I strummed my travel guitar idly as I stared into the dark canopy of the forest. The heat haze of the summer evening lay heavy upon us. Even after sunset the humidity thickened the air, and the scent of our skin brought the mosquitoes. I slapped one from my arm. I canceled a show for this.
“Earth to Erin.” Andi was stretched out in the tent, ready to sleep. “You okay, hon?”
“Yeah, don’t worry, love. Just tired.”
“Two days of hiking will do that, especially lugging a guitar along.” She offered me a weary smile.
“You can say that again.” I said, returning a half smile as I plucked a couple of strings listlessly.
Andi sighed. “Hon, just put the guitar down and come to bed. No-one’s going offer you a contract out here.”
Maybe they would if I were on stage right now.
I swallowed the retort and set the guitar down. She wasn’t wrong.
“So what do you outdoorsy types do once you’re out here?” I asked, taking my place beside her in the tent. She lay her head on my shoulder, tickling my neck with her hair.
“This isn’t enough?” She quirked an eyebrow as she looked up at me.
I snorted. “Totally.”
She nudged me gently in the ribs, kissed my cheek, then rolled onto her back.
“It’ll be good for us, you’ll see.”
I made a noncommittal noise.
Within minutes her breathing slowed to the steady rhythm of sleep. I never could understand how she could sleep so easily in such a soupy atmosphere. She snored softly, and eventually I fell into a fitful sleep.
I woke late in the night to an impossible sound. Among the chirrups and screeches of the wild, out in the darkness, thrummed the steady rhythm of blues on bass strings. The tune was mesmerizing despite the absurd incongruity.
Andi sat upright. “What is that?” she hissed.
I shook my head and held a finger to my lips. Perhaps our visitor wouldn’t notice us. The white light of the camp lantern was dim, and the campfire had reduced to embers before I’d fallen asleep. All colors had become brown, green and gray in the wan light.
I opened the zipper as quietly as possible and poked my head out. I couldn’t see a thing. The pitch black of the forest was absolute. The dense canopy blocked even the gentle light of the moon and stars that might otherwise have given our surroundings some texture.
The music was everywhere, it taunted from every side of the campsite. Mesmerized by the way the tree line shifted in shadow, I thought I heard something beneath it. I craned my neck, and tilted my ear toward the nearest patch of trees.
The message in the melody suddenly became clear as a spoken word.
Choose.
Two possible futures stretched out from that moment, jarring in their discord.
One was a silent place. A house without music. A world without song. The refrain was Andi’s face, the only color in a grey space. That future was familiar, but resentment bubbled up at the prospect of a future so colorless and devoid of inspiration.
A bridge broke up the tempo. The thought shifted and with it the second possibility formed. It was transposed over Andi’s face until she was no longer there. She was gone, but understanding flooded in. I felt the thrill of potential in my hands that comes before nailing a song. I knew I could intuitively execute every note perfectly and saw the accolades gather at my feet.
As suddenly as the trance had come over me, it shattered, dropping me like a lead weight.
Outside, the steady sound of blues started up again, and this time I understood immediately.
Choose.
Andi startled as I looked to her. Her bright, green eyes were washed out, dark. Had she been offered a choice too? I tilted my head, questioning. She conjured a weak smile. She took my hand. Outside, the musician missed a note, momentarily breaking the spell; not much, but enough.
“We’re going to fight this,” Andi hissed. I nodded, grimly resolute.
I grabbed my guitar by the neck – not an ideal weapon, but better than nothing – then reached for the zipper. The canvas parted to expose the small clearing, now lit by the rekindled flame of our modest campfire. A figure sat on the far side. The limited light and tremulous air above the fire made it hard to make out the shape, but it lit the stranger well enough to reflect eyeshine back at me like a cat in the night.
“Don’t hesitate!” The voice was mellifluous, but held an undercurrent of threat. “Come join old Jack by the fire.”
“Who the fuck are you?” I said, trying to keep inflection from my voice.
He gave a throaty chuckle. “Bold one, aren’t you? There was a time when your kind groveled for a moment of my muse. All that remains are half remembered stories. Nobody remembers old Jack.”
“Okay, Jack. What the fuck are you?” Andi this time.
A wide grin glittered in the shadows of his face, the firelight playing off his teeth like jewels. The smile spread so far across his face that it turned my stomach.
“Better question, but not one you’d much like the answer to, I’d wager.” He paused. Either considering how much to say, or savoring the moment. “I am a patron of the arts, and you have both spurned my muse this evening. That doesn’t happen too often.”
“You mean choosing between music and my girlfriend?” I spat. Andi gripped my hand. We chose each other.
“Details, details.” He gave another smug chuckle. “You could have been everything you’ve ever dreamed. Still could if you…?” He trailed off.
