Fairy Metal Thunder (Songs of Magic, #1) (7 page)

“Okay. I will.”

“And why should I believe anything you say?”
his dad asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re still grounded, and you said you’re
not going to prom, so I’m running out of ways to punish you. And,
at your age, it shouldn’t be about punishment. You should be more
mature. You should know to be honest, responsible and considerate
of others. Especially your little sister, who you left all
alone.”

Jason didn’t know what to say. His dad’s
disappointment filled the room like a thick, cold cloud.

“I’ll do better, Dad,” he finally said.

“I hope you do. Until you show me a little
responsibility, I’ll just think of you as somebody who can’t be
trusted at all.” His dad started reading the paper again.

Jason trudged up the stairs to his room,
feeling worse than he had in years. His parents hated him, and
there would be no more band practice. No more afternoons and
weekends with Erin.

He collapsed on his bed, put on his
headphones, played the Lead Belly collection on his iPod, and
closed his eyes.

Aoide slept in her woven-grass hammock, with
the doors of her rear balcony open to catch the cool breeze through
the trees. She was completely relaxed, her translucent purple wings
stretched out to either side of her. When the fist pounded on her
front door, she startled awake.

She fluttered her wings and hopped out of the
hammock, landing gently on her bare feet. The fist pounded on the
door again.

“I’m coming!” she yelled. She yanked on a
vine hanging from her ceiling, and the hammock folded up and pulled
away into a knothole overhead.

Aoide opened the small porthole in her
circular front door and looked out through the smoked-glass window.
She could see out, but no one could see inside.

Her apartment was on the south trunk of a
huge old sugar maple tree, the third door up. Like most fairy
homes, she had a landing porch outside her front door. From there,
a woven spider-silk bridge connected to the trunk’s main walkpath.
The walkpath itself alternated between more of the spider-silk rope
bridges, little stairwells molded inside the trunk itself, and
limbs trained to grow at just the right distance to serve as
stairs.

Now, Aoide’s view of the hustling, bustling
walkpath was blocked by cold-eyed male fairies in black armor, with
the Queen’s Seal on their breastplates.

Aoide held her breath. This could be good
news. She’d reported their instruments stolen, and maybe the
Queensguard had found them. It didn’t feel like good news, though.
They weren’t carrying any musical instruments, either, just the
iron swords in the ornate scabbards at their hips.

Aoide lifted the smoked-glass window.

“Happy morning!” Aoide said. “I must have
eaten a luck-clover, to have three such lovely and handsome boys on
my landing porch today.”

“You are Aoide the Lutist?” asked the
Queensguard fairy who stood closest to her door, in front of the
other two. He had long hair the color of polished gold and
glittering sapphire eyes.

“I am she,” Aoide said. “I certainly hope
this is about the stolen instruments. Did you find anything?”

“Her Majesty the Queen sends you this.” He
held up a black rose in full bloom.

Aoide’s fingers covered her lips, but she
tried not to gasp or look too frightened in front of them. A black
rose could mean good fortune or ill.

He held the rose close to her face, as if
expecting her to accept it on the spot.

“Oh, I cannot possibly go to court looking
like this!” Aoide said. “I’m still in my sleeping-dress. And my
hair!” She put a hand to the tangled violet-streak mess of her hair
and backed away. “I’ll be right back! Promise!”

Aoide stepped back into her sleeping room and
drew the brightly painted dressing-screen across the doorway. She
cranked her music box to play a song while she got ready, and then
opened her rosewood clothes trunk and looked for a suitable dress.
Then she noticed her sleepy, unkempt self in the round mirror on
the wall. There wasn’t time to fly over to the bath garden, but she
needed to wash up.

She stepped out onto her back balcony to
collect fresh water from her baby blue dew-pitcher flowers, and
then gasped when she realized someone had landed there. One of the
Queensguard fairies stood on her balcony railing with his arms
crossed, quietly watching her. He’d flown over to the back of her
apartment, as if they expected her to flee.

“Happy morning, good sir!” Aoide said. She
tilted one of the water-filled, pitcher-shaped flowers forward to
rinse her face, then brushed the water back through her hair. “Mind
looking away while I dress?”

