Chapter 29 And Now for Something Completely Different #2
Before we leave, I tuck my clipboard beneath my arm and say loudly enough for the whole room to hear: “Oh, and May? One last thing. You’re looking great. Freaking stunning.”
The fairy princess’s eyebrows knot together for a brief moment, likely suspicious at a compliment from her romantic rival. But she touches her hair with a graceful flourish.
“Thank you.”
The final pieces of wedding prep move fast after this.
Although Bulan and Mandy aren’t close at hand, for reasons unknown in Bulan’s case and unmentionable in Mandy’s, I still have ample assistance.
My borrowed fairy servants toe the line of my hasty instructions, meaning that when Mab sees the State Room, she melts with delight at its completed setup and décor.
Jurgis dutifully photographs the caterers’ work of setting out the display wedding cake.
Queen Mab, jubilated, unearths wedding invitations she sent at the time of Hanry’s changeling adoption.
Jurgis documents this too. He adds these announcements to a gorgeous commemorative wedding display, contributing loose flowers, moss, and ribbon.
“Photography is so coarse,” Mab reflects. “A still life would be nice, don’t you think?”
“Mm-hmm. I’ll look into finding a wedding painter,” I reply, refusing to worry about the practicality of that at T-minus two hours. “Where’s His Royal Highness? King Tits?”
“Oh, he’s out recruiting one last guest. I do hope he’ll return on time.”
Mab picks up a leaf and watches it flutter down. If I were her, I’d be concerned the king of Fairyland would risk missing his own son’s wedding. But, then again, these are fay. If Mab’s not having a panic attack, I guess I can’t be bothered to have one either.
“Cool, cool,” I say. Then I call over a catering fairy. “Add an extra place setting to the head table, will you?”
“No!” Mab commands, halting them. “It’s a secret guest. We can’t spoil the surprise by giving them a place to sit.”
“Sure,” I say, in spite of the fact that no one will be in the reception area until after the wedding is done.
The customer’s always right, after all. To move her along, I bring up another topic: “Your Highness, once Jurgis is done in here, he’ll head to Princess May’s room to photograph the bridal party. Did you still want to do a first look?”
“Do I ever!” she cries.
It takes a good half hour before I rediscover Mandy.
Rather, she finds me, as Hanry is being paraded from his rooms by a mime-guard entourage.
I refuse to watch as he is walked out beneath the cloudy sky onto the turret bridge to behold his fiancée in her royal wedding finery.
I’m too busy directing the first set of guests from their carriages to the courtyard for their champagne reception.
Okay, that’s not true.
I see everything. The way Hanry holds himself away from Princess May—whereas if it were me, he would’ve turned his chest in to cradle my shoulders.
How he poses for a photo, stiff—whereas if it were me, he would mold himself into my warmth.
I notice the closed-lip grimace he makes when a minion with a parasol ushers Jurgis onto the balcony, and Jurgis guides his hand onto the princess’s shoulder.
The way Hanry jolts when Jurgis clasps their hands together, bares his teeth, and goes for their wrists.
Hanry may be ridiculously conflict-adverse, but he’s still Hanry: he holds Jurgis back gently. Kindly. I know these attributes are what let his mother control him so easily. I’m certain a woman like May will walk all over him.
Hanry deserves better than that; he deserves someone who will respect him.
But if he doesn’t want to fight for something better, that’s his choice. He’s shoveling his own grave, so to speak, and I refuse to let myself be buried with him. Swallowing back the hurt, which feels like a clod of dirt catching in my throat, I elbow Mandy softly in the side.
“So.” I cough to correct the weakness in my voice. “So, you snagged the Roach.”
She squeals. “I know!”
“Come on, spill. How’d you do it?”
“He’s impressed with how serious I am!” Mandy squeals again. Because I have literally nothing to say to this, she explains: “He said that I’m always composed and prepared. He finds me very sensible.”
Rochester’s intelligence just dropped significantly in my estimation. But hey, after all the hard work Mandy has done to pull off this wedding, she deserves a reward. Though, frankly, I think she could do better.
