Wander The Night

Art Over Chaos Publishing – ArtOverChaos.com First Edition 2023 - Copyright © 2022 by Sydney Cobb All rights reserved. - No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred. dedication To my parents, who taught me how to keep my head in the clouds and my feet on the ground at the same time. ACT I The king doth keep his revels here to-night: Take heed the queen come not within his sight; For Oberon is passing fell and wrath, Because that she as her attendant hath A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king; She never had so sweet a changeling; And jealous Oberon would have the child Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild; But she perforce withholds the loved boy, Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy: And now they never meet in grove or green, By fountain clear, or spangl’d starlight sheen, But they do square, that all their elves for fear Creep into acorn-cups and hide them there. —William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act II, Scene I PROLOGUE Shakespeare would have started this tale with a witty and poetic prologue, complete with a brief overview of historical events, a disclaimer that would allow him to escape royal ire, and a well-placed innuendo that modern readers don’t understand. Personally, I’m no poet or playwright. I’m not interested in most historical events, I function as my own disclaimer, and I find nothing better than wit when it comes to humor. Ol’ Shakes was a good writer, the best some say, but I find that subjective, as all art is. And like most artists, he found muses in a lot of different places. Some tales he took from history; some he took from poems. One he learned from me. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he called it. It’s about a king and queen of the faeries who argue over which of them gets to keep a mortal child. His mother died, and both rulers believed themselves entitled to him: one due to assumed jealousy, the other due to friendship. A good, long conversation probably would have helped the situation, but the fey don’t always think that way. Trickery tends to be the default route for us. Shakespeare’s tale was a whimsical comedy of errors. Of pranks and trickery and jealous love. And not a tremendous amount of plot, to be honest. But it wasn’t the whole story. Few tales are. The rest comes many years after, when the boy is older and another child arrives. What the world believed was a dream wasn’t quite so, but Shakespeare did get some things correct: our stories start at night. SCENE 1 Within an ancient forest, deep beneath a hill, the night is alive with the pulse of music. Bodies of dancing fey sway and writhe in time to the eerie sound of violins and woodwinds and lute strings. Wine flows freely, and Robin Goodfellow is well on his way to inebriation. That’s me. I’m Robin, the only puck in existence to make a home within a faerie court, and quite possibly the only puck most people in the courts have ever dealt with. If I wished to be with others like me, it’s probably too late to change things now. The king all but owns me, and I’ve been here so long, I wouldn’t know where to go anyway. Besides, who else would he trust to run his clandestine errands or bring him information from the shadows of the court? “Have you seen her yet?” the girl at my elbow asks. Her greenish hair is tangled with twigs, but she has a pretty face. Spots of color sit high on her cheeks from too much wine. “The princess. What does she look like?” The room around us is filled with Gentry fey, the court nobility, as well as courtiers and visiting Solitary fey either paying their dues or just showing up to get wasted. The girl beside me must be one such Solitary fey, those who live within a court’s territory but not within the court itself. I haven’t seen her before tonight, and I’ve been around long enough to know almost everyone who lives here. Besides, she wouldn’t ask after the princess if she were a courtier or Gentry. “She looks like a baby,” I say, watching her inch closer to me with desire in her eyes. I am not tipsy enough for this right now. Or ever. “Like her parents, I guess.” Her parents are Lord Oberon and Lady Titania, the King and Queen of the illustrious Green Court. As faery birth rates are so low, new arrivals are momentous occasions, and royal births are even more so. The celebratory revels will continue until the baby receives her Naming on the night of her second full moon, a little over a month from now. It’s a bit over the top, but then, I suppose the first new royalty in centuries is something to get excited about. The fey love a good revel, and I can’t exclude myself from that. The girl giggles and catches my arm when I start to step away. Her fingers trace the embroidered patterns on my jacket. “You know, the stories don’t mention how cute you are.” Oh yeah. Time to disengage. I glance toward the two thrones set upon a dais across the room. Titania is, as is usual, not looking my way. On the throne next to Oberon’s, she sits regarding her subjects before her and tucks an errant crimson curl behind her ear, soaking up attention like a gold-plated sponge. She is