Wolf Notes and Other Musical Mishaps (13 page)

Helen tugged off her filthy boots and looked at the clock. It was nearly 5 am.

Everyone else in the lodge must have been asleep for hours. She shrugged. They’d had enough sleep already.

So she hauled out her fiddle and started to play Professor Greenhill’s masterpiece.

She played wildly, fumbling notes with her numb pinkie. At first she put all her dark forest terrors into the music, then she noticed lighter tones sneak in and recognised the guilty excitement she felt at the idea of performing for the Faery Queen and her court.

Suddenly, she thought of her little sister. If she performed for the Queen, James would play with Emma this weekend, but Helen might never see Nicola again.

She stood at the window, playing more slowly.

She saw a curtain twitch over in the old lodge. Was that the Professor’s window? The curtains opened and Fay Greenhill looked out. She was brushing her silver hair, winding it up into that messy bun. She waved at Helen. Helen played faster again, more cheerfully now. It was always easier with an audience.

Helen played herself calm and lay down on her bed at last. The gaps in her morning timetable meant she could sleep for a few hours.

However, when she woke up, long after
breakfast-time,
she didn’t feel rested at all.

She could hear pipes and flutes from the barn. She checked the clock. 10 am. Time for a slice of toast before her late morning lesson with the Professor.

She had hoped to find someone in the kitchen after her shower, because a chat about music would have been better than thinking about her failures and her fate.

Zoe was not the person she had been hoping for.

The older violinist was gazing into a steaming mug of coffee and didn’t even notice Helen
making
sandwiches as well as toast. After five minutes of silence, Zoe blurted out, “Have you heard about the solo yet?”

“No,” answered Helen, tapping her left pinkie against the table to see if it was still numb.

“I can’t stand not knowing. How can you be so calm about it? Are you too young and stupid to understand how important it is?”

Helen winced as her pinkie throbbed. “I do know how important this midsummer music is, but I have other things to worry about.”

She picked up the sandwiches, taking them to her room before going to the old lodge for her last lesson with the Professor. She tried to feel
enthusiastic
as she walked past the piles of leaflets in the untidy corridor.

She knocked and the Professor’s cheerful voice
summoned her into the study. “My early morning muse! You played beautifully this morning. What a lovely way to be woken up. But my dear, you look a little worried.

“Come and play me the music that inspires you. Come and lose yourself in the music.”

That sounded like a very good idea. Helen played the tune she and her friend Rona had written last year. She couldn’t help smiling as her music filled the study, remembering the successful quests it described.

Losing herself in music did work. Perhaps that was how she needed to look at her decision to play for the Faery Queen. She would spend the rest of her life lost in music.

She put the bow and violin down gently and shook her hands out.

The Professor smiled at Helen through her
waving
silver hair and adjusted her bright scarf. “I’m sorry I’ve kept you all waiting for my decision about the solo. I hope it hasn’t distracted you from your other concerns?”

Helen shook her head politely, if not entirely honestly.

“Well, my dear, you’re the most promising young fiddler I’ve heard in years, so I’ve no hesitation in offering you the violin solo tomorrow night. But …” the Professor’s voice cut sharper than usual, “… but there is a condition.”

Helen, who had made a mess of too many bargains over the last few days, raised her
eyebrows
in surprise.

“You’re a night owl and an early bird. I keep an
eye on my students and I’ve seen you wandering about. This gives us an opportunity.

“Performing in the middle of the night is a very different skill from performing during the day, or in the evening. Bringing the night alive. Making the blackness breathe. Using the power of the dark to make the music stronger. Those are the skills I need from you at midsummer.

“So I will give you the soloist’s spot, but only if you will have a midnight lesson with me tonight.”

Helen frowned.

“Stay here with me tonight. Play for me at midnight, play for me until the sun rises. Then you will be my soloist for this concert and, I’m sure, for many others.

“If you do not give me that commitment,” she flicked her hair over her shoulder, “then I will give the solo to someone else.”

