Lorelei And The Scourge Of Nokomis

Lorelei and the Scourge of Nokomis

Wendell McKay

(6422)

Lorelei gave a couple of passing early morning risers the stink eye and tried to focus on the wider surroundings, nonplussed as she’d rarely been at the situation. It was still the same: widely spaced fir trees, tents, nascent campfires, and campers like the one they’d mysteriously been landed with as far as the eye can see. At least fifteen guitars were being tuned within a hundred yards of her.

“Fucking hippies,” she whispered, shaking her head and then turning it as Goat Boy emerged from behind, a pair of brightly colored shorts concealing his bounteous genitals. “Hecate’s monthlies, friend! Why the hell are you wearing those?”

“I don’t know. They were there.” Goat Boy coughed meaningfully. “We might want to be quiet, let Valerie sleep. I’m surprised I’m not asleep.”

“After what I heard last night, I’m surprised you’re not dead.”

Goat Boy laughed. “There’s a time for everything. Where’s Chef, anyway?”
“I think he decided to make a recon, try and figure out where we are the hard way.”
“And where do you think that is?” Goat Boy shook his head. “They’ve got American accents, but it can’t be America. It’s so green and dull. I haven’t heard a gunshot or seen anyone praying in an entire day.”
“Canada?” Lorelei wondered out loud.
The sounds of machinery being smashed erupted from inside the camper.
“Stupid radio!” screamed Valerie. “It won’t play anything but Dave Matthews!”
“Okay, I guess it is America,” admitted Goat Boy.

Chef bought a bagel with some of the strange wooden tokens he’d been given in exchange for a couple of ratty old ten-dollar bills. He’d expected the pleasantly malodorous girl at the token counter to raise an eyebrow at his outfit or demeanor, but she’d smiled at him and said “thank you” for the mince pie he’d impulsively given her. The whole place threw him so far out of whack that he almost gave her the old dollar piece that had saved his life all those years ago from that Rebel bullet at Spotsylvania. Remembering the Bloody Angle and those nightmarish few hours threw into further contrast the almost eldritch bucolic peace of their current position.
He chuckled and wondered what Lorelei and the others must have thought of it. He didn’t think he’d been there before, and yet there was a nagging feeling of something familiar that simply wouldn’t let go.
“There’s rats in my brain,” he told a passing pair of early morning risers, who smiled politely.

“The minibar isn’t bad,” Valerie admitted, “though they could have done better with the furnishings. Don’t you think so, sweetie?” Her energy apparently restored by her brief nap, she enveloped Goat Boy in a savage hug as Goat Boy felt inclined to agree in any case.
The camper could have been used by the Partridge Family. That was all the description any of the three really felt the place needed.
“Hell yeah,” said Goat Boy, inspecting the bottle of nectar—Lotophagonis ’23, no less—that his lover held up, its amber glow seeming to illuminate the entire room, making the camper’s interior a colossal mixed drink.
“Someone’s brought us here, and not just for our health,” Lorelei announced.
“It couldn’t be… you know…” Goat Boy found himself unwilling to say “your dad.”
Lorelei’s eyes took on a faraway look, almost misting over. “Isn’t really his style, G.B. We may eternally seek for each other across the trackless wastes of time and space,” she drawled sarcastically, “but I’m not speaking to him unless he quits that moron political talk show.” She knew he was just doing it to piss her off.
“Should we go look for Chef?” Valerie looked towards the door with fascination. “Maybe if we take a look around we’ll get more answers.”
“Yeah,” said Goat Boy, “and I’m hungry.”

