The Musician and the Monster Read online

  Oberon nudged Mendel. “Go see if there’s any food.”

  “There isn’t,” said Mendel forlornly. “The food they brought all has meat.” He looked at Ángel. “They won’t let me leave.” As he spoke, Mendel unselfconsciously reached out to stroke Oberon’s shoulder and neck. “And they’re afraid of me, so no one ever comes here. And since I did the NPR interview without their permission, they took my phone away. It’s very boring, and I’m hungry.”

  Ángel took a deep breath. He was going to have to get used to Mendel touching Oberon. He was going to have to explain appropriate boundaries.

  But first, he was going to have to take care of these fae.

  “Go away,” he said, gently, to Mendel. “Because I don’t want you here while I’m getting dressed. But then, if you like, I’ll call my friend and she’ll bring us some food. Do you want to meet my friend Marissa?”

  “Yes, please,” said Mendel.

  “I would like that too,” agreed Oberon.

  “You like vegetables?” Ángel remembered Oberon’s preferred diet. “Do you like noodles?”

  “Yes!” said Mendel. “What are noodles?”

  Ángel would always remember that afternoon like a sort of strange party. People kept arriving, and then stayed, and talked, and ate, and played music.

  First he called Marissa and told her what to bring, and then he had to call the DOR and tell them to let her in. They’d erected a security cordon around the building in response to the growing protests on the streets of Atlanta.

  “It’s crazy out there,” she said when she arrived, greeting Ángel with a cheek-kiss, her arms laden with shopping bags. “There are protests, and there are counter-protests. ‘We hate elves’ on one street corner, ‘We love elves’ on the opposite corner.” Then she saw the two envoys and shrank back, uncharacteristically timid.

  “This is my friend, Marissa Sommers,” said Ángel, grabbing her hand. “Marissa, here is Oberon—” her gaze was flickering between the two fae— “the one in the black shirt. And Mendel is the one in the gray shirt.”

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Thank you for coming. It is very nice to meet you at last,” said Oberon. “I have heard so much about you, I feel that I know you already. I enjoyed your letter that was made of MelodEye lyrics.”

  Marissa dimpled at him. “Oh, well, it’s always nice to meet a fellow MelodEye fan.”

  Mendel was quiet, and Oberon added, “Mendel is a little nervous, but he is happy to meet you too.”

  “Is he?” Marissa’s eyes widened. “Uh. So am I. But, look, um, Mr. Mendel. I heard your radio interview. I brought you a gift.” Of course she had. In spite of all her rebellion, she was a Southern girl to the core. “To welcome you to, um, our world.”

  She bent to put down her bags and pulled a potted orchid from one of them. Its green-white flower nodded as she approached Mendel with the plant.

  “Oh,” breathed Mendel, reaching for the pot. Marissa snatched her hands back and dropped it, but the fae caught it adroitly. “How lovely. Thank you.”

  Marissa bit her lip. She was staring at Mendel’s expressionless face, her eyebrows crooked uncertainly. Ángel nudged her. “He really does like it,” he said. “He’s not making fun of you.”

  “No,” agreed Mendel. “I love it. I have had so little opportunity to see Earth’s plants.” He turned and showed the potted plant to Oberon. “Look, I think it is called dendrobium. I have seen pictures of them.”

  “Did you also bring lunch?” asked Ángel. “Because the DOR goons who have been shopping for these guys run to Hot Pockets and canned stew, and they need some real food.”

  She’d brought a smorgasbord of vegetarian Thai takeout. They crowded the dining room table with cartons and shared, and Mendel asked Marissa about the orchid. Marissa admitted that she didn’t know anything about orchids, so Mendel eagerly told her about them, their habitat and range. Ángel noticed that Oberon was only picking at a container of spicy papaya salad and growled, “Stop stirring it around and put it in your mouth.”

  “I’m not very hungry.”

  “I don’t care. You’ve been sick and you need to eat. Do you want soup instead?”

  “No.” Oberon ate.

  Marissa stared at Ángel, her dark eyes huge and glowing. “Sassy,” she murmured.

  “Shut up, bitch.”

  She laughed, then smiled shyly at Oberon. “I guess he really likes you,” she said. “He’s pretty polite to people he doesn’t like.”

