The fairies around the green bowed or averted their eyes. Those who had been working in the ribs of the growing dome clung close to their branches as if trying to become unseen, and while all attention was upon the fairy queen, all pretended to attend to other quiet occupations to create a privacy in the midst of a crowd. I had seen such behavior before, in the mobs about the pagan henges, when the Druids searched for the suitable sacrifice. Fear. Even cheeky Cobweb had folded herself into a stand of tall ferns and grabbed only furtive glances at her fairy queen through the parted fronds.
“Help,” Bottom whispered, but alas, no plan of action came to mind. I was here to see the queen and it appeared that I was doing quite well at it.
Titania moaned softly as she stroked Bottom’s ears, her eyes closed, head thrown back as if in an ecstatic trance, running one hand up his ear, the other down the leg of his trousers, her cheek to his bristly muzzle, even as he nuzzled tighter against my shoulder to escape her. The queen pressed her breasts against Bottom’s arm as he pulled closer to me. She took a long ear in each hand and pulled herself hard against Bottom’s leg; he turned to keep the great growing donkey dong snaking down his trousers away from her, me trying to escape both, which resulted in the three of us doing a rather slow turn in the middle of the forest, until Titania, in renewing her grip upon Bottom’s ear, caught one of the tentacles of my hat, yanking it off my head, at which time she ceased moaning, opened her eyes, and looked at the black and silver hat in her hand, half expecting, I suppose, to find a severed donkey ear, but alas, no. She slid down Bottom’s leg to her feet and peeked around the cringing ass-man’s head to look me in the eye.
“Hello,” said I.
“Who are you?”
“Pocket of Dog Snogging,” I said. “Royal fool, onetime king, and current emissary of Theseus of Athens.” As Cobweb had suggested, I pulled Theseus’s passport from my belt and held it out so she could see the seal. “I have been sent,” said I. I bowed, as much as I could with Bottom clinging to me.
She looked at the seal, looked at me, looked at the seal, looked at Bottom, cowering against my shoulder, shook her head in what appeared to be disgust, looked at me again, then turned and walked through one of the arches into the makeshift palace. Over her shoulder, she called, “Wash the cheese stink off of him and bring him to me.”
A rather small boy of perhaps eight, naked, brown, and scrawny, peeked out of Titania’s litter, then, seeing that the path was clear, padded after her into the green palace.
* * *
The fairy queen reclined in a raised nest under the domed chamber lit by lamps full of fireflies and a portal in the ceiling open to the moon. I stood before her, naked but for my puppet stick and a vine-belted loincloth the fairies had wrapped me in, and, except for my face and hands, nearly as pale as the fairy queen herself (no one wins the war of the wan against a sun-starved son of England), if a bit pink from the sand scrubbing the fairies had given me at the stream to remove the odor of cheese. (And I had shared my sack of victuals with them to boot, ungrateful, dog-eared vermin.) Cobweb and Moth attended Titania in her nest, weaving fresh blossoms into her hair. Bottom cowered in the far side of the nest, where Peaseblossom scratched his ears with a forked green stick. The other fairies I knew had blended back into the multitude. Some busied themselves with trussing up the last few branches on the dome, others slowly crept away into the forest. It had been no different in the stone castles and palaces where I’d lived and attended; one served as quickly as possible and left the court to their own dirty dealings, except Titania had no court, no clerks or guards. When the scene settled, there were only the servants who waited on her, fewer than a dozen, none armed. Somewhere out of sight, someone played softly on a pan flute.
“So, fool,” said Titania, “what is the message you have brought me from Theseus?”
“Not so much a message as questions, ma’am. First, when was the last you saw the Puck?”
Titania sat up and waved Cobweb and Moth away. Cobweb was shaking her head furiously at me as she retreated to the back of the nest with Bottom, Peaseblossom, and the small brown boy, who was curled into a ball as if trying to disappear up his own bum. “Just that?” said the queen. “Theseus wants to know when I last saw the Puck? Just that?”
“No, there are others, ma’am, but I’m not to ask them until you answer the first.”
