Wondrous Strange (6 page)

T
he Avalon Grande turned out to be an old church converted into a theater, and it held more than one surprise for Sonny and Maddox. Aside from the fact that it was disconcerting to watch a bunch of mortals wandering around pretending they were nobles of the Faerie courts, it was substantially
more
disconcerting to discover that not all of the actors were, in fact, mortal. It was Maddox who noticed it.

“Well now,” he murmured in a tone of voice that made Sonny turn and look. “There’s interesting for you.”

“What? Where?” Sonny craned his neck to see what it was that Maddox had seen.

“There.”

“Maddox, if you’re pointing at something, I can’t see it. We’re invisible,” Sonny hissed. They had secreted themselves in a dim alcove backstage and had called up strong veils just for good measure.

“That one way over there—in the green tunic. The one playing Puck.”

“What about him?”

“Let’s just say he’s not exactly ‘acting’ the part.”

“He’s a
boucca
?” Sonny’s eyes went wide.

“Sh!” The veils might have hidden them from the sight of humans—even other Janus—and all but the most powerful Faerie, but they didn’t mask the sounds of their voices, and the acoustics in the old building were surprisingly good.

“Sorry.” Sonny stared at the actor in green cartwheeling around on the stage. “Are you serious, Madd?”

“The real deal.” Maddox’s tone was tinged with wariness. Boucca were a rare breed of Fae that were almost as powerful as High Fae royalty. Characteristically mysterious and notoriously changeable in their moods and allegiances, they had been known to serve the various Faerie courts, but mostly preferred to serve themselves. Wherever they went, stories of mischief and mayhem abounded. They were a colorful lot, flamboyant, but they also had a reputation for being dangerous if provoked.

Sonny was dubious. The figure cavorting clownishly around the stage, hanging upside down by his knees from the set scaffolding as he said his lines, didn’t seem so very threatening. “Gods. No wonder he’s slumming at a theater. Pooks and their bloody theatrics.”

“Yeah, see…
I
wouldn’t call him a ‘pook’ to his face if I were you.”

“Ooh, I’m scared.” Sonny snorted, but he cast his Janus awareness in that direction, to get a sense of whatever it was about the boucca that had managed to impress Maddox so very much. After a moment he frowned. “I’m not reading him.”

“No—and you won’t.” There was a great deal of respect in Maddox’s voice. “That there isn’t just any garden-variety boucca. He’s
old
magic. Powerful. A boucca like that can fly under your Janus radar without so much as breaking a sweat.”

“How can you know for sure?”

“I recognize him. I used to see him coming and going from the Unseelie Court in the days before Auberon shut the Gates. Before your time, Sonn.”

Sonny blinked. “You don’t mean to tell me he’s
the
original Puck?”

“Dunno,” Maddox mused. “I heard a rumor that the
actual
Puck has been stuck in the mortal realm for the last hundred years or so—trapped in a jar of honey buried under a rock somewhere in Ireland. Ever since he did something that
royally pissed off a leprechaun.”

“Wow.” Sonny whistled low. “I wonder what he did to deserve that.”

“Who knows? Consider it a cautionary tale.” Maddox chuckled. “Leprechauns have their own fair share of ancient power and
no
discernible sense of humor.”

From a seat in the audience, one of the mortals—the director, it seemed—had called a stop to the boucca’s scene, apparently satisfied with the work done on it (or perhaps just tired of telling Puck to “quit bouncing around the bloody set”). At any rate, they moved on to a scene with Sonny’s girl from the park.

“C’mon, let’s get closer,” Sonny whispered to Maddox as he stepped farther into the wings, nearer to the stage proper.

“Why?”

“We might be able to find out something about her. You know—get a clue.”

“You suit yourself. I’m not getting any closer to that boucca than I have to.”

“Fine. Go have a look around outside then. See if you can find a kelpie tied up anywhere.”

“I don’t even see why you think there’s any connection. That girl could have dropped her script anytime,” Maddox muttered as he turned to leave. “It could have been sitting there for days. Weeks.”

Sonny had considered that, but he had also seen the girl—Kelley—with the very same script only an hour or two before
he’d found it beside the Lake. He’d found the crushed rose. It was hers, all right. He knew it. Now he just needed to find out what she’d been doing there. And what, if anything, she knew about a dangerous Faerie horse.

