Power Trio

Sion weaves a spiky, silver-shot lead line across Kell’s skeletal motorik pulse. She outdid herself on this one, a real v8 engine of a beat, just on the practiced verge of tripping over itself. Thekla Kamiyon remembers the evening they first sketched this song, giggly on boxed wine Kell had liberated from her weird sister’s weird party.

Thekla slams her first chord with a vengeance, as if its eruption could blow the round-eared interloper back out of her studio. Her guitar’s cavernous howl cocoons her, gives that comforting buzz in her gut. And here’s Kell, popping the clutch, all twitch muscles and flying sweat as she chisels the mountain of sound into a monolithic tower of power. Thekla was determined to stay mad at her for a few hours at least, but the primal joy of getting really fucking loud is plastered all over the orc’s face, and it’s a fool’s errand.

And then the euphoria is undercut by a galloping root-five bass part, unfurling like a big gaudy banner across Kell’s rhythm. Thekla glances at the human. His eyes are screwed shut, his narrow hips rocking to the beat. This is not how she saw this song going.

It’s not how she saw this day going.

She always takes her glasses off while she plays; otherwise, she tends to accidentally fling them into the audience by banging her head too hard. Though the far walls of the studio have become a rainbow smear, Evan the Interloper is close enough that she can take him in clearly. He looks the part, she has to admit, as her progression soars into a skyscraper barre chord. His bass stumbles and overshoots, correcting after a hesitant half-second and trailing her up the register.

He's wearing a faded Thunderhead shirt, from the 1989 Samhain eurotour. There's a swallow tattoo's wing peeking out from the right cuff. It's broken in, but everyone's thrifting that sort of stuff these days. Baggy slate carpenter jeans with a thready hole at the knee. He's got it held up with a canvas belt; the whole ensemble drapes on him a little too big. Maybe he's lost weight. There's certainly a post-punk spindliness about him, like he's a burnout legend frowning off the page of a "Top 100 of all time" list. The short, tawny beard strikes Thekla as a likely product of a misplaced razor rather than a choice, and the nose is too big to be traditionally handsome, but he's... interesting to look at. Especially in profile.

His shaggy hair slouches across his eyes, and he blows out of the corner of his mouth to flip it back up his forehead. Those are some big baby blues. And what long lashes for a boy. He registers Thekla’s glance and gives her a crooked grin. He has dimples, which seems somehow unfair.

He’s cute, in a rat-man kind of way. Or he would be if he took care of himself. And if he wasn’t an interloper.

She’s late for the first verse. She jerks her head to the mic, close enough to kiss, and drops the Alfons out entirely, yanking away the curtain of fuzz as she wails her opening salvo. Would be nice if the bass dropped out too, right here on the first and second couplets.

To her satisfied surprise, Evan seems to get the message on the second couplet and cuts his run, palm-muting a lurking background chug below her voice. That’s almost what she wanted. But not quite.

All right, interloper, she thinks, that little slice of her mind knowing how unfair she’s being. Let’s put you and that relic of yours through your paces. With a stomp onto her reverb pedal and a breathy grunt into the mic, she blitzes to the chorus.

What she told Evan is mostly true. The chorus is pretty simple. But it’s an iterative process, after all. And if everyone else wants to throw something new into the mix, why not little ol’ Thekla? She improvises a careening shoulder check of a riff, dancing across a droning D string, muscling the human out. Kell gives her a stormy look and mouths something like go easy. Thekla replies with a wiggle of her hips and a hammer-on flourish. So what, she’s feeling bratty today.

She leans into the mic again to bark the chorus.

“FOSSIL! FUEL!” Kell howls it with her, punctuating each word with a calamitous roll.

“HOLY! RULE!” Sion doesn’t join in on the shouty parts; that would involve changing his expression during a performance, which he has never ever done. The guy’s face becomes a meditative mask of concentration as soon as the music hits.

“FOSSIL! FUEL!” Evan doesn’t have a mic set up, but he’s singing it too now, inaudibly. Presumptive little pinkskin, isn’t he.

“PLAY YOU FOR A FOOL!” she roars with Kell and then divebombs into verse two.

Evan circles the rest of the song from the outside, trying to carve out space between Thekla’s humming wall of sound and Sion’s jittering geometries. He’s on roller skates for the bridge, scrambling for balance, and Thekla realizes she never told him the chords for it.

Okay, she’s being a bitch. She reminds herself that she’s mad at Kell, not the human. He’s just a clueless civilian. They’ll finish this take and she’ll actually walk him through the song.

They do the last chorus. Evan scoots closer to Kell, and when the backup vocals kick in, he leans down and the two of them yell into her mic together, faces inches from each other.

Thekla nearly fumbles her pick.

The smile Kell gives him as he pulls away.

The song ends, abrupt enough that Evan misses the cue. His bass line thrashes one last time and goes still. Thekla takes a breath, about to hit Evan with some pointers. Ease up on the first verse, give yourself somewhere to go. Listen to Sion’s line on the bridge—maybe you should harmonize with it. Let’s get you a mic so you and Kell don’t rub your cheeks on each other.

