I was breathless and I felt as floaty as one of Floss’s pink clouds. But he had everything upside down. “You’ve got it all wrong,” I whispered. “You’re the firefly one. There’s not one thing special about me.”
“You don’t think so?”
I shook my head.
“That makes you even better.”
I blew out a puff of air and said, “I’m glad you like it, anyway. Like me.” I felt shy now, because it’s always hard to talk about honest, serious things. But I did it anyway when I added, “Really glad. Which sounds inadequate and juvenile, and that’s not at all how I feel.”
It was a good thing that it was dark. It’s easier to talk in the dark. Nicholas apparently thought so too. “Maybe we should try something like that kiss again. You know, just to make absolutely sure we’re compatible,” he said.
I pulled back after several long minutes where there seemed to be nothing in my head but happiness and tried to see his face in the firefly light. I couldn’t see much. The fireflies were too busy with their own lives to shine much light on mine. But that was okay. I didn’t really need to see. I could feel. And what I felt was warm and solid and true.
“At some point,” I said carefully, “would you be interested in taking this…further?”
He smiled. Even in the dim light I could tell that. “I would be”—he kissed my nose—“very interested. Do you suppose we can find a quiet place and a free bit of time?”
I considered what I knew about Faerie and quiet, secret spaces while I tucked myself in under Nicholas’s arm. I pulled that arm around me, wrapped myself in it like a cloak of warmth and power. And I said, “Fred and Bron probably know lots of cozy, empty spaces where—”
As if we’d summoned him. Fred interrupted me by saying, “Sorry to interrupt.” He came out of the night surrounded by fireflies glowing like hundreds of tiny lanterns. “Thank you,” he said to them, and the fireflies bobbed air curtsies and flew away. Fred stopped in front of Nicholas and me. He stopped, and suddenly the night felt airless and tinged with menace. He dropped onto the bench next to me and said, “I’ll just sit, if you don’t mind.” His voice was as flat and thin as the air, and the bench shook when he landed.
Nicholas shifted and peered around me. “What’s up?”
Fred took a deep breath. “If I say treachery at the crossroads, would you believe me?”
“I’d get the idea, I think,” Nicholas said, “but I’d have to ask you to be a little more specific.”
I could feel Fred lean his head against the wall of Dau Hermanos. It was a hard lean. “How do you suppose factions come together?”
“There are factions?” I asked while Nicholas said, “Is this rhetorical?”
Fred answered him, not me. “Not rhetorical at all. How does one decide who to align with, after all?”
“Same ideas, same plans, same desired end,” I suggested.
“I suppose.” Fred sighed. “I was at home, you know. Just at that place where Floss says she’ll never go again and with some very good reasons. I was at home. El Jeffery and I were working on a drum piece he wants to use because he’s convinced he’s to be in the play.”
“He is,” I confirmed. “Lucia wants him to sing, as well.”
Fred’s head shake was just visible. “Don’t let him. He’s never been able to sing.”
“He’s in the band, right?”
“Drums, Persia, only drums. He’s definitely not solo singing material.”
“I think she meant backup,” Nicholas said, “but never mind. You were working on a drum piece and…?”
“We were in the storage areas because he insisted he had to ride while playing. For verisimilitude. We were making quite a racket, so when we stopped, all the sounds we’d been covering up were magnified. And even though Reginald walks very softly for a troll, he still makes noise.”
“Reginald?” Nicholas sounded both unhappy and disapproving.
“He apparently has much better relations with my parents than my sister has. Perhaps good relations with my brother, as well. At least, he didn’t look scared or cowed on his way to the manor.”
“Reginald is visiting your house?”
“Was he alone?” I added.
“Yes, he was visiting my house. Yes, he was alone. Yes to both is better than yes and no, but no to both would be better still.”
I was angry with this news from Fred. It showed when I said, “Why does it feel like everyone around here speaks in riddles?”
“Do we?” It was almost an abstract question. Fred shifted on the bench. “I suppose it’s just our way.”
“It makes things that much harder, you know,” I said.
Nicholas ignored me and cut to the important part. “Do we need a war council?”
“We at least need to let the others know that something’s going on,” said Fred.
I sighed a deep, heavy sigh. I stood up, and I held on to Nicholas’s hand while I did it. “Life is just full of ups and downs, isn’t it?” I pulled the memory of earlier in the evening a little closer, like a talisman.
Nicholas tightened his grip on my fingers. “Sure it is. We just need to keep the ups higher up, so to speak.”
“Yes. Let’s try that,” Fred said, but he didn’t sound very hopeful.
It was late enough that most of the Dau Hermanos customers were gone, and those that remained were sitting at the bar, paying no attention to us. Nicholas went to gather the rest of the Outlaws while Fred told Bron and Rohan what he’d seen. I stood at a table large enough for all of us, shoving chairs in and pulling them out again while I tried to pretend that I was doing something useful. It was both too late and too soon when everyone else began to drift into the room.
Floss looked like daggers were sprouting from her shoulder. Lucia looked sad. Tonio and Max were enigmatic—I couldn’t read them at all. Bron sat next to Fred and didn’t say a thing until Rohan brought a jug of sangria to the table, accompanied by dried currents and tiny shortbreads. Even then, all Bron said was “Thank you,” and he sounded like he was pushing a remote to make the words.