Chef saw them walking past the biodegradable balloon stand and smiled, wondering if they felt as out of place as he did. What made it weirder than anything else was that there didn’t seem to be danger of any kind.
“Hey guys,” he called, waving an omelet at them and realizing that, since he could wave it, he’d cooked it too long on the hot rock behind him. He blamed it on the distractions.
The others noticed them too as they emerged from the wood, finding a bluff that stretched away beneath them to a vast clearing of about a mile in circumference surrounded by trees of the kind they’d just left. A lazy little river passed beneath, ruins of wharves here and there, with scrubby grassland on either side. The sun hadn’t quite finished rising, and a dewy mist still held on for dear life in the bottomlands.
“It’s beautiful,” whispered Valerie, nibbling Goat Boy’s ear. “Where are we? This place reminds me of Hy-Brasil back before the zoning regulations scandal.”
“Near enough,” laughed Chef. “We’re in Michigan—the Upper Peninsula. A mile down that way,” he continued with another wave of the omelet, “is Lake Superior. Beyond that, Canada.”
“You were close,” Goat Boy told Lorelei.
“How did you find all that out?” asked Valerie.
“I asked.”
“Oh,” Lorelei responded, an impish smirk starting to steal across her face. “Aren’t you going to introduce us to your new friend?”
“Ah.” Chef blushed, deciding it was too late to pretend the “other distraction” didn’t exist. “Guys, this is Fausta.”
“Hey.” The woman stood and took off her straw hat like a Victorian gentleman greeting a lady. She was in her mid-to-late twenties, with a half-assed Louise Brooks bob, smoky dark blue eyes, and an appealingly sharp, good-natured face that kept sliding into a lazy grin no matter how hard she tried to stop it happening. Her old-fashioned floral print pink dress clung to a number of shapely curves, terminating at the bottom in a pair of striped socks and work boots. “Gustav here was just telling me about you guys.”
Gustav? Lorelei mouthed to Chef.
No real names, Chef mouthed back, too dangerous.
Lorelei tried to repress a fit of laughter, and then wondered with a shock when the last time was that she’d done that.
“Yeah, old Gustav’s a great talker,” Goat Boy managed, unsure what else to say.
“When do you go on?” asked Fausta. “Your band, I mean?”
“We’ll have to check,” Lorelei smoothly replied, making a mental note to kick Chef’s ass at some point in the extremely near future. “So are you here for…”
“Oh, it’s my vacation,” said Fausta. “Actually, I’m gonna sit down, if you don’t mind,” she added in obviously mock dudgeon, “as… it’s my vacation.” She smiled brightly at Chef, who coughed and turned to hide the unusually fierce blush that erupted all over his face.
“I don’t usually go in for this kind of thing, you know, it’s like ‘hippie camp’ or something. I mean, shit, a folk festival? I don’t think so. A couple of my colleagues were kind of into it, though, so I figured what the hell. I’m going to go to a conference in Rome later this year, so I guess this is slumming, but it’s a hell of a lot cheaper.”
“Yeah,” replied Goat Boy, who looked frantically at Valerie, the latter lost in the scenery.
“Fausta’s a lecturer,” Chef told them.
“I come out here to read every morning,” Fausta told them, laughing, “and this morning I find Gustav doing this super-cool ‘slow food’ thing with that omelet. That’s one thing I don’t really seem to find in Chicago that much anymore, just being able to meet really interesting people by chance without being afraid of saying the wrong thing.”
Lorelei shivered. All the excessive tranquility was starting to get to her.
Chef sighed heavily.
“I hate to interrupt your morning, Gustav, but we do need to rehearse,” Lorelei told him, with just the hint of steel in her voice. She got to watch Chef’s face fall very leisurely, like an apartment building demolition in slow motion.
“Can I watch?” Fausta chirped excitedly.
“We’d love to have you,” Lorelei improvised, “but Goat Boy has this… religious thing about our rehearsals.”
“Oh, no, please, forget I asked,” Fausta hurriedly averred. “It was great to meet you guys and I can’t wait to see you play. I’ll see you tomorrow night, Gustav?”
Chef nodded with a “hrm-hrm” sound.
“Come on, Gustav,” she said, trying not to make it sound like an order and trying not to make it look like she was yanking him to his feet like a Greek fisherman about to brain an octopus.
They left to find some open ground in the bottomlands, Lorelei looking back for a second to see Fausta hugging her knees and staring back at them with a wistful smile.
“Chef, Chef, Chef,” she laughed. His discomfiture almost made the “band” thing worth it.
“Hey, come on, girl, I was desperate. It was the best way to explain… us, especially with this bein’ a folk festival and all. We can always suddenly break up over ‘artistic differences.’”
“I can’t believe you said that about me back there, Lorelei,” cackled Goat Boy. “‘Religious about rehearsals,’ indeed. And Gustav?”
They found a crevice in the bluffs likely to conceal them from prying eyes and sat to discuss their bizarre situation.
“So we’re at a folk festival in Michigan,” Lorelei conceded. “Why?”
Chef breathed deeply. “You ever think someone just wants us to have a vacation? Shit, Lorelei, breathe that fresh air!”
“What do you think, baby?” Goat Boy asked Valerie, who was staring off into space.
“I… I don’t know.”
“Are you all right?” Lorelei asked.
“Sure, I’m fine, I just… this is all so strange.”
“I know how you feel, Val.” Lorelei shook her head. “We don’t just show up places for no reason at all.”
Valerie nodded distractedly, but couldn’t take her eyes off the far bluff to the south, where the mysterious stranger with the disheveled hair and flannel shirt wielded his guitar like an artist’s brush, mixing and warping the colors and hues of space and time into a single hypnotic beat kept together by a mere five strings. She felt herself sing inside in a way she wasn’t sure she had since she was a girl and Uncle Oisin told her stories of the mortal world before he decided to go back there himself and never returned.
Someone might have noticed, but the other three found them far too preoccupied with the swirling green mist that began to flood their meeting place, a mist that thickened and glistened until it took on a vaguely human shape. It was a woman of indeterminate years and attractive form, almost almond-shaped black eyes boring into each of their battle-ravaged beings.
“Who are you?” demanded Lorelei.
“I… am Nokomis.”

