toothpaste onto her brush and plunged it into her mouth.

Lisa was plumping the pillows on the sofa. It was not much, but it was a place to sleep. “Sounds like you’re planning ahead.”

Melinda rinsed her mouth before she answered. “Hey, this band is going places.”

“I’m keeping my day job,” said Lisa. “I like being a flagman, and I like the idea of eating three times a day.”

“You’re a pessimist.”

Lisa pulled on the oversized Motly Crüe T-shirt that she slept in. The room was cold, and she shivered a little as she crawled under the comforter. She edged her back around to miss the lumps in the sofa and settled in with a sigh. “I’m being real. There’s lots of bands. They come and go. Yeah, this one could make it big, but chances are that in ten years we’ll still be playing bars… if we’re together that long.”

“I don’t think we have to worry. Christa’s absolute dynamite with that guitar—and you should hear her on harp.”

“Heavy-metal harp. I can imagine.” Lisa buried her face in her pillow. “Good night.”

“You’re not listening to me.”

“I’m tired, Mel. We just practiced for four hours without a break, and my arms are ready to fall off. I want to be awake enough to go to that party tomorrow night.”

“Pansy wop.”

“Dippy blonde.” Melinda wanted to talk, and Lisa finally conceded defeat, turned over on her back, put her hands behind her head. “Christa’s a slave-driver,” she said. “I’ve never worked that hard at a practice before.”

“She’s different.”

“I’ll say. From what Monica said, she tore into old Ron like a SWAT team.” Lisa looked up at Melinda. “What does she mean when she keeps talking about energy and stuff like that? I can’t follow her. She sounds like my grandmother sometimes.”

Melinda was pulling on a tattered bathrobe. “What does your grandmother have to do with it?”

“Old-country Italian. She was a
strega
. A witch. Everyone went to her for herbs and stuff. She healed people, read cards… things like that. She never learned much English, but she used to baby-sit me when I was little. She talked about spirits in the garden, and she went on about energy just like Christa does. She said once that magic was going to save my ass someday.” She hitched herself up on one elbow. “Is Christa some kind of witch, do you think?”

“Nah. She just plays harp. But…” Melinda stopped suddenly, looked down at the floor.

“But what?”

“She once asked me about magic—if I felt magic in music.”

“What did you say?”

“I said I didn’t know.” Melinda’s voice dropped to a confidential whisper. “But I’ll tell you this, Boo-boo— and I haven’t told anyone else—she gave me this little harp piece to help me with my insomnia, and the damn thing works. Like… like…”

“Like magic?”

“Yeah, kinda.”

“This is giving me the creeps.” Lisa shuddered, turned back over. “Maybe we should take her with us tomorrow night and scare everyone to death.”

“I already asked her. She said she’s busy. It’s a holy day or something like that.”

“Halloween?”

Melinda shrugged. “Complaints?”

Lisa shook her head. “She’s cool. I’m glad we hooked up with her.”

“If we push a little, we can make it big.”

“Yeah, with a witch on lead guitar. Will you stow it? I’m tired.”

Melinda paused at the bedroom door. “G’night, Boo-boo. My little
Strega
.”

Lisa threw a pillow at her.

But when Lisa thought about it—the lights off, the streetlamps glowing on the thin curtains, the old sofa insisting on putting its lumps exactly where she did not want them—she knew that Christa was a good deal more than cool.

Christa was different. Like her grandmother, there was a sense of age about her, a feeling of solidity, of years that went back behind the actual person, as though she were a direct link with something far distant, an embodiment of old ways that others had forgotten.

Lisa tossed and turned for a minute, trying to get comfortable. She heard Melinda take down her harp in the other room, heard the gentle strains of the tune she used for her insomnia. Good bassist. Not bad on harp, either. She wondered what Christa the harper sounded like.

Suddenly, she found that she was happy. A good job, a place to sleep—her own apartment would have been nice, but that could come later—and a good band. What more could she ever want?

“Hey, God,” she said softly, “this isn’t bad. I’ll even buy the magic, if that’s what it takes.”

“Fucking bitch.”

The music that poured off the stage was too loud for Ron to hear his own words: they reached no further than his thoughts. Tucked into this little corner of the club, alone in the darkness of this tiny balcony overlooking the dance floor, he nursed his beer, nursed his anger.

Monica had left him. He knew all the lines, all the ways to make girls do what he wanted, but she had torn herself out of his hands in the middle of the night, grabbed her purse and car keys, and fled. Her nightgown had clung to her dark little breasts as he wrestled with her in the parking lot, and the greasy water had allowed her to writhe away from him like the snake she was. If he had not tripped and fallen over the concrete wheel-stop, she would not have gotten away so easily.

