From chawkins@nla.gov.au Sun Jun 16 17:30:35 1996 Date: Wed, 13 Mar 96 15:28:00 PST From: Christine Hawkins WOODSTOCK by Christine Hawkins. NICK: (smiling faintly) Woodstock.... SCHANKE: Yeah, Woodstock. (doubletakes) You were there?(snorts) Yeah, right... You're full of it, Knight. -- "Dying for Fame". I. He was travelling down to New York for the adventure of his life. His folks didn't know where he was - they thought he was with his cousins in Ottawa. Man, would they freak out if they knew where he really was! But hell, he wasn't a kid anymore. After all, he'd just graduated from high school! So he sat in the front of the beat-up old Chevy, rapping with Mitch, talking about the groovy time they were going to have and all the chick's they'd score. Mark didn't say much: he sat in the back with Cindi, practically making out already. Donald G. Schanke grinned with sheer happiness. He was free, young and without the hangups of the older generation, and he was headed for Woodstock. II. Nicholas felt the other land beside him without having to turn to look. "Not even 'Bonjour', Nicolah?" Nick swung around at the sound of the familiar voice. "Or perhaps I should say 'Peace, Man'?" Janette sounded amused. "Janette? What are you doing here?" "*Such* a greeting." She reached up to caress his jawline. "Surely I am allowed to share - how does it go now? - 'three days of love and peace and music'?" Nick regarded her critically. As usual she was dressed in the cutting edge of fashion. Her body, which he had seen swathed in hoops and ruffs and crinolines, in velvet, satin and lace, was now barely covered in something *very* brief and adorned by some kind of fringing. Her face, which he had seen from under henins and bonnets and all kinds of hats, was now framed by a headband and straight (but expensively cut) hair. "You make a very elegant hippy," Nick remarked dryly. Janette gave a very Gallic shrug. "Autre temps... autre modes. Besides I knew you would be here - where else, Nicolah? You could never resist a gathering of so many musicians." Nick's face darkened as a thought struck him. "Is *he* here?" "No. Oh, no." Janette's mouth dimpled with silent laughter. "Can you imagine it? - LaCroix, here?" Her amused mouth took in the hordes of long-haired and rebellious youths, the improvised tents of plastic sheeting, and the muddy fields. For one moment she and Nicholas shared one perfect instant of mutual understanding. "But there are others of us here," Janette added, growing serious. "So be careful. There are some in the community who aren't too pleased with your ideas about mortality." She studied him for a moment, as if expecting him to say something, but he remained silent. "Ah well," she sighed at last. "Now I have given you this little warning, Nicolah, I must bid you adieu. I have a most charming young man waiting for me who -" she smiled - "wants to teach me how to 'tune in and drop out'." And blowing Nick a kiss, she disappeared. III Don Schanke was in heaven. He'd spent the whole day listening to Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez and Janis Joplin. It's true he hadn't been able to get very close to the stage, but he'd heard them - *live* - from the loudspeakers mounted all around the festival on top of eighty-foot high scaffolding. Around midnight, Don found himself among a group of people huddled around a fire not far from that same scaffolding. He'd ditched Cindi, Mark and Mitch - or they had ditched him - some time ago. Some of his new friends were passing around a joint and Don, torn between fear and excitement, took a drag just to show he was hip. It must have been pretty strong pot, though, because Don felt as if he'd become untethered from his body and was starting to float away. Either that, or someone had spiked the kool-aid. A young woman with a cloud of blonde hair and a flower painted on her left cheekbone sat down beside him. "Hi," she breathed. "I'm Starshadow. What's your name?" "I'm Don." Mentally he cursed his parents for saddling him with such a decidedly un-cool name. "I'm an Aquarius," Starshadow continued. "Don't you think that this is the greatest scene since the Haight? I mean, like, it's like the Summer of Love all over again!" "Far out," Don stammered. The pot and his hormones were making him inarticulate, and he felt himself blush. Luckily it was too dark for Starshadow to see all of his confusion and she didn't really seem to be too worried that he was tongue-tied. She snuggled closer to him. "Why don't we blow this scene?" she murmured. She ran her hand under his t-shirt and over his chest. "Like, I know a place where we can go..." Man! Nothing like this had ever happened to Don before. Wait to he told the guys about it. This chick was trying to score with *him*! "Sure," he stuttered, trying to sound cool. "Like, why not? IV In his own way, Nick was having a good time too. Some time in the evening he had acquired a guitar and a group of hangers-on, and found himself picking out medieval ballads for their entertainment. One of the young women in his entourage was regarding him in a fashion which he would have considered an open invitation had he been human. And he