“Come, now a roundel and a fairy song….”

The girl made her entrance through the center stage arch, lifting the trailing edge of her skirt and stepping gracefully up a set of stairs and onto the floating platform suspended by cables that represented Titania’s bower. Garlands of silk flowers hung from the tops of ivy-wound poles, and gauze and organza draperies hung in filmy panels around the sides and back. The whole thing was lit in shades of green, gold, and blue to mimic a dappled forest.

It was sort of pretty, Sonny supposed, but nothing the least bit like any of the places where Titania and her Seelie Court were likely to spend time.

Gauze wings sprouted from the girl’s shoulders, held there by elastic ribbon. Somehow, despite the ridiculous contraption, “Titania” managed to impart a kind of Faelike elegance to the lines as she went about assigning various duties to her fairy attendants.

“Some keep back the clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders at our quaint spirits.” The girl finished her commands, reclining among the cushions. “Sing me now asleep, then to your offices, and let me rest.”

A few members of the fairy dance corps flitted away into
the wings to do her queenly bidding while the rest gathered about, kneeling or perching on the set rigging. They began to sing:

The quaint Shakespearean lyrics wound through the air.

The song was like an enchantment.

The stage lights seemed to flicker and dim.

And the girl in the bower began to glow.

K
elley sighed a fairy queen sigh, and her head sank to rest on her forearm. She loved this part of the play. The chorus of fairy singers had wonderful voices, and the tune for the “Philomel” song was an authentic Elizabethan roundel. It was strange, though. Even though Kelley had found herself humming the melody almost constantly for the past few weeks, today it was as if she’d never really heard it before.

I guess that’s what happens when you’re onstage instead of backstage
, she thought, smiling to herself. Kelley felt her
eyelids begin to droop as the murmuring refrain flowed over her like a babbling brook.

Dimly, as if from a great distance, she heard the actress playing the fairy named Cobweb say her line: “Hence, away! Now all is well. One aloof stand sentinel.”

That was Jack’s cue to enter as Oberon, sneaking near to anoint Titania’s eyes with a magic potion as part of his trickery. Kelley lay still, waiting to hear Jack’s mellifluous voice. Behind closed eyelids, she sensed the lights growing warmer. They must have turned a spotlight on her.

Part of her wanted to open her eyes to see how the lights looked, but she was just too comfortable. And anyway, they were running this scene straight through without the intervening “lovers” scenes, so she’d see soon enough—just as soon as Jack said his lines.

“What thou seest when thou dost wake, do it for thy true love take.”

Jack’s voice sounded
way
different from normal—the words hissing like a snake, sibilant and sinuous in her ears. The sound guy was definitely playing around. It was a cool effect. Creepy.

“Love and languish for his sake.”

The rest of the line fell away into silence, and Kelley opened her eyes to find herself on a mossy bank. On all sides, the forest loomed, a soaring black battlement of gnarled and knotted branches, but in the tiny, moon-strewn jewel of her grove, all was pristine and beautiful.

She turned and saw someone standing in the shadows. Long hair hung in a loose sable wave to his shoulders, framing the sharp angle of cheek and jaw. A face she knew. Kelley felt the blood rush from her head as her heart thumped wildly. Moonlight glowed in his eyes, turning his gaze to silver fire, and the stark white branches of birch trees arched above his head as though he wore the antlers of a king stag. He was clothed only in leggings made of supple, dark-brown leather and belted with silver; his feet and torso were bare. Around his neck was a thin braided cord from which hung an iron-gray medallion. A dark line of glossy blood seeped from beneath the charm to trickle halfway down his chest.

What thou seest when thou dost wake
…

He smiled. It was the saddest expression she had ever seen, full of unspeakable longing and heartache. Kelley felt her own heart tear in two.

Far off in the distance, she heard the harsh, keening cry of a hunting hawk.

Kelley’s eyes snapped open and she sat up with a start, glancing wildly around.

She was in the theater, on the bower set. Frantically, she
twisted to look over her left shoulder. For an instant, she
saw
him. He stood in the shadowed corridor of the stage-left wings. Instead of heartsick longing, however, his expression was one of shocked surprise. Her green eyes met his gray ones for the briefest instant, and then he was gone.

