10:7
Patti grabbed Sass’ house from her belt and pulled it up so she could look in the window. Sass lay curled in a tight ball on the floor of the house.
Taking a quick cleansing breath even as one of her eyes went blind, Patti sang, “Sass!”
Sass lifted its head and warbled a very thin, “Momma?”
Tears pricked Patti’s eyes as she nodded her head, whether from the sound or the relief of hearing Sass.
She drew another breath and started singing “ahhh ahhh ahhh” then flowed into the familiar lyrics of Don’t Worry Baby from the Beach Boys. Sass looked up at her and joined in on the “Don’t Worry, Baby” chorus. And blessed silence, blessed fucking silence, fell on Patti’s ears. Except for the sound of Sass and her voice singing the song and the less beautiful whimpers and shouts of her friends that echoed in the otherwise silent space.
Instantly tension she hadn’t felt in her entire body released and she slumped against the wall, making sure to not stop her singing despite kind of wanting to cry. Tears coursed down her cheeks as she met Dan’s insistent stare. She nodded at his questioning look and forced a smile through stiff cheeks.
He continued to shake and his face was a really waxen shade with sweat beading at his temples. Abe continued to slump on his thigh, their fingers making pathetic scrabbles at it. A quick scan of the room showed her other friends still in their debilitated states. So, Patti and Sass were fine but the others were not.
Well, she shifted a look over to the wall Kim stood against. Maybe she, Sass, and Kim. It was hard to tell through the cyclone around Kim but she looked to be standing pretty easily, just hemmed in by the swirl of wind and fire.
Okay. Was it touch? Easy to test.
She pushed away from the wall and with completely stable legs walked over to Dan and placed a hand on his shoulder. He kept his gaze steady on hers while shaking his head.
“Not working!” He yelled.
Patti winced and kept singing. At least the song her brain, or Magick, picked was easy to loop. She could keep this up all day. Although she wasn’t sure if the others were going to be able to endure that long.
Already Siobhan’s head had fallen to her shoulder and the arm buried in her bag was unmoving. Gwen had pulled herself about halfway across the floor to Siobhan, but her movements seemed a bit slower.
Patti switched her attention back to Dan, then shifted to look at Kim against the far wall. Hmmm. Then she looked at Ben and Ivan near the door, looking pretty rough. Then Prairie. Then Siobhan. Gwen had pulled herself to the point that she could almost touch Siobhan and she seemed determined to finish the route.
As Patti watched Gwen started screaming. In the near silence, broken only by Patti and Sass’s singing, Gwen’s voice tore the air. It didn’t sound like pain. No, Patti considered the timber, Gwen was pissed. Like she could yell loud enough to beat the screech.
Could she? Maybe not, as Gwen continued to slump against the floor with an arm reaching out along it. But, maybe Patti could?
She shifted her attention back to Dan and Abe. It wasn’t touch. Could it be they just couldn’t hear her? Maybe she just needed to be louder? Not like Gwen screaming at the universe loud, but louder?
Leaning in she scream sang in Dan’s face. He reared back and his toothpick tumbled over his loose lower lip. With a quick hand he grabbed it before it hit his leg, then he yelled at Patti. “Not! Working!”
Patti reached forward, grabbed his shoulder, and sang directly into his ear. He cringed away, then cringed back adjusting to the screech most likely.
Patti probed her Magick. Was it the song? It might not be the song. But it might be the song. She shifted over to the song Hear Me by Imagine Dragons because it felt right.
“Try. Try. Try. Try,” she started. As she moved into the line about hear her voice Sass joined in. Dan stared at her and shook his head. She poured more Magick into her voice and tried, tried, tried to freaking be heard.
Sass ran up her chest, little claws digging into her t-shirt and the skin underneath as they made their way to her shoulder then scampered down her arm and onto Dan’s shoulder. Dan turned his head to stare at the mouse but lost the ability to do so when Sass continued around his back, over his opposite shoulder then down his opposite arm.
Patti, still singing, and Dan, looking confused, followed Sass’ path as it reached the end of Dan’s arm and flung itself through the air and towards Abe.
