There was a time when Jon-Tom and Mudge would have reacted with panic and confusion to such a confrontation, but having been together for so long and dealt on numerous occasions with similar assaults they responded instinctively, as one.
Jon-Tom swung his duar around and backed quickly toward a large boulder while Mudge drew his sword and assumed a defensive stance in front of the spellsinger’s legs.
“’Old right there! I’ll split the first one from knee to groin wot takes another step toward us. There’s not a ’uman livin’ wot’s ’alf as quick as I, an’ I’ll take out two o’ you before the first can manage a thrust.” Delivered with a daunting bravado honed through long experience, the warning was enough to cause their assailants to pause and reflect. Every second they hesitated gave Jon-Tom more time to choose and perfect his lyrics.
Once his companion had begun to strum the strings of the duar, an emboldened Mudge took a step forward. “Consider this your last warnin’! Me mate ’ere is a spellsinger true, a most powerful magician. With ’is music ’e can turn the lot o’ you into a tot o’ tremblin’ toads.” The otter gestured with the point of his short sword. “Begone while you still ’ave the chance!”
Letting his tomahawk fall to his side, the nearest of their assailants used his free hand to push a handful of stringy brown hair away from his face. “No shit? Toads? Really? Wow!”
“Toadally rad, dude,” exclaimed the haggard figure next to him.
Jon-Tom untensed. There were only three of them, and it was clear now they weren’t about to overpower the experienced Mudge and himself. Furthermore, they were skinny and sadly undernourished.
The remaining member of the scraggly triumvirate gestured at the duar. “Hey, man, can you actually play that thing?”
“Not only can I play it”—Jon-Tom mentally downgraded their attackers from dangerous to unpredictable—“I can make magic with it.”
The one who’d spoken first nodded appreciatively. “Cool. Not that we should be surprised. Why should Hinckel be the only one?”
“Uh, Hinckel?” Jon-Tom inquired.
The shortest member of the objectionable trio plopped down against a thick-boled bush. Three loop earrings dangled from one ear while a perfect cubic zirconia sparkled dully in the other.
“Don’t repeat that name. One mention’s more than enough.” He chucked his homemade spear at an inoffensive tree. “Where you two from?”
“The Bellwoods,” Jon-Tom informed him.
The youth (they all looked to be in their early twenties, Jon-Tom decided) made a face. “Never heard of it.”
His lanky companion was eyeing Mudge. “Radical coat. Where’d you get it?”
“’Tis not a coat.” Mudge looked down at himself. “Possibly you mean my vest?”
“Naw. Okay, so you’re a giant rat. So why should I be surprised?” A look of resignation crossed his face.
Raising his sword, Mudge replied in low, dangerous tones. “I … am … not … a … rat.”
Jon-Tom restrained his friend. “He’s an otter.”
“Right. An otter. Cool.” The nominal leader of the trio wearily set his own weapon aside. “You have to excuse us. Things have been pretty rough since we ended up here.”
Ignoring a questioning look from Mudge, Jon-Tom carefully slid his duar around onto his back. Despite the hostility evinced by their initial confrontation he didn’t think this grungy threesome represented much of a threat. That didn’t prevent the otter from keeping a firm grip on his own sword.
Jon-Tom was gratified when the eldest of the three readily accepted his outstretched hand. The man’s grip was wiry and firm.
“Where are you guys from? I get the feeling I should know your accent.”
The trio exchanged looks. The one on the ground lowered his head, shaking it slowly.
“What accent?” replied the prodigally hirsute. “We’re all from Jersey.”
“North Jersey,” added the raggedy blonde next to him.
“Except for Hinckel.” Brush-Cut put his hands behind his head and leaned back against the bush. “He’s from the city. East side.”
“East side?” Jon-Tom frowned.
“New York, dude, New York. Man, don’t you know anything?” The leader nodded knowingly at his buddies. “He ain’t from around here.”
“You can always tell,” agreed Brush-Cut.
Come to think of it, where was he “from”? Jon-Tom wondered. It had been so long, so many years. This was his home now. The land of the Bellwoods and the Tailaroam, Lynchbany and the Glittergeist Sea. To that lexicon of miraculous topography could now be added this sullen isle of devastation. Of devastation, and bedraggled visitors from Jersey.
