The Warlock Rock (7 page)

"How didst thou that?"

" 'Tis almost as though the time between beats doth not exist for them," Gregory exclaimed.

"Why, then, betwixt beats, we can wend betwixt bodies! Come, brothers!" Magnus nodded his head.

"One, AND two AND three, NOW!"

They shoved through and saw Cordelia dancing, her whole body bobbing and weaving, a delighted smile on her face and a glazed look in her eyes as she stared at the boy who had pulled her in.

"Is he handsome?" Gregory asked, with interest.

"As lads go, I suppose," Geoffrey grudged, "though he cannot be much of a boy if he doth wish to dance with a lass."

"Alas!" a pretty blond twelve-year-old girl cried, catching his hand. "Wilt thou not dance with me?" Geoffrey recoiled as though a snake had bitten him. The girl flushed, hurt, and Gregory tried to smooth it over by asking quickly, "Dost thou not mind this great press of bodies about thee?"

"Nay." The girl beamed. "Wherefore should I? 'Tis but entertainment." She eyed Geoffrey with a slow
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smile, but he recovered, straightening, his lip curling. The girl saw and pouted for a beat, shrugged on the next, and whirled away on the third.

The boys stared at their dancing sister in the wrapping of music.

"There are words to it!" Gregory said, wide-eyed.

They listened, and heard the twanging music form into phrases:

Chew bop, chew bop! Bee bee yum hop! Yum chew sip sop, Boy and girl drop!

"What arrant nonsense!" Gregory shivered with distaste.

"What is its meaning?" Geoffrey wondered.

"Naught, I hope," Magnus scowled. "Come, brothers! We must haul our sister out from here."

"Yet how?"

"Catch her arms and fly."

"They will seek to prevent us," Gregory warned.

"I depend upon it." Geoffrey clenched a fist, his eyes glittering. "On the 'and,' brothers!"

"One AND two AND," Magnus counted. "To HER left NOW, catch HER arm AND rise AND fly NOW!"

He and Geoffrey shot off the ground with Gregory trailing behind. Cordelia disappeared so suddenly that her partner looked about for her, at a loss—to left and to right, but not up above. She writhed and twisted in their hands. "OH! Do LET me GO now! THOU foul KILLjoys!"

"Sister, wake!" Magnus cried, but she kept twisting until Gregory swooped up before her, beating time with his hands, then clapped suddenly under her nose on the offbeat. Cordelia's head snapped up, her eyes wide, startled. "OH! What…"

"Thou wert ensnared," her littlest brother informed her.

"I was not." She blushed and looked away. "I did only… attempt to…"

"Study the phenomenon from within, perhaps?"

All looked down, startled, to see Fess looking up at them from the edge of the crowd. Cordelia couldn't fib with his plastic optics on her. "Nay, I was caught," she admitted grudgingly. "But, oh! It doth take such a hold of one!"

"I do not doubt it," Fess said. "There is entirely too high a concentration of rock music in this meadow. Come away, children, so that we can hear one another talk."

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He turned and trotted away. The boys exchanged a glance, nodded, and swooped off after him. After about fifty feet, Magnus looked up, alarmed, and circled back to accompany his sister. "What kept thee?"

"My broomstick," Cordelia reminded him. "Thou couldst have waited, Magnus! 'Twas but a second's work to leap upon it—yet in that time, thou wast an hundred feet ahead."

"My apologies," Magnus said ruefully.

Down, Gwen's voice commanded inside their heads.

They looked down, surprised, to see their parents climbing out of a skiff and onto the bank. Aye, Mama

, Magnus thought back at her, and all four children landed neatly in front of Rod and Gwen.

"What hast thou learned?" she asked.

Cordelia blushed, and Magnus was just starting to answer, when a sizzling sound made them all turn and look up.

Sudden heat seared, and a muted roaring swelled in volume and rose in pitch. "Hit the dirt!" Rod yelled and leaped aside, knocking his children down like bowling pins as a huge mass of flame shot by overhead and plummeted away in front of them, its roar fading and dropping in pitch.

"Children! Are you well?"

