Modern Magick

Music and Misadventure: 1

'So,' said Jay. 'Tell me again. What exactly are we doing here?'

Here was a breezy, grassy plain adorned by craggy chunks of rock nicely arranged in a ring. Two rings, actually, one inside the other; swaying gently in the centre of both was me.

'Visiting my mother,' I said, swallowing nausea. I thought I was getting used to flying down the Winds of the Ways, but today...

'Ves,' said Jay, wearily. 'Visiting one's mother consists of popping by for tea and scones on a Saturday afternoon, and having a cosy chat. It does not consist of flying off to the other side of the country at a moment's notice, with nothing but a set of co-ordinates to inform us as to her precise location, and after six years of total silence on both sides.'

'All right,' I said, venturing a step or two beyond the confines of the inner circle. 'We are riding nobly to my mother's side to afford her whatever assistance lies within our power.'

'Six years, Ves.'

'I heard you.'

'There was a question in there.'

'Got it.'

'Actually, there were several.'

I had no answers for Jay, certainly none that would satisfy him, so I said nothing. He had brought us to a henge in Birkrigg, Cumbria, otherwise known as Druid's Temple, and it proved, to my satisfaction, to be located very near the sea. I filled my lungs with fresh ocean air, turned my face (probably tinged with green) to the brisk wind, and indulged in a moment's reflection.

I need you to come here at once, Mother had said, having called me out of the blue. And bring those pipes of yours. She had not, of course, said why. Nor had I been able to prise an answer from Milady, as to why she had obligingly given my personal phone number to my mother.

Mother dearest had also insisted upon Jay, equally without explanation. A few minutes after she had hung up on me, a text had arrived, containing nothing but a string of numbers: map co-ordinates.

They'd led us, so far, to the Cumbrian coast.

None of it made any sense.

'If your mother asked for your help,' I said, without turning around. 'Wouldn't you go running?'

'Yep,' said Jay. 'But that's—'

He stopped, but I had a feeling he'd been planning to say, but that's different. Maybe it was. He had, by all appearances, a close relationship with his family.

Privately, I couldn't fault him for a degree of indignation. Upon finding myself so peremptorily summoned across the country without so much as a Hi, daughter, how are you? I'd had to swallow a flicker of pure rage. How could she dare to—

No, no thinking like that. At least it was communication, after so much silence. At least she wanted me for something.

And then there was the fact of Milady's interference. Was she just being neighbourly, and trying to put me on better terms with my family? Or did she know something about my mother's purpose that I didn't?

Curse my insatiable curiosity, I had to find out.

'She's my mother,' was all I could find to say to Jay, which had to be explanation enough. After all, I only had the one.

Jay accepted this with a nod, though the frown did not clear from his brow. 'Okay,' he said. 'So. Sheep Island.'

Mother's co-ordinates proposed to land us in the middle of a tiny spit of land only fifteen acres across, populated with (despite the name) nothing but grass, and with (as far as we could find out) nothing whatsoever to recommend it to anybody's notice. It had taken us some little time to plot a route. Waymastery to Druid's Temple; take to the skies, and straight on to Sheep Island, taking great care not to fall into the sea en route.