“I’m from L.A., originally.”
“All right.” The leader looked pleased. “What was the name of your band? Who’d you play with?”
“I didn’t play with anybody. Never got the chance.”
“Bummer,” declared the skinny figure next to the leader.
A thunderclap of prodigious proportions rattled the mountain, dislodging a few small rocks. Skipping clear, Mudge warily eyed the inconstant heights.
“There he goes again,” muttered the seated member of the trio.
The leader was apologetic. “Hey, we’re sorry about the salutation, but things for us lately have been like, you know, kind of weird. I’m Wolf.” He proceeded to identify his companions. “This is Splitz, and the dwarf under the tree is Nuke-o.”
“Outlandish namings, wot?” observed Mudge.
“Like, they ain’t our given names, furry dude.” Nuke-o ran a hand over his black crest. “Sarcastic otters, man. What next?”
Realization didn’t so much strike Mudge as land splat in the middle of his consciousness in a wet, soggy lump. “These creatures are flotsam from your world, Jon-Tom.”
“Hey, who you calling flotsam?” Splitz frowned as he turned to the one called Wolf. “Like, what’s flotsam?”
Wolf ignored the query. “My real name’s Jimmy Gathers. That’s Felix Zimmerman on bass, Kenny Hill with his butt in the dirt. Kenny’s our drummer.”
“I guessed.” Jon-Tom grinned. It didn’t matter where you were, you could always tell a drummer. They formed a distinct subspecies with characteristics entirely their own. Jon-Tom wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that there were subtle differences in their DNA.
If a chimp’s DNA was ninety-nine percent that of a human, then a drummer’s would be …
“Pancreatic Sludge,” Gathers offered helpfully.
Jon-Tom blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“The name of our group. That’s it.”
Mudge nodded approvingly. “The shoe fits.” He sheathed his sword.
“How did you end up here, like this?” While it was nice to encounter visitors from home, Jon-Tom maintained his distance. He knew only what they’d told him and had no way of checking the truth of anything they said. Fellow musicians or not, he remained cautious.
“We’re on a three-week holiday, dude,” Hill grumbled. “Can’t you tell?” He pulled wide the inside of his shirt. “See? Pierre Cardin rags.”
Gathers’s explanation was curt. “We were jerked here against our wills. What’s your story?”
“Like my friend said, I’m a spellsinger. That’s a kind of sorcerer who uses music in his work. A lot of folks around here are losing their music. Even the whales are having their songs taken away. For all I know, the birds’ll be next.” He shrugged. “I’m trying to help. There’s reason to believe something on this island is the cause of the problem.” Looking around, he pointed toward a dark green copse. “It was actually some lost music that sort of led us here.”
Singled out, the chord cloud drifted clear of its place of concealment. The band members regarded it laconically.
“Looks like an F-sharp,” commented Zimmerman without missing a beat.
“Naw. It’s a flat.” Hill closed his eyes.
Gathers grinned. “The guys don’t tal
k much, but they know their music.” He lost the smile as he held up one hand, the fingers pinching half an inch of missing opportunity. “We were this close to signing a recording contract, man. Small label, local, but we were gonna cut a CD.”
“Small, hell,” groused Hill. “He had his studio in his garage.”
“Yeah,” Gathers conceded, “but it was, like, a big garage. The main thing is, he got stuff into the stores. He got airtime. Maybe only in his neighborhood, but when your neighborhood’s New York, that ain’t such a bad deal.”
“What happened?” Jon-Tom tried to scrounge some sympathy for these obviously disoriented strangers. Had the cosmos not had a substantially different fate in store for him, his life might have taken a similar path.
“Our lead singer ups and dumps us. Just like that, man! We were doin’ our first TV interview, they were gonna play the video we’d just finished, and Goldblum’s like not payin’ any attention. He’s watchin’ this pretty little techie assistant all the time.
“As soon as the interview’s over, he’s gone. ‘Artistic differences,’ was all he’d say. That techie put something in his ear and it went straight to his brain, man. What brain Goldblum had.”