“This was my lake,” spoke Nokomis, “or, rather, it was sacred to me. In days long gone by the shores would sing with hymns of praise to my bounty. As time passed, the invaders from beyond the great water came, the Ojibwa died out or dispersed, and my worship was neglected or forgotten. I am not a vengeful being by any means. What I have described, sadly, has been the way of the world from its inception. I can look down on such things and give them the attention they deserve—that is to say, none.”
Hard luck for your worshippers, thought Lorelei, who remained silent.
“Someone seeks to manipulate the psychic energies of this place for their own purposes,” spoke Nokomis. “This shows disrespect and must stop.”
“And you want us to stop it?” asked Goat Boy, furry brows furrowed.
“I had a choice of… agents,” spoke Nokomis. “The astral tides pulled your way, and there was a certain… reputation I found convincing.”
“What if we refuse?” asked Lorelei.
Nokomis giggled in a distinctly threatening manner and evaporated into the air above her former holy place.
“Well, let’s refuse, then,” Goat Boy suggested. “Eh?”
Lorelei refused. Chef caught himself glancing back at the bluff where he’d met Fausta. Valerie searched anxiously for the strange musician, but he had vanished.
“Maybe we do need a holiday,” said Lorelei, suddenly frowning as she remembered something Fausta had said. “What is tomorrow night, anyway, Chef?”
“Ha! Line dancing.”

Goat Boy and Valerie went to go “take a walk,” leaving Lorelei and Chef watching a halfway decent klezmer band play to a handful of spectators on one of the smaller stages. The park stretched from Bad River south for about a mile, the festival attendees numbering about five or six thousand.
Chef put on his sunglasses and basked, eventually giving up and turning to Lorelei.
“So what’s up, sister? You ain’t usually this quiet. We’ve been in weird spots before, and a hell of a lot less pleasant.”
“Come on, Chef, let’s face it. If there is something weird out there, it’ll find us. Like to like, as per fucking usual.” She folded her arms after adjusting her bikini, looking a little like a healthy, unmarked Amy Winehouse with white streaks in her hair. She found herself surprised at how much she didn’t mind the drooling teenage boys and men that somehow knew to keep a distance with their leering.
“That’s the thing I’m worried about.”
“Yeah? You don’t usually—ah. Fausta.”
“Oh, man, Lore. What were the odds? And now, just when I meet somebody who might just know her way around a kitchen, that Nokomis has to throw this in our lap.”
“What were the odds? You don’t think—”
“Nah, I didn’t catch that vibe.”
“Yeah, me neither.” Lorelei squinted, putting on her glasses. “You got a cigarette?”
“Fausta says it’s actually hip to roll your own nowa—oh.” Chef grinned sheepishly and handed her a Lucky Strike. “I don’t want her to get hurt, you know? When the shit hits the fan, and she happens to be around…” He shook his head vigorously.
“Hey, relax. Just keep your eyes open. We’ve all come through for each other in the past—one human woman shouldn’t be too much extra effort.”
Chef coughed and giggled. “Cute, Lorelei. And thanks.”
Lorelei shook her head in mock disapproval. “Look at you,” she said, laughing.
“Look at you, girlfriend. You look good laughing.”
Lorelei stopped laughing and simply smiled.