But before she can speak, Kell says, “Again?” She’s leaning forward, chewing her lip the way she does when she’s in marathon focus.

“Again,” Sion says.

Thekla’s speech deflates into a “Sure.”

“Thekla, could you turn the low end down a bit on your EQ?” Evan asks. “Kinda tough to hear myself on those open chords.”

And Thekla thinks: Come the fuck on! But when she looks at Sion, he just quirks one sculpted eyebrow and inclines his head an inch.

“Yeah, OK.” She fiddles with the bass dial on her amp, then straightens and strums an experimental note. Staying out of Evan’s range should help him cut through. And then maybe they can shake his hand and he can stay out of her life. “Count us in, Sion,” she says, and they resubmerge into the abyss of sound.

Evan eases up on the first verse and gives himself somewhere to go. He doesn’t exactly harmonize with Sion on the bridge, but when he mirrors the riff in the lower octave, it works. He does the thing with Kell and her mic again.

And yes, adding his baritone roar to the backup vox really fills it out. And yes, both Thekla and Evan sound better now that she’s cut her low end and given him room to stretch his wings. He plucks a call-and-response with her on the last chorus and smiles his crooked smile again, and it really isn’t fair how much fun this is and how much better the song sounds than it has all month.

If you get Sion drunk and maudlin enough, he tells the stories his mother told him, about the fairfolk in the old world. How magic was everywhere there, and the first songs were spells that shifted and enraptured the rocks and waters the same way they did their living listeners. How even in the wake of the final spell, the spell that dragged the fairfolk onto Earth two centuries ago, that magic still echoes in every chord, pulling on the heart like a moon on the tide.

Thekla doesn’t believe it, not really. But in the floating finale of the song, as her voice and her strings and her friends move as one, and Kell looks at her like she’s the only girl who ever picked up an axe, she comes close.

Sion’s last shimmering note rings out and squeals the song to a halt. Kell whoops. “That fuckin’ ripped!” She indicates Thekla and Evan with her sticks. “That shit you guys did on chorus three unlocked the fucking song, man. That’s the juice.”

“Band meeting,” Thekla says. “Er, current band meeting. Let’s go outside. I need a smoke.”

“Thekla,” Kell says. “Come on…”

“Kell, I’m not—” Thekla takes a breath. “I’m sorry for snapping before, and I promise I am done being pissy. But we gotta talk it through. Come on. I’ll let you bum one.”

“Fine, fine.” Kell reluctantly extracts herself from the drums and grabs a lighter from her windbreaker. “Sorry, Evan. Be right back.”

“You bet. No worries.” Evan gives Kell and Sion an awkward little wave as they step outside.

Thekla slips into her jean jacket, pats her pocket, finds her Kobold Blue Filters. “There’s a mini fridge behind that anime body pillow,” she says to Evan. “That stuff is all ours, help yourself.”

“I might take you up on that,” Evan says, glancing at the porny pillowcase curtaining off the booze corner. “Hey, uh. You really played the hell out of that song. I love your tone.” He shifts from foot to foot. There’s duct tape holding his sneakers together. “Sounds killer.”

“Thanks.” Thekla starts to follow her bandmates, then glances over her shoulder. “You did good, you know. For what it’s worth.”

She slips outside and denies him the chance to reply.

* * *

“What did I tell you?” Kell is ready to intercept her as she steps into Herbalism’s alley. “The dude has the fucking juice.”

“You hadn’t even heard him when you texted us!” Thekla protests. “You got my ass out of the tattoo shop for a cold call.”

Kell extracts a smoke from Thekla’s pocket, tousling the goblin’s ginger hair out of its bun as she goes. Thekla has gotten fantastic at ignoring the little sparks beneath her skin when Kell touches her. Seeing Evan and Kell sing together, so close, should not change that.

“I fink you should shay, ‘shorry, Kell,’” the orc says around her cigarette. She lights up and takes a drag. “‘You were right, and he has the juice.’”

“He has the juice, and we were both right,” Thekla says. “We had a bassist. You fired him.”

“We had a temporarily embarrassed guitarist with a bass-sized stick up his ass. No offense, Sion.”

“Kival is my cousin, not my clone,” Sion says. “What offense can be taken?”

“Kell, he’s just some random-ass human who called you two months too late,” Thekla says. “We don’t have to totally let go of the idea of Evan, and if the trio thing is a no-go, I get it, but we should do auditions again, line up some alternatives.”

“And end up with another Kival?” Kell says. “No fuckin’ way. Do not look this gift bassist in the mouth.”

Thekla has some thoughts she is about to share re: who in this circle should stop looking at the gift bassist’s mouth, but Kell keeps going. “Three Good Reasons, OK?” She holds up three black-nailed fingers.

“I really regret teaching you this method,” Thekla says.

“One: He’s a human and that opens doors. No, don’t shake your head. It just does, and that’s how it is. We can both hate it, but you can’t hate him over it.”

“I don’t!” Thekla protests. “You and Sion always make me sound like some kind of fairfolk returnist. But don’t you think it might be a problem for The Vail?”

