Tamani smiled. “Much of the set is an illusion. This is why Summer faeries are in charge of our entertainment.”
Laurel leaned forward, trying to study the new scenery, but she didn’t have much time before the faux glade was filled with dancing faeries in bright, multicolored costumes. She saw instantly just how obviously ungraceful the “human dancers” had been. The company of faeries whirled through elaborate choreography with a grace that would have put Pavlova to shame. After a few minutes of the incredible corps, a rather tall faerie in a sheer, clinging gown entered from stage right. The company of faeries dropped to their knees, allowing the female faerie to take central focus for her solo. Laurel had been to professional ballets in San Francisco, but nothing prepared her for the raw talent and grace of this principal dancer.
“Who is that?” she breathed to Tamani, her eyes riveted on the stage.
“Titania,” Tamani responded.
“The Titania?” Laurel asked breathlessly. His arm was snug around Laurel’s back as their heads pressed close so they could whisper, but Laurel hardly noticed.
“No, no. I meant she’s playing Titania.”
“Oh,” Laurel said, a little disappointed that she wasn’t going to get to see a legendary faerie perform. In the middle of Titania’s beautiful arabesque, a male faerie—with no beard this time—entered from stage left. The faerie corps twittered and dropped into low bows on the floor of the stage.
“Is that Oberon?” Laurel asked, thinking of the faerie king often paired with Titania in faerie lore.
“See, you’re catching on,” Tamani said with a grin.
The faerie playing Oberon began his own solo, his movements brash, daring, almost violent, but with the same controlled grace of the faerie playing Titania. Soon the two were dancing together, each trying to outdo the other as the music rose stronger, louder, until with a surge of brass, Titania tripped on her own feet and sprawled onto the ground. With a wave of her hand, and angry, stomping steps, she and some of the faerie corps exited the stage, chased by Oberon’s faeries.
“Why are they angry with her?” Laurel asked.
“Titania is a very unpopular figure in history,” Tamani responded. “She was a Fall faerie—and Unseelie at that—who became Queen during a time when there were no Winter Faeries. Oberon was born soon after and took over as King, when he was only twenty years old—almost a child, in terms of royalty, and still not soon enough for most people’s taste. Titania was responsible for the disastrous mess in Camelot.”
“The trolls…destroyed it, right?”
“That’s right. And the aftermath led to his death just as he was proving to be one of the greatest kings in Avalon’s history. So Titania is generally blamed for that loss.”
“That seems unfair.”
“Perhaps.”
The stage cleared again and returned to a forest scene. Lotus rushed in, pursued by Heather, who hid behind the trees every time Lotus turned around. They rushed about in confusing circles until two more figures entered the stage: Darnel, and a very pretty female faerie.
“Now I’m confused again,” Laurel said as the female faerie tried to cling to Darnel and he kept pushing her away.
“That’s Hazel. She is in love with Darnel. Darnel is chasing Heather, who is chasing Lotus, trying to stop him from the dangerous trip to the Isle of Hesperides. Hazel is trying to convince Darnel to just be happy with her.”
Something clicked in Laurel’s head as the lovely Hazel tugged forlornly on Darnel’s coat and he cast her aside. “Wait a second,” she said. “This is A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
“Well, it’s what would eventually become A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Like most of Shakespeare’s best plays, it started out as a faerie story.”
“No way!”
Tamani shushed her gently as a few Fall faeries glanced their way. “Honestly,” Tamani continued, his voice low and soft, “did you think he came up with Romeo and Juliet all by himself? A thousand years ago it was Rhoeo and Jasmine, but Shakespeare’s version is a passable retelling.”
Laurel’s eyes stayed locked on the four faeries dancing their dizzying chase. “How did Shakespeare come to know the faerie stories?” She glanced up at Tamani. “He was human, wasn’t he?”
