I came upon the trail to find Bottom standing over three bodies, Lysander on his knees holding the downed Hermia’s hand.
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Bottom, have you gotten another one killed?” I inquired.
The ass-man shook his great head. “No, no, she’s just fainted. ’Twas Rumour appeared, trying to retrieve his hat.”
“Bloke’s face was just floating in air, like a mask,” said Lysander. “Hermia saw him and over she went. Poor thing is at her wit’s end. Exhausted and hungry.”
“What did Rumour say?” I inquired of Bottom.
“Mostly he wanted his hat back, which I wouldn’t give him, as it is Moth’s, and he said something about the three words again, then he called me a tosser and was gone.”
Helena began to make moaning noises and Bottom knelt beside her with his waterskin to attend her. I pushed him back and took his place. “Perhaps stand at a distance, mate, until she becomes accustomed to your handsome countenance.” I took the waterskin from him. “There’s a love,” I said to Helena, helping her sit up. There was already a blue bruise blooming on her jaw where Hermia had smote her. “Have a little sip.”
Helena pushed the waterskin away and looked first at Demetrius, then to Hermia.
“Oh good, the little bitch is dead,” said Helena, having recovered from her grief rather quickly, I thought. “I suppose I shall have you, then, Lysander.”
“She’s not dead,” said Lysander. “She’s just fainted. There was a man, a thing, a strange thing here.”
“I know, I saw it, a horrible man-donkey creature,” said Helena.
Bottom, looking crestfallen, stepped behind the trunk of a large oak before Helena could turn to see him.
“No, worse than that,” said Lysander. “A horrible thing, its face floating in the air like a mask. Moving like a ghost.”
“There is nothing more horrible than that thing I saw, tongues all over its head,” said Helena.
“That’s just a hat!” brayed Bottom, from behind his tree. “Not even my hat.”
Helena looked around, frightened. I offered her a drink. “Perhaps gentle your discourse, milady, Master Bottom is an actor and therefore is often fragile in his confidence. Apologies if his costume frightened you. He prepares for a play for the duke’s wedding, and his method dictates he wear the aspect of his character to give an honest performance.”
“Oh,” said Helena as my balderdash took root in her mind. “Sorry,” she called meekly to Bottom. “Do forgive me, but I had just seen my dear Demetrius slain.” Then she was off, throwing herself upon the dead fellow and wailing. “Oh, curse the gods, Demetrius is slain. My beloved Demetrius is slain!”
As I handed the waterskin to Lysander so he might minister to Hermia, I said, “She didn’t even like him the last time I saw her, and he didn’t like her the time before that.”
“The course of true love never did run smooth,” said Lysander.
“Aye, blithe idiot, such is the path of all love stories: love is but tragedy’s happy feint before a bolt to the heart. Or in this case, the back of the neck.” I sighed. “But why would anyone want to kill Demetrius other than he was a massive bellend? That arrow was meant for you, was it not?”
“It was,” said Helena, pushing up from her newly becorpsed lover. “They were arguing over Hermia. Again. Lysander was standing there, and Demetrius was on one knee pleading with Hermia to take him back, as if she had ever taken him in the first place. And Lysander called him a name.”
“A wally,” Lysander provided.
“Well spoken,” said the puppet Jones, from his spot down my back.
Helena waved for the puppet to shush. “And when Demetrius rose to confront Lysander—again—the bolt hit him in the back of the neck.”
“Came through to the front,” said Lysander, “the point blooming from his throat. He seemed rather surprised. I suppose the bolt was meant for me.”
“It was my father,” said Hermia. And we all started a bit, as she hadn’t even opened her eyes.
“Theseus’s simpering toady?” I inquired. “The logic plays. He did try to hire me to do the same.”
“That’s how a respectable father shows his love,” said Helena. “Not all the pretty praise and sweet embraces. Proper possession and control. Hermia’s father so loved her he threatened death on her, unless she married Demetrius. None of that prattle of being the apple of Daddy’s eye that I heard from my own father, great bag of rags that he is.”
“Oh thou sad, broken thing,” said I. “Since I landed here I have seen many wondrous and annoying things, but the glory of your wrong-thinking outshines them all.”
“She’s quite mad,” said Hermia.
“Maestro,” called Bottom from his spot behind the oak. “The watch approaches.” He nodded his muzzle rather furiously down the trail.
I stood. “Grab the fairy frocks, Bottom, we are away.”