hadn't felt a quiver of blood hunger all evening. ... Which was a state which wouldn't last if he didn't feed soon. Mentally he sighed. He handed his guitar to one of his followers and made his apologies to the group. He'd seen some cows in a field not too far away earlier that evening... V. Don was no longer sure that this was such a good idea. Starshadow had lead him a long way from the rest of the festival, and it was dark, and it was damp, and it was cold. But whenever he had tried to get her to stop she just snapped something at him and grabbed him by the arm and tugged him along. Man, she had cold hands! There was something weird about this chick, Don decided, but he felt too vague and hazy to figure out exactly what it was. Be cool man, Don thought to himself. It's an adventure, right? Besides, you can't back out now. You'd never live it down! Abruptly, Starshadow came to a halt. Don peered out at his surroundings through the darkness. They were in a big field, empty except for some trees and some rocks and some cows grazing in the distance. "Are you sure this is the right place?" he asked nervously. "I mean, like, there's nothing here!" "It's good enough for what I want to do." As Starshadow moved closer Don could see her licking her lips. "I dunno... maybe we should have brought a blanket or something." Starshadow pushed him against the nearest tree and smiled. It was then that Don realised that his kool-aid had been spiked after all, and that he was having a bad trip. For Starshadow suddenly seemed to sprout fangs and her eyes were gleaming an unearthly, phosphorent yellow. VI Nick was hovering in the air when he sensed the young vampire and her prey. For a moment he wavered, hesitating between his desire to save the hapless mortal and his desire to not get involved. In the end Nick obeyed his first impulse and swooped to the rescue. He know he would be consumed with guilt if he failed to prevent this kill. "Let him go!" The other vampire swung around snarling. "He is mine!" Her prey, released from her grip, slumped against the base of the tree where she had pushed him. Nick saw that he was only a boy: a skinny teenager with an unruly mop of dark hair. Nick growled and bared his own fangs. He sprang towards the younger vampire, covering the ground between them faster than the human eye could see - and almost too fast for the vampire eye to follow. The other, caught off guard by this attack, found herself seized by the front of her tunic and lifted three feet into the air. "I said," Nick repeated, "let him go!" The faced each other, eye to eye, in silence. Confronted with an older, stronger and angrier vampire, the younger of the pair decided that her only real option would be to back down. She twitched herself out of Nick's grasp, and straightened her headband in an attempt to salvage her dignity. "What does it matter?" she asked. She looked at her erstwhile victim with contempt. "There are plenty more where *that* came from." Nick just stood his ground. The other vampire shrugged her shoulders. "All right then," she said. "I'm gone," - and launched herself into the night. Nick watched her depart, then turned to help the youth on the ground. Having saved the boy he now felt responsible for him. It was still possible that the vampire he had interrupted might return if he just abandoned him where he lay. In fact Nick wouldn't really count the boy safely out of her clutches until he went home after the festival. The vampire gently sat the boy up against the tree. He regarded Nick with a glassy-eyed stare: in shock, Nick thought to himself. He caught the teenager's eye. "What is your name?" he asked. "D-Don," was the reply. "Good. Don, I want you to -" He broke off in mid-sentence. How *did* one go about vampire proofing a teenager, especially in an environment sorely lacking in crosses and holy water? Nick frowned in concentration and looked around in the hope that his surroundings would provide some kind of inspiration. In the distance, someone was cooking food over a brightly lit campfire. The scent wafted towards Nick on the breeze. There was something familiar about the smell. - It was - it was - Suddenly Nick had a solution to his problem. Nick stared deep into Don's eyes. He could here the lub-dub, lub-dub of the boy's heart. "Listen to me, Don," he said carefully. "You will go to sleep and when you wake up you will be *very* hungry..." VII Schanke wadded up the takeaway wrapper. "Well, I must have passed out or something, and when I woke up I was *starving*." He looked over at his insensible partner. "Hey, Knight, are taking any of this in, or are you starting to go strange on me again?" Nick glanced way from the road briefly towards Schanke. "I'm listening." "Gotta wonder sometimes, " Schanke sniffed. "Anyway, to cut a long story short, I had a craving for garlic. Couldn't get enough of the stuff all weekend. And that's how I tasted my first souvlaki." He sighed in contentment. "Ol' Don Schanke's tastebuds lost their virginity at Woodstock." He grinned, full of happy memories. "Those were the days all right. You really should have been there, Nick, you really should have been there...." **********