The Wild Ways (14 page)
“I think you should take us flying.”
Jennifer, who was part of Aunt Judith’s clutch, was eleven and closest to him in age although Wendy, who was Uncle Randy’s, was only a few weeks younger. Even after a year, it still kind of weirded him out that Gale fathers were so . . . alive. Female dragons ate their mates.
“Jack!” Jennifer poked him in the chest with an imperious finger. “Did you hear me? I think you should take us flying!”
He caught her hand, careful not to hurt her. “Why?”
“Because you aren’t seven years older than us.” Tugging free of his grip, she folded her arms. Her expression dared him to argue. “We totally can ride you. I saw the movie.”
“You can carry both of us because you’re so big,” Wendy added. “Auntie Gwen says you’re big enough to come with bar service.”
“What?”
Wendy shrugged. “I don’t know either, but that’s what she said.”
“We should go now.” Jennifer grabbed his hand and pulled him away along the path. “We should go while Mom is busy with Richard.”
Richard was only just hatched, smelled bad a lot of the time, and screamed when he wanted feeding, but Aunt Judith didn’t seem to mind.
“How fast can you get into the air?” Wendy asked as they crested the hill.
“Why?”
The girls leaned out to exchange a look across his body that made him think of Allie and Charlie.
“You should do it fast,” Jennifer told him. “Hit the air as soon as we get on. Oh, and change now. Right now.”
They’d all seen him change. Allie hadn’t wanted anyone relocating to Calgary who had a problem with him, although Jack had assured her he could deal with them. Turned out dealing with them topped the list of things that weren’t allowed.
The moment between skin and scales burned. Sometimes, Jack wanted to get lost in the fire. Just let it burn and not worry about who he was or what he was supposed to be doing or what world he was supposed to be doing it on. He’d bet lower dragons did it, just woke up one morning, decided they’d had it with never knowing the answers, and burned away. But he was the Prince. And, right now, he was a Gale.
He shrugged, settling into scales, shifting a wing at the last moment so as not to knock down a small tree.
For all they wanted into the air right away, the girls wasted a moment admiring him . . .
“Oh, my God, so totally gorgeous.”
“He gleams like real gold in the sun, doesn’t he? He just gleams.”
“He’s definitely prettier than Connie Anderson’s stupid pony.”
. . . before they ducked under his wings, scrambled up his tail, and climbed until they sat together on his shoulders; Jennifer out in front, arms as far around his neck as they could reach, Wendy behind her.
“Go, go, go!”
So he went. Balancing with his tail, he rose up onto his hind legs, slammed his wings down, and grabbed sky, moving as fast as he could. He could hear them shrieking with laughter, but he tucked his legs up against his belly and concentrated on gaining altitude. At his size, he felt a lot better when he had a bit of distance between him and the ground. Leveling out at about two hundred feet, wings sculling to maintain lift, he suddenly realized he couldn’t feel Jennifer’s arms. Or the insignificant weight of their bodies. Or the drumming of their heels.
When he looked down, their pinwheeling forms had almost run out of sky.
He couldn’t reach them in time.
There was only one thing he could do.
Standing on a riser built to look a bit like an overturned dory, Bo played “The Duke of Gordon’s Birthday” as a line of step dancers formed a wall of nimble feet and nearly motionless upper bodies along the front of the festival stage. Festival rules required one traditional dance tune per set and, at just over three and a half minutes, this was the longest strathspey any of the bands had played yet. Mark and Tim had bodhran and accordion out in support, but this was all Bo.
He was good. More than just technically good, although he was that, too. Bow flying over the strings, he made an emotional connection with everyone listening—not just the dancers who smiled and moved as though it was the music lifting their feet off the floor. It was as close to magic as most of the world ever saw.
Charlie’s fingers itched to take it that single step further, but she wove them together, rested them on the shoulder of her guitar, and distracted herself by watching the crowd.
She appreciated the chance. Bar lighting made it impossible to see much of anything, but outside, on a midsummer afternoon, the audience—on blankets or lawn chairs or sprawled on the bare ground—was as well lit as the bands on the stage. A number of people were up and dancing and a spirited, if spatially challenged, square dance dominated the far right. A pack of kids too old to be easily contained and young enough not to be cynical about traditional music ran around and occasionally through the more sedate groups, grandmothers reaching out to swat at them as they passed. A lot of the heads were gray and as many of them were moving to the music as not.
The other fiddlers, and there were dozens seeded through the crowd, not even counting the ten from the other bands, all stared at the stage with expressions of fierce possessiveness, claiming the music Bo pulled from his fiddle as their own. Later, they’d pick it apart like a group of aunties over a chicken carcass, but while he played, they were one.
In the open space between two spread blankets, a girl no more than three danced in place, chestnut curls bouncing, one hand clutching a fistful of her tartan shorts, the other swinging a stuffed animal over her head. It was so exactly the sort of heartwarming scene the local news loved to show that Charlie checked for the camera, half convinced it had been staged.
Apparently not.
Behind the girl, a patch of stillness drew Charlie’s attention. The woman, tall, with a rippling fall of long dark hair stared at the stage with eyes so black Charlie’s heart said “auntie” even as her brain said, “too young” and “not here.” Charlie had never seen anyone listen with such intent. Her generous mouth was curved up into a smile that made Charlie think the word beatific although it had never been part of her vocabulary before and she’d shifted her weight forward onto the balls of her feet as though the music was physically pulling her in.
She was different. No, she was
more
.
more
.
When Bo finished, drawing out the last few bars with a not exactly traditional flourish, Charlie lost sight of her in the swirl of dancers leaving the stage. Before she could find her again, Mark called them into place for the next song.
