A Midsummer's Day

by Montford, Heather

  What he heard... was the sound of applause? He wrenched himself from the thick muck and stood. Through mud filled eyes he saw no sign of destruction. He saw no fire, no bomb crater. He saw no sign that the elephant had escaped from its pen on Caravan Way and had fallen over.

  Had he imagined the whole thing? That must have been it. He hit the mud too hard. He imagined the shockwave.

  Vaughn wiped the thick mud from his eyes and, with two deft flicks of his wrists, flung it as far into the audience as he could.

  Giddy shrieks were his reward. He and his two fellow beggars delighted in splatting the danger zone, the first eight rows of the audience. Anybody wearing white received special attention.

  The other beggars joined him at the edge of the pit, and the three took their bows together. Forarin, the hero of this showing, pushed villainous Puck back into the mud. Vaughn threw himself into the pit as hard as he could, and more shrieks greeted his ear.

  He stood again, breathless and happy. The crowd moved on. It seemed no one wanted the usual souvenir photo with the beggars today, so he went to a compartment hidden around the back of his stage. Some muddy prankster had replaced their worn terry towel, long having forgotten that it was once white, with a rag made from a burlap sack.

  Damned jokester, whoever it was. He was supposed to be the prankster of the pack. His very name gave him that quality.

  Whoever had left the burlap rag failed at their attempted prank. The fabric wasn’t scratchy in the least, and even around the delicate skin around his eyes it was amazingly smooth. He wiped his face and threw the rag back into the compartment.

  Something was… off. From a distance, the crowd beyond the last row of seats looked no different. No smaller. Children at a nearby game threw mud soaked sponges at game masters dressed like the mud beggars. The line leading to the privies was every bit as long as usual. Women shopped at a stand selling chopsticks for their hair. Sammie liked the things so much she owned three sets herself.

  But…

  There was nobody dressed in jeans. Nobody in shorts and tee shirts and sneakers. People squinted against the harsh sun for the lack of sunglasses.

  All the tourists were gone.

  Everyone was in period costume. Men wore rough breeches and jerkins. The women wore long gowns.

  What in the hell? He hadn’t paid that much attention to his audience when they left, but there damned well were tourists in the stands at the start of the show. He had personally tortured three in sparkling white tees himself.

  There hadn’t been enough time for them to completely disappear from sight.

  “Fair thee well, Cousin Puck?” Forarin joined Vaughn near the seats. “Thou hath a bewitched look about thee.”

  “What in the blazes is going on?” Vaughn walked out onto the Dregs road. Being closer to the situation didn’t make things better. “What happened to the tourists?”

  “I know not what thou dost mean, Cousin Puck, with this most strange word tourist. We have seen us our normal audience of peasants, gone now to view them other shows.”

  Vaughn sighed. “Enough, Scott.” He broke character and used Forarin’s real name. “No one’s close enough to hear.”

  “By what manner of name be this Scott?” Scott crossed his eyes. “Methinks the most oppressive heat hath tainted thy senses. Come and let us eat. Another performance awaits us hence.”

  “Are you freaking serious?”

  Scott just stared blankly at him. He was out of his flipping mind. It was hot, and he’d taken one too many hard hits in the mud. Maybe the mysterious shockwave, if it really existed, had knocked Scott’s memories of winter life as a barista from his brain.

  Vaughn walked down the Dregs. There had to be people around who still knew their names. People who weren’t in on this prank. People who were still dressed as tourists. It was just a matter of finding them.

  The Lover’s Bridge was strangely empty. The Grotto Stage wasn’t. The backwards speaking storyteller was telling the story of Dindercella the gullery scirl. Normally the audience was made up of tourist children.

  But now there were only peasant children. There were no parents minding strollers and cranky infants. Nobody recorded the act with digital camcorders, or the rapt joy that were missing from these joyless children’s faces.

  Around the corner, the glass blower still performed to a packed house. But only grim faced nobles and a few peasants watched the show now. Apparently it was an interesting diversion, but not enjoyable enough for anybody to smile at it.