"Aye, Mama," Cordelia answered shakily, and her brothers chorused after her. "What is that ?" Magnus cried.

"The Doppler effect," Fess answered obligingly. "As the object approached, its sound rose in pitch, and as it went away…"

"No, not the sound!" Rob said. "The object! What was it?"

"Why, do none of you recognize it? You have seen enough of them in your lifetimes, I know."

"Wilt thou te//us!"

"Why," said Gwen, "it was a fireball, such as witches and warlocks throw at one another! You have seen them ere now."

"It was a fireball." Cordelia stared off at the trail of smoke.

" That? 'Twas as much a fireball as a hillock is a mountain!"

"The difference is merely a matter of scale," Fess pointed out.

"A scale of mat much difference must come from a whale!"

"The whale is no fish, thou ninny!"

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"Nay, but thou wilt be, and thou dost call me a…"

"Quiet!" Rod snapped. "Here comes another one!"

"Two more!"

"Three!"

They stood rooted to the spot, staring at the huge spheres of flame that roared toward them. "They truly are great balls of fire," Gregory marvelled.

Fess's head snapped up. "But their elevation is significantly lower than mat of the first! Flee! Fly! Or you will be seared for certain! Go !"

The family leaped into the air, the boys shooting away over the meadow, Gwen and Cordelia swooping away on their broomsticks. Rod brought up the rear.

But the fireballs swooped faster.

"To the sides!" Gwen called. "Out of their pathway!" They veered sideways, Cordelia and Gregory to the left with their mother, Magnus and Geoffrey to the right with their father—but the outside fireballs only sheared off after them.

"The menace comes with purpose!" Fess cried. "Up! See if you can rise above it!" The family made a full-scale try at transcendence, swooping up into the sky so fast their stomachs thought they'd been forgotten—but the fireballs swooped up after them.

"They have our measure!" Magnus cried in despair. "How can we evade them?"

"I see a river!" Rod called. "Dive, kids! With as deep a breath as you can, then hold it! Maybe the fireballs will stay away from the water!"

As one, the children gulped air and stooped, barrelling downward like lead weights from theTower ofPisa , and shot into the water as though they were holding a splash contest, with Rod and Gwen right behind.

The outside fireballs veered back toward the center one, and the three of them shot by overhead. Fess knew he had to be mistaken; the noise of their passage couldn't truly have had an undertone of disappointment. "They have passed! You may come up!"

Four waterspouts erupted with four children inside them, exhaling explosively and gulping air like landed fish. They fell back into the water with cries of relief. Rod and Gwen followed with a little more dignity.

"They were chasing us!" Now that the crisis was over, Geoffrey could afford to be angry. "They truly did chase us!"

"Go rebuke them, then, brother," Magnus said, disgusted.

"Who could have set them on us?" Gregory wondered.

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The four young Gallowglasses were silent, staring at one another.

"We do have a few enemies," Fess admitted.

"And these fireballs, like the rocks, have sprung from one of them!" Geoffrey slapped the water. "Did I not say 'twas an enemy behind it?"

"We do not know that, and… Out of the water !"

"Wherefore?" Geoffrey asked, peering around him. "I see naught to fear."

"Aye," Magnus agreed. "There is naught but those four bumps on the water's surface."

"Those four bumps approach," Cordelia said nervously,

"and there is a log on our other side that doth likewise come nearer!"

"Out!" Gwen snapped, and gave them a head start with telekinesis as Fess explained, "Those are no logs, but giant amphibians! And they are hungry! Quickly, children! Out of the water!" The family shot out like pellets from a blowpipe, looking rather bedraggled; the ladies' brooms were definitely not at their best with soggy straw. The collection of bumps and the log shot toward each other, slammed together, and climbed halfway out of the water, following them in a crescendo of flashing teeth and writhing serpentine bodies. But the huge jaws snapped shut a good yard short of anyone's heels, and the two great lizards fell back on top of each other and lay glaring up at the children.

"Don't just sit there like a bump on a log," the bottom one grumbled, "go get them!"

"I didn't come equipped with wings, fishface!"

" Fishface? Who do you think you're calling fishface, snaketail?"

"What are they, Fess?" Cordelia stared down at them fearfully.

