Chapter 6 In Which We Experience Community Theater
In Which We Experience Community Theater
Sahir flushed.
“Has the madness afflicted you, Sahir?” the Princeling asked, in a way that destroyed any lingering hope I had that he wasn’t listening in on my every conversation. Did he have nothing better to do, really?
I glanced around the room again. Everyone was staring at us. Oh good, another dinner show put on by the Faerie Players, featuring One Scared Human Girl.
“My lord,” Sahir replied, bowing his head. “I do not believe myself mad.”
“They never do,” the Princeling mused. He had that same little half smile on his thin lips.
He had his usual cohort with him, the knights Gray and Red and Blue, and the Crone in her blue cloak. They all stood by the cafeteria door, in the wide center aisle that ran the middle of the room.
The Crone leaned on the Blue Knight’s arm and he supported her. Her cloak fell in folds that seemed to suck the color from Blue and Red both.
The Crone pushed her hood back, her black eyes burning in her head. “I saw it all,” she said in a voice likely meant to be menacing. She sounded more like a gleeful teenage girl about to recap the plot of Blood, Guts, and Pizza Huts: How We Found Friendship at Our High School Reunion and Then Died.
Without looking at her, the Princeling jerked his head in acknowledgment. “Show us then, Crone, what has made this wretch forsake his future in my Court for a mortal woman.”
The words made me uncomfortable, and I tried to pull my hand from Sahir’s. But he held on.
The Crone raised both her hands—the knights Red and Blue each held an elbow—and spread her gnarled fingers wide.
Between each finger a web of blue spread, joint to joint and then hand to hand, the color of night in my parents’ backyard when I was a child and went out to stand under the stars, feet cold in the wet grass.
I wanted to fall into the color, but it fell toward us instead and lightened, until the room had transformed into the dull lonely gray of the courtyard between our office building and the next one over, the sort of gray that has heard of sunlight but isn’t convinced of its relevance.
I shifted my weight. I knew this was vitally important, but it had started to feel like the time I went to Shakespeare in the Globe Theatre and it was standing room only. My knees hurt. No one else in the room seemed like they wanted to sit.
The Princeling and the Gray Knight moved off to the side, leaving the other three in a place of prominence. There, leaning against the illusory wall by the building entrance, stood the Red and Blue Knights, the Crone between them. They each held a cigarette and wore the illusion of a black suit.
The Red Knight opened his mouth, and Matt’s voice came from the Crone’s lips. “Where is that stupid prick?”
“Calm down,” said the Crone, as Corey. The Blue Knight moved his mouth in time.
“Calm down? This is so fucked up,” Red Matt sputtered.
Between them they still held the Crone upright, and as they moved their mouths she spoke.
“It’s probably a misunderstanding,” Blue Corey said, flicking his live cigarette butt onto the pavement for dramatic effect. I glared. I always told him not to litter.
“Everyone sit down,” the Princeling cut in, lazy and commanding. The Red Knight and Blue Knight paused midmotion as weight shifted around the room, faeries resting in their chairs.
Sahir stirred and slid his hand from mine, which left me standing in the middle of the room like an idiot.
He walked through the illusion—it parted like mist beneath his outstretched hand. When he’d passed through the revolving door, he turned and pushed it. It spun this time, like a solid object under his hand, and he walked “outside.”
Red Matt called out to him. “Hey, fairy-boy!”
Obviously there are no subtitles in life but I felt fairly confident that Matt had intended it as a callback to insults used for homosexuals, and would have spelled it with a Y.
Blue Corey elbowed Red Matt. “Sahir, we wanted to talk to you.” He pulled another cigarette from the pack in his pocket and dangled it between his lips.
Around them the indistinct impression of people rushing by; between them the Crone with her web of magic. The illusions crackled at the edges by her fingertips, a glimpse of the Red Knight’s shoulder plate visible where the faux suit splintered into her pinky finger.
Blue Corey lit the cigarette.
I glanced around the room. Like me, the faeries were transfixed. And we all hung suspended in the illusion, the gray of the courtyard extending on into infinity; a cracked, uninhabited pavement on which the wooden tables seemed to hover.
“Of what did you wish to speak?” Sahir was permitted his own voice, it seemed, though the Crone voiced Matt and Corey.
The Crone sagged slightly to the left; the Blue Knight hefted her straight again.
“Where’s Miri?” Blue Corey asked. “We heard there might have been a misunderstanding, and she thinks she needs to stay in Faerie.”
“The lady’s intellectual capacity far surpasses yours,” Sahir said, a surprising note of anger in his voice. “And she has understood well what must be.”