“Oh, yes.” Tamani chuckled quietly. “He lived in a time when the rulers of Avalon still kept an eye on human affairs. They were impressed by his plays about the Kings—Lear and Richard, I believe. Deadly dull stories, but his writing was magnificent. So the King had him brought here to give him some fresh story lines for his beautiful words. And they hoped he would correct some of the errors in faerie mythology. A Midsummer Night’s Dream was his first play after coming to Avalon, followed soon after by The Tempest. But after a while he resented that the King would not let him come and go as he pleased. So he left and didn’t come back. And as revenge, he didn’t put any more faeries into his plays. He made them all human and claimed them as his own.”
“Is that really true?” Laurel asked in wonder.
“That’s how I learned it.”
The scene returned to the flowered clearing where Puck—a Fall faerie of remarkable skill, Tamani informed Laurel—was instructed by Oberon to create a potion that would make Titania fall in love with the first creature she saw, in payment for her mishandling of Camelot. And since he was a benevolent king, he also tried to help the humans. “After all,” Tamani explained, “he couldn’t let them actually enter Avalon and take a golden apple, but he didn’t want to send them home with nothing to show for their pains.”
Laurel nodded and turned her attention back to the ballet. The story continued in a familiar manner, now that she knew what play it was—Lotus and Darnel both chasing after Hazel, Heather being left loverless, and everyone dancing in intricate, frenzied patterns that made Laurel’s head whirl.
Then the scene changed back to the faerie bower and, after Puck placed his potion in Titania’s eyes, a huge, hulking beast came lumbering in. Laurel couldn’t tell if the beast was an illusion or an elaborate costume. “What’s that?” she asked. “Isn’t he supposed to be a man with a donkey head?”
“He’s a troll,” Tamani said. “There is no greater disgrace among the fae than to fall in love with a troll. It just doesn’t happen without serious derangement—or some kind of magical compulsion.”
“What about the part where all the men are putting on a play? That’s where the guy is supposed to come from.”
“Shakespeare put that part in by himself. There’s no weird play in the original story.”
“I always did think that was the lamest part of the story. I thought it should end when the lovers wake up and are discovered,” Laurel said.
“Well, it does,” Tamani said with a grin.
Laurel watched silently for a while as the dancers continued the story and everything began to be set right. Just before the final scene, Titania came back on and danced the most beautiful solo Laurel had ever seen to the sad strains of a soft lament. Then she spun and swooned at Oberon’s feet, offering him her crown.
“What just happened?” Laurel asked when the dance was over. She couldn’t bear to ask during the solo—it was too lovely to take her eyes off of even for a second.
“Titania begs forgiveness of Oberon for her misdeeds and concedes her crown to him. That means that she admits she was never truly the Queen.”
“Because of Camelot?”
“Because she was a Fall faerie.”
Laurel frowned as she considered this. But the scenery changed quickly to the clearing where the lovers awoke from their enchanted sleep and danced a joyful double pas de deux, and were joined by the full corps at the end. When they stepped forward for their bows, the audience on the ground floor seemed to rise as one to applaud the company. Tamani rose from his seat as well and Laurel jumped up to join him, clapping so hard her hands began to sting.
Tamani placed a firm hand on her arm and pulled her downward.
“What?” Laurel
said, pulling her arm away.
Tamani’s eyes darted back and forth. “It’s not done, Laurel. You don’t stand for anyone below your station. Only your equals, or your superiors.”
Laurel glanced around. He was right. Nearly everyone in the balcony was clapping enthusiastically, faces lit with broad, beautiful smiles, but no one was standing except her and Tamani. She raised an eyebrow at Tamani, turned her face back to the stage, and remained on her feet as she continued clapping.
“Laurel!” Tamani said sternly under his breath.
“That was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen and I am going to express my appreciation as I see fit,” Laurel said flatly, continuing to clap. She shot a quick look at him. “Are you going to stop me?”
Tamani sighed and shook his head, but he stopped trying to get her to sit down.
Slowly the applause faded and the dancers ran gracefully off the stage, where the scenery had melted into stark whiteness. About twenty faeries in bright green lined up at the back.
“There’s more?” Laurel asked as she and Tamani took their seats again.