  “Where in the blazes are all the tourists?” Vaughn whispered. If this was a hoax, it was a good one. The instigator would have had to be good to swap out every tourist in a thousand foot radius with an actor. And to do so in less than a minute...

  Gypsy Way had seen the same switch. Peasant women wandered the tents, seeking their fortunes much as they had done this morning. As usual, there were no nobles here. There were no tourists here.

  Vaughn passed the worn tent where Sammie had gotten her reading. Inside was the gypsy that kissed Johnny so hard. That was how she knew who Sammie was. Sammie had never gotten a reading before. That was how she knew that Sammie hadn’t found her true love.

  Did the gypsy know anything now? She gave a palm reading to a young peasant girl. But she looked up as he passed. Her eyes bore into him so intently he turned away. His skin crawled.

  Freaky girl. He’d go and find his own answers. If he couldn’t, he’d come back and see what the gypsy knew. And he’d get some answers about Johnny, too.

  Beyond Gypsy Way was Brigands’ Den, home to the festival’s resident pirates and plunderers. Normally they did nothing but drink rum and plan raids. Now they sat in piles of plunder, pilfered from a number of nobles’ pocketbooks or the backs of the dozens of shops on the grounds. They laughed and called for more rum.

  Vaughn hurried away. He wasn’t about to find out what they would do if the fancy got to them, now that they were part of this joke.

  A thought came to him. He smacked himself in the forehead. “Sammie,” he whispered, a smile playing at his lips. There was no point in wandering around every path of the festival, looking for tourists. Sammie would tell him what the in the blazes was going on. She never kept anything from him, a fact he’d discovered when he was seven and she was six and she told him everything his mother had gotten him for Christmas. After that, it was a cinch to get her to tell him what he was getting for Christmas and his birthday.

  Sammie would tell him the truth. She wasn’t cruel enough to play this joke on him.

  He walked through the faire with a purpose. He stopped looking for tourists; he had an innate feeling that he wouldn’t find any, anyways. He stopped looking for signs that the actors were part of a prank and fighting the urge to laugh.

  He galloped up the Hill Road. Sam would be back in the break room, changing after her dunke.

  At the top of the road he ran headlong into a group of nobles. They gasped and backed away from him as fast as they could. It was as if he was evil. Diseased. They mumbled to each other about the unseemliness of a beggar on the upper levels of the festival.

  A black clad constable appeared. Somehow Vaughn didn’t think he was there to help him. “Be gone with thee, slime. Back to the Pits with thee.”

  The joke had just crossed the line. It wasn’t cute. It had never really been funny. Now it was annoying. Vaughn pushed the constable aside. “I’m just going to find a friend.”

  “Vile scum. Thou art to come with me.” The constable pulled a sword from a scabbard at his hip. It shone in the sunlight. It was sharp.

  Where in the hell did he get a sword? The only weapons in the festival were at the joust and at the whip and swordfight show. Johnny didn’t even carry a sword.

  Vaughn did the only thing he could think to do. He bolted. He ran through the Crossroads, disrupting two stage shows and a large group of nobles walking around the dust in aimless circles. The commotion he caused stalled the constable. He ducked
between the strength testing machine and a snack shop. He snuck down a hill and hid between two shops cut into the hill just beyond the Dead Road.

  Above him, the constable worked to calm down the riled nobility. Below him, on the Dead Road, all was normal.

  Except, of course, for the stark lack of tourists that now seemed to have spread throughout every inch of the festival like a sickness.

  Vaughn sat, safely hidden between the highest corners of two shops, and tried to catch his breath. He rested his head in his hands. “What in the hell am I going to do?”

  There was no way he could get back to the break room now. There was no way he could get to…

  Sammie… She wandered down the Dead Road, dripping in her wet dunking dress and soaking hair. She’d just come from the pond.

  She looked around her, a dazed and lost look on her face as she looked at the people around her. She looked for something she couldn’t find. With every step, what little hope she had in her face drained away.