Abe rotated their head slowly, their gaze hazy as it locked on Sass’s rapidly approaching form. Groaning and gritting their teeth they lifted a limp hand in Sass’s direction. Sass landed on it and ran up Abe’s arm until they could nestle in Abe’s shoulder.
Reaching up with tiny paws, Sass grabbed ahold of the halo of curls around Abe’s head and leaned into Abe’s ear. Their sweet voice carried to Patti, intertwining with hers on the air. Patti could almost swear she saw their voices weaving together before flowing into Abe’s ear.
Abe raised their shaking right hand, the one with all the ink, and pressed their fingers into the shoulder just under Sass’s perch. Ink sluggishly rose from their fingers and seeped up their shoulder to pool under Sass’ feet, anchoring the mouse so it wouldn’t slip off.
“Can you hear it?” Patti and Sass sang.
Biting their lip, Abe shook their head in the negative. Tears formed in their eyes, making them appear brighter than ever they did. Dan grunted in Patti’s ear. “Can’t hear!” It was clear he was regulating his tone. It was still a bit loud and Patti cringed back from it.
Rearing back slightly, Patti looked at where Kim stood, apparently, maybe, possibly unaffected by the screech. She needed to confirm Kim wasn’t being pummeled by the sound.
That decided she lifted a hand and gently extracted Sass from Abe’s shoulder, tucking the mouse back in its house and giving Dan a ‘sorry’ look before separating from him and Abe. Heading across the wide space she continued to sing with Sass, not allowing more than a mikro between words for breathing.
Her gaze tracked the area as she moved, noting where the others slumped or knelt or in Gwen’s case lay belly slithering on the floor. The gulf between them was large, defined by the width and length of the room. Who needed such a big music room? Jeesh.
It took her at least twenty strides to even get close to Kim. She stopped with a safe distance between her and the column of fire and air and gestured madly at Kim. Instinctively she switched over to singing Come to My Window by Melissa Etheridge. Something about the lyrics “Just to reach you” seemed appropriate.
She flailed her hands on the air. Sass shimmied out of her house, ran up Patti’s torso, and planted herself on Patti’s shoulder so she could reach entreating hands to Kim.
Either understanding dawned on her or just the sheer cuteness did it because Kim shifted and a fire creature separated from the swirl and bound over to Patti. It took nerves of steel to not flinch away from it because ‘fire bad’. Instead she smiled at the creature while keeping up her song.
She was proud there was only the faintest hitch in the tune as she adjusted to the heat and danger of the creature which wasn’t quite a dog and wasn’t quite a coyote and wasn’t quite a… deer? A very small deer? Oh, yeah, maybe it was a deerhound? Badum bum.
That Sass retained its place on Patti’s shoulder instead of retreating from the threat said a lot about the mouse’s spirit because if Patti had been that small and faced with a creature that large – and firey – she’d have scampered to safety for reals.
Shifting slightly Patti tapped her chest with two fingers then shifted them to make walking shapes on the air then pointed at Kim. The wavering air made it hard to read Kim’s expression but Patti kinda read it as confusion. So she squatted and repeated the motions to the fire dog. It leaned in and Patti was pretty sure she felt her eyelashes melting from the heat of it. She leaned back and tapped her chest then made the walking motions then energetically pointed at Kim.
As she did she sang the line about coming to her window and pushed Magick into the words. Whether it was the pantomime or the song, something seemed to make her request clear to Kim because the swirling of the fire on the column of air slowed, allowing Patti to clearly see Kim through the haze.
She mouthed the next line of the song, asking to ‘crawl inside’ with her gaze and her Magick. Kim shifted her attention to their friends and their various states of collapse. Then she turned her gaze back to Patti and narrowed her eyes.
Patti raised her hands and pressed them together in supplication, all the while keeping up the wall of song against the screech.
Finally, Kim called out, “Why?”
Patti raised her brows and tried her damnedest to convey why without stopping singing. Kim studied her expression for several long mikros then gave Patti a questioning look before saying, “Fine!”
