Chapter Nineteen
Nineteen
There was a weird sort of melancholy that always accompanied the last day of Faire—something I’d forgotten during my years away.
Everyone was a little louder getting ready for the day, conversations were a little more manic.
It was like we all realized it was over, and were trying to get in as much joy, as much laughter, as we could before the costumes, the swords, and the personalities were put away for another year.
Sure, Nina and I could bust a move or two at Jackson’s on karaoke night, but that was nothing like the maypole at the entrance of the Faire.
I was going to have to go eleven months without anyone bowing or calling me “Your Majesty”…
…was something I would be thinking if I were planning to be back next year, I reminded myself firmly. Living a day-to-day life was hard when you didn’t know where you were going to be that New Year’s Eve. Who you might be kissing when the clock struck midnight, if anyone.
Distantly, I remembered my Monday morning job interview.
I could be ringing in the new year in New York.
The thought didn’t excite me the way it should, but maybe that was because it was time to get into character.
Real life didn’t have a place here in the woods; future planning could wait one more day.
Toby and I seemed to be on the same wavelength. “Can you believe it’s only been four weeks?” He shook his head as we prepared to head to the front gate for the last opening speech of the season. “Feels like a million years.”
“You’re telling me.” I thought about who I’d been at the beginning of the season.
Pink dress, surly attitude, completely unaware that I’d be running into Alex again.
So much had changed. I tugged at my dress then reached up to touch the crown on my head.
Nina had secured it with the usual plethora of pins, but I still felt antsy.
Alex met me at the bottom of the hill, catching me before I left for the front gate.
“Last day,” he said, the words soft as he fixed one final blue rose into my hair.
“Last day,” I echoed with a sigh. This season had been nothing but emergency piled on top of emergency, and in some ways I would be glad to see the ass end of it. I could survive one more day as Queen.
But it was different for Alex. Of course.
“Last day,” I said again. I caught his cheek in my hand and kissed him, lipstick be damned.
“You’ll be at pub sing, right?”
“Of course I will.” I ran a thumb across his bottom lip, wiping away the smear of Smoked Red I’d left. “It’s kind of my job.”
“Good.” He took my hands in his, squeezing once before he left. There was a goodbye coming, I could feel it.
But not yet. God, not yet.
The words echoed in my head all day. Last day. The last opening gate speech. The last morning chess match. The last first joust. The last handfasting. And on and on. I took mental snapshots in my mind, hoping the memories would last into whatever future I may have.
I blamed the heat and probably slight dehydration, but I was on the verge of tears all day.
I’d never felt the end of the season so acutely.
How was it possible that, after four weekends in the woods, this little faux village would just disappear?
Next weekend the parking lot entrance would be padlocked.
If you came to this space all you’d see would be a huge grassy field, a few scattered wooden stages, and paths through the woods leading nowhere.
It was like something out of Brigadoon: our little Faire fading into the mist, nonexistent for the next eleven months.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to hold it together, but there was something about this costume.
About the expectant, almost worshipful way that people looked at you when you were the Queen.
It made you believe it. And so I held it together, because Queens didn’t cry.
The patrons who were here on the last day deserved the same joyous experience as those who were here on the first day.
I’d been so caught up in emotion that I’d almost forgotten one very important part of the weekend.
So after the second joust, in the hour or so before we were due for pub sing, I directed Toby down a side path and let myself slow down at the leather vendor’s booth.
She’d been my barometer all season, hadn’t she? And I hadn’t gotten my verdict yet.
She dropped a curtsy almost immediately. “Your Majesty.” Her mouth gave a twitch of a smile as she straightened up again.
I did my best to stay in character. “How goes it today, madam?”
“Oh, very well, very well.” Now her twitch was a full-blown grin. “And I would say things are very well for us all. Now that the rightful Queen is on her throne.”
Oh no. Here came the emotion I’d been holding at bay all day. I struggled to stay in character as unexpected tears flooded my eyes. “You truly think so?”
