With a Kiss (Twisted Tales) (3 page)

My sister strutted across the stage, the flowing material of her pink skirts dancing around her legs. “You are that shrewd and knavish sprite call’d Robin Goodfellow: are not you he that frights the maidens of the villagery?” Daphne couldn’t look stern enough when she addressed Puck. My sister was almost as bad an actress as I was.

I smoothed my skirts, getting ready for my cue. Puck delivered it with expert aplomb and I swept over the planks of the stage, my dress gliding over my slippered feet, a diminutive faery queen surrounded by a train of swanlike faeries. The faery king entered from the other side. He was dressed like a barbarian with fake tattoos splattered all over his bare chest. We met in the middle like two army captains. He glared savagely down at me. I matched the angry look. Being ferocious was the only part of acting I was good at.

“Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania,” he said, bowing coldly to me. “Am not I thy lord? I do but beg a little changeling boy to be my henchman . . .”

In Shakespearian language, that meant he was asking for the human baby that I stole fair and square. I tilted my head. The one-eyed feathers in my dark hair bounced at a jaunty angle. Yeah, bad luck, but what didn’t kill me . . . I tried not to sneeze when an errant feather drooped over my nose. “What, jealous Oberon!” I managed to say. “The faery land buys not the child of me.”

I searched around for that bawling bundle of joy. Wouldn’t someone bring it in about now, you know, if it were actually real this time? I desperately hoped so, but no one stepped forward. I tried to tell myself it was because it wouldn’t stop crying, and fighting over the kid wouldn’t be believable.

“Give me that boy,” Oberon said, “and I will go with thee.”

I took a deep breath. “Not for thy faery kingdom. Faeries, away!” My long graceful sleeves slipped over my hands. My costume was a little big. The faeries followed me out and we watched from backstage as Puck, the most mischievous faery of all, plotted against me with the faery king, devising a way to distract me from the child with a love potion. I couldn’t concentrate on the play at all.

The voices were at it again, only this time I could make out the whispers:
“Where is she? Where is she?”

I craned my neck. The talking came from the catwalks above the stage. Was it the techies? I glanced around at the other faeries. They watched the play as if they didn’t hear a thing. I sighed. Not techies.

On our cue, we stormed back onto the stage. I settled into a bed of wild flowers while the faeries danced and sang in a dizzying blur around me. Letting my eyes grow heavy—which wasn’t too hard considering my sleepless nights—I collapsed onto the flowers. It took forever, but eventually the other actresses danced themselves into exhaustion and landed on their own beds of flowers beside me, seemingly gone to the world
and
the play around us. The spotlight felt hot on my face. I took a deep breath and waited.

With all his manly prowess, the faery king snuck in. I could hear the bare pads of his feet slap across the stage and then the thud when he knelt beside me. The tip of the vial carrying the love potion felt cold against my closed eyelids. “What thou seest when thou dost wake,” he feigned a loud stage whisper, “do it for thy true-love take.”

I tried not to snort as he traced my still face with his fingers, droning on about finding love at first sight when I awoke. Nothing seemed more farfetched. Seriously, if anyone needed a real love potion, it was me . . . or really good acting skills because I was low on both.

“Wake when some vile thing is near,” the faery king commanded me. Moments later, the words seemed prophetic. My bed of flowers carried me up above the stage as if I were a sacrifice to the sky. I listened to the humans weave their tangled web of love and lies on the stage below and jerked in surprise when the voice I had been hunting all night whispered from the catwalks just a foot away.

“You cannot have her.”

My eyes wrenched open. The whispers were within touching distance now. The audience could still see me and I tried to find the exact source of the voices without turning my head. It wouldn’t do for everyone to know the faery queen was awake . . . or delusional.

The shadows painted the catwalks in black ink and seemed to stare down at me like the shadow had in my bathroom mirror. I swallowed hard. A warm gush of air brushed past my cheek, and it felt eerily like a human breath. It rushed over my bare arms, creating goose bumps everywhere it traveled.