“Fire dancers,” Tamani said with a broad smile. “You’ll love these.”
A deep boom from a large kettledrum sounded. At first, it was just a slow, steady beat. The green-clad faeries moved forward as one, taking slow, marching steps in time with the drums. As each line reached the front of the stage, they raised their hands, sending beams of multicolored light skyward. A second later, enormous showers of sparks exploded above the crowd—almost eye level with the balcony—beautiful, vivid colors in rainbow hues that made Laurel blink against their brilliance. It was better than any fireworks display she’d ever seen.
A second drum began to sound in a quicker and more intricate rhythm than the first, and the faeries onstage changed with it. Their dance turned acrobatic, faeries flipping and leaping to the front of the stage instead of walking. A third drum started, then a fourth, and the performers’ pace and motions grew frenetic with the beat.
Laurel watched, transfixed, as the fire dancers performed, twisted, and tumbled with remarkable skill. Each time they reached the front of the stage, they put up another light show. Rays of light fell like raindrops over the audience, and spinning balls of fire careened through the coliseum, trailing bright sparks that faded into glistening jewels before extinguishing themselves. Laurel was torn, watching first the acrobats, then the fireworks, wishing she could watch both at the same time. Then, when the beat of the drums became so fast Laurel couldn’t figure out how the faeries kept up, they all tumbled to the front of the stage, releasing the fireworks from their hands all at once, creating a curtain of sparkles that dazzled almost as brightly as the sun.
With her breath catching in her throat, Laurel rose to her feet, applauding the fire dancers with as much enthusiasm as she had the ballet dancers. Tamani rose silently beside her and didn’t say a word this time about her standing.
The fire dancers took their final bows and the applause began to die away. The Fall faeries in the balcony rose and started making their way to the exit; Laurel could see the Spring faeries below her doing the same thing.
Laurel turned to Tamani with a smile. “Oh, Tam, that was incredible! Thank you so much for making sure I got to come.” She looked back at the empty stage, concealed now behind its heavy silk curtains. “This has been the most amazing day.”
Tamani took Laurel’s hand and laid it on his arm. “The celebration has scarcely begun!”
Laurel looked up at Tamani in surprise. She dug in her small purse for a few seconds, glancing at the watch she’d brought with her. She could spare another hour or so. A smile spread across her face as she looked at the exits again, with eagerness this time. “I’m ready,” she said.
TWENTY-THREE
“THAT WAS AMAZING,” LAUREL SAID AGAIN AS she and Tamani lounged on pillows beside low tables heaped with fruits, vegetables, juices, and dishes of honey in a dizzying array of colors. Music filled the air from a dozen directions as faeries across the green lounged, and danced, and socialized. “I had no idea theatre could be like that. And those fireworks at the end! Those guys were incredible.”
Tamani laughed, much more relaxed now that they were spread out in a meadow where the faerie classes mingled a little more freely. “I’m glad you liked it. I haven’t been to a Samhain celebration in several years.”
“Why not?”
Tamani shrugged, his mood turning somber. “I wanted to be with you,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “Coming to festivals didn’t seem as important when it meant leaving you behind the gates. Especially considering the revelries at sundown.”
“What revelries?” Laurel asked, half distracted as she dipped a large strawberry in a dish of bright blue honey.
“Um…well, you’d probably find it rather distasteful.”
Laurel waited, her attention piqued now, then laughed when he didn’t continue. “Keep going,” she prodded.
Tamani shrugged and sighed. “I think I told you last year: Pollination is for reproduction, and sex is for fun.”
“I remember,” Laurel said, unsure how that related.
“So at big festivals like this, most people…have…fun.”
Laurel’s eyes widened and then she laughed. “Really?”
“Come on, don’t people ever do anything like that in the human world?”
Laurel was about to tell him no when she remembered the tradition of kissing at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Though, granted, it wasn’t really the same thing. “I suppose.” She looked at the crowds around her. “So nobody cares? Aren’t most of these people married?”