“I am the queen of the night, fool. Ruler of all the fields, forests, and fairies. Only with the dances of my fairies do the grains ripen, the apple trees blossom, the clouds bring life-giving rain. Only by my command do tides turn and the moon bless the fertile fruit of babies to be born. You stand before me, in my palace, and dare to ask trifling questions? You would hold messages from a king hostage under condition of my answers? In my palace?”
“So, last evening, I’m told, was when last you saw the Puck?”
The night queen leapt to her feet, leaving her garlands in a pile, and although I was still heartbroken and not attuned to such tastes, she was right fit for an ancient fucking fairy, and if Cobweb was right, and the queen was to have her way with me, I would try to savor my suffering.
“Insolent fool, on your life now, deliver Theseus’s message or suffer my wrath.”
“Will you be especially wrathful, then?” I inquired.
“I will.” She seemed less sure than when she’d first spoken. “Probably.”
“Well then, I should get to it. Theseus wondered if you received the message he sent by way of the Puck.”
“I did,” said the night queen.
“Aha!” said I, storming up to the very edge of her nest, which was built upon some small tree, higher than my head, so I backed up a bit so I could look the queen in the eye. “Aha!” I repeated. “So you did see the Puck last evening?”
“Yes, I just saw no reason to tell you.”
“And what was that message?”
“Theseus sent you, and Theseus knows, does he not?”
“He forgot, so I was to ask again.”
“He did not forget, fool. Must I have you seized and scrubbed again?”
Truth be told, I hadn’t been so much seized as the fairies had asked me to come along, and they were so enthusiastic and annoying that I accompanied them to the stream and submitted to their scrubbing on the condition that my kit was kept close at hand, except for my codpiece, of course, with which Mustardseed had absconded into the wood. Still, if Titania felt a good sand scrubbing was a viable threat, who was I to disabuse her of the notion?
“Oh no, ma’am, not that. But the duke was expecting you to send something to him with the Puck and he wonders if you sent it.”
“He does not know?”
“Well, no, since nothing was found with the Puck when they found his body.”
And everything paused, as if everyone in earshot were gathering a breath for a song.
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Pocket!” said Cobweb, which came out rather louder than I think she expected. Titania and all the fairies turned to regard Cobweb, and the girl fairy slid her bycocket hat down over her face and attempted to hide behind Bottom, who had folded his long ears down over his eyes and was pretending to sleep.
“Which you knew because you killed him,” said the puppet Jones, in my voice, as I was working his string. And suddenly everyone’s attention turned from Cobweb to the puppet, as had been my intent.
“Apologies, ma’am,” said I. “Your fairies gave the puppet a good scrubbing as well and he’s surly when he’s damp.”
“Aye,” said the puppet Jones. “Cross as a cat when wet, I am.”
“Aye,” said I.
“Aye,” said Jones.
Titania’s mad green eyes went wider. “What sorcery is this?”
“Simple fool craft, ma’am. Nothing any extraordinarily talented jester could not do.”
“Like the Puck?” she said.
Behind the queen Cobweb had peeked out from behind Bottom and was nodding at me hard enough to shake her eyeballs
free of their sockets.
“Aye, ma’am. Just like the Puck, who is, if I had not made it clear, quite dead.”
“Dead?” said she.
“Quite.”
Whispering commenced in the ferns and shadows—fairy voices trying to hush alarm and disbelief. Heart-shaped faces peeked out from the branches above, one fairy, who must have been hiding in the green dome, lost his grip and plummeted into the middle of Titania’s nest, then, before anyone could react, jumped to his feet and swung out the far side of the nest and out of sight. The odd sob and sniffle sounded out of the dark. The pan flute ceased.
“Murdered, ma’am,” said I. “With—” I looked for my clothes and weapons. “Where’s my kit?” I called to the gallery.
Mustardseed popped up out of a stand of ferns and strutted forward, codpiece on his prow rigged for ramming, carrying a bundle of my clothes, the harness with my daggers draped over the top. He set the bundle at my feet and stepped back, grinning like a loony, first at me, then at the queen, then at me again.
“Thank you. Well done,” said I. “Fuck off, then.”
Mustardseed proceeded to fuck off back to his hiding place, but Titania called him back. “Wait, you.”
Mustardseed waited, turned, grinned, basked in the attention of his queen.
“What is your name?” asked Titania.
“Mustardseed, ma’am,” said the prong-donged fairy.