El Jeffery shoved through the door and squished in next to Lucia. “Reginald just left. He’s headed toward home. And yes,” he said as he looked at Fred, “he’s still alone. And no, I didn’t see anyone walking him to the gate. Like your brother or your mother, for example. Or your father.”
Fred shook his head. “Father would be the least likely of anyone to walk to the gate with him. He does have some standards.”
“If he’d just exercise them every now and then…,” Floss muttered, and she left the sentence unfinished.
Silence. Then Tonio said, “I don’t think I like the idea of Reginald having little chats with the ruling family.” I considered this to be a grand understatement.
Floss tapped her nails in staccato on the table. She said, “I am so thoroughly tired of other people interfering in my life.” She glanced around the table and corrected herself. “In our lives.”
“Maybe he was delivering a gift. A fruit basket, a bouquet,” said Max, and to my surprise Tonio laughed.
Even I smiled. “The image of that is so surreal. I kind of like it.”
“Glad to help,” Max said.
Fred took a gulp of sangria and said, “I didn’t even know he knew our family.”
“He may not.” I tried the idea to see how it sounded in the open air. “This may be the first time he’s ever been there. You know, subject visiting ruler…”
Floss glared at me. “No, Persia. Nice try, but no. If he’s going somewhere this late, he has business at the destination.”
I tried again. “But—”
“I said no.” Floss’s voice was mild. “Trolls always prefer daylight. They think that if people can really see them it makes them scarier.”
“They might be right,” I half whispered.
El Jeffery ignored us both. “He looked pleased with himself.”
“Has anyone heard more about Major?
” Tonio asked. He wasn’t, I was happy to see, the Tonio of the days before we’d walked out the back of the chocolate factory. He was the old Tonio, the one who knew just who he was and what he wanted. “Because if Reginald is his shill—and in a pairing of those two I can’t imagine things going any other way—then he’s really only the errand boy.”
“I can’t believe that Reginald runs the thing, whatever the thing is,” Bron agreed.
Lucia said, “Maybe there is no thing.” She looked at Fred, hope in her eyes, but he just patted her hand. “Brave but delusional, I think,” he said, and he gave her a glass of wine. Lucia breathed out a lengthy breath, sank back into her chair, and took a long drink.
“I can ask around,” Fred went on, “but I think if your Major’s involved…”
“And in spite of the fruit basket comment, I’m sure he is,” Max said with a sigh.
Fred nodded. “Is it better to just go and ask him?”
“Catch the lion in his lair?” I asked.
“If Major’s involved, he’s not running things,” Floss said flatly. “We can ask him all we want, but he’s not the one in charge. Not here. He might be running Reginald, but he’s not running anything else. It’s much more likely, if the family’s involved, to be either our mother or our brother.”
Fred sighed and beat a tattoo on the table with his fingertips.
“You don’t agree?” Floss asked him.
Fred looked surprised. “Of course I agree.”
Floss looked pointedly at his fingers, still tapping the table.
He half smiled. “Nerves, not disagreement,” he said.
Max sighed, and a piece of paper fluttered down in front of him as if he’d asked for it. Max looked at it, inches from his fingertips, and he didn’t move at all. It was Tonio who picked the thing up and unwound its complicated, origami-like folds.
Tonio read, and the rest of us sat and watched until Max said, sotto voce, “I hate to say this, but he has more of a sense of style than I’ve given him credit for.”
“Who?” I whispered.
“Major. Or whoever he’s playing with. It’s got to have something to do with him. The timing is just too perfect. This is really quite good theater.”
Floss snorted. “So someone floated a letter. Anyone can float a letter.”
“Um, no Floss, they can’t,” Nicholas said.
Floss snorted again, and Max said, “The float was the least of it, I think.”
Tonio looked up. “Major seems to be feeling better. His emissary”—tiny finger quotes—“has met with Floss and Fred’s family. Major believes that the Outlaws have entered Faerie illegally….”
“There’s a legal way to get here?” asked Nicholas. “That’s interesting.” He turned to Fred. “Is that true? Did we need passports or something?”
Fred’s snort sounded exactly like his sister’s. “If you’re not fey, you get here any way you can. There’s no legality involved. Either you make it or you don’t.”
“So he’s building a false case.”
Tonio coughed. “May I continue? There’s more. Perhaps before we debate legal and illegal you’d like to hear the whole thing?”
“Of course we would,” Max said, and he rubbed Tonio’s shoulder.
Tonio nodded. “…have entered Faerie illegally. Rather than forcibly ejecting us the royal family will allow us to perform for them. The worthiness of our show will be the determining factor on whether we’re allowed to stay. Conversely, if we don’t meet expectations, we’ll be banished from Faerie forever.” Here he let his gaze brush Floss, Fred, and El Jeffery. “All of us, banished forever.”
