Shakespeare for Squirrels

I reached into the small of my back and drew the bolt that killed the Puck. “The Puck is dead. Killed by this.” I tossed the bolt onto the stage and it rattled at his feet.

“I am invisible,” said Oberon. The shadow king whipped his cape into the air as if trying to form wings, and while it did send an impressive wave of silk across the stage, he remained quite visible.

Cobweb sneaked a peek from under her arm, first at Oberon, then at me. “He’s not invisible,” she said.

“No,” said I. “He’s not.

“Your Grace, I am Pocket of Dog Snogging, freelance fool. Queen Titania has sent me with a message, in addition to that bolt, which is from a goblin weapon, so the Puck’s killer can be found. She bids you do me a favor as recompense for bringing you this message.”

“I am invisible,” repeated Oberon, but this time he didn’t do the grand wave of his cape.

Gritch now looked at me under his arm, then dared to raise an eye toward the stage, where he spotted the shadow king being decidedly visible. Gaudily so, truth be told.

“I am now visible,” said Oberon, with the cape wave.

“Much to my relief,” said I. “For surely, when you disappeared, we thought you might have been slain by the same fiend who murdered the Puck.”

“The Puck is slain, you say?” said Oberon, a quaver in his voice, as genuine in his grief as he had been in his invisibility. “He was my fool. My slave. My property. How happened this? Who would do such a thing?”

“Well,” said I, walking to the edge of the stage until I stood directly above the goblin with the silver armlet. “Offhand I would say it was that crossbow what killed him, fired by this tosser.”

Here and there around the hall, goblins were tearing their gaze away from the moon to see what manner of cheeky monkey was speaking to the shadow king in such a way.

Oberon picked up the bolt and leapt off the upper stage, trailing a wave of shimmering night cape behind him. He moved as if mountains might be humbled and slide away at his will. I stepped aside and reached to the small of my back, ready to draw a dagger, lest the shadow king decide it was his royal privilege to stab me in the head with the arrow. Bloody sloppy protocol, anyway, to let a complete stranger in jester togs trailing three fairies and a donkey-headed bloke within stabbing distance of your king. The guards with the halberds were as helpless with awe as the rest of the goblins. Irresponsible, it was.

“This tosser?” asked Oberon, pointing with a silver talon to the armleted tosser, who cowered under his king’s attention.

“Aye,” said I. Up close Oberon was as hard edged and dark as had Titania been pale and soft.

“Draw and cock your crossbow and give it me,” said Oberon, crouching over the goblin soldier. “Do not load a bolt.” Silver Armlet did as he was told and held the cocked crossbow over his head with both hands, his eyes averted to the ground, as if making an offering to a god, which I suppose, in his mind, he was. Oberon took the weapon, inspected it, and grinned down at me (yes, he was two heads taller than I, four with the ridiculous crown), his grin a cold crescent moon where lived no mirth. “This bolt killed my beloved Puck?” he said.

“Aye,” said I. I fought the urge to take the piss, add a colorful sobriquet—“grandiose wankpuffin” came to mind. I had seen mad kings before,

The shadow king fitted the bolt into the arrow groove of the crossbow and inspected it, nodded to me. “Yes, it appears to be from a weapon exactly like this.” He held the crossbow so I could see that the black finish on the stock was the same as on the bolt.

I nodded.

Oberon lowered the crossbow and fired it into Silver Armlet’s chest. The bolt easily pierced the goblin’s chest plate with a thunk and buried itself to the fletching. The goblin reeled and fell on his side, a look of surprise and betrayal in his yellow eyes, green goo oozed out of the wound. The goblins about the courtyard had all stopped looking at the moon as a thousand yellow eyes turned to their king.

“There,” said Oberon, holding the crossbow out to me. “Puck avenged.” The shadow king giggled, a high, mad giggle, then turned and leapt back up the six feet onto the upper stage with a single bound. As if calling to the sky itself, he shouted, “Take back the moon!”

The ground shook, the great gears began to grind, and the ceiling began to close. “Away!” Oberon gestured to the crowd and they swarmed to the exits as if running before a flood.

Oberon looked down on me. “I must go grieve. Tell Titania that justice is done. Tell her I will have the Indian boy now, and only then may her fairies dance again. This is the will of Oberon, ruler of all of the night, king of shadows, master of the moon and tides, giver of the planets and stars.” Oberon turned, wound his long cape around his arm and cast it out behind him, then strode away toward the exit.

