My Own True Love

It's a dream,
she assured herself.
You're having a dream
—

She pressed fingers to her aching temples and felt unfamiliar, thick tendrils of hair falling on either side of her face. With a sharp shriek she sprang to her feet, frightened that her short dark hair had turned into a medusa's nest of snakes.

She pinched herself, hoping she'd wake up. But all the action did was draw her attention to her slender arm and the sleeve of a faded blue blouse. She recognized neither the sleeve nor the arm wearing it.

HarperPaperbacks

Copyright 1994

Some things are harder to accept than others, magic rings, for example.

"The mail never comes
this early," Sara said as she met the mailman at her door.

He just smiled and nodded and handed her a tattered padded envelope covered in foreign stamps.

She took it inside and ripped it open in her front hallway. The package held a letter written on stiff paper, and a small box.

Sara opened the box. Inside was a small silver ring set with a cabochon-cut citrine stone. It was a pretty thing. The yellow-orange stone glowed in the sunlight as she held it up in front of her hall window.

The intricate silver knotwork pattern was delicate and graceful. She recognized it, of course. It was a replica of the legendary Bartholomew Ring.

The early morning air was stifling even for an August heat wave, but the ring was cool to the touch. It seemed to vibrate. Sara could almost imagine it giving off waves of energy. What she was imagining, she knew, were all the wondrous tales of the ring she'd heard as a child. The Bartholomew Ring was an important part of Bororavian folklore.

She slipped on the ring—it was a perfect fit—and picked up the letter. The handwriting was familiar, rather like her own, but still hard to read. It didn't help that the language was Bororavian.

It wasn't that she didn't know the language. Sort of. She hadn't been the best of students. Bororavian was a combination of Romany and Lithuanian. It was a difficult bastard language at best, and it also didn't help that the first person actually to study it had been a Chinese linguist. Unfprtunately Sara spoke it more often than she read it, and she didn't speak it all that often. She squinted at the writing and did her best to decipher it.

"This has to be a joke," she said aloud after she'd worked her way through the first improbable sentence. The sentence had stated that she'd sent the ring to herself. "Either my translation's way off, or we're dealing with a practical joke here. Probably Dad's idea of a practical joke," she concluded, and went on to finish reading the letter.

By the time she was finished she had eyestrain, and was convinced her father's sense of humor was the only possible explanation. The head of the family, was, after all, on vacation in the old country. There were Bororavian stamps all over the envelope.

He'd probably found a replica of the Bartholomew Ring in a museum gift shop, she decided. Then he had someone write this letter about a legacy from her to herself that must be delivered on August twenty-fourth or dire consequences for all Bororavia would follow. "'Use it wisely and no harm will befall the souls of the Heroes of the Revolution!' Whatever that means. You're putting me on, right, Dad?"

Sara rubbed a hand through her short black hair. She didn't know what was wrong with her. It was just a harmless joke.

"Honestly. Grandpa never should have let you run away and join a circus—even if it was as an accountant, and it was Grandpa's circus. You've got odd ideas about what's humorous, Dad. Thanks for the present, though," she added with a fond glance toward his photo. A trick of sunlight made her think for a moment that her father's bright blue eyes twinkled at her in response.

Outside a long blast of car horn sounded. The noise startled her, but brought her back to the real world. The real world had a holiday in it today, she remembered happily. She'd been looking forward to the Renaissance Faire all summer. Checking her watch she saw that Nancy was actually on time.

"Talk about strange occurrences."

The ring was still firmly settled on her right ring finger when she hurried out to the car.

******************

All day she felt strange, out of synch with the world. She tried to ignore it, tried to enjoy the fair, but the feeling wouldn't go away.

The crowd was thick. The staff and performers, dressed in Elizabethan finery, were far outnumbered by the casually dressed tourists swarming through the lanes lined with trees and gaudily decorated booths. Delicious aromas from the food stalls mixed with heated dust in the still air. The noise of the crowd, the calls and jests of the entertainers reached her ears with a faraway, muffled quality. Everything was dulled by the heat.

The sun was a mean yellow dot in the cloudless blue sky. The foliage hung beaten and limp all over the wooded fair site. The humans weren't faring any better, except that they had sunblock, while the trees just had to stand around and take it. It had grown from a stifling morning to a roasting afternoon, and every inch of available shade was crowded with hot fairgoers. Sara's sense of time was totally distorted.

She knew she'd been at the fair for hours, but she kept catching herself glancing in surprise at her watch.

It was always earlier or later than she thought.

Sara squeezed her way through the crowd, emerging in a grassy circular field at the very center of the fair. She was supposed to meet Nancy here, underneath the twenty-foot-high wooden statue of a dragon in the middle of the field. She was early, and Nancy, having last been spotted as she disappeared into a lane of clothes shops, wasn't likely to be on time. Sara looked around the crowded circle, not a spot of shade to be found anywhere. As she swiped sweat-soaked bangs off her forehead she concluded that roasting here for half an hour wasn't worth it. She headed up one of the paths that radiated away from the field like the spokes of a wheel.

She made her way uphill against the flow of foot traffic, then down a gentle slope to a tree-bordered glade. A row of gaily painted gypsy wagons formed a half-circle at one end. Music from a guitarist and drummer in Middle Eastern costumes filled the hot air with exotic music. A trio of belly dancers gyrated on the stage, layered skirts flying, coin-heavy belts jingling with their sensuous movements. The sweating audience was clapping and shouting in appreciation.