I pat her shoulder. “How about you go ahead? Make like a lovebird or whatever and hang with Rochester for a while, if you like. I’ll greet the officiant and our DJ on my own.”
Mandy’s eyes dart to mine, equal parts dubious and excited. “Are you sure?”
“One hundred percent,” I say, forcing a smile.
The glimpse of my teeth seems to discomfit her slightly, but after hugging me, she skips off in search of her lover.
That’s fine. Sure, I was planning to ask Mandy to help me find Bulan, but falling in love doesn’t happen every day.
And if it happens at a wedding, well… what kind of a jerk would get in the way of that?
“Samantha, I do not want to say that you are being a jerk—”
“Then don’t call me one. I’m not jerking you or anyone else around.
” It’s T-minus five minutes before Hanry’s wedding, and I’m trapped in an argument with Rochester.
For the most part, the guests are seated.
The enchanted DJ is poised at his booth, eyes glazed over, and hands moving frenetically—indicating he’s unaware his sound system blew out the room’s lone electrical outlet, rendering him useless.
At least he’s trying to do his job, unlike Hanry’s fairy godmother.
As our wedding officiant, Rochester isn’t supposed to be with me in the antechamber; he should be front and left with Mandy, ready to stride up to the altar.
But he is not cooperating with the spirit of the situation.
He is calling me names.
“I do not believe Hanry’s heart is in it,” he is saying.
“Yeah? Well, one could argue my heart should be broken too.”
The stoic fairy appears less than pleased. So basically, he appears as much as ever like a weathered chunk of rock.
“And yet,” he says. “You are participating in this scheme. And you seem happy.”
“I like what I do,” I reply tersely. “Even more than I like Hanry. Which begs the question: What’s with your change of heart? You should have protested this union ages ago.”
His glance at Mandy answers that question.
“You believe in true love now? Aww,” I say despite myself. “Well, do you think it’s possible Princess May feels truly in love with Hanry too?”
Rochester doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to.
Last I checked, May knew she was getting a great deal: she was glowing, ecstatic, and kept mentioning facial hair to her bridesmaids.
Presumably she’s excited about Hanry’s hair, not her own.
Fairies seem universally smooth-skinned.
It really takes beard-envy to new and soaring heights.
Feeling done with our argument—and done thinking about Hanry’s good qualities—I paste on my most professional face.
“I’m sure you’ll find a way to keep Mab and Tits happy,” I say.
With that, I leave the antechamber so I can watch over the ceremony from a respectful distance. This was my last official coordination task prior to the reception—and let’s be real, the caterers should be able to manage the bulk of the after-party with only minor oversight, barring major incidents.
“Unthink that, unthink that,” I mutter.
Slipping to the back of the Throne Room, I silently evaluate the scene.
Sixty rows of chairs splay out before me, gorgeously wrapped in greens and neutral beiges and whites, with occasional pops of magenta.
Beyond the guests is a stagelike platform, where May’s personal harpist, recently enlisted to replace our DJ, has taken a seat.
Above the platform is a raised dais, punctuated by two spectacularly mossy fairy thrones.
As Rochester ascends to the lower platform, he nods at the harpist. She lifts her obscenely long fingers to the ceiling.
And so the wedding begins.
To my left, Gustavo clicks on his video camera; to my right, Jurgis begins snapping photos; and before the audience, May’s harpist begins plucking a loose version of Pachelbel’s Canon in D.
The melody sounds okay… for about five seconds, until it’s time to bring in the accompaniment.
She doesn’t do it. Instead, she keeps plucking the D repeatedly without varying it. Or stopping.
Wait, I was wrong. She’s now playing D in more octaves.
Okay. Breathe, Sabby. At least the sounds emitted by the harp are technically music.
Mandy will still know to prompt the bridesmaids to move forward.
And… there. Applause rings out from the guests.
I assume this means Hanry has entered the Throne Room via the royal entrance.
I’m not sure if he’s being escorted by his buff fairy servants, if they’re miming him in a cage for effect, or if he’s walking unaided.
And that’s because I continue to refuse to look.
