Storm Singing and other Tangled Tasks by Lari Don Page A

can’t talk.”
    After a tense pause, Catesby fluttered above their heads, and chittered a chant with the same rhythm as the blue loons’ couplet, which ended in a loud squawk.
    The blue loons laughed. Helen hadn’t understood Catesby’s verse, but that squawk at the end had definitely rhymed with “talk”.
    Helen had no time to feel relieved, because Catesby’s success meant she was next. The boy to her right called out:
    “So human child, you can’t get past,
    Till you tell us the end of this verse.”
    Helen looked up at Yann. He shrugged. He was powerless here, away from the land where he was so fast and strong.
    The blue loon repeated the lines:
    “So human child, you can’t get past,
    Till you tell us the end of this verse.”
    Helen had no ideas at all. The rhythm was simple enough, but she had never liked writing words for tunes. Violinists weren’t expected to sing.
    The voice behind Helen called angrily, “Rhyme now , human child, or we’ll sink the boat. Once you’re in the water, we’ll sink you too, unless you give us the rhymes in your head.”
     “I don’t have any rhymes in my head,” she said quietly.
    And the blue loons attacked the boat. In one sudden shocking movement, the ones to port dragged the boat’s edge down, the ones to starboard shoved upwards, and the boat lurched to the side.
    Helen screamed as she slid out towards the water. She let go of the oars and grabbed the side of the boat. She wedged her feet under the bench in front. She flung herself sideways to starboard as if her weight could count against the force of ten teenagers determined to drown her.
    Yann roared and Helen felt the boat jerk as the centaur leapt into the air then crashed down again to stay in the boat.
    Then the boat swung back, and righted itself. The blue loons had only tipped it once. It wasn’t an attempt to drown them. Just a warning of what would happen if she didn’t answer.
    Yann was shifting his hooves to get his balance, Catesby was fluttering in the air above her head, and Helen groped about for the oars, vaguely aware she’d lost something even more vital.
    “LAVENDER! Where’s Lavender?”
    A tiny cough came from her right.
    Lavender was clinging to the port side of the boat. She was completely soaked. “I’m going to a party!” she yelled furiously. “And I look ridiculous!”
    “You won’t get to the party unless the human girl rhymes,” said one of the blue loons.
    “We won’t get to the party unless I find both oars,” muttered Helen. The left oar was in its rowlock, but the right oar had slipped free.
    She peered past the blue loons at the water. The oar should float, but it might already be out of reach. “More light, Lavender,” she whispered, “I’ve lost an oar.”
    Before Lavender could shake the water off her wand, Helen saw the oar. The blue loon nearest her was grinning as he pushed it back through the rowlock.
    As she bent closer to grasp the oar, he murmured, “Don’t overthink the rhyme, just listen to the rhythm, then answer it. It’s easy, you have it in your head already.”
    Then he called out, “Last chance, human child, rhyme the third time of asking, or we overturn the boat.
    “So human child, you can’t get past,
    Till you tell us the end of this verse.”
    Helen closed her eyes, mouthed the words along with him, and rather than planning an answer, she let her thumb keep the beat on the oar, and her mouth keep the words going …
    “Thanks for leaving my poem till last,
    Because my rhymes are even worse.”
    “No,” the boy at the bow said. “That’s not true. They aren’t any worse than rhyming seas and please, or talk and squawk. So your verse is a lie and you have to rhyme again.”
    “You challenged us to top your rhymes, not speak the truth,” Yann objected. “We’re late for the feast, so let us past.”
    “A human is most likely to know the answers we need,” said a higher voice. “So she rhymes again.”
    “That’s not how