“Much as I do not advocate the use of artificial stimulants, could somebody
please
provide our fairy queen with some bloody
No-Doz
before the next rehearsal?” Quentin shouted from the audience.

Dreaming
. She’d been asleep and dreaming….

Kelley felt the heat creeping up her neck into her face as she realized that, aside from her director’s basilisk stare, there were about a dozen other pairs of eyes on her, all expressing various degrees of annoyance or amusement.

“Right. That’s
it
for today, then, children.” Quentin got up and strode toward the direction of his office. “Either get some
sleep
, Miss Winslow, or dial down the
Method
acting, hmm?”

Kelley glanced around apologetically at the rest of the cast, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. Her gaze fell on Alec Oakland, the actor playing Bottom, sitting off to the side of the bower platform with his fake ass’s head tucked under one arm. Fortunately, he was smiling.

“Jeez, Winslow,” he said. “Did I bore you?”

“Oh, God, Alec—I’m sorry! I didn’t get much sleep last night and…”

“Don’t worry about it.” Alec waved a hand in dismissal. “I
don’t think the Q was really going to do much with our scene today anyway—it’s almost quittin’ time.”

He stood and hefted the prop mule head. Kelley stared at it, chagrined, abruptly reminded of the horse in her bathtub. Alec held out a hand to help her to her feet.

“You know,” he said as she stood, “I’ve been meaning to ask…do you want to grab a coffee together sometime?”

Pain flashed in Kelley’s head, accompanied by the dream image of the shadowy figure in the forest.

“Kelley? Are you okay?”

“Yeah…”

Alec was looking at her, concerned.

“Yes, thanks. Just the sleep deprivation, I think. Um—coffee. Coffee would be nice. Sometime.”

“You look like you could use some,” he joked, a hopeful expression on his handsome, freckled face. “Wanna go find a Starbucks?”

Kelley laughed and held up a hand. “Maybe not so much today. I think I’m just going to head home and try and get some rest…you know?”

“Sure. Right.” Alec nodded and backed off a step.

Kelley felt vaguely guilty and more than a little confused by her own reaction. A week earlier, she would have jumped at the chance to go out with Alec. Now? Now she couldn’t see past the twisting branches of her dream forest—and the dark-haired young man who stood beneath them, his eyes full of anguish. A moment of awkward silence ensued. Kelley
reached out a hand to scratch the mule-head prop behind one fake, fuzzy ear.

“Rain check?” she said, and tried to inject some enthusiasm into her voice.

“Absolutely!” Alec nodded, and his smile halfway returned. “See you tomorrow,” he said before loping off toward the dressing rooms.

After a minute she followed in his wake, walking a deliberate path through the darkened wings where she’d seen—where she’d
thought
she’d seen—someone. But, of course, there was no one there.

T
he boucca had Sonny by the throat.

Sonny was furious with himself for allowing his guard to drop—Maddox had warned him about the boucca and not getting too close. But he’d been distracted by the boy with the ridiculous donkey head under his arm, and the uncomfortable surge of emotion that had washed over him when he saw him take the girl by the hand.

The boucca wrinkled his nose, an expression of grim delight on his pale-green face. “I smell a Faerie killer.”

“And I smell a pook,” Sonny ground out between clenched teeth. “Which of us is more pungent, I wonder?”

A long, tense silence passed between them, and then the boucca threw back his head and laughed, releasing his punishing grip on Sonny’s larynx. “What’s a Janus doing down in Hell’s Kitchen on a day o’ the Nine?”

Sonny rubbed at his neck, wincing. Sizing the boucca up, he dug into his messenger bag and tossed one of the onyx beads at him. “Where is it?
What
is it?”

The boucca caught the bead out of the air, stared at it flatly for a long moment, and then tossed it back. “Not a clue.”

“All right, then.” If Sonny was going to get any answers at all, he thought, he was going to have to play rough. A Faerie could be compelled to obey commands if one knew the secret of its true name. Sonny stared the boucca in the eyes and said gravely, “I do compel thee—”

The boucca covered his pointed ears and began keening.

Sonny pushed on, relentless. “By thy truest of names, I do compel thee, and thou shalt obey my commands, for I do call thee
Robin Goodfellow
.”

The boucca’s shrieks suddenly turned to peals of laughter. “Oh, please!” he said finally, gasping in mirth. “That name’s not exactly the earth-shattering secret it once was, you know.” He wiped a tear from his eye, chortling. “You stupid great yob—you should get out to see more theater!”