“Oi, king of the night!” said Cobweb. She snatched up the shadow king’s cape and gave a good yank, causing Oberon to slip and barely catch himself before falling on his arse. The black crown tumbled off his head to the stones. As it turned out, one could get the attention of Oberon’s guards, it simply required yanking the king back by his cape like a fast dog finding the end of a short leash. Four spearmen, two from either side of the lower stage, came up the stairs looking quite determined to ventilate Cobweb. She jumped up, caught the edge of the upper stage, and swung up to her feet above the guards. Oberon was kneeling, having retrieved his crown, he rubbed his throat as one does after being suddenly and violently choked. Four more spearmen came out of the door at the back of the stage. I quickly measured the damage I might do with my two daggers and a volley of cutting insults against a platoon of leather-skinned spearmen, and I determined that it might be time to take a hostage.

I leapt to the upper stage with a single bound. (There was more than trifling magic in a fucking frolic, and I felt it boiling in my limbs.) I made to draw one of my daggers, thinking the point to the shadow king’s throat might persuade his guards to hold. Then, like a shooting star across a night sky of my mind, an idea . . .

“I have silver!” said I, pulling Bottom’s silver button from my belt and holding it aloft.

And the guards stopped in place, every yellow eye trained on the button. I looked over at the still-kneeling Oberon. “Really?”

“That is mine,” Gritch called.

I flipped the button in the air, caught it, showed it to them all, then made it appear to disappear. If they’d had lips, the goblins would have pouted. I made the button reappear from behind Cobweb’s ear. The goblins’ saw-toothed gobs fell open in wonder.

“You missed the part about him being a fool,” Cobweb said to Oberon, but the shadow king was following my antics with the button, as rapt as his guards.

“Oi! Shadow king,” said Cobweb, shouting in Oberon’s face. “He’s a bloody jester. Like the Puck. LIKE. THE. PUCK. He knows the Puck’s three words.”

Oberon’s attention seemed to return to the scene at hand, even as I was popping the button from foot to foot to elbow to forehead.

He stood. “Enough!” Oberon waved off the guards. I caught the button and tucked it into my belt.

The shadow king was furious but seemed to have no idea how to vent his wrath. He did not know who I was, but he suspected what I was, and I could see there was doubt, if not fear, in his eyes.

“There ye be,” said Cobweb.

Oberon appeared to see the fairy for the first time, standing in front of him, defiant and not a little angry herself.

“You have sticks and leaves in your hair,” he said.

“Your queen has sticks and leaves in her hair,” said Cobweb. “You live in this shining palace made of shards of midnight while your queen lives up a fucking tree in the forest. So pardon the bloody sticks in my hair, but that is the royal way, where we live.”

“Aye,” said Moth, running to the edge of the upper stage, then backing up so she could see Cobweb.

“Aye,” said Peaseblossom, who ran to the edge of the upper stage and stayed b

elow sight, no doubt wondering where everyone had gone.

Oberon looked to me, as if I might provide some guidance in how to deal with this situation. “She’s got you there, mate, the bitch does, indeed, live up a tree.”

“And she has to shag the donkey-donged chap while you have a harem of one hundred fairies,” added Cobweb, bringing Bottom reluctantly into the scene.

That seemed to yank Oberon’s attention back to the fore. He looked over the courtyard. Some of the goblins had stopped running for the towers and were watching, drifting back toward the stage. “Take the fairies to the harem. Have them washed and deloused.”

The guards moved toward Cobweb and she ran and threw herself into my arms. “Oh, save me, good Pocket!” She buried her face in my neck and whispered frantically, “Play him. Then lose him. Bring the dead goblin to the harem before dawn. Do not tell Oberon the three words.”

“I don’t know the three words,” I whispered back.

“Well don’t let him know that, you git,” she said as two of the guards pulled her away.

The guards dragged her off. Moth and Peaseblossom climbed up on the stage and followed along behind, chatting and cheerily negotiating with the guards, as they went, how much silver they would give to have their dicks sucked.

“Bottom,” I called. “With me.” I pulled the ass-man up on the stage and introduced him. “This is Nick Bottom, Majesty. He was a weaver, a mortal, before a magical misadventure with the Puck. Now he is my valet and he wears the head of an ass.”

“Enchanté,” said Bottom with a bow.

“Go keep an eye on our fairies,” I told Bottom, once I was sure Oberon had gotten a good look at him. Let the shadow king stew in jealousy’s emerald bile at the thought of his queen taking her time with the long-eared weaver. Bottom hurried out the door after Cobweb and her co-squirrels.

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