The implications were transparent. Floss, at the very least, could lose any chance of ever returning again to the land of her birth. And if the rest of us were tossed away, Major could follow us back home and start the whole mess all over again. Banishment here. Who-knew-what waiting for us there. Major very possibly able to bounce over to either side. Sort of the rock-and-the-hard-place scenario.
“Who writes his dialogue?” I sounded peevish because I was scared. “‘Banished forever.’ If we did a play that sounded that stilted, we’d deserve to be booed off the stage.”
Floss cast her scowl in my direction. “True, Persia, but not even one tiny bit helpful.”
I shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
“I don’t think the dialogue’s the important part.” Tonio looked at Floss and said, “After everything you’ve told me about your home, I have a hard time believing your family will rave about puppets. I think they’ll be even less excited about puppet karaoke that seems to be criticizing their rule.”
“I haven’t even told you all that much,” Floss said. “And it is criticizing their rule.”
“So you agree with me?”
“Mab, Tonio, of course I agree with you,” Floss said. “Aside from the very obvious fact that we’re not ready….”
“Does it say when?” Max asked. “When this preview is supposed to take place?”
Tonio looked at the letter again, but I had the feeling that he already knew the answer. “In two days’ time,” he said.
“Oh, please,” I said, while Lucia whispered, “Two days?” and Nicholas said, “I have to say that I, personally, am not ready. I don’t have even one faerielight that works the way it should. And what I don’t have doesn’t even begin to cover us as a group, or to mention all the other ways that we’re not prepared.”
“Add in the fact that we still don’t have a real script, just an outline concept,” said Tonio.
“It’s impossible,” I said.
“Yes, well, it’s my parents,” Floss said viciously.
“Oh, I’m sure Major had some say,” Max said.
“But can you do it?” Fred added, “I don’t understand half of what you all do. Can you do it?”
Bron passed the sangria. I pulled a slice of orange out of my glass and chewed on it. “No.”
“Persia, you’re usually positive,” Lucia cried.
I slumped in my chair and stared at her. “I know, I know. But two days? Lucia, we don’t have—anything!”
“We do, though,” Max said suddenly. Everyone turned to look at him. “We have an idea and a name. I know Floss has puppets we can use because, as Tonio says, Floss can make everything do anything. Nicholas at least has an idea for a light source. Persia has signs. Tonio has an idea, and if we can’t improv with one another after this long, what’s the point?”
“We won’t have polish, that’s for sure,” Tonio said, “but we do have a little bit of something.”
“We have karaoke. We have audience sing-along.” Floss looked at us each in turn. “I can guarantee my family will not enjoy or participate in karaoke or something that resembles a hootenanny.”
“Floss would be right about that.” Fred sounded apologetic. “Karaoke isn’t quite the family style.”
While Floss muttered, “Our family has no style. Of any kind,” I said, “So we treat it like a rehearsal and cross our fingers and hope?” The two sentences twisted around each other and came out sounding like “Our family treats it like a rehearsal—no style and hope.”
Fred blinked. “That was interesting. It just blended so well. Can you do that in a play?”
Floss and I sat up straight. We grinned at each other. “You know,” I said, but Lucia beat me to it.
“Blended audience participation dialogue,” she said gleefully. “They feed us lines based on the song lyrics….”
“And we pull the play along with the songs themselves,” I finished.
Lucia nodded. “Like Max said. Improv.” She took a deep breath and added, “I’ll even sing.”
Nicholas and Floss both looked at her, eyes wide, and said, “Lucia! Yes!”
“We still have to have lyrics to pick from,” Max said, talking over them, “but we can come up with some select choices for Persia’s books. We can pick things that can help us get where we want to go, one way or another.”
“We’ll just use the basic plot from the outline I started the day we decided to switch to the dance-hall scenario. We all know Mr. Fox, so we should be able to work with that easily enough,” Tonio said.
“They won’t participate. You know that, right?” Fred asked, his eyes on Floss.
Floss’s nostrils flared as she breathed in. She finally said, “Maybe some of the staff will be there.”
Fred looked at her as if she were delusional, and Floss shrugged.
“Then we throw out the line ourselves and go from there.” She sounded quite determined.
Max turned to Nicholas. “We can get enough light with candles if we have to. We just can’t move much.”
Nicholas nodded. “Right. Candles definitely won’t work on the bikes, but I’m sure Fred can help me get a least one faerielight platform and the light that goes with it ready to go.”
Fred said, “Possibly,” but he didn’t sound like he was thinking about his answer. He seemed hesitant when he added, “You were in the depths of despair, and now…”
“Now,” Floss said to her brother, “we have something to work with.” She sent him a subversive, little grin and added, “And we will make it work.”
“It turns that fast?”
Floss shrugged. “Sometimes.”
“Just give me a beat,” El Jeffery said. “You’ll have background.”
Tonio smacked the table with his palms in 4/4 time. “I’ll find songs that match.”
Floss was counting on her fingers. “With the blue dog we have six workable puppets.” She paused, then said, “They still won’t like it, you know.”
“Ah,” I said, “but maybe they won’t hate it. That gives us a lot of wiggle room.”
XXI
“You’ve just never seen my feet.”
Two days is a very short time. Things that get accomplished in two days may include, but are not limited to, the following:
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