Gossamer Axe (34 page)

“
I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, even if he die, shall live; and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die
.”

Monica was buried in a Catholic cemetery at the edge of the city and within clear sight of the Rocky Mountains. The weather was mild, as though to spite the gray clouds that dappled the blue sky, and the grass was fresh and green with the spring rains.

It was a Christian ceremony, but Christa felt no rancor towards the priest who read the antiphons and the verses over the casket, for he spoke for the living: Monica’s parents, bent like storm-broken trees; her brother standing stiffly in his full dress uniform, heedless of the tears on his cheeks; the rest of her relatives and friends. Monica—the real Monica, the Monica Christa knew—had long since fled to the Gods she had chosen freely for herself.

The band stood among the mourners as witnesses to their love and the music they had made. Devi’s face was hard, Lisa and Melinda wept freely with their arms about one another; and though Christa had already grieved, had already said her farewells in Gaeidelg the night before, still she leaned on Kevin’s arm, her vision blurry and shifting, for she was burying a kinswoman that morning.

I’ll wait for you
, Monica had said.

When the service was over, Christa went to the grave and stood there for a moment, head bowed, voice as soft as the whisper of aspen leaves.

“Inmain lem do ruidiud rán,

Inmain do chrut caem comlán.

Dursan do dál dedenac,

Tussu d’éc, missi d’anad.”

She placed a bough of evergreen among the flowers and departed, the hem of her Kinsale rustling across the grass.

Afterwards, Kevin left to meet with his students, and the women gathered at Christa’s house with Bill Sarah. In his dark suit, Bill looked even more like a lawyer than usual, and his polished shoes creaked as he sat down in one of the big chairs in the living room. His eyes were red. “I’ve never done well with funerals,” he said.

Christa, who was pouring coffee in a kitchen that seemed too silent without Monica’s voice and laughter, heard him. She nodded to herself. In two hundred years, she had seen a great deal of death, but it was never easy. And this death…

They spoke of simple things, touching now and again on Monica and what she had given to each of them. Christa dropped her modern persona enough to speak of the Summerland, and of Monica’s promise to wait. Lisa, Melinda, and Devi understood, and though Bill did not, he nodded in approval.

Toward afternoon, though, he finished his coffee and stood uncomfortably. “I hate to do this,” he said, “and I feel like an asshole, but I need to talk business.”

“It’s okay, Bill,” said Lisa. “We’ve got obligations. It’s not just us anymore.”

Bill looked relieved, but not much. “I talked with Harry and Jessica the other day. They both would have been out here for the funeral, but they couldn’t get a flight.”

“What do they want to do?”

“They’re willing to wait,” he said. “They said to go ahead and take six months, get yourselves sorted out, find…” Bill bent his head, plainly unwilling to say the words.

“Find another vocalist, right?” said Devi tonelessly.

“Yeah.”

Christa passed a hand over her still-tearing eyes. “I don’t want to think about that now.”

“Tell me one thing, though,” said Bill. “Do you think you’ll all want to stick together… as a band?”

Melinda spoke quietly. “You have to understand, Bill. This isn’t just a band. This is a family. We’ve…” A deeper sadness crossed her face. “We’ve stood by each other when things got rough. That’s not going to change.”

“The way I see it,” Lisa said slowly, “Ron was aiming to kill the band, too. If we knuckle under and give up, he’ll get just what he wanted.”

“What’s going on with that son of a bitch, anyway?” said Devi.

“He’s been arraigned and formally charged,” said Bill. “Bail’s high. He can’t get out.”

“Is the DA going for the death penalty?”

“He doesn’t think he can get it.”

Christa’s eyes flashed. One of her clan had been murdered. There were certain penalties, certain traditions of the Gaeidil… whether the district attorney considered them possible or not.

The phone rang, but she made no move to answer. “The machine will catch it. It’s probably another reporter. I’m done with them.”

“I’m surprised they’re not at your door.”

Christa snorted softly. “They can’t find my door.”

Bill stared for a moment, then shrugged. “Shall I tell Harry we’re still a band?”

“Yeah,” said Lisa. “We’ll get through this. We’ll do it for Monica.”

Devi clenched her fist. “Right on.”

Bill bade them farewell and went down the brick walk to his car. Only Christa could see the circle of blue light about her house flare for a moment as he passed through it.

When she turned away from the window, she realized that the others were watching her. “I said that we’ll get through this, Chris,” said Lisa. “I meant that we’ll get through all of it, including the Sidh gig.”

“Question is,” said Melinda, “can we do it without Monica?”

“The magic is in the music,” said Christa. “The voice makes it more real to the conscious mind, but I’m not overly concerned about Orfide’s conscious mind.”

Devi seemed to be running over songs in her mind. “What about cues? Vocals are good for that.”