He drained the last of his beer, leaned over the railing, and signaled to the waitress for another. He should have known she was going to look for Christa. Little redheaded bitch. It was Christa who had given Monica ideas about leaving—he was sure of it.

The dyke. And now Monica was probably getting felt up after practice every night, soft little hands prodding at her crotch, lipstick-coated lips seeking hers.
Come on, Monica, how can you say you don’t like it if you haven’t tried it
?

He shut his eyes, but the image would not go away. Damn them both. It was Christa’s fault, too, that Dark Power had fallen apart. Paul had quit a few days after Christa, and Fred and Jerry had stopped showing up for rehearsals. Too busy, they said. Besides, what good was a rehearsal without a drummer and a guitarist?

The waitress brought him another beer. He counted out her money and stiffed her the tip. When she was gone, he lifted the bottle and sucked at it.

Well, Christa had hit him where it counted. She had gotten her revenge. Or so she thought. She thought, too, that she was putting together a band. Stupid. Girl games. They probably spend most of their time talking about tampons or douche or something like that.

Short little fingers feeling into the waistband of designer jeans, pink nails sparkling in the half light of a frilly bedroom. Stuffed animals watching. The sweet scent of perfume and baby powder.

He stared at the bottle in his hand for a moment, then raised it and hurled it at the wall. But the crash was lost in the steady, pounding music, the foam invisible against the white paint. An amber splotch, that was all, trickling to the parquetry floor, puddling as though a dog had urinated in the corner.

Snow was falling on this last day of October, and it flecked Kevin’s long hair and spotted his denim jacket. He squinted into the flakes. The weather would keep the trick-or-treaters in, but it was otherwise appropriate for Halloween. Father Lynch would have called it witch-weather, and would have approved greatly.
Let the children stay in. Much better that old godless customs should die. All Saints’ Day is tomorrow. Think about that
.

“You old bastard, Lynch,” he muttered as he went up Christa’s brick walk. “Are you still alive? Still scaring the hell out of little kids with your stories about eternal damnation?”

Kevin felt a little foolish showing up on the harper’s doorstep without warning on a Friday evening, but he ran the bell and waited anyway, half expecting that there would be no answer, Christa was young, pretty, undoubtedly popular. Some fellow probably had her on his arm tonight, maybe at some Irish-club party. Lucky stiff.

But no, the door opened, and Christa stood there in a white robe, blue eyes inquiring. Her red hair still fell to her waist, but it had been layered around her face, and it feathered back to either side. She looked, if anything, younger.

“Uh… in,” said Kevin.

“Hello, Kevin. Blessings.”

“Sorry for just showing up like this. I lost your phone number, but I had your address at the school.”

She smiled. “I’m in the phone book.”

“Yeah… well… you were on my way, too.” He shuffled his feet for a moment. Snow was still falling. “I like your hair.”

She laughed. “Come in and have something hot to drink. There’s no sense in you being frozen.”

She took him into the living room, sat him down on the sofa, and went off to the kitchen. Her house rather surprised him. From her age, he had expected something small, something rented, something temporary. But this was obviously a home in which someone had invested time and money. The decor was mature but eclectic, with a predominance of earth tones and burnished wood. “Nice place, Christa. How’d you wind up with this?”

“I’ve been saving for a long time,” she said as she reentered with two cups of hot cider. She handed him one, and he noticed that her robe was bordered with white-on-white Celtic knotwork: intricate meanders that caught and held the eye.

He sniffed. Something in the air.

“Dittany of Crete and apple bark,” she explained. “I use it for incense.”

“I’ve interrupted something, haven’t I?”

“Not really. I keep some of the old ways, and Hallows is a special day. The children usually keep me busy in the early evening, but with the snow and all, I thought that this year I might start before midnight.”

Father Lynch would have reddened with outrage, but Kevin nodded slowly. “It’s one of the old Irish holidays, isn’t it?”

“Samain—” She caught herself. “I mean, Samhain.” She altered the pronunciation, slurring through the aspirated
m
. “It marks the changing of the seasons. The seam between summer and winter, if you will.”

His parents had kept what they called the Irish ways: mass every morning, parties on Saint Pat’s day, strict observance of their religion. His grandfather sang some of the old songs, and he had a harp, too, though Kevin was sure that the old man did not know how to play it. Wakes, weddings, and
never forget you’re a Larkin, Kevin
.