Sonny stood there, chagrined, the heat of embarrassment creeping up his cheeks.

“Shakespeare spilled those beans quite some time ago.
How do you expect me to go onstage night after night if every time someone chirps ‘Robin Goodfellow’ I fall to the ground in mindless submission?” The boucca shook his head in amused disgust. “I warned old Willie—gave him a scorching case of fleas, even. Bah—writers! Stubborn lot. Well, after that, the name sort of lost its potency, you know? Same with ‘Puck,’ so don’t bother trying. I can no more be compelled by those names than if you had just hallooed ‘Hey, buddy!’ at me.” He snorted and gave a parting shot. “Auberon’s breeding ’em up stupid these days, I see.”

Sonny’s hands clenched into fists at the insult. Then he remembered the script he’d found, with the scribbled words:
Kelley’s Script—Please Return (this means YOU, Bob!
)

Bouccas were notorious thieves.

“Let’s try this, then,” he said. “I do compel thee by the name of…Bob.”

The boucca stiffened and stopped in his tracks. He turned and pegged Sonny with a shrewd gaze.

“Will you help me?” Sonny implored.

Relenting, Bob the boucca said, “I’ve not a clue as to where it is. But…I do know
what
it is.”

“It’s a kelpie, isn’t it?”

“If you already know what it is, then why do you need me?”

That seemed to confirm Sonny’s suspicions. He could press the boucca further on the matter of the kelpie, but there were other things he needed to understand now, and he didn’t
know how far he could push his luck. “All right,” he said. “Another question, then.”

Bob waited.

“That girl. The actress playing Titania.” He nodded in the direction of the dressing rooms where she’d gone. “She saw me just now.”

“I noticed that.”

Sonny was beginning to lose patience. “I was veiled and she
saw
me.”

Bob tilted his head, his expression maddeningly inscrutable, and said, “How is that possible for a mortal?”

“That is my question to you. How is it possible for a mortal to have seen through my veil?”

“It isn’t.”

“What are you saying?” Sonny’s wariness of the ancient, powerful boucca warred with his absolute need to know.

“You ask a lot of questions.”

Sonny took a deep breath. If he angered Bob, the boucca was likely to just vanish without another word. “Please. It is…important to me.”

Bob cocked his head to one side, considering that. He seemed to shift and change in size and proportion ever so slightly as Sonny spoke to him. It was subtle, hard to notice unless you were only looking at him sideways—as if his appearance mirrored the slipperiness of what he said.

“Do you know
why
Auberon shut the Gates, young Sonny
Flannery?” the boucca asked.

“Of course I do.” Sonny barely contained his frustration. “I’m a bloody Janus.”

“You’re a Janus, certainly. And I’m sure you’re a fine one, at that,” Bob said, almost without sarcasm. He put up a hand to forestall any interruption. “And you’re a changeling—cradle-took from a mortal home to the Otherworld, just like the rest of your kind. But,
un
like the rest of them…I happen to know that you’re also the only Janus that Auberon handpicked to raise under his own roof, at the very center of the Unseelie Court, almost as if you were a son.”

“Do you have a point to make?”

“Aye. I do.” Bob nodded slowly, returning Sonny’s steady gaze. “But not about you. About
him
.”

Sonny knew well how Auberon was regarded by the majority of changelings and also by a good portion of the Faerie Folk: with suspicion and with fear.

But the king
had
treated Sonny like family and, despite an arrogance that could border on casual cruelty, he had never given the young mortal a reason not to trust him. If Sonny was to be honest, Auberon had his loyalty and respect.

“What tale did the mighty Auberon spin by the fire for his panting Janus pup about the closing of the Gates?” Bob asked, his voice thick with mockery.

Sonny glared at him. “He closed the Gates to protect us.”

“Which ‘us,’ little changeling boy?” Bob cocked his head,
his tone quizzical. “The mortal us or the Faerie us?”

“Both. He did it to protect both worlds—each from the other.”

“What you call ‘protection,’ a goodly portion of the Fair Folk call ‘imprisonment.’ What else did good king Auberon tell you? What dire threat from the mortal world was our benevolent lord and master keeping his loyal subjects safe and sound from?”

