Queen Mab (11 page)

Tybalt let out a snort.

Lord Capulet continued, "He has a reputation to be a virtuous and well-governed youth, proved in the company he keeps."  Lord Capulet gave a meaningful glance to Mercutio.  "I would not for the wealth of all the town disparage him in my house.  Pay Romeo no mind."

Tybalt made a move to make argument, but Lord Capulet silenced him.  "It is my will, which you will respect.  Do not shame me with your frowns and inhospitable storms which do not fit the joy of this feast."

Tybalt's face became dark.  "It fits when such a villain is a guest.  I'll not endure him."

Lord Capulet turned and rebuked. "He shall be endured!  I say he shall!  Am I the master here or you?  Go to.  You'll not endure him! God shall mend my soul!  You shall make a mutiny among my guests!"

"Why, uncle, it is a shame," Tybalt insisted.

"Be quiet!" he replied, cuffing his nephew across the ear. Tybalt stood in shock as the entire room fell quiet at the sound of the strike.  Lord Capulet straightened his tunic.  He looked about the room to face the reproachable silence and called out, "More light, more light! For shame!  I'll make you quiet. What?  Is this a celebration or no?  Cheerily, my hearts!"

Tybalt watched as Lord Capulet stumbled off to yell for more music or fire, anything to bring distraction, and Tybalt quietly withdrew.

Queen Mab looked on, knowing this Tybalt was the man she would have to endure in the years to come.  Still, no matter her reservations, she reminded herself, she was here to see to his ascent, no matter how distasteful it might be.  To protect the House of Capulet, she must be light of foot and ready to dance with her partner, young love, whose complicated footsteps would keep her on her toes. 

She edged her way around the ballroom, the flickering light of the candles settling a golden glow upon the revelers. 

Lord Capulet's daughter descended from her rooms and all eyes turned to see who joined the feast.  She was a delicate vision of loveliness, spun sugar which begged for gentleness so as not to break.  Her thick brown hair was wound in braids to form a crown upon her head.  Her gown of pink gossamer silk floated with each step, seeming to slow the world with its whispering sighs.  Modest jewels upon her bodice and neck seemed to shine a light upon the true gem they could not adequately adorn.  As Juliet's slippered foot left the stairs and touched the floor, Mab was pleased to see Paris there to bow low before her and lead her out into the dance.  The young maiden seemed open to his overtures and willing to listen to the compliments and niceties of his lips.  Lute and woodwind piles played as the two found quiet comfort in the touch of a hand and foot.

But Queen Mab's eyes were taken from this couple and fixed like a magnet to north, for crossing hands in the intricate patterns of the Amoroso was Mercutio.  His face was alight with joy and life as his feet lifted off the ground.  The ladies giggled at his exuberance, but Mab felt something quite different stir within her heart.  Perhaps it was jealousy, perhaps envy, but it was indeed a longing so deep that it made the mighty oceans seem like shallow rivers.  He was a creature of two worlds, not just friend to these two Houses estranged, but a dancer of both light and dark, a human who had tasted both worlds and found them equally delicious.  A man with terrible pain and terrible happiness.  He had eaten his fill until the hunger in his soul had been sated, and now he brought both together as a whole.

She ripped herself away, knowing that to reach out to him once more would be his doom.  As she stepped out of the ballroom and into the night air, the fireflies within her dress lit, bathing her in a soft, otherworldly light.  The flagstones gave way to a tended garden with topiaries, fountains, and tall hedges made for hiding. 

The gentle laugh of cavorting lovers stopped her in her tracks.  Mab looked and saw Juliet was no longer at the side of Paris.  Instead, she watched as Romeo and Juliet, palm to palm, stared into one another's eyes until their lips spoke the words that their breath could not.

Mab sent out her will, forcing Juliet's nurse to call, to stop this fate before it began.  But then these two lovers' lips parted, and Mab recognized that moment of holy stillness.  She had known it with Mercutio, and the span of her thousands of years told her that it was divine.

There must be another way, she thought, lifting the vial of Capulet's kindness from the chain around her neck.