“When I’m right, I’m right; you sounded good, Chuck, it’s hard to believe you’ve been away from real music for so long. And hey, nice fake on the last verse of “Highland Heart”; you forget the words?”
No. The old imperfect rhyme had finally gotten to her.
“Just a little bit,” Charlie lied to Mark’s ass, as he bent to shove his cymbal stands in under two hockey bags. “Think anyone noticed?”
“Besides me? Not likely. Lyrics are pretty flexible even with the shit this lot’s heard a hundred times. I’ll put money on them noticing every extra wiggle Bo tossed in, though.”
“We get points for extra wiggles?”
“Who the hell knows?”
Bands registered for the Samhradh Ceol Feill collected points every time they played. The more often a band played, the more chance for points, but that was the only straightforward part of the exercise as far as Charlie could tell. Still, Mark had managed to get
Grinneal
signed up for nearly the entire circuit, so they had a good chance of taking first prize and scoring the studio time with the MacMaster’s recording engineer. The ten song EP they were already selling wasn’t bad, but even Mark admitted it could use a professional polish.
Grinneal
signed up for nearly the entire circuit, so they had a good chance of taking first prize and scoring the studio time with the MacMaster’s recording engineer. The ten song EP they were already selling wasn’t bad, but even Mark admitted it could use a professional polish.
“Chuck!”
“Right, sorry.” She handed over her gig bag. The party’d be going on for a while, but, given the number of guitars around, she’d decided to stick with the mandolin—easier to carry and more chances to play. She could stuff everything else she needed in the pockets of her cargo pants.
Mark shifted his snare and slid the bag in on top of Tim’s keyboard. “Bo’s good, and fiddles rule the trad stuff, so I’m not ruling out points for extra wiggles. You know,” he added, somehow backing out without losing the coverage of his kilt, “this might be the last part of the country where I’d feel safe leaving the instruments locked in the van.” He straightened, turned, and dragged his hair back off his face. “I mean, this shit is our livelihood and if some asshat walks off with it, we’re screwed, but this is me walking away and feeling good about it.” Grinning, he slammed the door and tucked his thumbs under the strap of his bodhran case.
“You’re not walking away,” Charlie said after a moment.
“What?”
“You’re not walking away,” she repeated. “You’re standing by the van.”
“Yes, I am. Because I’m completely full of shit and I don’t want to leave this stuff unguarded. Maritimers as a whole might be their mamas’ darlings, but give it another hour. Once it’s fully dark and the kiddies have been packed off to bed, half that lot hanging around will be pissed and the other half well on the way. I don’t trust drunks.”
“Every vehicle parked back here behind the stage has instruments in it. There’s a one in seventeen chance the drunks will find ours. Less because we’re buried safely in the middle of the lot.”
“Less than one chance in seventeen?” His eyes narrowed. “You’re blowing smoke out your ass, aren’t you?”
“The numbers don’t lie, Mark.”
“Okay.” He patted the bumper as he moved away. “I can work with those odds.”
“I thought you could.” About to fall into step beside him, Charlie heard a sound that stopped her cold. It ran under the music and laughter and gulls and screaming children the way the ocean did, cadence rising and falling with the crash of the waves against the shore as the tide came in.
“Hey! Chuck?” When she looked up, Mark was already at the edge of the field given over to parking. “You coming?”
“In a minute.” The sound pulled at her. It was important, whatever it was. “I’m going to go down to the shore for a minute. Clear my head.”
“I’ll join the party without you, then. If I leave Tim on his own for too long, he makes friends with everyone under five, forgets what an asshole I am, and starts thinking about starting a family.” With a jaunty wave and a flick of the kilt Charlie could have done without, Mark jogged around the stage and disappeared into the crowd.
Charlie spent a moment sifting through the ambient noise, then she followed the pull of sound out past the last car, across the road leading to the jetty, and stopped when she saw two women standing by the water’s edge, so similar in appearance they had to be related. Tall and slender, with dark hair and dark eyes, they stood at the place where land met sea, looking more real in the dusk than they could possibly be in full sunlight. Water swirled around their feet and up over their ankles, but they didn’t seem to care. One of the women clutched the other, clutched the woman Charlie had seen listening so intently to Bo’s playing, and it was obvious, even from a distance, the first woman was on the edge of hysteria.
“. . . stolen . . .”
The rest of her lament blew away on the wind.
The Gale family did not involve themselves in anything that didn’t involve the family first, but the whole point of being a Wild Power was being, well, wild. Unpredictable even.
Charlie stepped forward.
Her phone rang.
FOUR
C
HARLIE COUNTED TO TEN, not for the first time since arriving back in Calgary, and finally managed to slip into a break in the flow of overlapping words. “But both girls are okay?”
HARLIE COUNTED TO TEN, not for the first time since arriving back in Calgary, and finally managed to slip into a break in the flow of overlapping words. “But both girls are okay?”
“It wasn’t easy gathering and then separating all the butterflies so Jack could change them back.” Allie rubbed her face with both hands. “Wendy keeps trying to land on flowers, but, bottom line, they’re fine.”
“The point isn’t that they’re
okay
, Charlotte.” Auntie Bea emphasized her point with the rolling pin, smacking it down on the table beside the ball of pastry dough. “The point is that he used sorcery to keep them from hitting the ground.”
okay
, Charlotte.” Auntie Bea emphasized her point with the rolling pin, smacking it down on the table beside the ball of pastry dough. “The point is that he used sorcery to keep them from hitting the ground.”
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