A Midsummer's Day (10 page)

A black clad constable appeared.  Somehow Vaughn didn’t think he was there to help him.  “Be gone with thee, slime.  Back to the Pits with thee.”

The joke had just crossed the line.  It wasn’t cute.  It had never really been funny.  Now it was annoying.  Vaughn pushed the constable aside.  “I’m just going to find a friend.”

“Vile scum.  Thou art to come with me.”  The constable pulled a sword from a scabbard at his hip.  It shone in the sunlight.   It was sharp.

Where in the hell did he get a sword?  The only weapons in the festival were at the joust and at the whip and swordfight show.  Johnny didn’t even carry a sword.

Vaughn did the only thing he could think to do.  He bolted.  He ran through the Crossroads, disrupting two stage shows and a large group of nobles walking around the dust in aimless circles.  The commotion he caused stalled the constable.  He ducked between the strength testing machine and a snack shop.  He snuck down a hill and hid between two shops cut into the hill just beyond the Dead Road.

Above him, the constable worked to calm down the riled nobility.  Below him, on the Dead Road, all was normal.

Except, of course, for the stark lack of tourists that now seemed to have spread throughout every inch of the festival like a sickness.

Vaughn sat, safely hidden between the highest corners of two shops, and tried to catch his breath.  He rested his head in his hands.  “What in the hell am I going to do?”

There was no way he could get back to the break room now.  There was no way he could get to…

Sammie…  She wandered down the Dead Road, dripping in her wet dunking dress and soaking hair.  She’d just come from the pond.

She looked around her, a dazed and lost look on her face as she looked at the people around her.  She looked for something she couldn’t find.  With every step, what little hope she had in her face drained away.

She wasn’t finding signs of tourists.  She wasn’t seeing a friendly face that would reveal that the strange things happening were just some strange, cruel joke.

Tears filled her silver eyes.  She wasn’t a part of this joke.

Vaughn snuck to the bottom of the hill.  He waved at her.  But she didn’t turn.  She didn’t even look his way by accident.

When she walked by, Vaughn grabbed her.

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She couldn’t scream.

Unseen hands grabbed her.  Yanked her to the side, to a place hidden between two shops.

It would finish her off.

And yet… she couldn’t scream.  If the thing that grabbed her killed her…  Well, at least the horribleness would end.  This cruel, sadistic joke would end.

It wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen.

The face of her attacker came into view.  The warm, friendly brown eyes of her best friend smiled at her.

But was it really Vaughn?  Or had he fallen prey to the same thing that had turned Johnny into Jameson Kent?  If Vaughn wasn’t Vaughn…  If he had turned into Puck, would he still have the friendship he shared with Lady Anne?  Or would he have turned into a proper Tudor beggar, and only sought her out for sinister reasons?

Sammie’s lungs clamped shut.  She gasped for air.  Damned her asthma.  Damned all this stress and confusion.  Damned this joke or this concussion or whatever caused this wildfire of hell.

“Hey hey hey.”  He, whoever he was, cupped her face in his hands.  “It’s just me, Sam.  It’s just me.  Breathe, sweetheart.”

The sound of her real name calmed her down.  She leaned forward and rested her head on his shoulder.  “You called me Sam.”  She forced herself to take a slow, shaky breath.

“Of course I did,” Vaughn said without his cockney beggar accent.  “I take it you’re a victim of the same cruel joke I am.”

Tears filled her raw eyes.  “I don’t think this is a joke.”  Her breathing came in short bursts.  “Johnny didn’t know me, Vaughn.  He thinks I’m really Anne.  He thinks that he’s really Jameson Kent.”

“Johnny didn’t know you?  I can’t believe that.”  Vaughn sat back on his haunches.  “Are you sure he just wasn’t acting?”

She shook her head.  “You know him, Vaughn.  He can’t even pull off a convincing pout when we’re out of sight of the tourists.  And he would never be that cruel.”  Free tears turned into open sobs.  That was the worst thing of all.  It wasn’t the fact that the tourists seemed to disappear, and that the actors went too far into their roles.  It was that Johnny could be so cold.

Vaughn wrapped her in his arms, letting her give in to her tears.  He didn’t tell her that she needed to calm down, that she would only make her asthma worse.  He didn’t give false promises about how everything was going to be okay.  He let her cry out all her fears and her frustrations, his arms a blanket of safety she never felt with Johnny.

Finally the tears slowed.  Her breathing slowed, though her asthma wasn’t happy with her.

Vaughn helped her into a sitting position higher on the hill.  From where they were, they were invisible to the people on both the higher and lower paths.  For the first time since the start of the dunking, she felt completely safe. 

He sat next to her.  “When’s the last time you saw a tourist?”

“Before I went into the pond for the third time.”  She wiped her cheeks.  Her skin was on fire.  “I was in the water for less than a minute.  It took less than a minute for our entire world to change.”

“Did you feel a shockwave?”

Her eyes went wide.  “Last time I was in the water.  It felt like the whole clearing had been blown to bits.”

“I was face down in the mud when it hit the Pits,” Vaughn said.  “It felt like somebody dropped a bomb right on top of us.  But no one else seems to have noticed.”

She thought she’d gone crazy.  She thought that she hit her head on the chair and lost all senses.  But Vaughn felt it too.  He felt the shockwave, and saw the disappearance of the tourists.  They were the only ones.

They were alone in a world of insanity.

But at least they were alone together.

Panicking relief set upon her.  An invisible hand squeezed the air from her lungs.  She grabbed at the leather cord around her neck and pulled the pouch from its hiding space.  Thank God she’d remembered to keep it on when she changed for the dunke.  She didn’t even want to think about walking all the way back up to the break room…

The wetness of the leather had disguised the smell.  Her eyes watered.  Her lungs protested loudly as she pulled the bag open.