  “His manners were excellent when we first met,” agreed Oberon.

  Recalling those times reminded Ángel to ask: “I miss Lily. Is she okay?”

  “She is well. She was in the gatehouse when the assassins came in. I miss her very much too—I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again. She and John work for the DOR, and they’re keeping us here. They won’t let me call her.”

  “What is going on with the DOR?” demanded Ángel. “What was their plan? Lock you up here by yourself with no plants and no music, and not give you anything you can eat, and wait to see if you died?”

  “There was cheese and lettuce.” Mendel touched Oberon as he spoke, petted him, and Ángel was beginning to recognize the smell of hero-worship. “But I ate it all. I’m sorry. I don’t like the Hot Pockets.”

  Oberon patted Mendel’s hand. “The DOR seems to be in considerable disarray,” said Oberon. “No one expected Mendel, of course, and he arrived right at the moment of greatest chaos, when I had been attacked by a member of my own security team, and Ángel had vanished. I think they had no idea what to do. I don’t know why they tried to keep us apart, though.”

  “Neil Jeremy seems to have felt guilty about me. Like I was an innocent lamb who had been corrupted to evil ways by you. He said he thought that since Mendel was here, I could go.”

  “It’s not the same at all,” said Mendel.

  “No, and even if his intentions were good, he could have talked to me. I’m able to make decisions; I don’t need to be shielded.” Ángel glanced at Marissa. “Not by Chandler, either.”

  “I didn’t think Chandler liked you,” said Oberon.

  “I don’t think she likes either of us.”

  “Adult child of an alcoholic,” said Marissa. “Overdeveloped sense of responsibility. It’s easier for her to try to control other people’s lives than to deal with her own issues.”

  “Wow,” teased Ángel. “All that and pretty too.”

  “I know, right?” She glanced at Oberon. “She doesn’t understand you. She’s afraid of you. But she doesn’t hate you.”

  “I’m glad. I am very fond of Chandler. Is she well?”

  “She’s okay,” said Marissa. “It was painful for her to quit the DOR, but—”

  “What?” said Oberon. “Did she quit? Why?”

  “She felt responsible for the attack on you,” said Marissa. “She was ashamed that you were hurt, and Ángel was kidnapped, on her watch. When she heard that Ángel had been found she cried with relief.”

  “She was not responsible.”

  “She hasn’t been held responsible, really, but she’s pretty hard on herself.”

  “I would like to see her,” said Oberon. “I would thank her for all her years of working to keep me safe. I would tell her that I, at least, do not blame her.”

  “She’s here in Atlanta,” said Marissa. “I can call her.”

  “Will you ask her to bring me a plant?” said Mendel.

  So they called Chandler, and she arrived with bottles of chilled wine and iced tea. She was accompanied by Victor, silent with shame, who brought a platter of fruit and a paper bag of guava pastelitos. Chandler, prompted by Marissa, gave Mendel an asparagus fern, and Victor gave him a Christmas cactus. Mendel glowed with delight. Both Victor and Chandler apologized to Oberon, who forgave them with his usual earnest courtesy. Then Oberon sat at the piano in the parlor to play, and as the first flat notes rippled through the apartment, he and Mendel froze in shock.

/>   “They put you in an apartment with an out-of-tune piano?” demanded Ángel. “Really, were they trying to kill you?”

  So the two fae opened up the piano and poked around in its innards while Victor retreated to the kitchen to make coffee and listen to NPR, and Marissa passed around the fruit and pastries. Oberon explained to Mendel and Marissa the parts of the piano. “If we had the right tools, we could fix it.”

  Ángel asked Victor for his multi-tool, which he never left home without, and offered it to Oberon. “Will this work?”

  “Perhaps.”

  So the two fae tuned the piano. Mendel sat on the bench and touched the keys and sang the notes at the true pitch, while Oberon adjusted the pegs. Meanwhile, Chandler and Marissa retired to the couch to cuddle and whisper together about whatever it was they had to whisper about. Victor handed around cups of coffee. It was sweet and strong and foamy, and tasted like home—Victor’s coffee was always better than Ángel’s.

  “Neil Jeremy just resigned from the DOR,” said Victor. “I heard it on the radio.”