Hill absently peeled bark from a twig. “I mean, where are you gonna find another Jewish-Vietnamese lead singer on short notice? Our producer was losing interest and we had to come up with somebody, anybody, fast or we’d blow the contract. This producer, he’s kind of a hyper type, you know, and he, like, wanted to do everything right away or not at all.”
“So you put an ad in the Voice, stick up want sheets in the usual places.” Gathers looked unhappy. “Man, everybody wants in the business. There must be, like, you know, a shortage of singers. Or maybe our timing just sucked.”
“Just sucked,” muttered Zimmerman.
“Anyway,” Gathers continued, “only this one guy shows, bright and early. He’s no Jon Bon J in the looks department, but he ain’t Meat Loaf, either. Kinda short, a little on the soft side, but we figured he’d work it off.”
“Can’t have a lead singer with a roll in a heavy metal band,” Hill added. “Don’t look good in an open vest.”
“So he lays this long list of credits on us, real earnest-like. I mean, real impressive, you know? It sounds too good, but nobody else shows and we’re, like, you know, pressed for time? We’re supposed to record two tracks first thing Monday. So he says, like, no sweat, give him the lyrics and he’ll be there.”
“So we give him sheets and a cover tape and after the weekend we all show up at Mike’s home studio.”
“Oh, man.” Zimmerman the one-man Greek chorus rolled his eyes.
Gathers went on. “The two techies are all ready, Mike’s excited to go, we’re tuned, sound’s rolling, and this guy Hinckel flashes this stupid shit-eating smile and tells Kenny to start rockin’. I mean, he actually said that. I mean, you should’ve heard it.”
“Lucky man he didn’t.” Zimmerman had now adopted the look of a stoned basset hound.
“’Eard wot?” Mudge had finally become engrossed in the travelers’ tale.”
“His voice, dude.”
Gathers was nodding vigorously. “My grandmother used to have a saying about somebody who couldn’t sing. ‘He couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket,’ she’d say. This Hinckel guy, he couldn’t lift the bucket.”
“He was past awful, dude.” The memory of it turned Zimmerman voluble. “He was the king of stink. Like, you know, the nadir?”
Gathers winced at the remembrance. “He couldn’t lead, he couldn’t follow, he couldn’t phrase, he couldn’t fake it. I don’t know if he knew what any of the notes meant. He was so bad Mike’s technicians couldn’t take it. Pretty soon everybody in the studio is, like, laughing so hard they couldn’t work.
“And the wonder of it is that this guy, he doesn’t think any-thing’s wrong! He doesn’t understand what everyone’s laughing at, or why Kenny looks like he’s about to hurl. Hinckel, he wants to know why we’ve stopped playing ’cause he was just getting in the groove.””
“That’s what he said.” Even now Hill couldn’t believe it. “‘Getting into the groove.’
“Nobody could look at him without cracking up,” Gathers continued. “Maybe I should’ve been nicer to him, but shit, man, he’d wasted our time, and Mike’s time, and technicians’ time, and, like, those guys were getting paid, you know? We didn’t have, like, the time or the money to screw around.
“So we threw him out. I mean, like in the movies, by his shirt and pants.”
“Wot did you do then?” Mudge wondered.
Hill sighed. “Improvised as best we could. Jimmy and I took turns coverin’ the vocals. We’re no singers, but compared to Hinckel we sounded like Coverdale and Page.”
“What happened to him?” Jon-Tom asked.
Hill and Gathers exchanged a glance. “Didn’t see him again for a couple of months,” the guitarist replied. “We had a party gig midtown. I mean, we took what we could get, the money wasn’t bad, and it was worth it anyway for the exposure. There were supposed to be a lot of industry types there.
“It went pretty good. Afterward we’re heading home over the bridge in Felix’s van, and, like, congratulating ourselves on maybe makin’ a decent contact or two at the party, and suddenly the whole East River starts makin’ like Gabriel.”
“The angel?” Jon-Tom wondered.
Gathers frowned at him. “There’s an angel named Gabriel? No man, Peter Gabriel. You know. Anyway, we’re like totally freaked because we’re a clean band, man, and nobody’s taken anything at the party.”