“For starters, you don’t get married in Avalon. You get handfasted. And no, most of them aren’t. In Avalon, the main reason to get handfasted is to raise seedlings. Typically faeries aren’t ready to do that until they are”—he paused, considering—“eighty, maybe a hundred years old.”
“But—” Laurel cut off her own question and turned her face away.
“But what?” Tamani prodded gently.
After a moment of hesitation she turned to him. “Do faeries ever get handfasted young? Like…like at our age?”
“Almost never.” He seemed to know what she was asking, though she couldn’t bring herself to be completely forthright; his eyes bored into her until she had to turn away. “But that doesn’t mean they aren’t entwined. A lot of people have committed lovers. Not a majority, but it’s common enough. My parents had been entwined for over seventy years before their handfasting. Handfasting is a little different from human marriage. It is not just a sign of a committed romance but an intention to form a family—to create a seedling and become a societal unit.”
Laurel giggled, trying to dissipate the tension that enveloped them. “It’s so weird to think of faeries having kids when they’re a hundred years old.”
“That’s barely middle-aged, here. After we reach adulthood, most of us don’t change much until we’re a hundred and forty, a hundred and fifty. But then you age fairly quickly—at least by faerie standards. You can go from looking like a thirty-year-old human to looking like a sixty-or seventy-year-old human in less than twenty years.”
“Does everyone live to two hundred?” Laurel asked. The thought of living for two centuries was boggling.
“More or less. Some faeries live longer, some shorter, but not usually by much.”
“Don’t they get sick and die?”
“Almost never.” Tamani leaned over and touched the tip of her nose. “That’s what you’re for.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not you specifically—Fall faeries. It’s like having the world’s most perfect…shoot, what do you call them. Hostels?” He sighed. “Help me out; where people go when they’re sick.”
“Hospitals?” Laurel suggested.
“Yeah.” Tamani shook his head. “Wow, it’s been a long time since I lost a human word like that. I mean, we all speak English, but human-only lingo really is like an
other language sometimes.”
“You weren’t speaking English earlier, to those guards,” Laurel observed.
“You really want another history lesson today?” Tamani teased.
“I don’t mind,” Laurel said, savoring a spear of perfectly ripe nectarine. Harvest time never seemed to end in Avalon.
“Those were Gaelic words. Over the years we’ve had a lot of contact with the human world, through the gates. Am fear-faire, for example, is basically a Gaelic word for ‘sentry,’ but we borrowed it many years ago, when the humans we encountered still spoke Gaelic. These days it’s mostly a formality.”
“So why does everyone speak English? Aren’t there gates in Egypt and Japan, too?”
“And in America, lest ye forget,” Tamani said, smiling. “We’ve had some contact with your Native Americans as well as with the Egyptians and Japanese.” He laughed. “In Japan, we had extensive contact with the Ainu—the people who lived there before the Japanese arrived.” He grinned. “Though even the Ainu never quite comprehended how long before them we were there.”
“Hundreds of years?” Laurel guessed.
“Thousands,” Tamani said solemnly. “The fae are far older than humans. But humans have reproduced and spread much faster than us. And they are just plain heartier. Certainly more capable of surviving extreme temperatures. It’s only with the help of Fall faeries that our sentries manage to survive the winters at the gate on Hokkaido. Because of that, humans have come to dominate the world, so we have to learn to live among them, at least a little. And language is a big part of that. We have a training facility in Scotland, where, as you know, they speak English. Every sentry with dealings in the human world must train there, at least for a few weeks.”
“So you and Shar trained there?”
“Among others.” Tamani was growing increasingly animated, speaking without the hesitation that always clouded his behavior when he set foot in Avalon. “Covert operations are usually performed by Sparklers, and very rarely a Mixer will need an ingredient that doesn’t grow in Avalon. The manor is built around the gateway, in the middle of a sizable game preserve, so it guards the gate as well as forming a safely controlled connection to human affairs. It was acquired centuries ago, in much the same way we’re working to acquire your land.”
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