  “I called him while Oberon and Ángel were in the shower,” said Mendel. “I told him that Oberon was better. I told him that we knew he had lied to us and that we didn’t trust him anymore.”

  “I wonder who will take over,” said Oberon.

  “Mendel, you should hire Chandler,” Ángel said.

  “Why?”

  “Well, you don’t actually have to do what the DOR says, do you? You want to travel. The DOR wants to keep you here, but you could leave, right?”

  “Wait until the protests stop,” said Victor.

  “I mean, you have money of your own, don’t you?” persisted Ángel. “It’s not controlled by the government or anything?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Yes,” said Oberon, emerging, dusty, from inside the piano. “We have money.”

  “Well, off you go, then. Tell the DOR to fuck off and hire Chandler to provide security and handle logistics, and go look at plants. I know Oberon would like to see some trees.”

  “Ooh, you should go to Corkscrew Swamp,” said Marissa. “Over by Naples. Huge old cypress trees, and wild orchids. It’s very cool.”

  “That sounds interesting.” Mendel turned to Chandler. “Do you want to do that? When could we leave?”

  “Mendel,” said Chandler, “respectfully, Oberon was nearly murdered by one of my employees just a few days ago.”

  “Chandler protected me for years,” said Oberon. “She foiled several assassination attempts. I am still alive because of her. And Ángel, of course.”

  “I can’t guarantee your safety,” protested Chandler.

  “I understand,” said Mendel. “But I’m not expected to live. No one thought Oberon would still be alive when I got here. I need to send back good data before I die, that’s all.”

  “This is a suicide mission?” said Victor, incredulously.

  “Not really,” said Mendel. “But we know we aren’t going back. We will be in your world for the rest of our lives. The information we discover is what’s important, not us.”

  Victor looked appalled.

  “They’re great adventurers,” said Ángel.

  “I would like to go,” said Oberon. “I would like to see the trees.”

  “If Oberon’s going, I’m going,” said Ángel. “And then we can go to Miami. I know some bands who would sell their grandmas for a chance to play for Oberon. Chandler, I hope you’re taking notes. Oberon has also been asked to teach a class on fae musicology at Colombia, so that would be another challenge.”

  “I . . . I’ll look into it,” said Chandler, clearly dazed.

  “You are a great adventurer too, Chandler,” said Oberon, resuming fiddling with the piano pegs. “So are all of you. Look at us. This has never happened before.”

  Marissa grinned at Ángel, and he smiled back at her. “I wish I had my guitar.”

  “I regret your guitar very much,” said Oberon, from the interior of the piano.

  “What happened to your guitar?” asked Chandler. “The DOR is dying to know if Oberon attacked you with it or something.”

  “Oh my God, no,” said Ángel. “No, it was my own fault.” He glanced unhappily at Oberon, remembering the fight they’d had.

  Oberon said, “I am sure there is a music store in Atlanta. Why don’t we ask them to bring some guitars here? Victor will give them coffee.”

  “There’s protests,” Victor reminded them.

  “Oh, man, are you kidding me?” piped up Marissa, pulling her phone out of her purse. “Atlanta music store employees would fight through actual war to bring Ángel Cruz a new guitar. Can you even imagine better publicity?”

  She was right. Two salespeople, Shawn and Caitlyn, arrived from Maple Street Guitars, pushing a wheeled cart stacked with black cases. They were smiling when they arrived, but as soon as they saw the fae, they both visibly flinched. Ángel thought the woman was going to run away.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “They’re totally harmless. Come in. They’re busy tuning that piano, so we’ll go into the dining room. You don’t have to worry about them.”

  They stacked the cases on the dining room table, clearly nervous but gamely sticking to their sales pitches while ignoring the sound of piano tuning from the other room. Marissa and Ángel opened them and lifted the guitars from their velvet-lined shells. He immediately rejected a fancy Ovation that had hardwood inlays in the top.

  “That one’s pretty,” said Victor.

  “Don’t like a fancy soundboard,” said Ángel, closing the case and putting the Ovation aside. He played all the others, one by one, chatting with the salespeople about the features of each guitar.