“Nothing.” Zimmerman was emphatic.
“My first thought was that somebody slipped us something,” Gathers explained. “Then we found ourselves here. Just like that. No more van, no more East River, no Jersey Turnpike, no Big Apple. No nothin’.” He waved at their surroundings. “Just these rocks and these trees, which looked a lot better when we first got here.”
“That’s right,” put in Hill. “This island didn’t look like this all the time.”
“One other thing.” Gathers’s countenance darkened. “Hinckel’s waiting for us, and he’s got this, like, real snotty look on his face.”
“An aura of megalomania,” ventured Zimmerman somberly, hinting at an education beyond the one generally available in cheap clubs and dingy venues.
“After he tells us that he’s responsible for what happened,” Gathers went on, “we all, like, try to rush him. You know what he does then? He sort of rises up into the air on this dark cloud of dissonance. Music to match his personality. And he just leaves, flies on up to the top of the mountain.” The guitarist pointed. “Up there.”
Jon-Tom and Mudge turned to follow the accusing finger, looking toward the spiraling black vortex that was slowly rotating about the uppermost crags. Sporadic thunder continued to rattle the slopes.
“Before he leaves,” Gathers continued, “he tells us he’s tapped into this evil force that gives him power over all music. Only in this world to start, but he’s sure it won’t be long before he’s master over all music everywhere.” The guitarist shook his head. “What a weirdo.”
“What kind of evil force?” Jon-Tom inquired.
Hill coughed. “How the hell should we know? We’re just musicians and he, like, didn’t give us the details. Maybe he found it in the phone book under ‘Force, Evil.’”
Zimmerman nodded knowingly. “Like, there ain’t nothin’ you can’t find in the Manhattan Yellow Pages.”
“Whatever it is”—Gathers scowled—”it was strong enough to suck us over here. Wherever here is. He said he wanted to make us pay for the way we treated him.”
“Like he didn’t try to screw us,” Hill complained.
“You know what one of the worst things about living on this island is?” Gathers went on. “We can’t play our music. Not a lick. We can improvise something to drum on and something to strum, but as soon as we do, he steals the music. I don’t know how
he does that, but he does.”
Mudge eyed their torn, ragged attire sympathetically. “Sounds like a real rotter, don’t you know. Bastard didn’t even let you bring your clothes.”
Hill drew back slightly. “What are you talkin’ about, whisker dude? These are our clothes.”
“Oi, me apologies, guv.” The otter forbore from further comment.
“He’s made himself lord of this island,” Gathers informed them, “and keeps workin’ on this spell to steal all music everywhere. With each practice he gets a little better at it, and each time another load of music ends up on this dump.”
“Even a prime doofus like Hinckel can sharpen his playing,” Hill explained, “but not his singing. That’s still as gross as it gets.”
“He’s trapping all kinds of music,” said Gathers. “I think I’ve heard some of those whale songs you were talkin’ about. I recognize ’em ’cause the Exeter Whackoffs used to use tapes of it in their act.”
“Dude, the Exeter Whackoffs used everything in their act,” Hill reminisced. “I remember one time they had, like, this cat—”
“The music,” Jon-Tom prompted them. “Where does he keep it?”
“Inside the mountain.” Zimmerman kicked at a pitted gray rock. “This whole island’s built up from an old volcano, like. Plenty of lava tubes and hollows to stash stuff in.”
“The stuff just lies there, sloshing back and forth inside the main crater singin’ to itself, as wild and noisy a mix as you could imagine,” Gathers explained. “A whole lake of ripped-off music.” He indicated his tattered orange and black leather boots. “It’s not an easy climb, dude. Should’ve had my Tevas.”
“It was something to see.” Hill sounded almost wistful. “Not to mention hear. I mean, you want to talk counterpoint, man…”
“Hinckel, he’s storin’ everything up there,” Gathers continued. “Whale songs, bird songs, rock, folk, ethnic, electronic, classical, stuff like I never heard before, and all of it dumped together to get along as best it can.”
“And the worst of it still sounds better than anything he can come up with,” Zimmerman added emotionally.