"Why, I do know them!" Magnus said, staring too. "Thou didst show them me in my bestiary—though we have never seen them here, and I had thought them but myths! They are crocodiles from Terra!"

"Very good, Magnus!" Rod said, impressed.

"However," said Fess, "only one is a crocodile. The other is an alligator."

"How canst thou tell?" Gregory demanded.

"The alligator's snout is more rounded at the tip; the crocodile's is more pointed. There are other differences, but those are the most obvious ones."

"They got away," the crocodile groused, glowering up at the children.

"Inflation does it," the alligator answered. "Everything's going up these days—even food."
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"Well, it was a nice try." The crocodile sighed, turning away.

"Probably sour children anyway." The alligator turned away, too.

"Well! Such audacity!" Cordelia exclaimed, jamming her fists onto her hips. "I'll have thee know I am quite mmfftfptl !" The last bit of pronunciation was occasioned by the clapping of Magnus's hand over her mouth as he hissed in her ear, "Wilt thou be still! The last we should wish would be to have them think thee sweet and tender!"

Cordelia gave him a murderous glare over the top of his wrist, but held her tongue.

"I'm gonna go hunt up some mud guppies," the crocodile grumped.

"Yeah." The alligator turned away. "Me for some crayfish."

"They'll do in a pinch," the croc agreed. "See you later, alligator."

"With a smile, crocodile."

They swam away, disappearing into the muddy waters of the river.

"Well! Praise Heaven we have survived that!" Cordelia watched the two reptiles depart, still miffed.

"How dare they call me sour!"

"Thou wouldst not wish them to know thee better, sister," Magnus assured her.

"Come," said Gwen, "let us be on our way, and quickly—I do not wish to give them time to think again."

They hadn't gone far, though, when Cordelia stopped, staring down at the grass. "What things are these?"

"Let me see!" Geoffrey jumped over to her, and Gregory twisted his way in between them. Gwen looked up, interested, and stepped over.

An insect was toiling its way through the long grass, but with such intensity of purpose that Geoffrey said,

"Can it be a warrior bug?"

"Not properly a bug." Fess's great head hung over them. "It is truly a beetle, children. It is strange, though."

Rod looked up, alert. "In what way?"

"I had thought they were extinct."

"What?" asked Gregory.

"This particular variety of insect. It is a scarab, such as were represented in ancient Egyptian art."
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"Here is another," Magnus called, ten feet away. "It doth move… why, toward Papa!"

"Toward me?" Rod looked down—and saw another scarab struggling through the grass. "Hey, I've got one, too! Only it's heading toward you!"

"Toward me ?" Magnus stared.

Cordelia clapped her hands. "Belike they seek one another!"

"Nay," said Gwen. "They move toward the fairy ring." They all looked up and saw, midway between Rod and Magnus, a flattened circle of grass—and in the center of it, a larger-than-average rock, thrumming away.

Rod frowned. "What's this? Are the Wee Folk helping out on rock distribution now?"

"Oh, nay!" Gwen said, with a mock glare at him. "Thou dost know the Wee Folk dance in circles, and leave rings behind them—but here all is flattened, not the circumference only!"

"What hath made it?" Gregory wondered.

"Perhaps the rock itself," Fess said slowly. He moved closer, being careful not to step on the scarab, and lowered his head toward the circle. "Yes, it is a small depression, a sort of natural bowl. If the rock landed with enough momentum, it might have rolled around and around the circle until…" A scarab struggled out of the grass on the far side, teetered on the brink, and tumbled into the depression.

"Oh!" Cordelia clapped her hands. "There is a fourth!"

"Ours doth arrive now, too," Gregory noted.

Magnus came up to the bowl a step at a time, eyes on the ground. "Mine doth approach."

"Mine, too." Rod was only a step away from the rim. "They're all attracted to the rock."

"Even scarabs ?" Gwen exclaimed.

Gregory was peering closely. "They are oddly colored, Mama—a slate gray. One would almost think they were, themselves, stone to the core." ' ~tT_

Rod frowned. "Then the question arises, were the beetles attracted by rock, or made by rock?"