Street Fair (17 page)

"Most mad scientists aren't really scientists. They're not testing any theories. They're just building death rays. They're mad engineers."

"Okay, okay, so I stand corrected. Now, what were you saying before?"

"Okay, so he has Robin Goodfellow working for him, or with him, or something. And as soon as a wight gets away, Robin is right after us. Why?"

"Because he thought it would be fun?"

"On Robin's side, maybe. But with the market on, there must be a thousand fun things he could be doing. I think it was more intentional than that. We're wild cards. He thinks he has everything else planned, so he had to mess with us."

"You really think so?"

"There's plenty of people more powerful than us out there. Someone that careful isn't going to go mess with Balor's stuff if he doesn't have something to cover himself. He obviously knows how to get into Faerie, and he knows pixies and their ways of finding things.” Lani looked vaguely apologetic as Ashling shuddered. “Maybe sprites too. If he couldn't counter those, they'd have found him already."

"Now I'm way more worried than I was. Why do you need to figure these things out in so much detail?"

Lani took one hand off the wheel, a rare gesture for her, to lean to the side and give Megan a one-armed hug. "Because, if I don't, you don't come up with brilliant plans to save the world."

When
Space Ship!
pulled into Megan's driveway, there was still plenty of time to disable the alarm clock in the hallway. Her mother seemed to have indeed gone straight to bed with a new kind of exhaustion. Megan urged Ashling to be quiet, and to just enter via her bedroom window, just in case, while Ashling urged Megan to remember her lessons about sneaking, before she climbed onto the Count, and they flew directly to Megan's room.

Megan found a snack, took her vitamins, and then got to her room without waking her mother. She sat down on her bed, managing to be too worried to fall asleep, despite physical exhaustion. "So, what now?"

"Now," said the pixie, cheerfully, "We make some music."

"Ashling, we can't wake my mom up," Megan hissed.

Ashling sighed. "First, your grammar is atrocious. Yes, we most certainly can wake your mother. It would be pretty easy. But we shouldn't. We have important work to do. Where is the music book?"

Megan dug around for a bit through her things to remember which hiding place she had it in, finally pulling out the book. "Right here, but I don't see how this is going to help. I can't go... I shouldn't go singing at this hour."

"Who said anything about singing? Well, except Aerosmith, Sesame Street, Bob Seger... the list goes on and on, but no matter what you've heard, you shouldn't be listening to Steven Tyler, except when you should. But not in this case."

Megan sighed. "Okay, okay, so not singing. Then what are we doing with the music book?"

Ashling smiled, wide-eyed, turning pages until she found one of the songs Megan had struggled with. "We're making music. Or rather, we're unmaking some music, so we can make others. Then, at some point, you can sing. But not right now."

Megan stared at the notes to the song, eyes homing in on the F-Sharps in particular. "Will that actually work?"

"I don't know. I've never unmade music before. Okay, okay, so there was one time, but I was drunk, and that tavern song was dangerously non-offensive. But no one remembers that song now, so it's okay. But I've never unmade music and expected it to work for a bard the new way. Nothing to do but give it a shot, though. Good thing you've got a lot of blank paper for recopying on.”

While Ashling spoke, Megan was flipping through the music book. “Ooh! The storm-calling song hasn't got any F#s in it.”

“That's good. The one you tried to use to save all our lives recently does, so break out the pen collection.”

Megan worked with Ashling until she was too exhausted to keep her eyes open, worry or not. Between them, they retooled the counter-magic song, replacing parts of the melody that contained F#s with elements of other songs Ashling knew with similar effects. They planned tests to see if the songs would remain consistent without the original notes as written. Regardless, they weren't able to test the new composition while needing to be silent.

While it had felt like a lot at the time, when she woke up and double checked the music books and her extra paper, Megan found rather less progress, and a lot more doodling in the margins, than she'd remembered. Still, it was something.

Megan had breakfast with her mother, a much less ambitious effort than the day before, with her mother apologizing and citing a headache. Megan assured her that cereal was still perfectly good for breakfast most days and concernedly but chipperly recommended seeing a doctor if the headache went on.

She quietly hoped a reasonable doctor might take her mother off the extreme dosage of the green pills, if her moods had been steadily improving. When they were done with breakfast, including discussion of the concert, Sheila excused herself to get some work done, and Megan headed for the back yard to test the changes.

Ashling practiced moving small objects around, while Megan sang from the new songsheet to see if she could counteract the magic. There was no effect. Megan tried improvising. When this failed, Ashling tried a few suggestions as well. Whether she was basing them on long experience with bards and knowledge of the theories behind magic, or just trying to make Megan test her range with odd notes, sounds, and scales, Megan wasn't sure.

After what felt like a hundred failures, even if it was probably far fewer, Megan finally sat down to catch her breath, while trying to figure out what she was missing.

"Hey, don't look so depressed. We'll get it." Ashling offered, moving up to pat Megan's knee comfortingly.

"We will, but we're kind of in a hurry, and it would be good to maybe be able to do something more helpful."

"You were a lot of help. Think of all the things you did in those fights."

"Sure, but it took forever. Someone could have gotten a lot more hurt while I figured out the right song. And maybe I could have done something about that illusion."

"Maybe, maybe not. But remember what I said about trying too hard and faerie magic? If you keep trying to fret over every detail, the magic won't want to work with you. So, let's try this again. Breathe in, breathe out. Repeat as necessary."

Megan took a few deep breaths, reviewing the original song in her head. Every time she approached the troublesome notes, though, she lost the thread of thought, as if she couldn't even conceive of the sound of an F-sharp, much less sing it. "So, shouldn't it have gone really easily when I was all sleep-depped last night?