Goat Boy looked around to make sure that nobody was watching and started loping through the woods in the manner of his animal brethren, his eyes and ears distended and alert for the slightest trace of his lover. Valerie had gone missing. It was bad enough—sort of—that they had no idea where the kids were, but this was vastly worse.
One minute he and Valerie had been rolling along a stray slab of granite in post-coital glee, the next she seemed to slide away and vanish. Her gorgeous faery smell still stained him all over, and was able to spin in the residue traces like an unrolling blanket as he tracked her. She was still in the earthly plane, and not too far away, he knew that much. Keeping the campers and tents in sight as a geographical reference, he leapt through the wood in a fury and worried himself sick.

Valerie spun and spun and spun until she was the sun and the trees the planets. The clearing was alive and bright with magic she’d long thought gone from the world, sparkling and vital with shimmering forms, half visions and half ghosts. Her hair lashed around her like flares as her entire body lived and breathed with unprecedented force.
“It’s been long since you heard the music, my child,” came the voice, a husky, honeyed baritone that filled her with a feeling of comfort and safety. “It’s been long since you were among your proper kind. Soon I shall come, and take you there, and you shall be the love of a king.”
Everything cut out, as if a light switch had gone off, and Valerie hit a tree with the centrifugal force from her spinning, crying out and giggling as if she’d been drunk.
“Valerie!” Goat Boy bounded to her side and rooted around her as if pulling up grass. “Are you all right? What happened?”
“I don’t know… this is so strange.”
A curious music sounded in her head.

The man swanked arrogantly across the stage, his leather pants audibly creaking out past the pretzel stands where Lorelei and the Chef regarded him warily.
“I fucking hate metal,” hissed Chef.
“You just never hear it live,” scolded Lorelei.
“This is a folk festival, for Curnonsky’s sake! What the hell is that guy doing here? I mean, I’m not that big on folk music, really, but it’s better than this shit.”
The man unslung his guitar from his shoulder, pointing it like a weapon at the audience, the latter emitting a mix of hostile groans and appreciative titters. He winked and pumped a fist, revealing an indistinct tattoo.
“See, the guitar’s supposed to be his cock,” Chef lectured, temporarily mastering the obvious.
“Did you see that?” whispered Lorelei.
“Not really,” said Chef, who was trying to look everywhere but at the hair-metal interloper. “What was it?”
“His tattoo. There was something familiar about it…”
After an exhibitionistic warmup session, the man started to play an ear-shattering, cacophonous song about dragons and midnight and riding free on the wings of eternal and infernal love. Chef went to go take a piss and see if there was another klezmer band around while Lorelei sat on the edge of her seat, torn between admiration at the song and mystification at her memory of the man’s wrist tattoo.
“Mannannan’s Weir,” she whispered to herself. “Where have I heard of it before?” Images came to her of fathomless depths and slimy things worming their way through an ancient and rotten world. The Cells Beyond. The Lockup of Faery.
“Valerie,” she cried, looking around in a sudden worry.

Goat Boy worried equally as he watched his lover all but drool as Bad River’s answer to Bret Michaels worked his way through a number of songs to the increasing interest and approval of the audience. Certainly not the most natural crowd for his stuff, the music lovers stopped barbecuing or playing hackysack and began to congregate in greater clumps around the stage.
“Who is this guy?” Goat Boy asked a girl dancing next to her.
“That’s Alex Dread,” she chirped excitedly. Goat Boy found her refusal to roll her eyes when saying such a name certain evidence of some kind of hypnosis. “He used to be in Pain Market.”
“You like him?”
“I didn’t think so; actually, I used to think he sucked. Now, though… this stuff is so real!”