Thanks to our vigorous post-lunch rehearsal, May’s fairy entourage succeeds in walking up the aisle, arm in arm with the groomsmen.
They’re steady and perfect. Moved to passion, a few guests stand up and attempt to develop some kind of leprechaun-leaping game of hopscotch.
I snap my fingers, and fairy minion ushers swiftly intervene.
Something else is much more wrong, however. Something less easily fixed.
I cross the room, maximally stealthy, and sidle up to Mandy. “There’s one too many groomsmen,” I whisper close to her ear. “Or one too few bridesmaids.”
She squeaks, reddening. “You’re right! What should we do?”
“I don’t know,” I reply. But I’m going to have to think of something, fast. I leave Mandy to approach the platform, hugging the wall along the way so I garner minimal attention.
Thankfully, my well-honed, borderline invisibility skills remain on point.
So much so that when I emerge from the relative shadows to signal Rochester to interrupt the music, no one notices. Except him.
With obvious resentment, the fairy-godmother-officiant clears his throat.
“Now that the processional is complete,” he says, “we will have the entrance of the ring bearers and flower girls.”
Finally, mercifully, the harpist quits ejecting D notes at us. Her music shifts to a folkloric, pleasant tune. At the back of the room, Gustavo smoothly adjusts the angle of his camera, and Jurgis crouches and creeps past me, changing lenses ahead of May’s grand entry.
On any given wedding day, it’s expected that the bride will float down the aisle, an angelic vision in white.
Sure, there are variations on this theme.
May’s variation is that she’s going to do it literally.
I wouldn’t look, and I don’t want to look, except I need to make sure her ceiling entrance isn’t terribly bungled.
And… crap. She’s gorgeous, her face shining with a pearlescent glow.
The layers of her white silk kimono float up cloudlike behind her, giving her the appearance of an actual angel.
Or, I guess, a fairy. I’m aware that she is gracefully descending on wires—not magic, because this is a human wedding—but that’s beside the point.
She’s taking her time with it too, sighing and preening to great applause, her geta shoes dancing in the air.
It is devastating. Because at the end of it all, she alights on the platform beside Hanry, looking as pleased as any other bride I’ve seen.
And Hanry… Hanry looks happy too.
I really can’t believe this.
Like, two nights ago, less than fifty hours ago, I was texting him about how he makes me laugh.
I was thinking about the way he’d told me I was beautiful; the touch of his hand pressing against my back, smoothing down my shirt; how it sent frissons into my stomach.
And now he’s not just marrying a fairy princess, he’s actually trying to smile back at her. Wow.
Woooooow.
The officiant begins his opening greetings. “Welcome, welcome, on this happy—”
A deep voice calls out from the front of the room:
“I object!”
I freeze. We all do.
Actually, as far as I can tell, I’m the only one who understands that this word means something.
And you know what? That’s good. Because hell no to anyone objecting to this wedding.
I want Hanry to pay. I want him to suffer like I’m suffering.
To feel, every day, like there’s a dagger sticking out of the center of his chest.
“Go on!” I shout at Rochester. “The vows.”
“Yes, yes, indeed, the vows,” the fairy godmother says, struggling to recover. Same as Hanry, who searches his pockets. Oh, shit. Mandy checked that Hanry had his vows ten minutes ago. Could he seriously have lost them already?
“I have them,” calls out a groomsman. I release a “whew” of relief. Said groomsman, a stocky redheaded fellow, strides over to Hanry, a hand on the back of his neck. He makes a big show of extending the parchment out, one-handedly, to Hanry.
At the last second, he whips the parchment away.
“Aha!” the groomsman exclaims. “Surprise!”
Oh. I get it now—this must be one of the cousin-bullies Hanry told me about. I smile tightly, enjoying the poetic justice.
“Surprise what?” asks Hanry, that pre-wed wussy of a prince. He reaches out again for the vows, but the groomsman doesn’t release them. Instead, he turns to face the gathered guests. His laughter booms throughout the room.
“These are not Hanry’s vows, but mine!” he announces. “For I too am engaged to May!”
I stagger backward.
How did I not recognize that groomsman’s voice immediately?
It’s Bulan’s.