A Midsummer's Day (27 page)

“Everything’s already been taken care of.  I’ve already engaged one Lady Emily Montgomery to replace you, though she doesn’t have the same heavenly voice you do.”  Robert laughed.  “You’re not having second thoughts?”

“What!  Bloody hell no!”  Her heart beat a thousand times a second.  If Vaughn wasn’t holding her hand, she would float right up into the clouds.

Robert laughed and walked away.

Vaughn wrapped his arms around her.  “Good for you, love.  Now you won’t have to deal with him at all.”

Sammie giggled herself silly.  Everything that happened…  All the beatings, the chasings, the death sentences…  Everything had led to her having everything she’d ever wanted.  It was crazy.  Manic.  Refreshing.

Vaughn just let her laugh.

<>

It was Vaughn who remembered their mysterious friend T.

Gypsy Way was just as empty as the rest of the festival.  The tents stood like strange sentinels, waiting for a nightly mist to come before breaking into dance.

A strange cloud hung near one tent, one so faded and worn it hardly looked red anymore.  The cloud… was made up of moths.  Pure white moths floated in a perfect ball.  In its center, amazingly easy to see, was their queen.  A white moth with a silver lightning bolt shooting down one wing.

The faded tent was not empty.  A young blond, this time in jeans and a silver sequined tank top, came out of it.  It was the same gypsy who gave Sammie her reading.

It was the same gypsy they had both seen standing at the end of the Dead Road.

She saw Sammie and Vaughn and smiled.  “Well, I see you two made it back in one piece.”  The moth with the lightning bolt wing alighted on her shoulder.

“You’re her,” Sammie said quietly.  “You’re T.”

It all made sense now.  How many times she saw the moth, before and during the time change…  Everything was making sense.

The gypsy nodded.  “My name is Tacyn.”

“You were the one helping us.  Sending us all the notes,” Vaughn said, and she nodded again.  “Were you transported back in time, too?”

“Ah, the time change.”  Tacyn ran a hand through her hair.  “I am sorry about that.  But it was the only way I could show you the kind of man you were marrying.”  She looked straight at Sammie.

“The only way…”

“Johnny started hitting on me four, five years ago,” Tacyn said before Sammie could fully comprehend what was being said.  “It was a fling, nothing more.  Even after he met you he still sought me out.  He said that it was your relationship that was a fling, and while I didn’t believe him, I was powerless to resist his looks.  I didn’t find out that you were engaged, that you were going to marry him at the end of the season, until last week.  It was then that I knew I had to show you who he really is.”

“Who he really is?”

“We all created our characters out of who we really are inside,” Tacyn said.

“So the shockwave…  The time changes…  That was you?” Sammie asked.

“They tried to kill us.  Sammie almost died.  Twice,” Vaughn said.

“Three times,” Sammie said.  If her wrist had been cut any deeper by that shackle she would have died.  She held up her arm…

The scar was gone.

Tacyn smiled.  “Your scar lasted only to give Johnny proof of who he really is inside.  You no longer have need of it, just as you no longer had need of your bruises once you left the pond.”  She looked at Vaughn.  “And neither of you would have died.  If anything fatal had occurred, if there was anything that I could not have prevented…  You would have woken up safely in the break room and thought you had fallen asleep there during a break.  But you both would have remembered.”  She turned back to Sammie.  “You would have still known in your heart, SamanthaAn Hallows, that it is Vaughn and not Johnny that you are meant to be with.”

Was that the reason for everything?  To find out that she loved Vaughn, and that Johnny wasn’t a person worth being with?  If that was the truth…  Well, Sammie could accept that.  It was worth it, if that was the case.  She squeezed Vaughn’s hand.  But something still bothered her.  “How did you send us back into time?”

Tacyn just smiled.  “Is love not the most powerful magic in existence?  Is there not magic in the very water?  Is the Renaissance Faire not a place where reality merges with fantasy?”  She turned to walk away.  “Oh, by the way…  He’s waiting for you at Justice Pond.”

The gypsy and her magical moth disappeared without another word.

<>

He stood on the bottom level of the stage, holding the ring in two fingers.  In the glint of the diamond, he had laid all of his hopes and dreams for the future.  In reality, it was nothing more than a reminder of the shattering of those hopes and dreams.