“My order is to watch this door,” he
said.

“This door, and not me, then?”

“Yes.”

“Good!” Aoide slammed the pink shutters and
slid the peg-lock into place.

She changed into her best dress, made of
specially pressed and preserved violet petals. She stained her lips
with a little elderberry juice, then raked her seashell comb
through her hair until it looked sort of presentable. Then she
pulled on her matching violet-petal slippers, since the Queen,
joyless stickler that she was, insisted people wear shoes in her
presence.

She stepped out into the front porch and
smiled at the Queensguard fairy who’d first spoken to her. “I
suppose I’m ready as I will be,” she told him.

He held out the black rose toward her. Aoide
steeled herself, then touched her finger to the bloom.

There was a smell like burning pitch, and
then she and the Queensguard fairy stood in a small, hexagon-shaped
side chamber of the Queen’s court. The floor tiles were hexagonal,
too. The tiles just below Aoide’s feet depicted a large black
rose.

Porting in through one of the black rose
chambers was the only way into the palace. Most visitors ported in
from the guardhouse at the outer wall, located where the front gate
had been before the Queen ordered it sealed. Between the outer wall
and the inner complex of palace buildings lay a vast labyrinth of
deadly traps and foul monsters, which no one intruder could hope to
survive.

“This way.” The Queensguard fairy stepped out
through an angular, arched doorway.

Aoide tried not to shiver as she followed
him. She was terrified, but she didn’t want anyone to see it.

They emerged into a great golden space that
looked like an enormous cavern built of six-sided golden tiles,
from floor to glittering roof. A thick swarm of fireflies radiated
gold and purple overhead, where they lived on the pollen of
flowering vines growing down from the ceiling.

Fairies came and went everywhere, dressed in
their finest. Aoide and the Queensguard fairy walked up a long,
wide carpet made of sewn-together rose petals, past groups of
courtiers, ambassadors, merchants, costumed musicians and dancers,
and more Queensguard men in their black armor. Tapestries depicted
the Queen’s past war victories, and the vast room was decorated
with statuary and artwork from all over the realm.

Far ahead of them, at the end of the carpet,
the queen’s golden throne overlooked the room, atop staircases and
terraces. From here, Aoide could see the glitter of her crown, and
the theatrically huge skirts of her black and gold dress draped
down over the terraced stairways beneath her.

Aoide was being led directly toward the
Queen.

As they drew closer, Aoide could see the
Queen better, her mountainous braids of midnight-black hair—which
had to be a wig—sprawling over her dress like great pythons. The
Queen surveyed her court with stern golden eyes and a beautiful,
youthful face. Her eyes and lips were painted with black makeup,
and a golden rune was painted on her cheek.

Aoide curtsied low before the Queen, nearly
sitting on the floor before she rose up again.

“What have you brought me, Icarus?” the
Queen’s voice echoed down the terraces from her throne.

“This is the musician called Aoide the
Lutist,” the Queensguard fairy replied.

The Queen’s head turned toward a
silver-haired, bearded elf in a dark blue cowl, who occupied a
terrace below her. He wore a golden chain, on which hung a pendant
with a scarab trapped in amber.

“Conjurer,” she said, “Create the Shush
Bubble.”

The old elf used a staff to heave himself to
his feet. The staff was a crooked length of ironwood, topped with a
gleaming quartz crystal. He muttered in Old Elvish, a language
Aoide didn’t know. The quartz ball sparkled, and suddenly all the
voices, chatter and music in the room vanished.

Aoide turned around, half-expecting to find
that everyone had disappeared. The courtiers were all still there,
continuing their chatting and gossip, but it was as if an invisible
curtain blocked all sound.

“Aoide the Lutist,” the Queen said.

“Yes, Your Majesty?” Aoide replied.

“You reported to the Queensguard that four
objects of high magic, four musical instruments, had been stolen
from you. Yes?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Aoide kept her gaze low,
on the Queen’s yards and yards of skirts. Subjects weren’t supposed
to look the Queen in the eye.

“Our seer tells us these four instruments are
no longer within our realm,” the Queen said.