  She wasn’t finding signs of tourists. She wasn’t seeing a friendly face that would reveal that the strange things happening were just some strange, cruel joke.

  Tears filled her silver eyes. She wasn’t a part of this joke.

  Vaughn snuck to the bottom of the hill. He waved at her. But she didn’t turn. She didn’t even look his way by accident.

  When she walked by, Vaughn grabbed her.

  <>

  She couldn’t scream.

  Unseen hands grabbed her. Yanked her to the side, to a place hidden between two shops.

  It would finish her off.

  And yet… she couldn’t scream. If the thing that grabbed her killed her… Well, at least the horribleness would end. This cruel, sadistic joke would end.

  It wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen.

  The face of her attacker came into view. The warm, friendly brown eyes of her best friend smiled at her.

  But was it really Vaughn? Or had he fallen prey to the same thing that had turned Johnny into Jameson Kent? If Vaughn wasn’t Vaughn… If he had turned into Puck, would he still have the friendship he shared with Lady Anne? Or would he have turned into a proper Tudor beggar, and only sought her out for sinister reasons?

  Sammie’s lungs clamped shut. She gasped for air. Damned her asthma. Damned all this stress and confusion. Damned this joke or this concussion or whatever caused this wildfire of hell.

  “Hey hey hey.” He, whoever he was, cupped her face in his hands. “It’s just me, Sam. It’s just me. Breathe, sweetheart.”

  The sound of her real name calmed her down. She leaned forward and rested her head on his shoulder. “You called me Sam.” She forced herself to take a slow, shaky breath.

  “Of course I did,” Vaughn said without his cockney beggar accent. “I take it you’re a victim of the same cruel joke I am.”

  Tears filled her raw eyes. “I don’t think this is a joke.” Her breathing came in short bursts. “Johnny didn’t know me, Vaughn. He thinks I’m really Anne. He thinks that he’s really Jameson Kent.”

  “Johnny didn’t know you? I can’t believe that.” Vaughn sat back on his haunches. “Are you sure he just wasn’t acting?”

  She shook her head. “You know him, Vaughn. He can’t even pull off a convincing pout when we’re out of sight of the tourists. And he would never be that cruel.” Free tears turned into open sobs. That was the worst thing of all. It wasn’t the fact that the tourists seemed to disappear, and that the actors went too far into their roles. It was that Johnny could be so cold.

  Vaughn wrapped her in his arms, letting her give in to her tears. He didn’t tell her that she needed to calm down, that she would only make her asthma worse. He didn’t give false promises about how everything was going to be okay. He let her cry out all her fears and her frustrations, his arms a blanket of safety she never felt with Johnny.

  Finally the tears slowed. Her breathing slowed, though her asthma wasn’t happy with her.

  Vaughn helped her into a sitting position higher on the hill. From where they were, they were invisible to the people on both the higher and lower paths. For the first time since the start of the dunking, she felt completely safe.

  He sat next to her. “When’s the last time you saw a tourist?”

  “Before I went into the pond for the third time.” She wiped her cheeks. Her skin was on fire. “I was in the water for less than a minute. It took less than a minute for our entire world to change.”

  “Did you feel a shockwave?”

  Her eyes went wide. “Last time I was in the water. It felt like the whole clearing had been blown to bits.”

  “I was face down in the mud when it hit the Pits,” Vaughn said. “It felt like somebody dropped a bomb right on top of us. But no one else seems to have noticed.”

  She thought she’d gone crazy. She thought that she hit her head on the chair and lost all senses. But Vaughn felt it too. He felt the shockwave, and saw the disappearance of the tourists. They were the only ones.

  They were alone in a world of insanity.

  But at least they were alone together.

  Panicking relief set upon her. An invisible hand squeezed the air from her lungs. She grabbed at the leather cord around her neck and pulled the pouch from its hiding space. Thank God she’d remembered to keep it on when she changed for the dunke. She didn’t even want to think about walking all the way back up to the break room…

  The wetness of the leather had disguised the smell. Her eyes watered. Her lungs protested loudly as she pulled the bag open.

