Kitty & Cadaver. Narrelle M Harris

continued, too soft for anyone else to hear. ‘Have you ever played to the dry ground and made it rain? Sung a baby to sleep and the whole house went quiet? Played so angry you broke every glass in your house, or cracked a paving stone outside? You ever made a fire with your fingers on those strings, kid?’

      The boy’s jaw clenched shut. His eyes were wide. ‘What do you know about that?’ His whisper was forced out like a confession over vocal cords tight with fear.

      ‘I know all there is to know about it, including what it’s for.’

      The boy swallowed so hard the sound of it swelled in the air between them.

      ‘Come with me when you’re done here,’ Steve said. ‘I’ll tell you a story.’

      The kid hesitated, but Steve had been in his place before – full of questions and suspicions, and then full of hope when someone at last offered an explanation – and with it a way out of poverty, misery and fear. Well, Steve guessed he still had a lot of those, but his new bedrock of certainty made it bearable in a way it never used to be.

      ‘Fine,’ the boy said suddenly. ‘I’ll go with you and you can tell me a story. But that’s it. No promises from me.’

      ‘I haven’t asked you for any yet.’

      ‘The name’s Aaron. Aaron Maclean,’ said the kid.

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      ‘So,’ said young Aaron Maclean, sitting opposite the older man. ‘Music is a conduit for magic, it’s the natural defence against demons, ghosts and other creepy things if you’re born with the gift to use it, and you play bass in the rock band equivalent of Merlin the Magician, fighting dragons in C Major. Does that cover the basics?’

      Steve nodded coolly. ‘Maybe more Buffy than Merlin most of the time, and C Major has some more specific uses against things that live in water, but yeah.’

      ‘You are full of shit.’

      ‘Could be,’ conceded Steve, ‘and it could be that you imagined those times when you played guitar and set fire to the carpet.’

      Aaron frowned uncertainly.

      ‘Or sang to keep yourself from being afraid of the dark, and had a little light glow on your fingertips, from nowhere.’

      ‘Used to light up the end of my nose,’ confessed Aaron before he thought to deny the charge. ‘Tickled.’ Then he pressed his mouth shut.

      ‘I used to glow from my palms to my elbows,’ Steve said matter-of-factly. ‘I was living on the streets at the time, so you can imagine the inconvenience.’

      Aaron arched an eyebrow despite himself.

      ‘It weren’t so bad. There were a lot of hippies and dope heads in California. That’s a lot of people with a funny way of looking at the world. Half the time folks saw me, they thought I was an angel.’ Steve grinned. ‘I wasn’t. In case you’re wondering.’

      Aaron dropped his gaze to the cooling cup of coffee in front of him. He’d sat here, listening to this mad story of music and vampires, songs affecting the elements and stealing the cries of banshees and who knew what else besides. It was, if not actually insane, then a ludicrous yarn spun by this softly spoken Yank to pull his leg.

      Except for his gran.

      Aaron sighed. ‘My gran always reckoned when I sang to birds they listened.’ He cleared his throat gruffly and gave Steve a steely glare. ‘Mind you, towards the end she also said her own grandmother had power over the weather so, you know, not quite sure what to believe.’

      ‘Maybe she did have power over the weather,’ Steve said. ‘I know a pretty good rain song myself.’

      ‘You’re off your nut.’

      Steve shrugged. ‘It sure seemed like it in the early days. I tell you kid, there’s never a time you wish more that you were hallucinating than when you’re hip-deep in a spring thaw river, freezing your ass off and trying to work out how to decapitate a hydra.’

      Aaron stared. ‘What’s a hydra?’

      ‘Thing like a snake with way too many heads,’ Steve sounded disgruntled at the memory. ‘Plus it transpires cutting ‘em off is a stupid idea. Little bastard grows heads back and then some. Pays to read your classic mythology before stepping into that river.’

      ‘What did you do?’

      ‘Oh, Anna sang down some fire on that slithery sum’bitch. I used a scythe we’d found on the farm the river ran through, sang it sharp enough to cut silk, and while I mowed, she scorched the stumps with a sweet tune in good ol’ E Major.’

      Steve grinned at Aaron’s rapt attention. ‘I could sing you a little rain, if you need more convincing. Not here, though.’

      ‘Down by the Yarra?’ said Aaron, lifting his chin in the general southerly direction.

      ‘Alrighty.’ Leaving Aaron to pay for the coffee, Steve rose and headed towards the wide river he’d sensed before he saw.

      ‘Cheap bastard,’ complained Aaron as he caught up, his guitar case heavy in one hand.

      ‘Ain’t a lot of cash in saving the world.’

      ‘You’re doing a shit job of selling this gig.’

      ‘I can’t get you into it by lying about riches you won’t make.’

      ‘No, really, shut up. I’m losing interest.’

      They came to the bridge spanning the river then followed the steps down to the riverbank.

      ‘I’ll keep it low,’ Steve said. ‘No sense bringing on a whole storm, and I haven’t got my guitar. Unless I can use yours?’

      Aaron made a show of considering it, then handed over his beloved Fender Kingman acoustic. He’d brought it along after the rest of the gear had been loaded in the van because it had felt like the right thing to do. He hadn’t questioned the odd impulse. ‘Should I go back for the amp?’

      ‘Hell, no. Like I said, we don’t want a big sound. That’d bring a torrent down.’

      ‘You’re certain this’ll work.’

      ‘So’re you,’ grinned Steve. ‘Hoping, anyhow.’

      ‘How do you figure that?’

      ‘You’re still here, ain’t ya? Now sit and hush.’ Steve sat cross-legged on the bank and arranged the guitar on his thigh. He began to pluck out the melody, senses reaching into the instrument. There. A trace of that raw magic talent embedded in the frame, the strings and the hollows of it. Softly, coaxing a gentle rise of power from the instrument, Steve began to sing.

      Listen to the ocean

      Surrender water to the sky

      Listen to the streams

      Soak the clay and earth nearby

      Watching, listening, thinking that it was such a simple tune for something that was meant to be magic, Aaron suddenly fancied that he could – that he really could – hear something. Water. Moving. Small and slick. Not the slap of the Yarra on the banks: something other.

      The lullabies of lakes

      Evaporating droplets with a sigh

      All these drips and beads and mists

      Spinning invisibly by

      The drops were not quite invisible. Aaron could see, though he couldn’t understand how, a haze in front of his eyes, in which he could see individual droplets. Reverse teardrops, heading… up.

      Rain come down

      Then, in the clear, blue, cloudless sky, he felt but did not see the mist of droplets coalesce, combine, condense…