  He kept returning to a cutaway Taylor whose strings seemed to spring like live things under his fingertips. Medullary rays fanned across the spruce top, shining like silver under the lacquer. Its tone was warm, golden, surprisingly loud for a smaller instrument.

  “That one keeps calling your name, doesn’t it?” asked Caitlyn with a smile.

  “Yeah.” He smiled back at her and played a few licks of “Guantanamera.” The notes rang out, filling the apartment effortlessly. Shawn grabbed another guitar and played along. Marissa found wooden spoons and tapped out the rhythm on the back of a chair.

  From the other room, the piano responded with the old Cuban song’s simple rhythmic counterpoint. Ángel grinned, closed his eyes, and played. Invisibly, from the parlor, Oberon accompanied them.

  “This is so cool,” whispered Caitlyn. “It’s just like O-Pod.”

  After “Guantanamera,” Oberon began playing something exquisite and soft on the now perfectly tuned piano.

  “That’s— Is that Mozart?” said Shawn.

  “Would you like to meet Oberon and Mendel? They’re nice. You’ll see.”

  “It’s true,” said Marissa. “I met them today, and look, I’m still alive.”

  So the guitar store employees met Oberon and Mendel, and they gave Ángel a deep discount on the Taylor, and then they stayed and drank wine and played a few songs on the guitars together. Mendel, who knew none of the words, la-la-la-ed along unselfconsciously, his lovely alto voice forging harmonies on the fly.

  Then Oberon began to play something shining and staccato. For a moment Ángel listened with drawn brows, trying to place it. Then Shawn said, “It’s ‘Take On Me.’”

  Marissa laughed first, her big infectious laugh, and pretty soon everyone in the room was cracking up. Because the cultural envoy from the Otherworld was playing A-ha on a grand piano.

  Oberon lifted his hands from the keys. “People often laugh at songs,” he remarked to Mendel. “I’ve never been able to pinpoint why, or which ones.”

  “Okay, wait, wait,” said Marissa, through her giggles. “I know this one. Oberon, from the top.”

  With wooden spoons on a pot, she played the drum intro. Oberon launched into the keyboard riff. Ángel began to sing the chorus, and the rest of the humans—except for Victor
and Chandler—sang along. They killed it until they got to the verse, when not one of them could hit the high notes. The song fell apart again as they all collapsed, laughing.

  Victor waved his hands urgently. “Listen!”

  He turned up the NPR broadcast.

  “The anti-elven protests began in Atlanta at about noon,” said the radio newscaster, “when word leaked that Oberon and Mendel were housed in the DOR building on Marietta Street. But then something new happened: counter-protesters filled the streets of Atlanta.”

  “I’m on Washington Street near the State Capitol,” said a reporter, “and I estimate that there are tens of thousands of people here, waving signs and chanting. I’ve seen signs that read ‘No Hate’ and ‘We Aren’t Afraid.’”

  “Is it peaceful?”

  “Oh yes,” said the reporter. “It’s joyous. It’s like a festival atmosphere. I haven’t seen any violent acts at all, and the counter-protesters outnumber the original protesters on a scale of something like ten to one.”

  “What’s that I hear in the background?” asked the newscaster.

  “The most amazing thing,” said the reporter. “Several local church choirs have come out onto the streets, and they’re singing Oberon’s name.”

  “What?”

  “His elven name,” repeated the reporter. “It’s kind of a little song. He sings it on every episode of the podcast, and these choirs have come out on the streets and . . . and they’re singing.”

  Ángel stared at Oberon. Then he got up and went to the balcony and threw open the sliding glass window.

  The sound of the crowd rose up to them: the loud, chaotic cacophony of tens of thousands of people. Chanting, shouting, singing. Church choirs, identifiable by their matching robes, had gathered in the street, swaying as they sang, belting out the nine syllables of Oberon’s name. Harmonizing, improvising, riffing on his name, and the crowd was swaying, chanting along. As they stood and listened, a compelling mezzo-soprano voice rose above the crowd, unamplified and powerful, drawing out the nine notes into a hymn of welcome.

  Oberon stood still, listening, thunderstruck.

  “They’re changing it,” whispered Ángel, standing beside him. “The pitch isn’t right . . . the cadence . . . is it okay for them to do that?”