What… in… the… hell?

Her inhaler was gone, the two toned blue cylinder with its dose counter on the back and the red lined canister filled with its magical, lifesaving powder.  In its place was nothing but dark red powder that turned her world blurry.

Vaughn looked into the pouch.  He wrinkled his nose.  “It smells like…”

“Cinnamon.”  She snapped the cord and threw the bag as far away from her as she could.  It was the same cinnamon smell that was on those horrible pinecones stores sold during the winter holidays.  “It used to be popular in sixteenth century pomanders…”

“But it’s completely devastating to your asthma,” Vaughn finished.

Sammie nodded.  Tears threatened to spill.  She forced them back, but she could not force away the thought that caused them.

The tourists had disappeared.  The minds of the actors had disappeared.  And now her inhaler…

Was everything modern going to disappear?

Vaughn stood.  “Stay here.  I’m going to find you a drink.”

A new fear gripped her.  She grabbed his hand.  He couldn’t leave her.  Not here.  Not when everything had gone to hell.  What if something happened and he came back thinking he was Puck? 

What if something happened, and he never came back at all?

She couldn’t handle this strange world by herself.  She’d go mad in a second.

“I’ll only be gone a minute, Sam,” he said gently, brushing a lock of drying hair from her eyes.  “There’s a drink stand just down the road a bit.”

She shook her head.  He didn’t understand.  She wished to death she had the air to tell him…

He knelt in front of her.  “Are you scared that I’ll come back as Puck?” he guessed.  She nodded.

He took her left hand.  Her rings were still there, at least.  They hadn’t disappeared into the wild blue future.  There was the diamond Johnny had given her when they got engaged.  Next to that was the only thing that could possibly mean more to her. 

It was a silver band with a crowned emerald heart, cupped by silver hands.  Her claddaugh ring.

Vaughn slipped the ring from her finger.  “I gave this to you on your sixteenth birthday.”

Sammie smiled.  She remembered.  She would remember it when all other memories were erased by the ravages of age.  Sixteen was supposed to be a magical birthday, but that year was turning out to be one of her worst.  Weeks before, her first serious boyfriend had just dumped her, the redheaded history buff actress for a ditsy blond cheerleader with a reputation.  A few months before that her father had left her, her mother, and her two sisters, never to be heard from again.

On her birthday, Vaughn had given her the ring as a symbol that he was never going to leave her.  Suddenly the worst year of her life became her best.  Fourteen years later, he was still in her life, and she’d never taken the ring from her middle finger.

Vaughn screwed the ring onto his pinky.  He managed to get it just below his first knuckle.  “I don’t think a real beggar would wear something like this without being accused of stealing it.  So if I still have this on when I come back…”  He winked at her and stood.  “Stay here and relax.  I’ll be back in a flash.”  With a confident smile and another wink, he was gone.

Sammie wrapped her arms around her knees and looked into the open shop just below her.  It lacked a cash register.  It lacked glass fronted display cases.  It lacked cute signs about which American credit cards they accepted.

She closed her eyes and leaned back on the soft grass.  Breathe in.  Breathe out.  Breathe in.  Breathe out.  Slowly, slowly. 

Slowly the wheezing quieted.  The sharp, stabbing pain stopped spreading through her lungs with each breath.  Things weren’t perfect, but she wasn’t going to pass out now.

Somebody ran on the path below.  She sat, pushing herself higher on the hill.  Vaughn ducked between the shops, breathless but holding a tin cup full of… something.  He had left and returned in record time.  There was a drynke stand on the Queen’s Road, just off the Dead Road.  Not far, but he must have ran the entire way.

“Are you all right?” she asked slowly.

He nodded and sat, splashing bright red liquid from the depths of the cup.  “I pinched it from the back of the stand while the servers were helping a pack of nobles.  Drink up.”

Sammie took a slow, refreshing sip.  The birch beer cooled her lungs, opened her airways.  She drank half the soda and gave the rest to Vaughn.

“Why were you hiding here?” Sammie asked after a deafeningly quiet moment.

“A constable caught me on the upper level of the grounds.  Apparently that’s a high crime these days.”  He chuckled stiffly.

“Exactly what days are we in?”

They fell silent again.  She’d asked the question she knew they were both thinking.  Had something, the strange shockwave maybe, sent them back in time?

“I think we should keep looking around,” Vaughn said.  “There’s got to be others here who know that something’s happened.  Maybe that gypsy you got your reading from this morning knows something.  She seems to know a lot.”

“You think so?”

Vaughn stood.  He held out his hand.  “There’s one way to find out.”

She didn’t want to leave their hiding spot.  Here things were safe.  Here with Vaughn it was still 2012.  Out there was the festival she used to love.  Out there was fear and danger.

But she didn’t want to be alone, either.  If Vaughn was going to explore…

Then she would too. 

Vaughn pulled her to her feet.  With a shallowly deep, whistling breath, she followed him out onto the path.

Chapter 11

She felt safe while travelling with Vaughn.

Maybe it was the fact that he still knew who he was, her lifelong best friend.  Her lifelong protector. 

Maybe it was the fact that… they seemed to be the only two people left in this blasted Shire.

Where in the blazes was everybody?  The King’s Road, the long path curving around the entire rear of the festival, was deserted.  Nobody watched the woodcarver create wonderful sculptures out of great chunks of trees.  Nobody sweated on the wooden benches of the Woodland Stage.

Nobody performed on the tree filled stage.

What had happened to the faery?  Had they been caught up in the strange events that plagued the festival?  Johnny thought he was Jameson Kent.  Did the women playing the faery think they were really faery?  Had they turned small?  Troublesome and mean?  Everything that the people of the Tudor age feared?  Or had they found a portal and gone back to their magical world?