She looked upon it, warm and glowing in her hand.  The sound of Juliet being called once more back into the party drifted across the garden.

It suddenly seemed so foolish to waste a drop of such a gift on a mortal, Mab thought.  They had enough to spare and jealously kept it close or heedlessly gave it away.

She turned to gaze upon Mercutio inside, his eyes smiling in the lamplight as he laughed at the witticisms of one who did not deserve his attention.  Mab missed him, missed the lessons of his gentle, careless ways.  She did not even know until now that she was and always would be his pupil, learning the sweetest lessons of the world from the dreams they shared, of the instruction she found navigating the heart.

It suddenly seemed quite strange that she would think such a wager, which would have her even consider turning such a man into her champion, was sound.  Why had she staked this gift of kindness so hardly won upon a peace with Faunus?  Peace with or without him was none of her desire.

No.

It was of Faunus's desire.  As it always had been, ever since he tricked her from her sacred bull and stole that night of dreams from her.  Always Faunus.  Always his wants.  Always his schemes.

She would not play his game.  Clarity ringing through her mind.  Unstoppered, she lifted the vial to her lips.  In a single draught, she swallowed down the sweet taste.

It was richer than the richest nectar she had ever eaten in the forest of forgetting.  It warmed her as it traveled down her body, filling her with a glow within and without.  She looked upon the world as if after all those centuries, she had never gazed upon it before.  She looked upon the ballroom, upon the mortals dancing there, so delicate, so frail, untended and unwatched by one with power.  She felt a need build up inside of her, to wrap them in her arms and tuck them off to bed.  To fill their minds with the most beautiful dreams imaginable so that the drudgery of living would be easier day by day.

She watched as Romeo left the party, yearning to call him back.  His face was stricken first by some words of Benvolio, and then of Lord Capulet, who soon stumbled off to bed and called the revelry to an end.  As the confused party goers made their way to the door, Mab hastily followed, trying to give chase to Romeo as he headed into the darkness.  The kindness she had stolen burned her with remorse.  The memories of her past actions caused her to recoil like touching white hot coals.  But born from these ashes was a new desire: to stop the fall of either House no matter what the cost.

M
ab watched as Romeo climbed the Capulet's wall and went over with youthful joy.  He made straight towards the balcony of his Juliet. 

Oh that she could turn this hand and take back the wager with Faunus.  Mab tried to keep her thoughts upon the path that must be, this daughter and the County Paris.  She wanted to call out to Romeo to come back and she would plant the seeds of love within Rosaline.  But she could not, frozen by the power of that human feeling which caused him to risk his life. Love.  Oh, the love that drove him!  It was beyond rapture.  A drink of the divine to quench the longing thirst of the heart. 

Her ears pricked as she heard the voices of those who might be able to save this boy.

Benvolio called, "Romeo! My cousin Romeo!"

Mab gave his words wings and sent them over the wall to his kinsman, but Romeo would not be stopped.

Then Mab heard the voice of Mercutio.  It rang like a bell in her soul, its sound rippling its toll from toe to fingertip. 

He placed his hand upon Benvolio's arm.  "He is home by now and in bed."

She felt deep within her bones how cruel it was to have left Mercutio, even for his own protection.  She felt how unkindly she abandoned him to face the world without that which they shared to fend off the buffeting winds.  She stood immobile, wanting to fling herself into his arms and beg for his forgiveness, but knew he would not recognize her, not even know what sorrow plagued her.  She herself had seen to that.  All he had was a vague memory of a dream woman who flew across the sky in a hazelnut.

Even as these emotions tore within her, the world continued without care.  Benvolio insisted, "He ran this way, and leaped this orchard wall.  Call, good Mercutio!"

Mab reflected the wish, hoping that Mercutio would heed his words.

"Nay, he hears not, he stirs not, he moves not."

"Call!"

Mercutio laughed, leaping atop the stones that separated their path from the land of Capulet.  "Romeo!  I conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes, by her high forehead and her scarlet lip! By her fine foot, straight leg and quivering thigh, and the areas that there adjacent lie!"

Benvolio hushed his friend.  "You will anger him!  He has hid himself among these trees.  Blind is his love and best befits the dark."