We stood silent, staring across the flame.
“It would seem not. Admirable strength of will. Fine, spoil my fun. Let’s get this over with.”
He stood, revealing himself to be at least eight feet tall, with unnaturally long arms. At the edge of the flame a hand came into view, gnarled, seemingly made of the very trees that surrounded us; and tipped with wicked points. My face must have given way to fear.
“Oh, yeah! That’s it! That’s the proper and respectful reaction when you meet old Jack, in his own home no less!”
He lunged across the fire and seized me by the throat, lifting me into the air in one fluid motion. In the full light it was quite plain that he was not human. His skin was caramel, and smooth as the inner flesh of a tree trunk. His eyes were a green so dark that they were barely distinguishable from black by the variance of the flickering fire. His hair looked to be tree bark. His smile was a cruel, red crescent of strong, flat teeth.
“Wait!” Andi shouted. “Put them down!”
Jack’s head tilted toward her.
“Why would I do that? A man has to eat,” he sneered.
“A game. A gamble. You like deals, right? You want this to be fun? Why not make it a wager?”
By the ease in which he held me aloft it was clear that if he wanted to, he could snap me like kindling. As far as I could read his alien features, he appeared to grow thoughtful.
“What kind of game?” he mused.
I gurgled. Spots flickered at the edges of my vision.
“Put them down first!”
He made a huffing sound, then set me down. I gasped for breath.
“What is it you have in mind?”
“Name your game, and we’ll play. If we win, you let us go.” Andi sounded more confident than I felt.
“I do enjoy games…and if I win?” The grin returned to his face.
“If you win…well, we can’t stop you from killing us. At least you’ll have got your kicks out of it.” She spat the last words in disgust.
“Quite so, quite so. Very well.” He turned to me, gesturing at the guitar that had fallen at my feet when he grabbed me. “Best me in a game of song, and you may leave.” He loped over to the nearest tree, and seemed to reach into it, pulling back to reveal a standing bass, completely perfect, albeit for the odd number of strings. Only three. He slapped the top string smartly with the edge of his thumb; it rang out a note that I felt in my bones.
He played a song of yearning, hunting, and taking. The song was as elemental as the one he played to present his offer to us. I felt his desires, though they had little analogue in human experience. He finished with a flourish, a bow; and never once lost eye contact with me.
The absence of sound that followed was so shocking that I felt my legs quiver.
“Giving up without a fight, Erin?” he asked with a smirk.
I gripped the neck of my guitar and growled.
“Not fucking likely”
So I played. I played the ache of searching for validation. The fear of never making it. The desperation of survival. I looked up for a moment and saw that Jack’s face was twisted in a grimace, as if he was in pain. The momentary surprise caused me to miss a note, and the music almost fell apart…but I caught it. I closed my eyes and went deeper.
I found the pain being abandoned, the bitterness of being alone, and the joy of being found. The absolute conviction that I would not allow some two-bit tree goblin take all the things I worked so hard to find. I played it all. I played it until the strings gave and my fingers bled, staining the wood. Finally, I let go of the final, bitter note.
Silence held in the air for a time. I opened my eyes to see him standing directly in front of me, frowning down, humor vanished from his expression. Did I do it?
“Whoever let you hold an instrument?” he asked through his teeth. He reached out and crushed my guitar like kindling, leaving only the jagged remains of the neck in my hand. “You tried, I’ll give you that, but now it’s over.”
He lifted his hand to strike me, but before he could bring it down Andi’s hand grasped mine. The one that still held the splintered guitar neck. She squeezed, and with a violent shove, we thrust it into his chest. It lodged there, and Jack shrieked and careened backwards, yanking it from my grasp. He dropped to one knee, and spat pale blood on the ground between us.
“This won’t kill me. You vapid creatures.” His voice was warped with rage.
“No,” I said quietly. “But this will”.
I kicked him square in the chest, and he fell backwards onto the fire. His screams were the primal sounds that kept our ancestors from straying from camp at night. He caught like tinder, and we felt his dying with the same clarity and horror that his songs had wrought. It couldn’t have been more than minutes, but it felt like an eternity. We stood in silence, holding each other up, for a long time.
He was done.
I turned to Andi and kissed her. Then pulled back and looked her in the eye.
“Next time, let’s camp in the back yard. What do you say?”
She smirked.
“Deal.”
By Dan Sexton-Riley (They/Them, He/Him)
Dan Sexton-Riley is a writer and baker living on Cape Cod with their wife, stepdaughter, and a menagerie of pets. When not writing stories, you can find Dan in the kitchen, baking for fun or teaching others how to do so. Dan also has work forthcoming in Bewildering Stories.”
My website is www.dansextonriley.com and you can find me on Twitter @dansextonriley
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