The Vail is their holy grail festival, up north in Niagara, and it’s by fairfolk for fairfolk. Kell would strangle someone to play that stage.

“No, I don’t, because we’re basically a rainbow coalition with him on,” Kell says. “But if we have to, we can stick fake ears on him and call him Evandolar or something. Two: he’s a pro. He has the look, he has the rhythm, and he showed up within an hour’s notice and he wasn’t high or anything.”

“I don’t know. Did you see his shoes? His hair? The dude isn’t exactly put together.”

“That’s number three. I don’t think he has anywhere to stay, Thek. I think he’s on the streets. He had his underwear and a toothbrush in his bass bag. We can get him money, gigs, a place to crash.”

“We aren’t a charity,” Thekla says, hating herself a bit for it.

“You aren’t a charity,” Sion says. “I have class guilt and a large, rich family.”

“For the fiftieth time, Sion, your dad is not paying our rent,” Kell says.

“It would help you focus on our craft,” Sion says.

“Dude, when am I not focused?” Kell turns back to Thekla, her voice soft but unyielding. “When you met me, I needed help, and you gave me help. You can’t bullshit me and pretend you’re not that person.”

Thekla doesn’t know what to say to that.

Instead, she lights her own cigarette off Kell’s cherry and kicks an invisible soccer ball to Sion. “Sounds like you’re the tiebreaker again.”

“You know how I feel about breaking ties,” Sion says. He smokes nothing that won’t get him high, and is occupying himself by rolling his pick across and in between his fingers. “I am here to make loud music and take designer drugs. I will go along with any details you care to define. I am an entirely neutral party. I am Switzerland, the elf.”

“But if you had to,” Kell presses.

“And you have to,” Thekla adds.

Sion slips the pick down his sweater sleeve. “If I had to do anything, which as a member of the idle rich I do not, I would say: He has talent. Raw talent, great instincts, clearly didn’t learn through schooling and drilling because his technique is a bit shit. He’s not exactly playing etudes. But we’re not exactly playing Swan Lake.” He shrugs. “And the drummer’s opinion is the important one. The holy bond betwixt bass and drum is the most sacrosanct in our society. Like a marriage, only with an actual function.”

“Thek,” Kell says, and lays a gentle, encompassing hand on her shoulder. “We lock in.”

“I just thought…” Thekla looks out at the New Laytham skyline through the bits of plastic trapped in the alley’s chain-link fence, then at the ground, at Kell’s size 13 black combat shitkickers. Thekla’s wearing the brown color of the same brand; both of hers could fit in one of Kell’s. She met the orc and bought her pair the next day. “I thought we could lock in,” she says in a quiet voice.

“We definitely could,” Kell says. She crouches in front of Thekla, eye-to-eye now. “Zero question. Because you are a great fucking musician who could melt faces with a ukulele and you are the most important person in my life. But you’d hate the bass, Thekla Kamiyon. You’re in the spotlight, not manning it. You belong in the front with that red fuckin’ rocket, where everyone can see you shake that big round ass and sing like a siren. You were born for it. Let me and Evan give you that boost, and you’ll be able to dropkick the moon.”

“And I will also be present,” Sion says.

“And Sion will be present. And we can make him pay for drinks.” Kell presses her lips to the top of Thekla’s head, then stands back up.

Thekla sighs heavily, trying to shake off the syrupy feeling her friend’s lips planted in the core of her stomach. “Fine. Probationally.”

“Fine?” Kell’s eyes spark.

“Fine, but it’s probationohhh hey hey HEY.” Thekla’s feet kick as Kell lifts her up and spins her around. “Ohmigod, put me down. I fucking hate you.”

“You fucking love me,” Kell says. “And I love you.”

“And I am going back inside.” Sion reaches for his keys. “Perhaps our new pet stray hasn’t completely emptied Neko-chan’s mini-fridge. See you in there.” He slips inside the building. Kell stops the door closing completely with a cocked hip, still holding Thekla bridal-style.

“One more thing,” Thekla says. “And promise you won’t say I’m being dumb.”

“I promise you are a genius.”

“I don’t like the way he keeps looking at you.”

“Dude!” Kell giggles. “You threw him into the deep end without a life preserver. Don’t think I didn’t notice. If he wasn’t looking at me, he’d have missed every cue. You little green asshole.”

“I’m serious!” But Thekla finds herself laughing too. “There is going to be some kind of psychosexual intra-band drama and I am going to actually lay it on the line right now ahead of time. If you fuck our new bassist, I get to add a keys player and fuck them.”

“Jeez, Thek. If I hadn’t promised…” Kell hoists Thekla onto her shoulder, dipping to avoid knocking the goblin’s head on the building’s doorjamb. “We are not a keyboard band.”

“What, am I going to fuck Sion? He’s smooth down there! Like a doll!”

“Talking about psychosexual yadda yadda when who keeps asking who to let her bounce a quarter off her ass?”

“Just to see! As a science experiment, Kell!” Thekla beats a fist against Kell’s linebacker deltoid. “That would be for science!”