Griffon's Hunt was the oddest establishment I'd ever been in, including that club in Eddie's Mill. The place was vast, and though it may have been a cave originally, someone had carefully carved the room to accommodate a growing customer base. It was full and loud, unlike the other taverns we'd sampled.

  A harried hostess waved at us to find our own seats.

  Something’s off about this place.

  “You just don’t like dive bars,” I responded.

  Richard craned his neck, his tentacles looking around. There are too many children. He settled back down on my shoulder in silent protest.

  Meredeath, with her fishbowl clutched in both hands, wove through the madness. Ash and I trailed behind like two awestruck kids.

  The patronage was notably dirty. There wasn't a person in the room who didn't have dirt under their fingernails or dust in their eyebrows. Several folks sitting at the bar had animal companions. Mostly parrots and squirrels. Unlike everywhere else in the city, no one gave them a second glance. We were definitely in the right place.

  Meredeath had spotted a small circular booth, and scootched into it before someone else could claim the open seat. She carefully put her fishbowl on the table, the old SCMMOO globe taking up a good third of the table. That was going to get irritating fast.

  Ash and I sat on either side of her. Richard stayed on my shoulders, preferring his perch to sharing the table with Briyain.

  I scanned the crowd, trying to catch the eye of a server. Red head with big curly bangs nodded in my direction. She had, like all the waitstaff, a bit of thin feather glued to the outside crease of her eyes. Some costume gimmick for the Griffin in Griffin’s Hunt.

  Her fingernails at least looked clean. After checking in with two of her tables, she wove her way over to us like a pro.

  "There's a cover charge tonight for the show. You lot okay with that?" Her lips smacked as she talked, as though she were chewing on a jelly.

  Before I could respond, Meredeath spoke. "How much is the cover? We were hoping to get a room for the night too."

  The server looked at us appraisingly. The feathers at the tips of her eyes bobbed as she evaluated our worth.

  "You don't look like Miners to me." Her eyes settled on Richard, and she grimaced. "I'm guessing no one else would let you stay? Let me see what we've got. Any other night and it'd be fine, but on Friday nights we've got The Entertainer here, and we're packed. Cover is 5 silver each, half for your companions."

  Ash went to protest the exorbitant cover charge, but grunted instead. Meredeath had inserted a sharp elbow into his ribcage. I counted out twenty silver coins. We had the money.

  "Let’s get an order of moss fries and three beers," Meredeath ordered. Moss fries wouldn’t have been my first choice. Meredeath looked at me and I shook my head. No part of me was hungry after the last stop. Her eyes flickered behind me, to Richard. Then she added, "And some raw meat for my fish, and a salad for the slug. Thank you!" She said the last so sweetly, it was easy to forget that she'd just asked for raw meat for her undead pet.

  The server paused, scribbling our order on a notepad.

  "So that is a slug, huh? You are pretty brave bringing a mollusk to Cersapil. Even here. Alright, salad, meat, moss fries and three beers..."

  Without further comment, she slid our coins off the counter, giving me a quick nod at the extra silver I'd slipped in for dealing with a slug. I got it. Slugs could be a real pain in the ass.

  "What do you think the entertainment is?" Ash asked from across the table, almost yelling over the noise.

  Inspecting the crowd assuaged my fears. This wasn't the patronage of the red-eaves district, but full of working-class families. Many of the adults had little feathers glued to their faces like the waitstaff. Several had sashes made of red sequins. Whoever The Entertainer was, they had fans.

  The food was simple but plentiful. The crowd surrounded a small stage with an old upright piano. Otherwise, the space was empty of tables, just showing the rough gray stone floor. The stage did not match the buzz of the clientele.

  "Hopefully, the show’s worth it considering the price. Hard to imagine these families being willing to pay that cover charge. That table over there has five kids." As Ash was griping about the price, Meredeath just smiled.

  The server was back, catching the tail end of his complaint. She held three mugs of what smelled to be weak, hoppy beer.

  "Kids are free," she said, feathered eyes crinkled in a grin before dashing back into the madness.

  Several more families had lined up at the entrance, scanning for free seats.

  "God, it's like an IHOP on Easter Sunday," Meredeath complained.

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  "Is that bad?" I asked.

  Meredeath looked at me with dead eyes and said, "It's the worst." I glanced at Ash, who shrugged as he took a swig from his mug.

  The lights across the taproom magically dimmed. A hush fell over the crowd. Except for a wailing kid in the corner, everyone was holding their breath, ready for the show to begin.

  The server appeared suddenly, dampening the moment. She plunked down a plate of fries tossed in a brown moss crumble with cheese. The fries were still sizzling out of the oil, and the cheese was melting as we watched. She had another bowl of what looked like offal, and a plate with a couple of carrots and sprigs of wilted lettuce.

  If I eat too many carrots, I'll turn orange. Was that a threat or a promise?

  Either way, my slug undulated down my arm. His fangs bit deeply into the first carrot as he seemed to suck the color out of the vegetable.

  “We do have a room.” Clapping and whooping interrupted the server’s words. I couldn’t get a view, because everyone had gotten to their feet and was cheering.