“Hey!” Chef whirled around to see Fausta approaching, her straw hat fastened at a rakish angle with an old-fashioned scarf. “I didn’t think I’d see you again until tomorrow night.”
Chef was torn between the urge to run away and take her in his arms.
“You don’t think I’m scared of you, do you?” he laughed.
“Man, I hope not. No, it’s just that you guys seem like you have this crazy tight bond, you know? I know people in bands and they haven’t been nearly as close.”
“We are kind of a family.” Chef laughed inside at the understatement.
Fausta made a charming motion with her mouth and looked around. “So, you and Lorelei, you’re not, like, you know—”
Chef almost exploded with laughter at the notion. “No, no… she’s sort of like… a mildly abusive but loving sister.”
“Listen,” said Fausta, “do you have to rehearse now? I was going to eat, and…”
“I’d love to, frankly.”
They found a spot under a tree and spoke generally and awkwardly about a great many things until Fausta came to the subject of the festival’s present lineup.
“And so in the middle of all this hippie stuff we get this Alex Dread guy, the one who used to be in Pain Market?”
“Him.” Chef rolled his eyes and laughed. “Yeah, I noticed him earlier. You’re not a fan, are you?”
“No, but it turns out one of my friends was, back in the day. You’d never believe it to look at her. She actually dragged me up to talk with him, give her moral support, you know?” Fausta giggled, a sound Chef found breathtakingly pleasant. “We got onto this whole weird discussion; my friend specializes—or will specialize, I guess—in Celtic mythology, and apparently this Alex Dread guy used to be in some weird outfit called Mannannan’s Weir.”
Chef’s heart skipped a beat. “Mannannan’s Weir.”
“Yeah. Mannannan was the Celtic god of the sea, apparently.”
“Oh, man.” Chef wiped his brows, as if he’d just made the biggest pot of chicken broth in the universe.
“I know. Isn’t that the cheesiest thing you’ve ever heard?” Fausta started to warm to her subject. “Why the hell do people always go for Celtic mythology, anyway? It seems like half the fantasy novels out there are Celtic,” she said, waving her hands with sarcastic melodrama at the last word. “I mean, it’s not like there aren’t a fucking jillion other traditions to exploit.”
“Fausta.” Chef leaned forward and took her hands, wondering what he was doing. “I hate to do this to you, but—”
“No. No, I’m gonna do this to you,” snapped Fausta. “I’m sick and tired of guys telling me I talk too much. It’s such a double fucking standard—”
“What?” He reeled from the unexpected onslaught, exasperated and exhilarated at the same time. “No, that’s not it, I mean… I could listen to you forever.” Chef reddened and tried to continue. “The thing is, I have to go for a bit.”
“Back to Lorelei, you mean.” Fausta’s eyes clouded over.
“That’s not it, either. I can’t explain why or how, but my… band’s in trouble, and if you see me in the next few hours or so, I need you to keep away. It’s for your own safety.”
“What the hell…” The air grew very thick and dense between them, Fausta’s eyes like the dusk. She tightened her hands around his, and looked as if she might say something.
“Aw, goddamnit.” Chef leaned forward and kissed her, taking her in his arms and holding her close, unable to suppress a moan of delight. After entirely too short a time, they stopped and looked at each other.
“Well,” Fausta finally said.
“If… if everything goes well, I’ll meet you at nine, over by the bluff where we met this morning. If I’m not there… it might be a good idea if y’all cleared out of here.”
“What’s going on, Gustav?” There was no disbelief or suspicion in her voice, just a simple and understandable desire to know.
“I wish I knew.” He kissed her hand somewhat impulsively and left, doubting he’d be able to do so if he stayed a second longer.
Fausta rocked back on her haunches and pondered the tree for a minute, wondering how a perfectly ordinary dawn had turned into such a remarkable day. Her eyes strayed to the river, ambling lazily among the rushes and the rock.
“Oh, fuck this,” she howled, scrambling to her feet and charging off.

Goat Boy sat next to Valerie and watched her with the worry that seemed to have become his stock in trade as of late. On any regular day, she’d have grabbed his pretzel and thrown him onto the ground, doing a variety of things with it before finally chugging the bugger.
Nokomis’ commission seemed to have had an unpleasantly sedative effect on her. She kept staring into space, her eyes and consequently Goat Boy’s consistently straying to the stage where Alex Dread hammered out heavy-metal gut punchers to the unexpected delight of the audience.
“Maybe we should go back to the camper,” he suggested, hoping that the savage light in her eyes would come back at a suggestion of his.
“Maybe,” was all she said, glancing longingly at the stage again.
“Folks, that was Alex Dread,” explained a portly, balding, middle-aged man with a ponytail in a Hawaiian shirt. “We thought we’d surprise you by shaking things up a little this year,” he said a little sheepishly. “Now we’ve got a talented young man from Washtenaw County who you may have heard of… folks, give it up for Lighthorse!”
A scruffy, sandy-haired fellow in a flannel shirt ambled up onto the stage, puffing on a cigarette and laying aside his bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon for safety’s sake.
“I’m Lighthorse,” he charmingly mumbled.