The column of air and fire parted, the fire moving around the circumference of it to cluster closer to the wall so all that faced Patti was air wavering with the residue of heat. Then even that wavering flowed back along the column. Kim reached an arm out, hand grasping, and then she started cursing while pressing her free hand to her ear.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! Motherfucking fuck!” She latched her hand around Patti’s arm and yanked. Patti flowed with the motion, letting Kim yank her into the column. The yank was so hard she ended up smashing right into Kim’s chest.
Kim heaved out a hard breath and released her hold on Patti. She clamped that hand to her other ear and stared at the column of air. Instantly fire danced from where it banked against the wall and began its swirling dance up, down, and around the column which formed a dome over Kim and Patti’s heads.
Patti felt the hair along her face frizzing from the heat. She flung her hands up to her hair, making sure it wasn’t on fire. It wasn’t. Yet.
Without thinking she stopped singing and asked. “Can you tone it down a little?”
About the time she hit tone she realized the screech was gone. Instead, her ears were assailed by the song of wind, like on a seaside cliff when a storm threatened. It was loud but nowhere close to the screech outside.
Kim closed her eyes, lowered her hands from her head, and made a smoothing motion from an area about three inches away from her ears and ending in the region of her shoulders as she ascribed a curve that pushed the column of fire and air back to the point Patti didn’t feel the fat under her skin crackling or her hair gathering to burst into a nimbus of fire.
Okay. That was a slight exaggeration but boy she bet she’d sweat off a pound before Kim moved the column.
She mopped the sweat from her hairline then looked into Kim’s eyes which were still way too close with them pressed boob to boob. They were around the same height so really they were boob to boob and while Patti might be down for some boob to boob at some other time standing in a fire and wind column protected from an ungodly screech didn’t seem a great time for it. Plus, Kim seemed to not like being touched. Fact she was surprised the other woman wasn’t flinching away from her. Guess that had a little to do with the tight space the air and fire column carved out. But she liked to think that just maybe after their adventures Kim trusted her a little to be close.
Still, better to move before Kim gronked that they were plastered together. Patti eyed the wall behind Kim and decided there was room for her there if they squished shoulder to shoulder. Pivoting she put her back to the wall and leaned against it. She eyed the proximity of the swirling air and fire to her shoulder and squished a bit closer to Kim. Sass peeped and hugged Patti’s neck, burying themselves in the fall of Patti’s undercut.
When Patti’s shoulder nudged Kim the other woman gave a noticeable flinch that Patti felt in her skin. Patti shifted so she wasn’t leaning quite so hard into Kim’s arm.
“Sorry,” Kim murmured then looked down and bit her lip. Despite the fatalistic acceptance dripping from the word, she shrunk to the side, making a tiny bit more space between her and Patti.
Patti knew the polite thing to do was to just ignore the flinch but she wasn’t really known as the most polite person ever. Even in her heart where she knew she should be. So, Patti tossed politeness to the wind. “Do I need to move?”
“To where?” Kim slanted a look at Patti then adamantly said, “No.”
“What was it okay when I’m in front of you but bad from the side? I need to know your comfort zone so I don’t overstep.” Patti added the explanation to sooth her own sense of trespassing.
“In front I see you coming. It would take a mikro to remove the air from your body if you were a threat,” Kim said in a flat tone, her gaze locked on the wall of air and fire in front of them and her expression completely flat.
Patti’s thoughts just stopped. There was something about that cold statement that spoke to her lizard brain and that brain was screaming “run!” loud enough the base of her neck spasmed. She gulped and forced herself to not shift away from Kim and into the pulsating wall to her left.
“Wow,” Kim said on a wince, “that sounded completely psycho.”
Patti swallowed around her panic and forced her tone to remain light, “I’d say no but I’d be lying.”
“Sorry. I have,” Kim made air quotes, “issues. More maybe since I was taken.”
“I get that.”
“So.”
“So.”
