Shakespeare for Squirrels

“She bonked me right proper, out of my sox,” sang the fairies as we went.

“She’s a friend indeed, to a thousand cocks,” sang Bottom, because the fairies weren’t good at counting.

And I filled my bellows to belt out, “Oh, I give your sweet mum—”

Which is when the monkey swung down from a rather twisted cedar tree and snatched the hat of many tongues off of Moth’s head, then scampered to higher branches, where he screeched down at us.

“Jeff!” I called. “You cheeky monkey, you!”

“Why does that monkey have the same outfit as you, Pocket?” asked Cobweb.

“Do you turn into a monkey in the daytime?” asked Peaseblossom.

“No, why would you ask that?”

“Because it would be smashing,” she said.

“Also, because she is simple,” said Cobweb.

“That’s true,” said Peaseblossom.

“I love that hat,” said Moth. “That is my first and only hat.” She shook her fist at Jeff, who shook his little fist back at her, as is the way of his people. “If it were daytime I’d run that rascal down and get it back,” said Moth.

“Sorry, love,” said I, “but I’m afraid there will be monkey spunk in the millinery before you see it again.”

Alas, I would have tried to call Jeff back, but at that very moment the ground began to undulate around us, lumps of forest floor growing like great blisters of leaves and pine straw to erupt into creatures, six of them, manlike, as black as tar, great heads low on their shoulders, with ears like bat wings and yellow eyes as big as a duck’s eggs, each brandishing a short sword curved like a sickle.

Cobweb screamed and scurried up a tree as two of the creatures broke for her. Moth and Peaseblossom similarly shinnied up trees out of reach.

“Run,” I shouted at Bottom as I drew a dagger from the small of my back and flung it overhand at the attacker who stormed at me, screeching, sword swinging over his head. The dagger caught the creature high on the chest, and stuck, but did not sink to the hilt as it would have in a man, but penetrated only to the depth of the first joint of your finger. It stopped the creature for only a tick. He yanked my dagger out of his chest and cast it aside, while I drew my second dagger and dodged behind a fir tree. The thing hissed and bared a mouthful of jagged teeth like I’d seen in sharks we’d caught at sea, his mouth fully twice as wide as that of any human I’d ever seen.

The single beast that pursued me swung his sword and I dove and rolled away. His blade caromed off the bark of the tree. I risked a look back. Three of the creatures were clawing at trees, trying to get the fairies, another two had taken off after Nick Bottom, who, no doubt fortified by the fairy frolic, was outrunning them easily.

I backflipped away from my attacker and rolled to put another tree between us. I dared not throw another knife and have the same result as the first. The fiend was covered in plates, as smooth as polished onyx, each approximating where there might be a muscle underneath, and although there was space between the plates, there was no way to know if a blade would even penetrate at those points, and before I could flip the blade to throw it, he was on me.

He hacked away at me with his sword as he advanced. By backing away and leaping I was able to avoid losing an arm. He was a shit fighter, really, signaling every slash with a great windup, so as long as I had a clear path to retreat to, I could avoid his blows. But even an agile warrior with only a knife cannot long hold off a stronger opponent with a sword, and when my heel caught on a downed branch and I fell backward, he was on me. I drew the puppet Jones from down my back and used his oak stick to parry a blow, then quickly riposted, hoping to lock his curved blade with the puppet, then slide under to plant my dagger beneath his breastplate.

But the puppet stick snapped.

“Oh, fuckstockings,” said I, regarding the splintered stem of my puppety friend.

I should perhaps add here that I, too, am a shit fighter. Oh, I am nimble footed, and I can perform many acrobatic tricks, but they are not suited so much for fighting as for entertainment, so my base battle strategy is, generally, to jump around like a lunatic until my adversary is thoroughly confused, then stab him in the eye.

The creature made a quick recovery and swung straight down at my face. I parried the blow with my dagger and made to roll away, but my jerkin caught on whatever branch had caught my heel and I lay open to the next blow.