Alex Dread sauntered into his trailer to receive a killer uppercut, staggering against the wall and accidentally ripping down a poster for Yuengling.
“What the hell do you want with her?”
Alex tried to focus, grinning foolishly when he saw a pretty girl in a bikini standing over him, and then turning pale as he saw who it was.
“Lorelei… damn, thought I recognized that hair.” Alex tried to raise himself to a sitting position. “How’s your dad?”
“Don’t ask. Answer my question.”
“Sure, just tell me who you’re talking about when you say ‘her.’”
“Valerie.”
“Val—Oisin’s ‘niece?’ She’s ridin’ with y’all nowadays?”
“You’re trying to tell me you didn’t know?”
“Little girl, it may surprise you to know that you and your travelin’ circus of hippie terrorist monkey-junk aren’t really a tremendous topic of concern in my world.”
“Have you heard of Nokomis?”
“Sure. This is her backyard, or used to be, at any rate.” Alex stared mournfully at the torn poster for Yuengling. “You want a beer?”

“Let’s give him a hand,” the portly guy advised as the feedback from the microphone lacerated eardrums across the clearing. “And now…”
“Well, if you don’t want to go back to the camper, we’d better find Lorelei, don’t you—” Goat Boy trailed off as he turned to find Valerie gone. Gritting his teeth, he dashed off in search of her, almost forgetting himself and using his natural locomotive skills. Those could wait for the wood.
Chef neared the stage just in time to see him leave.
“Why can’t we have nice things?” he sighed, following in hot pursuit.

“So you don’t have any interest in Valerie?” asked Lorelei, carefully sipping her bottle of Yuengling and watching Alex Dread through narrowed eyes.
“Hell no. Nice looker, sure, but I’m Alex Dread, girl,” Alex said, throwing his arms wide and touching his guitar neck fondly. “I’ve got the pick of the litter all over America! Faery-land was never like this!”
“Thank you, Tommy Steele.” Lorelei hunched forward. “What the hell was Nokomis warning us about, then? And why’s Valerie been so spooked recently?”
A knocking came at the door.
“Fans?” Lorelei asked disdainfully.
“They can wait,” Alex conceded. “Part of my parole deal with the Weir. I gotta keep a lookout for any suspicious and unauthorized activity. What they expect me to do about it I don’t know. But I suppose I could help—”
The knocking came again, now more insistently.
“Hell.” Alex opened the door to find Fausta.
“Hi. We met earlier—I’m Renee’s friend—and I need to ask you—oh.” She saw Lorelei and her face fell.
“Hey, Fausta.” Lorelei noted the confusion on her face as she turned from one to the other. “Mutual acquaintances, that kind of thing.”
“What exactly is going on? Gustav took off and I think he might be in trouble. I mentioned something about Mannannan’s Weir and he started acting real… uh, weird, and then just left.”
“Just like that?” Lorelei asked, somewhat surprised.
“No, not just like that,” replied Fausta with the hint of a smile, “but—”
“Well, I don’t have anything to do with it,” insisted Alex, “or at least I didn’t until now. So if you—” He stopped and went very still for a moment, hurrying to the rear of his camper and pressing his hands to the window. “Do you two hear that?”
The women shook their heads.
“That’s it,” breathed Alex. “That music… haven’t heard that in many a day. The Jongleur’s Magick.”
“Tell me you don’t spell that with a ‘k’.”
“Fausta, let him speak.”
Fausta nodded, a little shame-faced but her eyes wide and shining.
“They roam the planes and use music as a weapon, feeding off souls and the energy from physical attraction. Haven’t you ever felt it,” he asked Fausta, realizing his appeal would be lost on Lorelei, “seeing a musician whose music you really liked and who you thought was just the hottest thing ever?”
Fausta nodded, fascinated but deciding not to reveal the specific example.
“The Jongleurs refine that to a ‘t.’ They’ve been doing this for so long that they’ve made it into a science, and just in time for MySpace, YouTube, Facebook… their power’s increasing with the internet, and they’re growing more dangerous.” He frowned, obviously puzzled. “I don’t know what one would be doing at some over-the-hill folk festival.”
“What are you doing at some over-the-hill folk festival?”
“Been livin’ too hard; thought this would be a bit of a vacation.”
“So did we,” admitted Lorelei ruefully.
“Maybe he’s like a sport fisherman,” Fausta suggested. “You know, someone who decides to go for the quiet streams instead of the big rivers.”
Alex and Lorelei stared at her, impressed.
“Wait, you believe all this?” Lorelei suddenly realized.
“It’s pretty obvious you guys were out of the ordinary to begin with,” explained Fausta. “From that point, it wasn’t much of a jump to this stuff. Besides, it feels right here, for some reason.”
The power of Nokomis, Lorelei thought to herself, and then realized that her own crew was behaving a little out of the ordinary as well.
“Yeah… I know what you mean.” Snapping out of it, Lorelei turned her attention to Alex. “But if the music’s playing now… you think the Jongleur’s after Valerie?”
“The beauty, power, and energy of a Faery?” Alex whistled appreciatively. “If I were a Jongleur, I’d be all over that sweet… stuff,” he said, deciding for Lorelei’s benefit—and his own—to amend the final word just in time.
“Can you find the Jongleur?” asked Fausta. “Do you think that’s where Gustav went?”
“And can you stop him?”
“Ladies, please,” Alex chastened as if refusing autographs. “Let’s rev up the truck first.”

