Shakespeare for Squirrels: A Novel (Fool #3)(55)

“I was a slave,” I said.

“You were?” A light in her eye. “How did you get free?”

“My enormous apprentice crushed my master to death.”

“Well I don’t have an apprentice.”

“Then we shall have to find a different way for you.”

“How? And how do we find a way for the hundred in there?” She waved in the direction of the Night Palace.

“You may have to learn to be selfish in this instance.”

“Maybe you should be selfish and just fuck off to lands unknown.”

“I can’t. I have to save Drool.”

“No you don’t. Be selfish. How long would he live anyway? Another thirty to forty years. He’s nearly dead already. Be doing him a favor, really. You mortals are as fleeting as dew under morning sun. Why not just fuck off and leave him to his fate? Like I should have when I found you.”

I stood, paused, feeling, perhaps, as if a new perspective had opened upon the world. I said, “Why have you been watching over me? Saving me? Feeding me? Taking care of me?”

“I loved a man once. A mortal. And when I saw you wash up in the surf, you reminded me of him.”

“I was limp and dead in the sea.”

“He drowned.”

“Sorry.”

“So I saved you.”

“Lovely of you.”

“I know. It is the first time I have ever tried being lovely. And I quite like it.”

“So you were a cranky little bitch for nine hundred years?”

“Not all the time.”

“Why didn’t you frolic then, on the beach, to heal my wounds?”

“We can’t do it alone. I would have had to bring another to frolic, and you were mine.”

I sat down in the leaves next to her.

“What now?” said I.

“We need to rescue your mate, don’t we?”

“I don’t have the flower for Theseus.”

“You said it before. Rumour can fetch it. He said he taught the Puck to circle the world in forty minutes, didn’t he?”

“He won’t do that. He quite hates me. Showed up when I was dining with Oberon, looking for his hat of many tongues. Accused me of taking the piss out of the royals just because I thrive under the threat of death.”

“True, innit?”

“He won’t help. Although his appearance upon the scene did convince Oberon of my mysterious yet completely rubbish powers.”

“He will if you trade him his hat.”

“But Jeff—”

“Oi, Moth, Pease, after the change, you tarts think you can find that monkey and get that hat back by sundown?”

“Oh, that would be lovely,” said Peaseblossom, well into her fourth wank of the morning, judging by her ascending scale of yips.

Moth came over, faced us, knock-kneed and coy. “Would you carry my new frock and my razor, Pocket?”

“My pleasure,” said I.

“Piece of piss, then,” said Moth. “I rather fancy that Jeff bloke, anyway.”

“He’s a monkey!” said I.

“Not all the time,” said Moth.

“Yes, all the bloody time.”

“Still,” she said, shrugging off her robe and throwing the folded razor on top of it.

“If you get the hat, find us on the trail,” said Cobweb, counting out the events on the same two fingers. “If you can’t find us, meet us on the north trail into Athens at sundown. The wedding isn’t until midnight. Rumour will have to find us, then retrieve the flower, then Theseus will release your mate.”

“It seems there are very high odds against all of that lining up,” said I.

“What are odds?” asked Moth.

“Well, it is the likelihood of all of those things happening, as measured against the likelihood of all of those things not happening, and happening by the time we need them to happen.”

“So counting?” said Cobweb.

“Never mind,” said I.

“We will do this,” said Cobweb. “The north trail, outside of Athens, at dusk. Don’t watch me change.”

“What?” I said.

“Don’t watch me change,” she said. “And if after I’m changed, I’m still shaved, don’t look.” She stood and shrugged off her black robe. “Bring that. That cloth feels lovely. And Bottom still has my hat. Bring that. And don’t let him eat us.”

I looked to Gritch just as he stood over his dead friend and fit the silver armlet onto his arm. “He is gone,” he said.

“Blimey,” said Bottom. “That’s strange.”

I turned to see a horned-eared red squirrel standing on her hind legs in a puddle of black satin, looking at me with squirrelly recrimination.

“That’s what’s strange? After all we’ve seen and done, that you find strange?”

“The world is a wonder, isn’t it?” said Bottom, musing philosophical. “Two days ago I was a weaver who had never been more than two miles from his house, practicing a play for a wedding, and today I am a transformed half man escaping from a goblin castle pondering shaved squirrel snatch.”

“I’m not looking!” I said to the red squirrel, but she chittered angrily anyway.