The pond lay below him.  He saw it twice a day.  Every day.  Never had he thought it a horrible place.  A place of darkness and danger and horribleness.  Not until it killed his fiancée.

He didn’t know when she’d found out about Tacyn.  That bastard Vaughn must have found time to talk to her before the trial and dunke.  But it didn’t matter.  A fling couldn’t compare to an affair.

Sammie had gone into the water a loving, faithful fiancée.  She’d come out of it a lying, cheating bitch.

“Johnny?  What are you doing?”

He didn’t have to look up to know she stood on the grass just below
the
cage.  He didn’t have to look up to know what she wasn’t alone.

It was probably a good thing.  For her sake.

He threw the ring into the pond.  He hoped she knew just how much money he’d wasted on her.  “Just paying homage,” he said as he marched off the stage.  “I don’t know if you heard, but the pond murdered my fiancée.”  He stopped in front of her.  He glared at her.  This was all her fault.  “Jameson Kent no longer has a betrothed, either.”

“I heard,” she said with all the emotion of a stone.

“I’ll make sure you can get your shit from my place when the season’s over.”  He walked away from the pond without another word.

<>

“Are you okay?” Vaughn asked.

“The man I fell in love with didn’t really exist, so…  Yeah.  I am.”  She turned around and threw her arms around Vaughn’s neck.  “What do you think the chances are of a faery being allowed to fall in love with a mud beggar?”

“I’m guessing pretty good,” Vaughn said.  He kissed her.

Yesterday, that morning really, Sammie knew that her dunke would lead to something special.  To a great day.

And she was right.

Chapter 29

The many paths of Sherwood Village, in the Shire of Nottingham, were abuzz with activity.

Half of England had gathered in the golden dappled village hidden away deep in the depths of Sherwood Forest.  People flowed down the paths, as liquid as the heat shimmering silver in the air. 

Wandering minstrels played lively tunes on their lutes and pipes.  Mad capped stilted performers in garishly colored costumes told silly stories, making young men erupt in laughter and even the most proper of Courtly Ladies blush bright crimson.

The people of Nottingham and the Court mingled together on the paths, ignoring the differences in statuses and manners of birth as they moved from the top level of the grounds to the bottom.  Together they sampled stage shows and delicious foods and drynke.  They watched artisans create wondrous crafts and beautiful pieces of art.

At one end of the festival, on a stage overlooking an ominously green pond, Nottingham’s own Lord High Sheriff Jameson Kent presided over the morning’s trial and dunke.  People whispered amongst each other that the Lord High Sheriff had lost his sanity, and what little compassion he had, with the death of his betrothed.  The Lady Anne Halloway’s ship had sunk as she travelled to her exile in France.  It was unknown as to why the once noble Lady had been banished, but Jameson now dunked a noble Lady, a member of the Queen’s own retinue besides, for bearing a slight resemblance to Lady Anne, and for showing affection in a public manner to her own betrothed.

On the opposite end of the grounds, three motley beggars performed the story of Heracles in a waist deep pit of mud.  Puck, the mud beggars’ leader, played the historic hero, and threw the other two into the depths of the pit.  People in the first six rows of the audience screeched as they became splattered with mud.

On the lush Village Green, the meadow in the center of the festival, a flight of faery danced in a circle to the sounds of a faery flute.  A newly born faery, dressed in the yellows and oranges of autumn, stood in the center of the circle and sang about faery wings.

Bramble reached into a pouch strung onto her belt.  She handed a little girl a magical faery stone, and the child went away with a smile and bright, shining eyes.  In her other pouch, she had a special device full of magical, lifesaving powder.

But she hardly felt the need to use it.

All who watched thought Bramble was the happiest faery they’d ever seen.

<>

Justice Pond was empty.

The trial and dunke had ended.  The audience had moved on to other shows.  The water, so riled up from dunking the three criminals three times each, had finally stilled.

The water erupted into perfectly circular ripples.  A silent shockwave shook the clearing.

A snow white moth fluttered over the rippling water.  A silver lightning bolt spanned the width of one of its wings.