My heart thumped rapidly. This wasn’t happening.
This wasn’t happening!
The ropes holding my bed of flowers in place groaned and began to swing like an invisible hand pushed against it. My whole body tensed as if I could fight something that wasn’t real. I listened to the players below, not able to concentrate on them.

The bed of flowers sagged in protest like a powerful weight crushed against it. I struggled to breathe, grappling for some kind of hold. If the ropes broke, I’d fall to my death on the hard stage below. Something cold and scary lurked inches above me. I could sense it . . . but no, my senses were faulty. I couldn’t trust them. The weaves on the basket began to burst. That did it! I didn’t care that I was crazy. I had to get down.

Too late, the bed of flowers swayed. My fingers clenched over the ivies and my bed dropped. I gasped before I realized what was happening. The techs were lowering the bed closer to the ground. Nothing was broken. I was still in one piece. Everything was okay.

The guy playing Bottom sang drunkenly below me. It was supposed to be my cue to wake up and fall in love with him, the most hideous creature in all of faeryland. It was Shakespeare’s idea of a joke, but I didn’t care what lover boy looked like. A half-human, half-donkey mix had nothing on what lurked in the shadows above me. I remembered that decomposing face in my mirror.

I took a steadying breath and popped my head over the side. “What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?” I asked a little too loudly.

My knuckles were white on the ivies. Bottom was supposed to sing a few more crazy rounds, but the whispers above me started again and I tried to cover them with another shout, “I pray thee, gentle mortal! Sing again: Mine ear is much enamour’d of thy note.” Maybe Bottom’s rowdy singing could drown out those voices too, though nothing could disguise them. I had to get down from here. I tugged on the ropes to show the techies I was serious.

“Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth! And Mustardseed!” I bellowed, cutting off quite a few of Bottom’s lines. “Get over here! Get me down!” Bottom’s mouth fell open and after a confused commotion, my delicate sister danced onstage with the other faeries just as my bed mercifully touched the ground.

Bottom plopped down next to me before I could get out. My skirt got caught underneath him and I tried to tug away inconspicuously. The fact that I was scared out of my wits made my acting worse and with a sinking heart, I felt my instincts kick in. The guy grabbed for my hand and I shrank away. Normally, I’d slap a guy for less, but this was a guy playing a donkey and I was supposed to be acting like I was in love. What was wrong with me?

The audience laughed and I could only imagine the director’s groans. This was not some faery queen in love with a weaver turned monster. I tried to cover it up. “Out of this wood do not desire to go.” I commanded Bottom in an angry voice as if the fear of losing him made me so prickly.

“Where’s my baby?”

My breath quickened. I was crazy. Certifiably crazy! The baby was in my head, just like these voices were in my head. I wasn’t sure if they were talking to me—or if I was overhearing some strange conversation no one else could hear, but I didn’t know how to hide this!

I turned to Bottom with a determined glare as if ignoring these voices would make them go away. His donkey ears quivered and he frowned under his makeshift snout. I took a deep breath. “Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no,” I commanded him.

He stared at me in shock, since I had effectively cut our scene in half, more than half. I was a director’s nightmare. I stumbled out of my flowery bed and stalked off the stage, trying to escape the darkness that threatened to swallow me. The kid playing Bottom rushed after me into the wings, his feet stomping loudly. “What are you doing?” he hissed. He grabbed my elbow before I could escape.

“Help me!”

I stilled and stared up into the semi-darkness. “Please tell me you heard that!” He looked blank. Of course he didn’t hear anything, but I pointed anyway, desperate to prove I wasn’t insane. “That noise above us. Just try to hear it! Could you just try? Please.”

Under his donkey nose, Bottom’s lip shook with frustration. He escaped me to find a more sympathetic ear to bemoan his ruined acting career.