Lisa nodded. “But could we find somebody who could do it without freaking?”

Christa shook her head. “I don’t believe we can. Not with the time we have. I don’t sing very well, but my voice has strengthened since we began playing out, and I think I can do well enough to fill the need.” She laughed sadly. “Fitting it is, I suppose: Judith gave up her singing so as to follow me to the harpers’ school, and now I must sing with all my heart in order to free her from the Sidh.”

Lisa plucked at her dress. “Looks like we’ve got some heavy-shit rehearsals coming up. Let’s go change clothes and get on it.”

“For Monica,” said Christa.

Lisa stood, took Christa by the shoulders, looked her in the eye. “For Monica,” she said. “And for you.”

Monica’s absence at the rehearsal was an empty ache in the music, like a missing limb. Together, fighting back emotions that ranged from anger to tears, the four women began to hammer out the final decisions regarding the music they would play for the Sidh.

“We’ll do the songs first,” explained Christa. “I set them up that way. ‘Firing Line’ is designed to breach the gate and issue a formal challenge to Orfide. I’ve a slow synth and guitar prelude to it, Devi, that I’ll use to muster strength. Some of the covers we’ve been playing will also be useful.”

“I want to see this dude’s face when we hit him with ‘Metal Health,’ ” said Lisa.

Christa’s smile was thin. “And I also. But, more than likely, Orfide will come to understand the structure of the songs and will counterattack in ways that we can’t answer without sizable improvisation.”

“We can handle that,” said Melinda.

“Indeed, I have no doubt of it. But as I’ve said before, don’t underestimate Orfide.”

“What about ‘Light My Fire’?” said Devi suddenly. “The solos. I’ve seen what they can do.”

“I did not plan to use that piece, but it’s one well worth having in reserve. Can you play that under stress?”

“Shit, Chris, I played that when I was nine years old, and you know what was going on then. I can play it in the middle of a napalm attack.”

Christa met her eyes. “Devi, I beg you, be careful of your anger.”

“I know what you’re saying, Chris, but you can’t deny that you’re mad, too.”

“I am indeed. Just be careful.”

“Gotcha.” But Devi’s eyes were hot.

Christa had no one to drive home, no one to drive home to, and she stayed in the rehearsal studio after the others left. Monica’s microphone was still clipped in its stand to the side of the room, and although Christa had stood by her grave that morning, she could not but think that, out of the corner of her eye, she could see a familiar flash of peroxide-blond hair.

Over the months, painstakingly, she had been slowly peeling back the layers of enculturation that she had suffered to grow for the last two hundred years. The Gaeidil, once swaddled in wrappings not at all her own, had gotten her hands loose, had found her voice again. At Christmas, she had freed Kevin, but she had also freed herself. Monica had turned to her, a child seeking a people and a religion that would take her in and love her; and Christa, in welcoming her, had found her own beliefs and loyalties strengthened.

One of her clan play dead by the hand of another.

Without speaking, Christa picked up Ceis and threw the volume knobs of her amplifier full on. She had rebuked the guitar for its vengeance, but she wished now that she could take back her words. To some actions there could be only one rely.

With a clean, precise anger that she thought she had reserved only for the Sidh bard, she began to play.

Pale faces, silvery voices. The Sidh are engrossed in a revel, torchlight white as frost spilling over tables heaped with pallid food, reflecting in deep cups of colorless wine, shimmering in platinum hair. The air is saturated with the bell-like laughter of innumerable, bloodless throats.

From the dais at the end of the banquet room, Lamcrann watches and listens, but he does not himself participate. Orfide is playing well, but even the king detects a note of desperation in his music. It is as though the bard is pursued by something, and madness lurks in the depths of his eyes.

Orfide will not speak of it, denies, in fact, that there is anything wrong. But Lamcrann knows that the bard, like Cumad, is foundering in thoughts that, by right, should never enter the mind of a Sidh.

Perhaps he is right, then
, he considers slowly.
perhaps the mortal is not good for this place. perhaps she should be altered
. He imagines Siudb as a tractable, willing participant in the Realm, contemplates her presence in his bed, wonders for a moment what her rough, mortal skin would feel like when coated with rank sweat and pressed against his own opalescent flesh. If she could be made willing…

Lost in his own thoughts of change, he is hardly aware that Siudb has quietly left the room, led by Glasluit to a small chamber near the door to the courtyard. There she finds her harp and the simple clothing she wore when Orfide first bespelled her. Silently, she strips off the hated gown of gossamer and light, dons the loose shirt and tunic, the trews and shoes, slips over all the white mantle of a novice harper. She is tall and proud as she takes up her harp.