Goat Boy stopped at a clearing by what seemed to be a long-overgrown dirt road, scraps of prairie and forest alternating off into the distance, for all he knew, all the way to Wisconsin. A tiny stream trickled through, beside which stood Valerie on tiptoe, looking as if she’d just been kissed by moonlight.
“Hey,” said Lighthorse. “What’s up?” He played a few chords on his guitar, amidst some dimension where Elliott Smith and Ryan Adams prominently figured. “You want a beer?” A cold bottle of Stroh’s rolled on its own across the clearing until it clinked next to Goat Boy’s left hoof.
“I was looking for my girlfriend.”
“Oh. We were just talking.”
“Valerie, come on, we need to find Lorelei.”
Valerie didn’t move.
“I don’t think she wants to go with you,” Lighthorse placidly observed. “You want a cigarette?” A pack of Parliament Lights dropped from the sky next to Goat Boy.
“Who are you?” asked Goat Boy in sudden horrified realization.
“I’m Lighthorse,” he answered, with a modest duck of the head. A loathsome “aw, shucks” vibe slithered around the reply.
“You can’t take her!” Goat Boy planted himself in front of Valerie.
“Funny expression,” Lighthorse smirked. “ ‘Over my dead body.’ Of course, you made me say it, but—”
A rubbery omelet sailed past Lighthorse’s face.
“Shit,” they heard Chef swear.
Lighthorse’s guitar neck swung away from Goat Boy and at the bushes where Chef had obviously planted himself, sending forth music almost without his hands touching the strings.
Chef tried to make a dive for it, but found himself caught in the beguiling mix of traditional and contemporary that Lighthorse’s music presented, challenging its audience to forget rote, stereotyped notions of themselves as “urban hipsters” and reclaim their true spiritual selves as children of the soil, waiting out the mild sunsets on clapboard front porches and swapping tall tales over a barrel of cider with three “X”s incongruously marked on the side. Guitar lines and vocal layering thankfully outmatched the set’s more deeply produced moments, the rhythms and melodies clear mountain streams between ridges of reverb and feedback.
Chef screamed.

Lorelei bounded into the clearing to see Chef writhing in quirky, introspective alt-country overload and realized she had just gotten there in time.
Lighthorse arched an eyebrow, his attention to Valerie faltering temporarily, as he plainly wondered about forging some kind of erotic connection between the world of thoughtful nű-sarsparilla and midnight-movie psychobilly.
“Hey, what’s up?” Lighthorse adorably mumbled, charmingly running a hand through his artistically tousled hair. “I’m Lighthorse.”
“Don’t try it on, son,” snapped Lorelei, letting loose a jarring wolf whistle.
A battered old Chevy truck roared into the clearing, circling the four and swerving so that its bed faced the confrontation. Alex Dread stood atop the side like a conquering pirate, his guitar aimed steadily at the group. Behind him was a large machine gun that, whatever its make, caliber, and specifications, could probably still kill lots and lots of people regardless. At its trigger…
“Oh, my God! Gustav! What’s happened to him?”
“Fausta?” cried Goat Boy. “Now that’s more like it,” he crowed, eyeing the machine gun.
“I figured it’d be interesting to learn,” Fausta shrugged with some embarrassment, staring worriedly at Chef’s supine form beneath her. “Lorelei thought… oh shit, is that Lighthorse?”
“You know him?” asked Lorelei.
“My friend Renee went out with him for two weeks while he was playing Chicago,” snarled Fausta. “He promised her the harvest moon and then took her for…” Fausta shook her head at an unpleasant memory. “She was a mess.”
“Hey, c’mon, man, there were issues.” Lighthorse turned to face Alex Dread. “What’s he doin’ here?” he asked, his mask of bashful bonhomie slipping. “Looks like Kip Winger’s hemorrhoid.”
“Now, Lorelei?” asked Alex, the eagerness in his voice palpable.
“Now.”