But the tree had long ago been severed at the root. Ireland had been broken, and broken again. Even as a child he had sensed something hollow about the pride, about the tenacious clinging to a heritage of defeat and exile.

Never forget you’re a Larkin, Kevin. Never forget you’re Irish
. But what did that mean—Irish? What difference did it make? Any semblance of an Irish culture had been submerged long ago. Even the language was gone: Irish Gaelic was dead or dying, clinging to a vestigial and eroding existence on the rocky shores of bays and inlets the names of which he did not know and could not pronounce even if he did. What was a culture without even a language of its own?

And yet here was Christa, a harper, preparing to celebrate a holiday that predated all the troubles, predated even the advent of Christianity. The tree had withered, but she had not clung to the branches. She had instead held to the deep roots that tapped down into something vital, something nourishing.

“I feel like an idiot,” he said softly. Christa was a queen, and he had shuffled to her door in a snowstorm as though she were a commoner like himself.

“I don’t understand.”

He shrugged sheepishly. “I came here because I was going to a party. A dumb Halloween party. Loud music and a bunch of drunk rockers. I thought you might like to go.” He laughed with self-deprecation. “Stupid, huh?”

“For going to a party?” Christa sat down in an armchair, settling the robe about her as though she had been born to it. “Better the day have some commemoration than none at all.”

He shifted uneasily and found that he did not know what to do with his hands.

Christa smiled kindly. “Relax, Kevin. Stay a little. I have time.”

“Haven’t heard from you in a while,” he mumbled. “I didn’t want to lose touch. That’s another reason I stopped in.”

“I’m… rather glad you did.”

“How’s the band going? Any bookings?”

“Nothing concrete. The other ladies want to play out by December. I’m willing.”

It was not the time to talk about rock and roll. Harps, maybe. But rock was too new, too recent to fit in with this night of snow and incense. He drained the cider hurriedly and stood up. “I guess I’ll take off, then. If there’s anything I can do to help with the band, let me know. I know a few of the club owners in town. They might listen to me. You’ll stay in touch?”

A fool. A total fool. All he had to offer was mealy-mouthed promises that could have come from anyone.
I know a few of the club owners
… Sure. And he knew a bunch of record executives, and… and… the mayor of New York… yeah… and…

“Sit down, Kevin,” said Christa. “You’re upset now, and I won’t have you leaving my house in such a state.”

“What am I supposed to do? I interrupted something special for you. You’re busy.”

She considered, looked at the clock, thought some more. “It’s been a long time since I’ve gone to a party,” she said.

He felt, if anything, worse. “Aw… it’s just stupid.”

“That it is not.” She stood. “Is it too late to accept your invitation, Kevin? I ask only that you get me home by midnight.”

“Yeah, I can do that. Uh—”

“Let me go and change. Make yourself at home.”

She went upstairs, and he heard closet doors and drawers opening and closing, the faint clink of jewelry being doffed and donned. It was tempting to think that she cared for him enough to put aside her own plans for the evening, but he knew that, even in acquiescing, Christa was keeping her own counsel. Delaying her celebration of the holiday fit in somehow with larger plans that only she knew.

His cup was empty, and he found his way into the kitchen. A kettle of spiced cider sat on the stove, kept warm by a low flame. “You’re damned amazing, Christa,” he murmured, dipping the ladle. “Where the hell did you come from? Not from any Ireland that I know of.”

Behind him, a doorway opened off into a dark room; and when he had filled his cup, he peered through it. Christa’s studio. Harps… and a guitar. On the desk, a coal glowed on a ceramic plate, incense sputtering in the red heat. On a table across the room…

He leaned closer. It was a harp, but it was unlike any he had ever seen, certainly nothing like his grandfather’s. Ornate, gilt, glittering with gems, it stood upright on a table, its polished wood gleaming in the faint light, its strings of… gold? Who strung harps with gold?

“Its name is Ceis,” said Christa from behind him. “The name is Old Irish. It means a number of things. Harmony. The interaction of notes. The full voice of the harp in all the Worlds. The understanding of the harp’s music. Ceis, this is Kevin Larkin.”

He turned around. Christa stood in the bright kitchen, dressed in spandex and leather. She zipped up her jacket. “I believe I’m ready.”

“Brother. You’ve changed.”

“Indeed. But I play in a heavy-metal band, and I don’t want to embarrass my ladies. I believe it’s called… ah… image?” She smiled, and though at first glance he thought the combination of her sweet face and her black leather jacket to be unexpected, even absurd, he saw a little deeper tonight and noticed the glint in her eyes. Unexpected, perhaps. But not absurd.

“It’s rather fun, too,” she added.