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The crowd moved in around Caffrey, and his world darkened until he felt he was standing in a pitch-black closet. An ebony oval case appeared, its surface holding billions of tiny stars deep within its sheen. A glow poured forth from the perfect cube of orange gelatin within. Caffrey continued the song, staring at the hallucination before him.
"Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow? And did you know, your stairway lies on the whispering wind…"
There were quite a few guitar solos lauded in song and tale throughout the galaxy. Caffrey himself had his favorites, and had performed most of them during his years with Marmalade Skies—the works of Pink Floyd, Stevie Ray
Vaughan, Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd and, of course, one James Marshall Hendrix. Yet, of all the musical breaks made famous from the annals of Rock & Roll, there was one that had taken on a religious significance. And though it had not the speed of a Van Halen solo, or the unique complexity of Hendrix, it was the one that felt more like a continuation of the lyrics than any other.
The guitar spoke. It continued the tale of the Lady who was sure all that glittered was gold, in its own language of beautiful notes. Caffrey had always felt his soul take flight while listening to Jimmy Page play the famed piece. Unlike every other aspiring guitar player or teen who received a cheap electric for Christmas, he'd never once attempted to play it himself.
It may have very well been Caffrey Quark who first noted that, should you ever need to hear a bad version of "Stairway," take a stroll into any music store or teenager's bedroom. It had become a sub-cult of a vastly spread religion. Caffrey vowed a heart of purity—for him it was no different than expecting his feet to have aquaplaning abilities after speaking his own rendition of the Sermon on the Mount. Just as a priest reading the Gospels, a rabbi reciting from the Torah, an Islamic imam speaking from the Qu'ran or a Buddhist monk chanting "Om" are the icons of their respective religions, the electric six-string vibrating with these perfect frequencies was the sound of Rock's very soul.
Yet there he stood, his fingers traveling the frets like an adventuring pilgrim on virgin roads and every note—every interval—every chord—sounding not with just perfect clarity but sounding as it should. He felt his body lift. Melt. He rose above the surrounding forest world. Up above the Forest of Medieval Stereotypes. He saw the tiny flickering lights of Heddington. He rose up past the moon, the stars and the edges of eternity. He felt the anger of Nefarious, helpless to stop him from his ascent into the entity's dimension. Up he rose on the solo. He had become music. He'd literally entered the fabric of space-time. It was under his control. He understood for the first time that it really was all vibration. All energy. All music. He felt a powerful wisdom at his disposal. Unlike his past experiences with the L'Orange, where he was spoken to like teacher to student, Caffrey Quark felt one with it all.
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