Ear-splitting guitar chords roused Chef from a curious existence where he lay against a log-chopping tree stump in flannels and denims, a strand of hay between his lips and a copy of McSweeney’s lying on his face to shield it from the midday sun.
Before he could quite register the charmingly melodic nature of the quirky self-deprecation that seemed to surround him like a metatextual miasma, the air was rent with the bloodcurdling assault of pure industrial grade sludge rock. The carefully sculpted hills and fields gave way before surging trace work of lightning and the descent of fleets of unicorns as black as the night with gaseous flames for breath.
The biggest unicorn leapt onto a rock that split the ground and unfurled great leathery wings from its scaly back.
“Yeahhhhh!” it wailed in a guttural falsetto, playing frenetic air guitar and turning to the bleary-eyed Chef and grinning, shooting its stupefied spectator double guns with its blood-stained hooves. “Rock out wit’ your cock out,” it drawled, licking its nostrils with a forked tongue.

Chef screamed and flailed about, before realizing he was lying in Fausta’s arms.
“Hey, hey, shhh…” Fausta held him close and ran a caressing hand through his hair. “It’s okay, sweetie.”
“What happened?” asked Chef, wondering if his dream had taken a sudden pleasant turn.
“I… I don’t think I understand,” Fausta replied in mock astonishment.
“It’s not over, friend, said Lighthorse, circling with Alex like a diffident shark, ducking his head and scratching his hair. “Don’t much matter to me what happens to Vic Tayback over there. Little Titania, though…” He laughed unpleasantly, all the ersatz sincerity leached from his voice. “She’s mine.”
“I owe this lady a favor,” said Alex, indicating Lorelei, “and you’re not takin’ Valerie without a fight.” He thought for a millisecond. “Hippie,” he added.
Lighthorse wove a deceptively simple skein of cornpone lyrical whimsy, searching, gem-like songs both heartfelt and guarded, both musically sophisticated and down-home, mapping ordinary highs and lows through the common humor of reality.
Alex pointed his guitar straight at Lighthorse, let loose a series of chthonic, thunderous chords that betokened the death of things, and screamed “Rock!!!!!”
A colossal wall of black light slammed across the clearing to the sound of car-shattering music. When they came to, Lighthorse was nowhere to be seen and everyone had a faint taste of malt liquor in their mouths.
“Steel Reserve?” Chef loudly wondered as Fausta nodded.
“Is he gone?” asked Lorelei, clearly impressed.
“He’s gone,” growled Alex with grim cheer. “Not for good, but for now.”
Chef grimaced at the taste in his mouth. “Can I have your Stroh’s, G.B.?”

Goat Boy and Valerie spent the night in the camper, sounding as if the latter was back to her old self and with a vengeance.
Chef and Fausta collapsed into their seats, their acquaintance with line dancing done for good.
“At least we know now, right?” laughed Fausta.
“What do you want to do now?” asked Chef as they walked off.
“Nice big fire sounds about right. My tent’s… a little ways away from the fire.” She crinkled her nose. “Safer that way, more private, and what the fuck is your real name, anyway?”
Chef told her.
“Fausta,” she replied, shaking his hand and laughing.
Later that evening, to the immense amusement of their neighbors, they’d scream both names for a number of enjoyable reasons.
Lorelei and Alex watched them from a distance and laughed.
“This really is turning into a proper vacation,” Lorelei observed, inspecting her hot dog with interest. “I’m gonna have to learn how to relax for a change.”
“You need someone to teach you?” Alex asked with an inescapable emphasis.
“There is someone else,” she told him, raising a hand to show that wasn’t all, “but it’s complicated. Sometimes we’re together and sometimes we aren’t.”
“Life on the planes,” Alex laughed mirthlessly. “It can be like that.”
“We have an understanding,” Lorelei mulled, remembering the music, “and we can turn to other people to…”
“Learn?”
“Learn,” responded Lorelei, the look in her eyes refusing to rise to Alex’s laughing face, “but there won’t really be anybody else. Do you understand?”
Alex stopped laughing and nodded, taking her hand and looking at it closely.
From far across the river, Nokomis watched and smiled, giving everyone a week.