Read Online Wondrous Strange by Lesley Livingston - Free Book Online

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 intothe wings to do her queenly bidding while the rest gathered about, kneeling or perching on the set rigging. They began to sing:
    “You spotted snakes with double tongue,
    Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
    Newts and blindworms, do no wrong,
    Come not near our Fairy Queen.”
    The quaint Shakespearean lyrics wound through the air.
    “Philomel with melody,
    Sing in our sweet lullaby;
    Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby….”
    The song was like an enchantment.
    The stage lights seemed to flicker and dim.
    And the girl in the bower began to glow.

IX
    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 hereyelids begin to droop as the murmuring refrain flowed over her like a babbling brook.
    “Never harm
    Nor spell nor charm
    Come our lovely lady nigh.
    So good night, with lullaby.”
    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