Sonny frowned. He failed to see what this had to do with him or the kelpie or the girl or anything he actually
wanted
to learn from the boucca. But he obviously had no choice but to play along with Bob’s game of questions. “He told me that, around the turn of the last century, as the mortal world measures time, a human woman found a way through one of the Gates to the Otherworld. And that she stole a Faerie child right from out of the cradle and escaped back to the mortal realm. So the king closed the Gates to keep it from happening again.”

“And there’s thundering great hypocrisy for you!” Bob did a little jig and swung himself effortlessly up onto the landing of a set of escape stairs. His eyes glowed fiercely. “Putting aside for the moment the fact that stealing children in the
other
direction was—up until that time—a sort of national pastime for the Fair Folk…don’t you think that whole story is a bit odd? Pretty drastic measures for one wee bairn gone missing, wouldn’t you say?”

“It wasn’t just
any
Faerie child that mortal stole!” Sonny
protested. “Granted it may have been a harsh decision at the time, but Auberon was well within his rights to make it. The child was his heir!”

Bob was relentless. “And the fact that
you
were, what, the son of a poor crofter? Or that your friend who waits outside the door—whatsisname? Maddox—that he was a mere blacksmith’s child…did that then make it all right for the Faerie to cross thresholds and steal
you
from
your
folk?”

“I…”

“Do you not think that your own mother wept bitter tears at the loss? Tear at her pretty, dark hair and fall to the ground in an agony of mourning for her stolen child?”

“What do you know of my mother?” Sonny demanded, suddenly furious.

“Pretty thing, strong-willed, and a wild heart. Blue eyes. Lovely face…when it wasn’t all twisted up with grieving, that is.” The boucca spoke in low, thrumming tones. The glint of mischief was gone from his eyes. “The theft of you tore her apart. Tore her family apart. They all thought she’d gone mad. Husband up and left because he couldn’t stand the pain in her.”

“Stop it.”

“Do you not think a woman like that might have sworn revenge?” The Fae’s eyes glowed green as his stare bored into Sonny. “A child for a child?”

“My mother—”

“Could
never
have crossed into the Otherworld. No matter
how strong, nor wild, nor willful. Not without help.”

“But you just said—”

“Yes. I did.”

Sonny could only stand there staring at the boucca, mystified.

“Now. There’s something to
think
about, eh?” Bob fell silent then. He crouched on the landing, utterly still, watching Sonny with his unblinking eyes.

Riddles
.
Why is he giving me riddles
? Questions with no answers, all obscured by the emotional impact of thoughts of his mother. His mortal life that could have been…He clamped down hard on the urge to ask anything further and turned to leave.

Except there was just one more thing he wanted to know. A mere curiosity—but it pricked at his mind…

“Tell me something.”

“Is that an order?” Bob glared flatly at him.

“No. Please.” Sonny held up a hand. “I mean—I would like to know. If you would like to tell me. The story I heard about you and the leprechaun…”

“And the honey jar?”

“Yes. Did it happen? Really?”

“Well…the insides of my ears are sticky.” He snorted. “And I occasionally attract the attention of amorous bees. You tell me.”

“How did you get out?”

“May the gods bless progress.” Bob raised his eyes to the
ceiling. “Eight or nine years ago some bullyboyo contractors came along and built a five-star resort and golf course on the very site. The day they broke ground, they broke my jar!”

Sonny laughed despite himself.

Bob shrugged. “It’s a very nice course. I’m sure the patrons wonder, though, why they lose so very many balls. And the plumbing in the clubhouse tends to be…quirky.”

“Never cross a leprechaun.”

“Right.”

“What did you do to raise his wrath?”

Bob’s expression went stern. “That I will not tell you.”

“But why—”

“What I
will
tell you is this. Are you listening?”

Sonny nodded silently. The Faerie’s stare was so intense that Sonny almost felt it as a physical sensation.

“Once upon a time,” the boucca continued, “I was Auberon’s henchman, much like you. But I was
never
Auberon’s fool. And I am not entirely without compassion.” And then Bob, who was called Puck, who was called Robin Goodfellow, laughed gently and leaped gracefully from his perch, disappearing up into the shadows of the high stage rigging. His last words echoed down through the darkness.

“Take care of her, Sonny Flannery,” he said. “I did….”