“But what if it was the watch that killed Demetrius?” asked Hermia. “My father might have sent them, he is often in the company of Blacktooth and Burke at court.”
“It wasn’t the watch,” said I. “Probably. Let them lead you back to Athens, before you all perish from the elements and stupidity. And say nothing about our presence here.”
“But why?” asked Lysander, but I was already running down the trail with the ass-man clomping along behind me.
Chapter 12
The Squirrel is Strong with This One
The fairies dropped naked out of the trees, at dusk, and Cobweb immediately leapt into my arms and snogged me mercilessly, breathing her nutty breath on me, her skin redolent of bark and leaves from her squirrelly day out and about. I pushed her away after mere minutes.
“You’re a squirrel!”
“Well, you stink of cheese!”
“But you’re a squirrel!”
“Not all the time.”
“Enough of the time that you might have mentioned it before shagging me. Common courtesy, innit?”
Cobweb, wrist to forehead as if she might faint any second, said, “Oh, didst thou shag me? Methought me fanny was lightly brushed in the night by a foraging hummingbird. Could it have been . . . ?”
Moth and Peaseblossom snickered. Bottom honked.
Sarcasm does not wear well on the naked. “We should go. Blacktooth and Burke are behind us.”
“Not to worry, they are miles back, and not even following you.”
“How do you know?”
“Fine view from atop the trees.”
“Oh right. Squirrel. So, shall we gallantly bugger on, or do you need to gather some nuts first?”
“Why, haven’t you eaten? Are you hungry?”
Sarcasm is oft lost on the recently unsquirreled. “Grab your kit, sprite, night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast.”
Cobweb and the others retrieved their frocks and hats from Bottom, who, with Peaseblossom and Moth on his flanks, led us through the darkening forest toward the Night Palace. Time passed with just the crunch of leaves underfoot and we trod the first thousand or so miles before we spoke.
“Were you with us through the day?” I asked.
“No, we had duties to perform for the queen.”
“Even when you are a . . .”
“Daytime is the best time for gathering. We are always slaves, bound forever to serve.”
An immortal slave? My breath caught in my chest at the thought of it. I had been a slave. I knew the singular succor that was hope of freedom, even if promised after the grave, and yet I had forgotten what it was to not only have nothing, but be property. And as the all-licensed fool I’d had more privilege than most slaves. Yet, I had received Cobweb’s kindness and complained. Shame fell upon me like a hot shadow, and for the first time I found myself without words. I squinted and rubbed dust from my eyes and we walked for a long time before I spoke again, lest my voice break and she think me a wally.
When my shame settled, I said, “We encountered the young Athenian lovers again.
One was murdered.”
“One of the shoe whores? Well, what do they expect, strutting about the forest all tarted up with their smooth hair and their shoes. A wonder they lasted this long.”
“It was the one you stabbed in the chin with the crossbow quarrel.”
“The yellow-haired geezer?”
“Demetrius,” I provided.
“Well, he was annoyingly tall. Did the pointy-bearded one do it? He had the look of a scoundrel.”
“He was the target of the bolt that killed Demetrius. The same kind as killed the Puck.”
“You reckon it was the same killer ended the Puck?”
“I don’t know. I can’t figure the why of it. Hermia’s father, Egeus, propositioned me to kill Lysander—”
“Pointy Beard?”
“Aye, but why would he kill the Puck?”
“The Puck could be a right shit,” said Cobweb. She bowed her head. “May his memory shine like the stars ’til the end of days.”
“Right,” said I. “But Egeus is just a toady in Theseus’s court. There’s no reason for it.”
“Well, it wasn’t a fairy what did it.”
“Obviously, the sun was up when the Puck was killed, so that leaves out you lot. Wait, if the sun was out when he was shot and the Puck was a fairy, that means he wasn’t a squirrel?”
“The Puck could be anything at any time. Take any form. A shape-shifter of the first order was the Puck. There was no one like him.”
“But still, it couldn’t have been a fairy because you are all squirrels in daylight, right?”
“Yes, but also it wasn’t a fairy because we’re shit at killing each other, aren’t we? We live a long time but few of us are born, so if we were good murderers there wouldn’t be any of us at all.”
“But—and I don’t belabor this to be difficult—during the day you are fucking squirrels.”
“Not Titania.”
I stopped. “The queen of the bloody night does not change shapes like the rest of you?”