neetha Napew - The Paths Of The Perambulator

“There’s four of ‘em, lad,” Mudge whispered. “Can you ‘andle four of ‘em at once?”

“I don’t know,” his tall friend confessed. “Each of them carries a different instrument. Maybe they’re only effective when working together. If that’s the case, I’ll only have to counter one spellsong at a time. We’ll know soon enough.” Slowly he brought the duar around to a playing position.

The second imp regarded him out of wide black-and-red eyes. It hardly looked alarmed, Jon-Tom thought. Amused, perhaps.

“Oh, ho, so,” it chirped, “another singer! We were told we might encounter such. That’s much better. Death and destruction is always tastier when rendered with a little spice. Make it interesting for us, man.”

“I intend to,” Jon-Tom told it grimly.

The imp regarded its companions. “Look to your tunes, to your chords and phrases, and beware your harmonizing!”

The first song was aimed not at Jon-Tom but at the member of the offending trespassers who’d dared to strike an opening blow. The words struck Colin hard. He dropped his sword, his eyes going wide, and he staggered backward with both hands clutched to his belly. Mudge instantly put his own weapon down and, moving as only a otter can move, just did manage to catch the koala before he collapsed to the ground. He held the wheezing, vomiting Colin under both arms. A single chorus had reduced him from a powerful, alert fighter to a physical and mental basket case.

The imps didn’t bother to finish the song. A few bars and lyrics had lain the strongest of their opponents low. At the first notes Jon-Tom’s jaw had dropped in astonishment, though the song had not affected him. But then, it hadn’t been directed at him, either.

“You see”—the second imp sneered—”what we can do. Our master has given us the strength of spellsinging that arises from the deepest well of confusion, from the black pits where unpleasant songs of sorrow and despair mix together to form the most depressing soul-suffocating sludge. Our music moans of dark moments and wails of woeful weeping. No living creature is immune. None can ignore its effects.”

“I’m afraid he’s right, Mudge.”

“You won’t see me denying it.” The otter gently lowered the still softly retching koala to the ground, trying to fight off the cold chills that were coursing through his own body. “Wot an ‘orrible noise. ‘Tis more sickenin’ than I imagined music could be. But I saw your face when they started singin’, mate. You recognize it.”

“Yes, I recognize it, Mudge.”

“Then you’ve got to try an’ counter it, for all our sakes. If they sing much more o’ that, they’ll burn out our ears and then our ‘earts. ‘Tis worse than anything I’ve ever ‘eard or ever ‘oped to ‘ear.”

But Colin was not done. Breathing hard, he rolled over onto hands and knees, recovered his sword, and started crawling toward the quartet. Mudge tried to stop him, but the koala was still strong enough to shake the well-meaning otter off. The determination on his round gray face was something to behold.

Unimpressed, the imps put their voices together and began to sing again. A new song this time, one even more affecting and lugubrious than the first.

“Yourrr cheatin’ hearttt . . .!”

Jon-Tom found he was sweating. Straightforward traditional country-western they were singing. Even though he was on the fringes of the music, it staggered him. He’d never expected anything so awful, so bright and brassy, so thick with saccharine lyrics and sickly chords. The imps sang on, harmonizing beautifully, their voices dense with despair and self-pity.

Colin couldn’t take it. He had no experience of that degree of moroseness, and it knocked him flat. With a last burst of energy he threw his sword at the quartet’s lead singer. A few strains of Hank Williams knocked the blade to the ground.

Then they turned to face the only one capable of standing against them. Jon-Tom held his ground, his fingers poised over the duar’s strings, ready for whatever might come.

The simple Conway Twitty tune was a test, he knew, and he handled it easily enough, striking back with Springsteen’s “Pink Cadillac.” One imp gave ground, frowned, then returned to the lineup with a will. The hellish quartet segued instantly into serious solemnity with a typically maudlin Patsy Cline standard. Sweat broke out on Jon-Tom’s brow as he countered with van Halen’s effervescent “Jump.”

As they traded songs the air itself seemed confused, uncertain of whether to give vent to rain or sunshine. Songs in four-part harsh harmony by Tammy Wynette, Johnny Cash, and Ronnie Milsap made it hard for the travelers even to breathe by turning the air into a cloying stew. Jon-Tom tried to lighten the atmosphere as best he could by responding with the more exuberant music he could think of, from Loggin’s “Footloose” to a medley by Cyndi Lauper.

But there was no one to help him, and it was four against one. As always, his strongest ally was his own playing. The more he sang, the stronger his spellsinging became.

The imps began to retreat, falling back a step at a time as Jon-Tom advanced upon them. They were unable to deal with his exhilaration or the relentless vitality of his music. They drew closer and closer together until there was no space between them at all. Like four figures fashioned of Silly Putty, they began to merge, in body as well as in voice. When the convergence had concluded, Jon-Tom found himself facing a four-headed, eight-armed giant instead of the impish humanoid figures who’d first challenged him and his companions on the trail. It had the same four faces, played the same four instruments, but the body had grown swollen and distorted. Like a bloated four-headed slug it wove and danced before him, all the while continuing to sing, sing of a world in which work led only to poverty, beauty only to heartbreak, and love only to misery and loneliness.

As they sang on, something new became apparent. There was an air of desperation about their music. It carried over into the expressions on the four faces. Jon-Tom was winning. They knew it and he knew it, and worst of all, they knew he knew they knew it.

He pressed his attack with a vibrant, volcanic rendition of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” while letting Dormas take a temporary lead. The song seemed to invigorate the ninny as well, and she kicked and pawed at the stumbling, retreating monstrosity. The music flowed out of him. He felt good: strong; full of voice; his fingers a blur on the strings of the duar. It was an echo of his performance during the perturbation, when he’d played to that imaginary Forum crowd of thousands.

Utterly desperate now, the imp-monster counterattacked with the heaviest weapons in its arsenal—a string of greatest hits by Hank Williams himself. Taken aback by the overwhelming melancholy of the lyrics, Jon-Tom felt himself knocked back on his heels. Mudge was there to prop him up and to shout encouragement in his ear.

“Don’t let ‘em get you down, mate! You’ve got ‘em on the run, you do. Stand up to it, fight back, let ‘em have everything you’ve got!”

With the otter standing behind him and Dormas and Clothahump ranged to either side of him, Jon-Tom did just that, blasting out a string of platinum bullets by Stevie Wonder, the Stones, Tina Turner, and the Eurythmics. When the imp-monster sagged, he laid a little of its own medicine on it in the form of a soulful version of “Purple Rain.” The imps’ color began to run from red to lavender. “You’ve got it, lad, you’ve got it now! Finish it off!” Pulling itself together, the imp-monster tried to rally its former confidence and muster enough energy to attack with prosaic weapons like spears and swords. Mudge and Dormas made ready to defend Jon-Tom from this unmagical but possibly lethal attack.