“Why are we the only two that aren’t praying to the floor?” Kim shifted the topic. Patti let it rest. She closed her eyes and hummed an unformed tune, asking her Magick to settle the clamp at the back of her neck and the prickles going from her wrists to her fingertips
As usual her Magick did not fail her. A wave of calm started at the top of her head and traveled down her limbs, flowing like honey from her fingertips and her toes so she was left with a fluid sense of calm.
Once she was satisfied her lizard brain wasn’t going to send her running into fire, Patti eyed the opaque wall in front of them then tipped her head back to look at the dome over them. The rhythm of the air and the crackling of the fire played along her Magick, demanding she put lyrics to it.
Oh. Crap. Was that it?
She scanned the rest of the room. Gwen was still screaming. She tapered off once she got to Siobhan then pushed herself to sit and lean into Siobhan’s shoulder. Once she was settled there she craned her neck around then cocked her head so she could look into Siobhan’s lowered face. Something she read there must have spoken to her because she lifted her hand and placed it on Siobhan’s chest above her heart. Her hand visibly shook but she persisted.
Despite the crackle whoosh song of the elements cocooning she and Kim, Patti could still hear the sounds her friends made, almost like her Magick had latched to them and carried them to her ears.
Ivan was yelling down at Ben slumped against the wall. Ben was glowering and screaming back. Their words were indistinct, more an outpouring of anger and pain. Meanwhile Dempsey had lowered his head to rest on the edge of his shield. Indistinct grunts came from behind it. Dan muttered muffled curses as he dropped to his ass on the floor. Abe flopped on the floor as they lost their perch on Dan’s thigh, releasing a high keening cry.
Gwen screamed at Siobhan. Siobhan flinched and lifted her hands to her ears, clamping them there and relocating her flower crown to hang off to the side, held by the ribbons tangled in her hair. Then she screamed a wordless wave of sound back at Gwen who flinched back too.
The one commonality between all the others was that they were just making noises with no cadence or form. Not like the song of the elements cradling she and Kim.
Patti eyed the shifting wall around them then turned her head to look at Kim. “I need you to lower the wall for a mero.”
Kim curled her lip. “Fuck that noise. Literally. Fuck that,” she waved her hands at the room outside the wall of elements, “noise.”
“I get it. That screech is foul.” Patti frowned. “No one gets that more than me, trust me.”
Sass peeped.
“And Sass,” she added. “But I need you to do it. If what I think is true then you can raise it again. But its got to be long enough for me to test my theory.”
“What theory?”
“That its rhythmic sounds. Singing. The sough of the wind,” she waved a hand at the wall again. “I need you to lower the wall. Then I need you to sing and see if it keeps the screech out.”
Kim narrowed her eyes, skepticism rife in her expression. Then she scrunched her nose and rolled her eyes so far Patti could only see whites. Finally she raised her face to the dome above them then back down to focus on Patti.
“Fine.” She snorted a breath through her nostrils. “I can’t promise the fire and air won’t do whatever the fuck they want. I didn’t form this wall, they did. But I’ll ask. And,” she frowned, “try to explain in a way they’ll understand.” She scratched the back of her neck and stared at the wall. “That’s the challenge.”
“Okay.” She drew a breath that lifted her chest. “Let’s do this.”
Her gaze went inwards as she focused on the wall. It held. In fact it got higher and thicker for a mikro. But then it slowly thinned so Patti was staring through nothing but air and then one moment to the next the screech assailed her ears.
Immediately she started to sing. Her brain or her Magick settled on Things We Lost in the Fire by Bastille and she snorted a chuckle. Sass began singing with her and once again she could breathe as the screech faded to nothing and she could hear her friends suffering in the stillness.
For a mikro Kim clapped her hands to her ears and then she started singing about a guy who thinks he’s fly. Her eyes darted as she sang, then she lowered her hands from her ears and gave Patti an incredulous look. Patti smiled and gave her a thumbs up. Kim snickered while continuing to sing.
Their voices clashed as they sang the different songs. Patti reflected on the time she heard Bastille sing their version of the song, No Angels, at Stripped, the acoustic club that apparently Ben owned. She shifted to singing along with Kim, offering small flourishes like the Bastille interpretation.
Enter The Woods 