"Don't worry, you'll get it. But you need to relax and quit frowning so hard. My Cousin Nessa always had this technique for dark moods, see, she'd—"

Megan jumped up. "That's it!"

Now it was Ashling's turn to look confused. "Yes, it's really helpful, but first, I haven't even said it yet, and second, where are we going to get a horse-drawn carriage and a repeating crossbow?"

Megan blinked, mind going straight to thoughts of medieval drive-bys, before she got it back on track. "No, dark. Like, you know those songs we listened to on the internet, where they take a song, and change the key, and they sound all mournful and creepy, but awesome?"

Ashling nodded. "Not very danceable most of the time, though."

"Sure, but Faerie things do it all the time."

"Dance? Yeah, those are really popular."

"No, I mean that, say, when a guy is wearing a red cap, he could well be a healthy, normal American boy, even if it is '49ers gear. But if it's actually a magical cap dyed with blood, it takes on a
much darker tone
. Can we do that? Not the blood, the darker parallels. Like, keep the whole song, but put it in a completely different key to get rid of the sharps. Can you help?"

"Can I help drag a millennia-old, rousing Celtic ballad into the internet age and make the part where the prince rescues his true love sound like he's a creepy stalker? You bet!"

Chapter 24: Returning

Space Ship!
was back in the driveway at lunchtime. Megan came out with a few pieces of paper in her back pocket. Ashling and the Count entered through one of the back passenger windows, while Megan said goodbye to her mother.

“Where are we eating?” Megan asked.

“At the Market, I hope,” Lani said.

“Dad said he wanted us away for a bit,” Megan said.

“He got his bit,” Lani insisted. “Now I've got a hunch.”

“Definitely not going to bet against your hunches. You okay with this, Justin?”

“Okay is a very complex term. I trust Lani, certainly.”

They arrived at the Fremont Solstice Fair just in time for the dog parade. Lani wanted to get food, but agreed to pause on the side street while the various dogs, costumed and not, were led, or led their owners, through the streets. Megan, meanwhile, did her best to explain some of the costumes to Justin, who seemed more interested in these than he had the various body-painted people the day before. At least until she was reduced to an unintelligible squee as the dachshunds passed, two dressed in traditional Germanic festival dress, and the third, missing its back legs, with its mobility-assistance wheels and body partly encased in a little rolling beer keg.

Ashling and the Count conducted a few flyarounds, scouting out the sprawling fairgrounds, then eventually settled atop one of the canopy tents, once the teenagers picked out food after the parade. Cassia found them as they were finishing their lunch, the satyress joining them on the grass.

"Everyone okay?" Lani asked.

Cassia shook her head. "All of the band made it back safely. I'm giving all of them some space, since things back in Faerie are a mess. People found one more of the wight barrows, but the inhabitant was gone."

"And they haven't gotten the Huntsman and his hounds out after him?" Justin asked.

"Or a bunch of pixies, or, I guess, sprites might even be useful," Ashling added.

"That's just it," Cassia said, "They've done those things. Both courts have people looking. It's like the Butterfly Collector either doesn't exist, or we don't have enough information on him to give them a place to start, and the wights, well, something is protecting them."

Megan glanced at Lani, who was currently managing to look more irritated at the situation than she looked smug at being right about the level of preparation involved. "What could do that?" Megan asked.

"We saw some pretty powerful wards back on one of the wight barrows," Lani said, "The Fomoire had magic to rival the fae, and sometimes even the Gods. Maybe they're hiding out in one of the other burial mounds that wasn't on our map?"

Cassia nodded. "We have people in Ireland searching. Unfortunately, there's a lot of tombs out there. But we'll find them."

Megan said "We? But you're here. Looking after your girlfriend and the band and everything?"

Cassia shook her head. "Ric let me evacuate them, but asked me to do some scouting here, instead of joining the hunting parties in Faerie or Ireland."

"Scouting?" Justin asked, "What are they looking for here?"

"The Butterfly Collector had to have come from this side. He certainly didn't go through An Teach Deiridh. This is my stomping grounds, so Ric asked me to collect Ashling, and see if we can find any sign of him on this side. Knowing who he is might help. Or give the Huntsman a name."

"Just knowing his real name would help that much?" Megan asked.

"The Huntsman's magic is powerful, powerful stuff,” Cassia said. “Ric doesn't think he had possession of the map for long enough, didn't use it enough, for it to count as his, or I'd be borrowing that. But yeah, a real name, and those hounds might be able to get past whatever protection he has hiding him."

"What about a receipt?" Megan asked.

"What are you talking about?" Justin said.

Megan glanced at Lani, who brightened, catching on to the idea quickly. "She's right," Lani said, "We don't know who he is, but we know where he's been shopping."

"We have to get back to the Goblin Market and find out where he bought the map." Megan said, getting up, with the others right after her.

"Are you sure that they can release that kind of information?" Lani said. "I mean, it seems like those kinds of shopping records are usually private, right?"

Justin said "They're still faeries. We have to convince them that it's in their best interests to tell us."

Ashling shook her head, letting Megan put the butterfly on her shoulder, while the Count took off and circled above. "That's not how it works. They have rules, but..."

"But," Megan said, "Even if they won't tell us just because, we can still get the information from them. The rule is that everything is for sale at the Goblin Market, right?"

"If you can pay for it," Ashling said, "Now you're catching on. I'm so proud of you."

They hurried to the stage as best they could through the people, moving around to the back to collect their passes. There, they found Finn sitting on the ground, laying back against the stage, eyes shut, snoring. One hand rested atop a red toy Volkswagen.