Helen patted the pocket of her clean jeans. She wished she was still wearing her manky jeans, with the fragment of the Fairy Flag in her pocket. She wished she still had the power to see through glamour.

Then she realized she didn’t need the thread to give her that power.

She could see clearly what she was being offered, without any magic at all.

Helen was being offered what she wanted most of all, but to get it she had to sacrifice her chance of finding a way to save both James and herself.

She looked closely at the Professor. Who was she? What was she?

That didn’t really matter. What mattered was
what she was trying to do. The Professor was trying to keep Helen here all night, rather than in the forest with her friends, for the same reason that the Faery Queen had sent her to Skye. So she couldn’t search for an alternative to playing tomorrow night.

Helen smiled. The Professor looked relieved.

But Helen had smiled because now she had hope. If queens and professors were trying to stop her finding an answer, that must mean there was an answer out there.

She smiled wider and opened her lips to say “no.” Her voice caught in her throat. It was was hard, really hard, to turn down a solo spot that she wanted so much.

The Professor was staring at her. “Come on, Helen. Is the decision so difficult to make?”

“No, it’s not difficult. Thanks for the offer … but I can’t accept it.”

The Professor frowned. “I hope you don’t regret that decision.”

Helen packed away her fiddle and bow, then opened the door. “I won’t regret it. Thanks for all I’ve learnt, Professor.”

She left the study, went back to bed and slept a calm restful sleep, at last sure of what she needed to do that night.

She woke up just in time for the school’s first rehearsal with the soloists. In the barn, with the stuffed animals set up in a row like an audience, Professor Greenhill ignored Helen and fussed over her soloists. Stewart on cello, Catriona on pipes, Juliet’s friend Amelia on flute, Tommy on bodhran
drum and, of course, Zoe on fiddle, fizzing with excitement.

Helen stood at the back of the violin section trying to ignore the wolf staring at her with glassy eyes. After a good afternoon’s sleep, she was
wondering
if she’d overreacted this morning. Surely Professor Greenhill wasn’t conspiring with the Faery Queen? She was a well-known academic. Surely the offer of a night-time lesson had been a genuine attempt to help Helen adapt to different ways of playing.

What a daft thing to do … throwing away the chance of a solo!

Helen gritted her teeth as she watched Zoe put rosin on her bow with a flourish and pride that should have been Helen’s.

Then she saw the Professor’s narrow pink heels teeter about the dust and rubble of the barn, never picking up any dirt, and reminded herself that she would have the rest of her life to play solos, but only if she found a way round the Faery Queen’s demands tonight. The Professor’s solo and Helen’s desire to play it were distractions, just like the quest for the flag.

That evening, for the first time, the Professor conducted the whole orchestra. When Zoe began the violin solo, the Professor stood high on her pointy toes, peering into the back of the barn, to look straight at Helen. Her tight smile was not pleasant at all.

Helen was scribbling:
In a bad mood. Leave me alone
,
by her name on the clipboard, when Alice came down the stairs and glanced at the form.

“Are you upset about the solo? Going for another early night?”

Helen grunted.

“Don’t worry. No one will come hunting for you. Every player understands disappointment.”

Helen grinned as Alice turned away, then stomped loudly up the stairs, tiptoed back down and crept out of the side door.

She rushed breathless into the clearing ten
minutes
later, gasping, “The Faery Queen isn’t
hijacking
the summer school!”

Helen glanced round, looking for Lavender. She was awake, perched on Yann’s shoulder, her
bandage
still pristine white. Helen reached out for the fairy and Yann passed her down.

Helen explained as she unwound Lavender’s bandage. “The Professor has been organizing this concert
for
the midsummer revels!”

Sylvie, who was sitting on the lowest branch of the beech tree, dressed in her grey fleece again, with no bandage on her arm, said sarcastically. “Obviously! Didn’t you realize that? Why else would the best young musicians in Scotland be here, now, playing that magical music?”

Helen frowned up at Sylvie. “When did you work that out? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Yann laughed. “We worked it out about five minutes ago. Your Professor is either enchanted or in league with the Faery Queen.”