Several colorful tents stood to one side of the gypsy camp, their canvas walls painted with mystical symbols. The tents were shaded by a pair of imposing oaks. Sara made for the shade of the trees, leaned back against the rough bark of one of the oaks, closed her eyes, and listened to the music. She ignored the heat, her own indescribable feelings, the dust, and the thousands of people around her. She let herself be carried away by the music. Guitar music, the most beautiful sound in the world.

She didn't come to the gypsy camp looking for gypsies; there weren't any. If she wanted gypsies she had the majority of the Twin Cities Bororavian Rom population written down in her address book. She was related to most of them.

She came to the camp year after year for the music. The Renaissance Faire drew some of the best musicians in the Midwest to play at the camp. Despite years of dedicated practice Sara didn't consider herself a musician. She was too shy about her playing to perform in public. She was a pretty good accountant, if not exactly in love with the work. What she really wanted to be when she grew up was a guitar hero. Maybe in her next life, she sometimes told herself. This time around she would just concentrate on her lessons and enjoy other people's performances.

As she happily listened her callused fingers flexed surreptitiously. She played air folk guitar along with the dancers' accompanist, working out the chord changes by ear.

Too bad I'll never be able to make the transition to playing in public,
she thought wistfully.

"Why not?"

'Cause I'm not good enough.

"I find your lack of self-confidence hard to believe."

She hadn't thought she'd spoken aloud. In the midday heat a cold shiver crept over Sara's flesh.

She swung her head around sharply.

"Who said that? Who's there?"

She was alone. She couldn't see anyone close enough to overhear anything she might have said out loud, especially with all the noise going on around her.

Must be someone in the tent, she concluded. She wasn't hearing voices, she tried to reassure herself.

Not disembodied voices, anyway. Maybe she had heatstroke.

Just remember, she reminded herself, there's always a logical explanation.

"I quite agree."

She didn't know where the voice was coming from but she thought it was best just to ignore it. Maybe the best thing would be for her to get away from the tents where the joker was lurking. She'd already had enough jokes today. The music was ending anyway, in time to meet Nancy. She checked her watch. Her hand felt heavy as she lifted her arm, as though the ring had taken on weight. It had to be the heat.

Maybe she needed some salt tablets.

She turned to head back up the hill, but the crowd leaving the gypsy camp blocked the path. Cut off from making quick progress, she sidled her way around the edge of the throng to pass between the tents.

She wasn't watching where she was going. As she stepped around the front of a tent she ran smack into a thick pole, bumping her nose and forehead. The impact was hard enough to set the wooden signboard at the top of the pole swinging.

"Ow!"

Sara nearly screamed as the shadow of a large hand crossed in front of her face. She looked up quickly, heart racing, only to discover that the hand was a painted plywood cutout, a signboard announcing Sybil's Palmistry in elegant gothic script.

A woman in flounced skirts and a paisley headscarf emerged from the tent just as Sara mumbled,

“Gajo
nonsense."

The fake gypsy's head came up sharply. Her hand snaked out to grasp Sara's arm as she turned away. "What did you say? Who are you calling a
gajo?"
she asked in indignant Romany.

Sara swung back around, and in a brief fit of dizziness said, "Excuse me, I—Mala Rajko?!" she exclaimed as she recognized the exotically dressed fortune teller; she was used to seeing her in suits.

"What's a real Rom doing in the gypsy camp?"

The high school math teacher and pillar of the Twin Cities Bororavian community gave an elegant shrug. Then she adjusted her off-the-shoulder blouse to compensate for considerable slippage over her large bosom.

"A joke on the
gajos,
eh?" she asked. In English, but with a thick accent she must have borrowed from an old movie. "I've got kids in college," she went on in her normal voice. "My grandma taught me palmistry when I was little. So I decided the skill could help me earn some extra income. Come in," she invited. "I've got iced tea in the cooler."

Mala threw a sour look over the fairgrounds. Sara's glance followed the fortune teller's. Everything was obscured as dust and heat radiated up off the ground in shimmering waves. Sara wiped the back of her hand across her burning eyes. The dust and dense air was really getting to her.

"Business is slow today," Mala added, disappearing inside, holding the flap open for Sara to enter.

It looked cool in the tent. Pain was shooting from the spot where her forehead had hit the wood. She still felt a little dizzy. The crowd noise was scraping against her nerves. The thought of a place to sit and a cold drink sounded wonderful. Besides, she hadn't seen anyone from the old neighborhood for several months. She looked at her hand, and got the odd impression the little orange stone was preening in the bright sunlight. She dived in after Mala.

The tent held a foot-high round table covered in a brown-and-red paisley cloth, piles of velvet and tapestry pillows spread on a fake Persian rug, and a cooler covered by a patchwork quilt. Mala took out two cans of iced tea and handed one to Sara.

"I've got a problem," Sara announced as she settled onto a pile of pillows across the little table from Mala. No, she didn't, she corrected herself, she had a crazy father. "This ring arriv—"

"Show me your palm."

"It's my crazy dad."

"He's not crazy, he's a history nut. No one knows more about the history of Bororavia and the Heroes of the Revolution than your father," Mala reminded her. "Your hand."

"Tell me about it. He went and named me after one of them. Not that there's that much to know, really, other than names and a few scraps of evidence. And legends, lots of legends."

"All of which your father knows and has passed on to you."

"So?" Sara held one palm out for Mala to study. The other she pressed to the lump forming on her forehead. "I've got such a headache. Heroes of the Revolution, indeed," she added sarcastically. "I wonder what Sara and Lewis Morgan were really like?"