  What… in… the… hell?

  Her inhaler was gone, the two toned blue cylinder with its dose counter on the back and the red lined canister filled with its magical, lifesaving powder. In its place was nothing but dark red powder that turned her world blurry.

  Vaughn looked into the pouch. He wrinkled his nose. “It smells like…”

  “Cinnamon.” She snapped the cord and threw the bag as far away from her as she could. It was the same cinnamon smell that was on those horrible pinecones stores sold during the winter holidays. “It used to be popular in sixteenth century pomanders…”

  “But it’s completely devastating to your asthma,” Vaughn finished.

  Sammie nodded. Tears threatened to spill. She forced them back, but she could not force away the thought that caused them.

  The tourists had disappeared. The minds of the actors had disappeared. And now her inhaler…

  Was everything modern going to disappear?

  Vaughn stood. “Stay here. I’m going to find you a drink.”

  A new fear gripped her. She grabbed his hand. He couldn’t leave her. Not here. Not when everything had gone to hell. What if something happened and he came back thinking he was Puck?

  What if something happened, and he never came back at all?

  She couldn’t handle this strange world by herself. She’d go mad in a second.

  “I’ll only be gone a minute, Sam,” he said gently, brushing a lock of drying hair from her eyes. “There’s a drink stand just down the road a bit.”

  She shook her head. He didn’t understand. She wished to death she had the air to tell him…

  He knelt in front of her. “Are you scared that I’ll come back as Puck?” he guessed. She nodded.

  He took her left hand. Her rings were still there, at least. They hadn’t disappeared into the wild blue future. There was the diamond Johnny had given her when they got engaged. Next to that was the only thing that could possibly mean more to her.

  It was a silver band with a crowned emerald heart, cupped by silver hands. Her claddaugh ring.

  Vaughn slipped the ring from her finger. “I gave this to you on your sixteenth birthday.”

  Sammie smiled. She remembered. She would remember it when all other memories were erased by the ravages of age. Sixteen was supposed to be a magical birthday, but that year was turning out to be one of her worst. Weeks before, her first serious boyfriend had just dumped her, the r
edheaded history buff actress for a ditsy blond cheerleader with a reputation. A few months before that her father had left her, her mother, and her two sisters, never to be heard from again.

  On her birthday, Vaughn had given her the ring as a symbol that he was never going to leave her. Suddenly the worst year of her life became her best. Fourteen years later, he was still in her life, and she’d never taken the ring from her middle finger.

  Vaughn screwed the ring onto his pinky. He managed to get it just below his first knuckle. “I don’t think a real beggar would wear something like this without being accused of stealing it. So if I still have this on when I come back…” He winked at her and stood. “Stay here and relax. I’ll be back in a flash.” With a confident smile and another wink, he was gone.

  Sammie wrapped her arms around her knees and looked into the open shop just below her. It lacked a cash register. It lacked glass fronted display cases. It lacked cute signs about which American credit cards they accepted.

  She closed her eyes and leaned back on the soft grass. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Slowly, slowly.

  Slowly the wheezing quieted. The sharp, stabbing pain stopped spreading through her lungs with each breath. Things weren’t perfect, but she wasn’t going to pass out now.

  Somebody ran on the path below. She sat, pushing herself higher on the hill. Vaughn ducked between the shops, breathless but holding a tin cup full of… something. He had left and returned in record time. There was a drynke stand on the Queen’s Road, just off the Dead Road. Not far, but he must have ran the entire way.

  “Are you all right?” she asked slowly.

  He nodded and sat, splashing bright red liquid from the depths of the cup. “I pinched it from the back of the stand while the servers were helping a pack of nobles. Drink up.”

  Sammie took a slow, refreshing sip. The birch beer cooled her lungs, opened her airways. She drank half the soda and gave the rest to Vaughn.

  “Why were you hiding here?” Sammie asked after a deafeningly quiet moment.

  “A constable caught me on the upper level of the grounds. Apparently that’s a high crime these days.” He chuckled stiffly.