Aoide didn’t know what to say. “How is that
possible? I thought they must have been stolen by goblins, or
perhaps other musicians…”

“Their magic has departed from Faerie,” the
Queen said.

Now Aoide grew nervous. They hadn’t brought
her here to return the instruments, but to punish her.

“As you surely know,” the Queen continued,
“Allowing magic to pass out of Faerie—either on purpose, or by
negligence—violates the Supreme Law. This can be punished by
death.”

Aoide tried to look calm, but she was shaking
with panic. What would they do to her? She would have to beg for
mercy.

“My Queen,” Aoide said, falling to her hands
and knees. “I do not know how this could have happened. I have not
gone near the doors to the man-world.”

“Yet your instruments must have left through
such doors,” the Queen said.

“Your Majesty, I am sorry. I do not
understand—”

“Magic, leaking out into the man-world,” the
Queen said, glaring down at Aoide. “After we have kept ourselves
hidden so well, for so long. They have chased us from that world
with their iron. If they bring their iron here, to our world, then
where shall we hide?”

Aoide trembled, staring at the hexagon floor
tile below her. “I do not know, Your Majesty.”

“You and your musical troupe are in violation
of the Supreme Law,” the Queen said. “Rhodia the Harpist. The faun
called Neus, player of songpipes. The ogre Skezg, bearing in mind
that ogres have no legal rights under the Queen’s Law anyway. The
four of you must recover the stolen instruments from the
man-world.”

Aoide looked up, surprised. At least she
wasn’t being imprisoned, or put to death. “Yes, Your Majesty. We
will do all we can!”

“You will succeed,” the Queen said, “Or you
will suffer the full penalty. All four of you. Do you
understand?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“This will be done entirely at your expense,
naturally,” the Queen said. “I have assigned Icarus to watch over
you and make sure you resolve this matter quickly.”

Aoide looked at the sapphire-eyed fairy in
black armor, and he gave her a very small smile.

“I will do as Your Majesty desires,” Aoide
said. She tried not let her relief show.

“Then we are understood,” the Queen said. “Go
and do as I say.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

The old elf rapped the base of his staff on
the floor, and sound flooded in again from all over the room.

Icarus took Aoide’s arm to escort her away.
She walked along with him, but slowly slipped her elbow from his
grasp. He would lead her to one of the black-rose chambers, and
there they would teleport across the deadly labyrinth surrounding
the palace, to the guardhouse where the front gate had been before
the Queen walled it in.

Aoide managed to look calm on the outside,
but she was terrified. She had no idea what had happened, so she
had no idea where to begin. But she would recover what had been
stolen from her. Her life, and her friends’ lives, depended on
it.

Jason sat on the bleachers at school,
watching the seniors assemble on the football field in their rented
caps and gowns. He could see Mitch making practice tosses in the
air with his square blue cap. Dred sat near him, looking bored.

“Hi, Jason,” Erin’s voice said. She was on
the row of bleachers behind him, but she stepped down beside him to
talk.

“Hi.” Jason smiled at her.

“Are you here by yourself?” Erin asked,
looking at the empty space beside him.

“Yep.”

“Oh.” Erin sat down beside him. “So…I didn’t
see you at prom.”

“I didn’t go.”

“Yeah, it was pretty lame,” Erin said. “But
my girlfriends, you know, Kennedy and Parker, they were nuts about
it. So I had to do the whole dress thing, the whole make-up and
hair thing. Zach was nice, got us the limo and everything.”

“Did you have a good time?”

“It wasn’t what I expected it to be.” Erin
shrugged. “But that’s life, right?”

Jason nodded. If he had gone to prom with
Erin, he thought, he would make sure she had the best night of her
life.

Jason couldn’t say that, though, so he moved
to a subject that felt safer.

“Sorry I haven’t been at band practice,” he
said. “My parents are still mad at me for sneaking off for that
audition.”

“It’s okay,” Erin said. “The band’s breaking
up, anyway.”

“Really?” Jason hadn’t heard anything about
that.

“We kind of have to, don’t we?” Erin asked.
“Dred’s been saying she’ll move to the Cities after graduation. And
Mitch is going off to Stout for college, in a few months. So that’s
pretty much it.”