Red Matt let go of the Crone to crack his knuckles. “Miri needs to come back.”
“Clearly not.” Sahir had recovered his composure and clasped his hands behind his back. Red Matt took the Crone’s arm again.
“Clearly, she does,” Red Matt argued. “You twat.” It was certainly something to watch the wizened Crone say the words you twat as the Red Knight mouthed along.
Matt had spent a semester in England, and it showed.
“The lady will remain in Faerie, as is our right. She partook of our fare and slept in our bowers.”
“What are you insinuating about where Miri slept?” Blue Corey snapped, the faerie’s face contorting into a passable imitation of a human’s menacing glare.
I felt my own face redden. What sweet, sweet morons.
Blue Corey still had the lit cigarette between his lips.
I kept looking at it, waiting for him to hold it against Sahir’s wrist.
“I insinuate nothing,” Sahir said, taking another step closer.
And to my utter shock, Blue Corey let go of the Crone and swung a fierce right hook at Sahir’s face. The illusion fractured for a moment, hanging in the air like the shards of ice in a storm. I felt the stillness in the room as everyone stopped breathing.
Corey, really?
Blue Corey stepped back again and took the Crone’s arm. The illusion knit back together, the grays and blacks and fabric and concrete. I wondered how it must look to the faeries, so unlike their brown and green and blue.
Sahir moved too fast for me to see, slamming his fist into Blue Corey’s jaw. The crack sounded real, and Blue Corey recoiled, mouth gaping. The cigarette dropped to the ground.
In the crowd a few faeries cheered.
“Cease,” Sahir said, sliding his hand back to touch the wall next to Blue Corey. “What is done cannot be undone.” The motion was intimate, dangerous. He leaned in close to Blue Corey’s face, their noses nearly touching.
Red Matt stooped next to them, one hand on the floor. Somehow the Red Knight managed not to lose his grip on the Crone.
Blue Corey didn’t flinch from Sahir’s nearness. “What will you do to her?”
“I will do nothing,” Sahir breathed, though by some magic his voice carried through the room. “She is not my responsibility.”
“Then make her your responsibility,” Blue Corey said, his hand coming up to grasp Sahir’s sleeve.
Sahir tried to pull away, but Blue Corey held him.
“Why would I do that?”
“I could go to the press,” Red Matt said, “or HR.”
“Human Resources,” Sahir repeated, incredulously.
“You don’t want to get fired, do you?” And then Red Matt opened his hand, the still-red stub of Blue Corey’s cigarette pinched between his thumb and forefinger, and brought the hot end down on Sahir’s wrist.
“And what is stopping you from going anyway?” Though he didn’t wince, Sahir finally pulled away from Blue Corey, who hadn’t let go of the suit, and the Crone imitated a ripping sound. Sahir held his arm out straight—showing the audience the tear in his suit?
“We could give you our word,” Blue Corey said.
“The word of a mortal means nothing. You treat with me and burn my flesh in one breath.”
Blue Corey stared at Sahir. “Please.”
Sahir sighed. “I give you my word that I will do my best to keep her alive.”
“Healthy,” Blue Corey corrected. “Keep her healthy, not just alive. And swear on your life.”
“Why would I do that?” Sahir snapped.
“Please,” Blue Corey said again. He sounded genuinely devastated. I stared at the foreign face of the faerie, trying to imagine my colleague, who had never been anything but simply fine to me before, assuming that expression.
Sahir straightened, his jaw tight. I watched the muscle work there, the bob in his neck when he swallowed.
“Fine, if it means you will cease to accost me.” He put his shoulders back, haughty, and brought both hands together in a long twisting gesture, an impossible sweep like a tangle of vines off a trellis.
“I shall keep Miriam healthy, to the best of my ability, and protect her from foreseeable harm, until she dies of natural causes. I shall be her sword in conflict and her pen in peace, and I swear this on my own existence; may it not continue if I fail her.”
There was a low hum of noise around the room, a startled incessant mumble.
Even I could tell this was more than he’d needed to do.
The image cracked again, and fractured into flakes and webs and shards, and clattered onto the floor.
After the false cold light of the New York afternoon faded, the muted glow of the darting creatures by the ceiling and the flicker of torches on the walls felt gloomy and dull.
The Crone sagged between the Red Knight and the Blue Knight, her head lolling.
Before the voices around us crescendoed, the Princeling spoke. “Odd,” he mused. “The humans showed bravery and loyalty.” He looked out among the crowd. “Did any of you know them to do thusly?”
Laying it on thick, buddy, I thought.