Mercutio shook his head.  "If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark. Romeo, good night!  I'll to my bed. This field is too cold for me to sleep.  Come, shall we go?"

"Go, then," Benvolio said, waving him goodbye.

Mercutio stumbled away to find a place to rest from the evening's intrigue.  A whistling tune upon his lips, he wandered carelessly up the street.

She should flee before he reached her hiding place, but the sight of him through new eyes was almost more than Mab could bear.  She felt her cheeks, and there was a wetness there, as if rain had fallen, but there was no rain in the sky.  She stared at her hand, unbelieving and unknowing.

"Why do you weep?" asked a voice.

She looked up and there he was, her beloved Mercutio, stepping out from the shadows to inquire about the happiness of a stranger.  He was both familiar and strange.  She was filled with something that she now could only describe as love.  She could not speak.  She could not move.  Just weep for the callousness with which she was going to play these Houses, ready to ruin lives for nothing but a game.

"I know thee," he spoke in astonishment, as the things meant never to be remembered begged once more their place within his mind.  He reached out, as if to touch her, as if to brush away the tears she did not know could fall, but then stopped.  He examined her face for the solution to the mystery.  "I remember thee as if in a dream.  From whence do I know thee?  From a ball or a feast or upon a throne of gold and ebony?"

She took his hand, its calloused palm and male roughness and held it to her face.  "From all those things, for we have danced and been merry and mended the wounds that time could not.  I am of one world and another, but I am sworn forever to protect thee, and in protecting thee, I do love thee.  Forgive me," she whispered before disappearing into the night, leaving the world to the steady march of fate.

Mercutio watched her, puzzled as she flew.  But then the dreams came back, as fresh as if he had never woke.  His heart pounded, his mind raced, that this woman who existed only in his mind had just stood before him in the flesh.  He would not let her hide to bear these dreams alone, not since she had shown him the world.  He desperately gave chase and vowed he would run to the ends of the earth and beyond to gain her heart once more.

M
ab gripped the railing of her balcony and looked out upon her sprawling land. At night, it teased of the warmth and green always beyond her touch.  Inside her home, it was so cold and dark, such a strange contrast to the feelings which coursed through her tonight.

Her heart had fought a war over the century to stay as cold as the inner shadows of her retreat, but now with each moment that she breathed with this taste of kindness upon her tongue - one breath was the world, another began the world anew.

Her mind was awash in the nevers and forevers she had promised herself, which now knocked gently at her door.  To love a mortal... to open her heart to one who had already aged from a child to a man and soon to a wrinkled creature of skin and bone who would fade into nothing but a memory until he was forgotten.  One generation, perhaps two, and all who held him in their mind would be gone and she would be left alone night after night, remembering the way his pulse pounded in his veins whenever she drew close.  Nothing more.

This was the fate of love.  She had seen finer, stronger faeries than she fade to mere shadows due to the intoxicating power of a mortal's affection.  Even Queen Titania, mourning the loss of her changling, fell so far on a midsummer's eve as to love an ass.  Such was the price of vulnerability.

Mab looked at her domain and wondered if it was worth sacrificing everything for this, her Mercutio.  Her traitorous heart told her yes.

"Oh, what a man is this," she whispered, "He who can turn my thoughts and turn my head, and in doing so, turn this world upside down.  Such a strange creature, made of flesh and blood which will grow old with age, which will fade and decay like the sunset.  Perhaps for a moment, we will have the brilliant swaths of orange and gold and red passion painted across the sky.  But always the dark creeps over the horizon.  How can I love knowing that one day the morning will never come again?  Illusions of real and imaginary...  Are the worlds I paint not just as fine as the world I look upon?  Finer still, I say!"

"But no world as fine as the ones we shared in those dreams of own making," said a voice from far below.

Mab looked down from her balcony.  In the moonlight was the raven-haired man with the eyes of ocean green her heart longed for.

"How long have you been standing there?" she asked.

"Long enough to hear, long enough to remember.  Each exquisite word was like a drop of water upon a man's parched tongue, a balm upon a heart that was broken by a foolish woman's unkindness."