I let him go, staring up at the catwalks, I listened to the voice. It called to me, and I found myself on the stairs before I could fight it. After everything that had happened, nothing should entice me to go after those voices, but I felt myself moving up to them anyway, like Sleeping Beauty
going after her spindle to fulfill a curse that I didn’t want to fulfill. My whole body felt relaxed and I couldn’t get myself to care that I was heading for danger. A flash of light ripped past my face and I jumped back, the spell over me broken like a splash of cold water.

“Help me.”

I hesitated on the stairs. The darkness loomed over me. I shouldn’t be doing this. The whispers were frightening enough. I tried to turn back.

“My baby!”

My hand landed back on the railing—against my will—and I pulled further into the gloom. The voice actually moved me up the stairs, edging me closer to whatever threat was up there. My faery skirts swished against the railing behind me. My heart cried out against every step like I was caught in a nightmare, but my feet refused to obey. I opened my mouth and tried to call for help, but my voice was gone. Nothing belonged to me. I reached the catwalk and watched the actors’ heads below. They were too far down. I hoped whatever force controlling me wouldn’t drive me off the edge.

“I wonder if Titania be awaked?” the faery king asked below on the bright stage.

I was Titania,
well, I was playing her, and yes, I had never felt more awake. Every sense tingled with a fear I had never known before. From the darkness, I watched the actors beneath me, feeling like a fly on the wall . . . pursuing a spider.

Puck entered the stage below with a smug grin. “My mistress with a monster is in love,” he announced.

Was I? Something strange controlled me. I hesitated on the catwalk and peered into the shadows. They were forming into something, a light in the darkness that grew pale blonde hair until it swept over the catwalk. Then there appeared the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Her face looked to be cut from ghostly marble as if she had never known the sun. Her silver robes were part of the mist that clung to her. It wasn’t a bad look really.

She turned, watching me. “Please . . .” she began.

“Onagh!” I heard a man’s rough voice. The ethereal beauty stepped back as he ripped through the air. Looking distasteful, he peeled it from him like a spider web, but didn’t bother to brush the rest off his powerful shoulders as he stalked our way. The man was dressed entirely in black shadow. His dark-eyed gaze swept over her. He wasn’t happy and he looked powerful enough to do something about it. “Give me the child, Onagh.”

The dialogue seemed strangely familiar. I backed into the shadows, not wanting this man to see me. “Finvara, I . . .” The woman looked close to breaking. “I cannot. You know not what’s been done!”

The baby cried out somewhere in the darkness and I waited for the black-haired man to do something. Things had gone too far for me to think these two star-crossed lovers were techies, but I couldn’t believe this was what it seemed to be either. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a reenactment of the play below with two powerful figures fighting over a baby. Different names, different faces, much more drama.

Through the stillness, I could hear someone coming. The footsteps trudged closer and I jerked to action, realizing I had control over myself again. My legs. My hands. I ripped my fingers free from the railing and twisted backwards. Nothing felt so good, and yet so frightening because I couldn’t move away fast enough. The footsteps were almost on me and I hid behind a pile of backdrops, muffling my loud breathing behind my hand, trying to keep from strangling myself. A techie casually strolled past me and walked through the fighting couple like nothing was happening. Likewise, the couple acted as if they hadn’t been interrupted by him, either.

“You cannot be here in the Otherworld. It is forbidden,” the man told the beautiful lady. “We must leave.”

The woman shook her head. Tears glistened over her alabaster skin.

“Cupid is a knavish lad,” Puck’s voice echoed up to us. “Thus to make poor females mad.” My eyes widened at the significance. Puck was absolutely right. Not just mad—I was ready for an asylum—but I couldn’t stop watching. This was better than any teen series Daphne followed, maybe because it wasn’t supposed to be happening. Two beautiful people caught in tragic circumstances that I was dying to understand. If it wasn’t all in my head, I’d grab some popcorn.

The techie threw some rose petals down to the stage below. Then, completely oblivious to the drama enfolding before him, he left me alone with it.