“Oh, aye.” Our shared gaze was full of meaning, and I drove those tears back by sheer force of will. Her acceptance of me as Queen, above any of the others this season, meant more than I’d expected. She saw what I saw: that this costume fit me. This character fit me.
It was almost too bad that I wasn’t staying. That I was just the last in a line of stopgap measures. By next year, Simon and Emily would have cast a new Queen, and I would be…elsewhere.
I nodded to the leather vendor as she curtsied to me, and I turned back to Toby with a merry smile. For a few more short hours I was still the Queen and I was going to make the most of it.
But those hours went too fast, and before I knew it, we were making our way to pub sing as the afternoon drew to a close. “You sure you’re not coming back next year?” Toby asked me in a low murmur.
I shook my head hard. “Absolutely not.” But the automatic denial didn’t have the heat or force that it would have even a week ago.
Faire season was all but over now, the remaining time measured in minutes instead of hours.
That frantic feeling came back, of trying to snatch all the good times that you could before they disappeared.
It was like clutching sand in your fist, only to feel it draining away between your fingers.
I took slow, deep breaths to calm my racing heart as I found my seat at pub sing, toward the back of the audience.
Last show of the day. Of the season, and I was going to enjoy the hell out of it all.
And I did. The guys up there did the most epic “Rattlin’ Bog” I’d ever seen, going way beyond feathers on birds in nests and extending to things that weren’t physically possible to exist on the branch of a tree.
The belly dancers were up next, presumably to give all the singers a break after that, and I found myself looking around for Alex.
He’d been onstage for “Rattlin’ Bog” but had fouled out about halfway through.
I’d expected to see him out in the house after that, but he never appeared.
Hmm. Obviously, the Queen couldn’t just start making out with one of the performers, but a girl could dream, right?
He didn’t come out during the belly dancers, either.
I shifted on the bench, trying to look around without making it too obvious, but Toby cleared his throat twice and I got the hint and settled down. But where the hell was he?
I got my answer soon enough.
After the belly dancers, Dex came back onstage, carrying two stools. Alex followed him out, his acoustic guitar still strapped to him, and the two men settled on the stools. Dex gave the audience a friendly wave.
“Don’t mind me,” he said. “I’m just here for backup.” He hoisted his own guitar. “Literally. This next bit is all Mr. Shakespeare here.”
“That’s me, Mr. Shakespeare.” Alex grinned at Dex, but his eyes darted as he looked into the audience.
His mask had slipped just a little, and I saw nervousness in those dark eyes.
He never looked nervous onstage. He took a deep breath then blew it out, shaking out his hands before addressing the crowd.
“This is a little something I’ve been working on for a couple weeks now.” He strummed a chord, then another, less about making music and more giving him something to do with his hands. “A little side project—”
“Because you haven’t had enough to do this season,” Dex cut in with a crooked grin, and Alex huffed out a nervous laugh.
“Hey, idle hands and all that, right?” He cleared his throat hard. “Anyway, the words are Shakespeare’s, the music is mine. Well, mine and Dex’s. He helped me a little.”
Dex scoffed. “Not that much. This guy’s good.”
Alex waved a hand, dismissing the compliment, then turned back to his guitar.
A serious shift came over the two as they stopped with the banter and started with the music.
It didn’t take long to recognize the melody.
I’d heard snatches of it before, on the back deck at my house, while the two of them were harmonizing with their instruments.
The Shakespeare song that Alex had been talking about doing.
He’d actually done it. A small smile came to my face as I settled in to listen. Which passage had he chosen?
Alex began to sing in a clear baritone:
“O! never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seemed my flame to qualify.
As easy might I from myself depart
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie”
I caught my breath. I knew this one. Sonnet 109, one of the Fair Youth sonnets.
I’d studied them as a group, back in college before I stopped believing in the romance of Shakespeare’s words.
This was one of the ones that had hit me hardest, and it was all in those first few lines.
The sentiment had sounded then like Sure, I left you physically, but that doesn’t mean I stopped loving you, you should know that.
And as someone who had just been left? It had sounded like a load of bullshit to me.
“That is my home of love; if I have ranged,
Like him that travels, I return again”