  The server smiled, as though apologizing for the interruption, and mouthed, "We'll talk after the show."

  I nodded, waving her off as I squinted at the stage. A woman stood before the crowd. She had a large, shoulder-padded vest with bright red and blue sequins flashing in a magically induced spotlight. Two large feathers sprouted from her shoulders, shimmering in a metallic hue that mimicked her wardrobe.

  We had a terrible view, far from the stage. With the sparkling sequins, all I could make out was a bright velvet cape that stretched to the floor behind her as she took a seat on the piano bench.

  She had long auburn hair that fell in curls, with strands of silver wire and beads that sparkled in the light in the room like drops of diamonds.

  A hush returned to the crowd. Someone removed the wailing child in the interim. The crowd inhaled in anticipation.

  The [Pianist] started playing, a cascade of notes that reminded me of the tumble of water running across the basalt boulders of the mountains.

  As though my thoughts summoned the image, on the stage a waterfall sprouted out of the ceiling, white water churning as it squeezed between three familiar boulders and plunged into a deep pool sunk deep into the floor of the bar. It was an illusion, but it felt real.

  I thought the waterfall spray was wet, yet my face was dry. The boulders teased me, sharp and tall. They forced the water through chutes, speeding the journey of any debris caught in the tumult. This was a waterfall in the Ursine Wall near Woodsten.

  Leo and I had gone several times to see it, even though forbidden. A kid had rock-hopped upstream and fallen in years before our time.

  He hadn't survived the descent.

  This image was not the grisly scene I always imagined when visiting the Three Sisters, named after the three dark boulders at the top of the falls. It was a sunny day, completely opposed to the dim bar. Sunlight streamed through the trees looming around our tables and hit the waterfall spray in just the right combination. The [Pianist's] notes climbed, chords of the waterfall's spray supporting as a rainbow shimmered into view.

  The surrounding crowd gasped. I sat mouth agape; my beer untouched.

  "Now this is some magic!" Ash enthusiastically whispered, as though afraid to break the spell.

  I stared at the auburn curls of the [Pianist], her velvet cape fringed with white fur. How had she pulled an image of Woodsten, here? Were we telepathically connected? Was Ash and Meredeath seeing the same imagery I was?

  The [Pianist’s] hand trilled, willing a tiny bird into the illusion. It was one of the yellow-bellied songbirds that were rare, but adored in the Heltenic Forest. The music followed the bird's flight down through the valley, dipping to greet squirrels, spiders, and squawking to avoid a bogquacker.

  What sealed it was the last bit. The perspective flowed down onto a farm. One with wooden fences, and a peeling red barn. Baby goats mixed with chickens in the front yard, and the dinner bell hung quiet on the front porch of my family homestead.

  There was, however, a noticeable lack of our ever-present sheep.

  "We found her." A grin split my face in two. I wasn’t sure how, but the mysterious entertainer had to be Tandy. She’d fallen into our laps.

  Notes softened, turning the song into an ode celebrating the farmer's life before closing with a small ditty that highlighted two baby goats butting heads in play.

  The images faded, returning the inhabitants of the bar to the dim underground reality.

  The crowd paused, as though unsure if they should applaud. They didn't want to interrupt the spell Tandy had cast, and, like me, hoped for more.

  She decided for them, standing and turning.

  The crowd erupted as I watched this [Pianist] who was and wasn't Tandy. She wore deep red lipstick, and someone had teased her thin eyebrows into elegance. Her hair twisted in silver coils, and the dust of freckles that I'd always loved had vanished.

  The sequined shoulder pads sat on her shoulders like an entertainer’s uniform. Gold and silver filaments danced in a chained design across the front. Buttons tightened her waist, pushing her bosom up in a glittery display.

  She didn’t look bad. Quite the opposite. She was flaunting assets I was pretty sure none of us knew she possessed. It was just so un-Tandy-like that I wouldn’t have considered it even possible. Her eyes were bright, the telltale bits of feather bobbing as she smiled.

  She basked in the adoration the crowd was throwing at her, taking a feathered bow. My friend moved with a confident possession of the crowd’s adoration. There were none of the normal reservations in her manner. It was almost as if she were drunk.

  She scanned the crowd, her eyes dancing right over our party without a hint of recognition.

  I take my previous statement back. Something is very wrong here.

  "That's Tandy, right?" Ash asked, his normally confident voice unsure. "I didn't know she could play the piano." He left unsaid what we were all thinking. I didn’t know she could look like this.

  My mind raced through every memory of her playing the piano as a child, and none of them included anything remotely close to the level of skill she'd just put on.

  "She can't." Tandy had sat back down to play another number. I turned to Meredeath, wanting her opinion.

  Our death knight sat daintily, holding tongs containing chicken livers over Briyain's bowl. Blood dripped dyeing the water red momentarily before it dissipated.

  Feed me, Briyain intoned. Meredeath's green eyes didn't blink as her hand released the liver into the bowl.

  "If Pops did something to Tandy..." she left the threat unspoken as her [Pet] tore at the liver. The SCMMOO turned crimson.

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