“Oi! Goblin!” Cobweb, behind my attacker perhaps four yards, stood with my first dagger, blade in hand, ready to fling. The goblin (for now I knew what the creature was) paused in his attack and looked under his raised sword arm to the attacking fairy.

“In the eye, lass,” I called as I freed my jerkin and rolled away. Cobweb let fly with my knife.

A thrown knife is a fussy weapon. Not only must it be thrown with enough force to pierce an enemy, but it must arrive at its target point-first and perpendicular or you may as well have flung a stick for all the damage it will do. Thus is required an assessment of the blade’s balance and weight, as well as the rate at which it will spin and how far the weapon will travel with each spin. With practice, and a matched set of throwing knives, one becomes able to instantly calculate the distance, time the rotation, adjust the force and attitude of the throw to match the circumstances, and, if truly aimed, drive a dagger into a soft target to the hilt. All this calculation, of course, depends on the ability to count, at which fairies are complete shit.

The dagger slapped flat against the goblin’s back and fell to the ground, at which point I heard, for the first time, the sound of goblin laughing. The other goblins stopped trying to get after Peaseblossom and Moth and turned to see what was so funny.

“We’re sent by the night queen, you gormless bloody git,” said Cobweb. “Show him the passport, Pocket.”

I hadn’t thought about the blossom I’d put in my hat since we’d left Titania’s leafy cathedral. I pulled off my coxcomb and reached in, to see my finger emerge from the hole the crossbow bolt had made when I pursued Demetrius’s killer in the morning. There was some damp, plantlike pulp but little more. “The passport is ruined, but I’ve some of its essence. Here, smell my finger,” I said as I held out my damp digit for sniffing.

He turned, made as if to sniff my finger, but with a closer look at his great maw of ragged teeth I withdrew the offer.

“Take my word for it,” said I. “We are sent, to see the shadow king. Take us to him immediately.”

The goblin regarded me, his cohort stopped worrying the trees and looked over.

“Do you have any silver?” he said, his voice a rat scratching in a tin bucket. I could see now that the shiny plates I had thought to be armor were, indeed, part of the goblin’s body, like the shell of a turtle, only segmented and articulated. Other than a small silver ring in his ear, the goblin wore only a ragged loincloth and a thin dusting of the loamy earth from which he’d emerged.

“I do, I do, I do,” called Nick Bottom, who had circled back at full gallop, leaving his two pursuers a hundred yards behind.

“Silver!” said the goblin with the earring. I assumed he was in charge, because when he held up his hand, thin fingers tipped with thick claws, the two chasing Bottom slowed to a limping walk, which was the way all of them seemed to ambulate—bit of a sideways crab stride, as if they had suffered some injury.

Nick Bottom had unbuttoned his fine waistcoat and was coming forward holding one lapel out. “This button is silver. It’s sulfured black, but that will polish off.”

I strode to the weaver, my dagger still in hand, the ranking goblin like a shadow behind me. I snipped the button from Bottom’s vest and held it away from the goblin, who had become as single-minded as a begging dog with the scent of roast beef in his nose.

“No,” said I. I polished the button against my jerkin and held it for the goblin to see the shining relief of a woven Celtic knot standing out silver against the black patina. His great yellow eyes rolled back in his head as he

looked, and he reached for the button as if reaching for a dream. I pulled it away. “When we see Oberon.”

The head goblin looked at the others. “We take them to the shadow king.”

And so they did. Peaseblossom and Moth came down from their trees. Nick Bottom fell in behind them, muttering something like, “So this is why we weren’t to go into the forest at night. I knew it wasn’t the bloody fairies.” I walked side by side with Cobweb, the silver button tucked into my belt, and the goblins formed a stutter-stepping formation around us, the one with the silver earring leading.

“You lived among these goblins when Titania lived at the Night Palace?” I asked Cobweb.

“We tended her in the forest. She came to us. We only went into the Night Palace for ceremonies, and never during the day. Except for Puck and the one hundred.”

“The one hundred?”

“Oberon’s concubines. They are locked in a chamber in the palace all day and night.”

The head goblin began to drift back in the column until he marched at my side.

“I am Gritch,” he said.