Shakespeare for Squirrels: A Novel (Fool #3)(73)

“You’re late,” said I.

“You are a disaster, a calamity, and an abject failure all rolled into one,” said Rumour. “I would say you were a disappointment, but with expectations below a worm’s belly, that is not possible. You are a disappointment to disappointments.”

“And you are ever a delight,” said I. To the crowd, I shouted, “This is Rumour, a teller of tales.” Which settled them not at all.

Rumour stepped forward, took off his hat, then pulled open his coat and turned, slowly, in place. And as he turned, the great hall went quiet as man and goblin took in the sight of a creature holding open a coat of waggling tongues, wherein there was no body, and above it floated a face with no head for a home.

“I see you’ve killed the duke,” said Rumour, his coat still open wide.

“I didn’t kill him, the bloody queen of the Amazons killed him, and if you’d been here on time with the magic flower she’d be blissfully in love and the duke wouldn’t be an expanding bloodstain on the pavers.”

“Well you’ve cocked it all up just the same.”

“He’s been bloody brilliant,” said Cobweb. “Except for forgetting about the three magic words. Brilliant.”

Rumour shook his head, turned to the audience, closed his coat of many tongues, and began.

“Who killed the Puck? To know that, we must know why someone would want to kill the Puck.”

“Because he was a shit,” shouted Snug, rather out of nowhere. “’At’s why I killed him.”

“You didn’t kill him,” said Peter Quince.

“Well I wanted to.”

“Was it love? Was it greed? Or was it power? I submit, it was all three. The story starts a thousand years ago, when Theseus came to this land with an army, intent on conquering it as his kingdom. Well, the men who lived in this land submitted without a fight, for they were not warriors. But then Theseus’s men ventured to the edge of the forest in search of new villages to tax, and when night fell, they were slaughtered by the hundreds by creatures that could barely be scratched by their bronze swords, the goblins. They knew no way to fight these men of stone, as they called them, so they explored to the south, where they encountered a race of tiny people we know as the fairies. Some they killed, some they enslaved, but most escaped deeper into the forest, and search as they might, Theseus’s men could not find them by day. But that spring the grain did not sprout, the fruit trees did not blossom, the cows gave no milk, and even babies born to the women of the village were small and weak and soon perished. In hiding, the fairies did not dance, and in this land, there was no life but by the power of the fairies. Another season without their light and the mortals of Athens would be in famine, yet Theseus did not know the source of his misfortune and continued to send raiding parties into the fairy forest looking for fairy villages they might plunder.

“The queen of the fairies knew that her people could not long live in hiding and on the run, so she went to the black mountain in search of the shadow king, the goblin king, Oberon, to ask him a favor. She knew the goblins were fierce warriors, and the mortals feared them, so she begged the shadow king to protect her people. So began a love story, for the fairy queen and the goblin king fell deeply in love. Oberon agreed he would protect the fairies, send the goblins to the fairy forest to meet the mortals in battle and frighten them away, but he needed something beyond her love in return. Oberon’s power over the goblins was tenuous, by birth only, and he was not one of them, but a hybrid creature of some other race. To satisfy his goblin soldiers he needed silver, and there was no more in the black mountain. The fairies had no silver, no possessions at all to speak of. Only Theseus, and the mortals, had silver to give, and while the goblins could slaughter the people of Athens and take their silver, they would then lose their source. The goblins were not sailors and could not go about in the day. But Theseus had an army, a navy, ships that could raid and trade and bring silver back to the goblin king.

“A three-way bargain was made. Oberon would protect the fairies from the mortals, and in exchange, the fairies would dance and bring their fertile magic back to the mortals, and in addition, the fairies would do their dances just for Theseus, and from them, he would become immortal.”

Well that explains how he could be so dogfuckingly old, I thought, and still walking about talking about his adventures.

“Under the arrangement, all the races prospered. Oberon, like Theseus, did not age or become ill, for he, too, was sustained by fairy magic. By and by, Titania had a child, a son, half fairy and half goblin, with more than the powers of either of the races. As he grew, his powers manifested.

“He was a shape-shifter, a spell-caster. He could travel great distances in an instant and return again as fast. But in his mind, he was as simple and unassuming as a fairy, as dogged and steadfast and sturdy as a goblin. He took his parents to distant shores, planets even. He conjured skies full of art for their entertainment. Like his fairy brethren, he thought himself nothing but a servant, and as he grew more powerful, the king and queen did nothing to disabuse him of the notion that he was merely a servant like the others, a slave to do their bidding.”

“The Puck,” said Cobweb loudly enough for it to echo in the high rafters.

“You were shagging your son?” I said to the fairy queen. “I know you poxy royals are inbred, but—”