Helen nodded. “The Professor tried to keep me there this evening with the promise of a solo part … but I turned it down. Can you flap your wing, Lavender?”

“You turned down a faery bargain that would have fed your ambition?” asked Lavender. “Good for you.” She winced as she stretched her wing.

“So I realized that if everyone is trying to stop us doing something this evening, there must be something we can do.”

“No,” said Sylvie. “This has gone on long enough. This is no longer a quest, nor an adventure. This is now a war. I will not let you go over to the enemy, human child, because you have healed me, and I don’t want to fight you. So I cannot let you play for her tomorrow.”

“That’s okay. I’m not going to play for her tomorrow. I’m going to find someone else to play.”

“No! If you find some other living breathing musicians for her, then she’ll still have her party and she’ll still be invading my forest. All you
musicians
must leave Dorry Shee before midsummer night, then her party will flop and she’ll leave.”

“But then she’ll take James with her!” Helen yelled in frustration. She passed the fairy back up to Yann, so Lavender could exercise her wing
without
being shouted over.

Sylvie shook her head. “You’ve done well to keep the boy human for such a long time, but he was lost the moment they laid hands on him. He may have forgotten his family by now.”

“He remembers jam sandwiches. And his family haven’t forgotten him.”

“You cannot save him, because I will not let these revels go ahead.”

“You? On your own?”

“No. Me, my brothers, my pack…”

“Sylvie, this boy is someone’s brother too.” Helen tried to speak more calmly. “I promise if you will help me tonight, then once James is free, I’ll help you drive the faeries from the forest.”

Sylvie looked down her long nose at Helen. “What use is that promise? What use is your help? Everything you have touched so far has failed.”

“So you don’t need to worry about me
succeeding
tonight then, do you?” Helen’s voice rose. “If everything I do fails, then I might fail tonight too. But I’m not going to give up until I’ve tried. Will you help me?”

Sylvie jumped to the ground, landing softly on all fours. “I will listen … then decide.”

Yann said, “We will all help. First, tell us exactly what the Faery Queen said to you last night. I would rather hear it from you than from him,” he gestured at Lee, standing at the edge of the clearing.

So Helen, Lee, Yann and Lavender crowded round the fire, Sapphire shuffled to sit nearby
without
squashing anyone, and Sylvie sat sceptically further away. Helen wound the bandage gently round Lavender’s wing again, and explained, “The Faery Queen wants a living breathing musician. It doesn’t have to be me. I can betray someone else to her and still get the boy; she would be amused by that. But I won’t buy the boy’s safety at the cost of anyone else’s. Except mine, of course.”

“And we will not let you do that,” Yann insisted. “There must be an alternative.”

“I had planned to give her a recording and even the equipment to play it on, but the words ‘living breathing’ cancel out all the alternatives I had
come up with. She will accept nothing but a real live musician.”

“Does it have to be human?”

“You mean like a selkie singing? I couldn’t do that to another fabled beast. They would be trapped with that awful woman forever.”

Yann scraped his hoof at the edge of the fire. “So you will only give her another musician if you can be sure you’re not putting that musician in danger?”

“Yes, so we’re looking for a musician talented enough to play for them and strong enough to walk out of their mound; someone used to the ways of faeries.

“You keep calling me your bard, which I’m not. I’m just a fiddler. But there have been real bards, haven’t there? Have any bards played for the faeries and escaped from them before? If we can find
someone
like that, we’ve found our alternative.”

Lavender nodded enthusiastically, much happier now her wing was supported again. “Do you have someone in mind?”

Helen shook her head. “I don’t know any bards. I thought you might.”

So Yann, Lavender and Lee started to name drop.

“Orpheus?”

“No, he’d just put us all to sleep.”

“Pan?”

“Not another stinky faun!”

“Thomas the Rhymer?”

“No, he went back to the faeries in the end. He might even be there tomorrow.”

“The Viking skald, Nornagest?”