Peter & Max - Bill Willingham [107]
The next morning Beast and Rose Red took her Range Rover out to Peter and Bo’s house, where they found the two of them sitting out on one of their many porches. Bo was sitting down on the deck, a tartan blanket covering her legs. Her wheelchair stood empty nearby. Peter sat close to her and played a low, haunting tune on the red wooden flute named Fire.
“Good morning,” Bo said cheerfully, when Beast and Rose Red climbed out of the truck.
“Good morning,” Beast said. “I see you two managed to get through the winter okay.” There were still many patches of snow here and there, on hill and meadow. The morning breeze was chilly, but not oppressively so.
“We had plenty to keep us busy,” Peter said. He’d stopped playing with Fire when their guests had arrived. “I’ve still got a lot to learn with this thing.” He held the flute up for all to see.
“That’s what I came up here to talk to you about,” Beast said. “The Witch tells me that’s a very dangerous weapon — perhaps the deadliest magic thing in existence. I can’t let you keep it, Peter. It needs to be locked away in the Business Office.”
“And it will be,” Peter said. “I promise. But only after I’ve mastered one specific tune on it. I’m determined to undo what my brother did to Bo.”
“We’ve already made progress,” Bo said. Her smile contained none of the sadness that it had borne for so many years. “There are actual patches of pink flesh on my legs — you’ll understand if I don’t show you. And yesterday my toes itched something awful for hours on end! Isn’t that marvelous?”
“It is!” Rose Red said.
“How much longer will this take?” Beast said.
“Who can say?” Peter said. “But the moment it’s accomplished, you can bet your bottom dollar that I’ll turn Fire over to you, without hesitation. It’s a foul and sullen thing, and I dearly wish I didn’t have to have anything to do with it. Unlike Frost, there are no joyful songs that can be wrung from it.”
“Hurry then,” Beast said. “And, in the meantime, every two weeks you’re to report down to the city, for as long as Fire’s in your possession. This is nonnegotiable. The Witch is going to examine you, on a regular basis, to make sure you don’t succumb to Fire’s corruption the way Max did.”
“That seems fair,” Peter said. “But, as awful as this is to say about my own brother, I suspect Fire succumbed more to Max’s corruption, rather than the other way around. Makes no difference now though. The damage is long done. If anyone can restore goodness to this flute, it’ll take centuries, and it won’t be me. Once Bo is made well, I plan to play nothing but Frost, until the end of my days.”
In the months that followed, Peter and Bo showed up more often to the Farm’s many dances and firelight celebrations. Peter played with the band, marrying Frost’s wild and joyful tunes to Boy Blue’s trumpet, Seamus’s harp, Joe Sheppard’s drums and Puss’s mad, screaming fiddle. Bo would surprise them all then by enthusiastically clapping along, and sometimes even singing off key, which everyone enjoyed, even though it was generally agreed that she couldn’t carry a tune, even if she made extra trips.
Then, one evening, almost a year later, Bo appeared at the dance standing (albeit not too steadily) on her own two feet, needing only the help of two matched wooden canes.
“My wheelchair?” she said. “Oh, I threw that horrid old thing away ages ago.”
I AM INDEBTED TO MANY PEOPLE WHOSE GENEROUS HELP was essential to the completion of this story, so many in fact that I apologize in advance to those I’m about to inadvertently leave out.
At DC/Vertigo, Shelly Bond, my editor, caught and corrected a host of sins on my part, after which copy editor Arlene Lo (Robin to Shelly’s Batman) weighed in, and like any good alchemist,