“Now,” says Glasluit, “to the grove and beyond. And then…”

Siudb hugs him, gripping him about the waist as though he is indeed a man of her own people. This is not Sidh flesh she feels through his shimmering raiment. No, this is sinew and blood and solid bone and, she fancies, the good, reassuring odor of a male body. “Let us go, then.”

She holds out her hand, and he takes it. Together they ease out into the darkness surrounding the palace and, under cover of the ornamental hedges, run for the myrtle grove. Behind them, the sounds of the revel continue, but Orfide has stopped playing.

“…
and it’s a beautiful morning here in the Mile High City, taking us into an almost-perfect weekend with just a touch of some late afternoon thundershowers to liven things up. Temperature is sixty-two degrees, going up to a high today of eighty-five. Saturday and Sunday going to be much the same, with some scattered afternoon clouds, continuing hot into Monday, so keep those six packs cold, and I’ll see you all out by the pool. Coming up, here’s one from Bon Jovi… ‘Dead or Alive’… on KAZY, Denver
. …”

Christa awoke at the first words and lay, eyes closed, listening to the song and to several others that followed. The room was warm with the soft air of a midsummer morning, was filled with the scent of the roses that twined up the trellis on the front of the house.

When the commercials started, she turned the alarm off, dropped a light gown over her head, and went downstairs to make coffee and breakfast. A full day was before her: a long drive, hard work, final arrangements. Tomorrow night, beside a mountain lake, Kevin would power up the sound system, and the Sidh would hear a challenge from mortality that would shatter their complacent existence forever.

As she stirred the oatmeal, she swallowed and felt her throat experimentally. The last days of rehearsal had been hard on her voice, and she had gone to bed hoarse. Guitars could be tuned, strings could be replaced, volume and tone knobs could be adjusted, but a singer’s instrument was flesh and blood, and, in spite of healing spells, was prone to pain and wear.

The soreness was gone this morning. That was good. She would have to sing tomorrow night, a necessary but poor replacement for a member of the band who could not be present.

She looked up from the stove. “Blessings, Monica,” she said to the empty kitchen. “Be well.”

Even after a month, the vocalist was still a presence in the house, a memory that warmed the rooms. Christa wondered that she had never noticed how lonely she had been before Monica had come to stay with her. The Gaeidil were a clannish race—people taking care of one another, contributing to the well-being of a larger whole that, in turn, helped its members. A Gaeidil in isolation was unthinkable, and yet Christa had been so for two centuries.

No more, though. She had the band. And Kevin was with her. And Monica, though dead, was nonetheless family: honored appropriately… revenged appropriately.

* blessings*

Ceis distracted her from her thoughts. She was grateful. “Brigit bless, Ceis.”

Through the door to her studio she could see the guitar leaning in its stand, as radiant as it had ever been in harp-shape. Even Ron’s bullet had not detracted from its beauty. She had taken the instrument back to Roger Best for repairs, and he had, at her request, merely smoothed the wound and polished the slug flush with the surface. It winked at her in the light, a metallic spot of brilliance against the rich wood tones, a reminder of much-loved kindred and the vengeance of the Gael.

“I’d like to see her again,” she said to the guitar. “Just to be sure she’s all right. I hope she found the Summerland.”

The latch of the front door clicked.

*Kevin*

He entered with a backpack, his harp, and Frankie’s guitar, setting all three down in her living room before he joined her for breakfast. “For luck,” he said when Christa asked about the guitar. “It’s been with me everywhere, and if I’m going off to fight the Sidh, it’s coming with me.”

“You’re sure you still want to do this?”

He buttered his bread slowly and deliberately. He reminded her of her father. “Hey look, Chris, can you imagine what those techs of yours would do down in Gunnison? They’re okay guys, both of them, but… well… they’re not our people.” He chuckled. “At least not yet.”

“ ’Twill not be easy for you, even though you’ve seen magic.”

“Easier with me running sound than with anyone else.” Kevin had been mumbling through the bread, but he now swallowed it and continued in a clearer voice. “I’m just glad I can do something. I’ve been sitting around, twitching, feeling like there’s something that I’ve got to do. Maybe this is it.” He looked at his watch. “When are the ladies showing u?”

“In a few minutes. We loaded the truck last night, and Boo-boo’s stopping by the studio to get it. Devi will take our clothes and personals in her van.”

“What about a generator?”

“We rented a big Allison diesel powerplant.”

Her words trailed off as she looked down the hall to the front door. When she reentered her house on Monday, would Judith be on her arm? Or would Christa Cruitaire be, again, alone?

She held a staggering weapon in her hand, but Orfide was himself unbelievably powerful. She believed in rock and roll, and she believed in herself, but she could not but think that heavy metal had but evened the odds between her and the bard.

Kevin took her hand. “Courage, Chris. If rock and roll can’t get Judith out of there, nothing can.”

She was still looking at the door. “It’s greatly I’m afraid of that.”