Wondrous Strange

Bob gave Sonny a long, appraising look. “Technically it’s a four-leaf clover. Shamrocks have only three leaves. But the four-leaf-”

“I know, I know,” Sonny murmured impatiently. “Powerful magic. Strong protection. The leaves represent the Four Gates, the Four Feasts, the Four Courts of Faerie-”

“Also hope, faith, love…and luck. It is powerful in any case, but that particular charm is exceptionally potent. The little green finks do good work, I’ll give them that.”

“You stole it from a leprechaun?”

“Yes. And, contrary to popular opinion, I make a lousy thief. He figured out it was me pretty quickly and was waiting for me when I got back.”

“That was a heavy price to pay.”

“You have no idea.” Bob’s face scrunched up in misery. His eyes glowed with a sullen green fire. “I hate honey. Can’t stand the stuff.”

“Why did you do it then?”

The most notorious boucca to ever make mischief in the mortal realm stared up at the vaulted ceiling. His voice when he spoke was barely audible.

“I let myself become fond. Of a mortal.”

“Who?” Sonny asked. Something deep within him whispered that he already knew the answer.

“Your mother, Sonny.”

“My…”

Sonny felt as though all of the air in the theater had been sucked out. His chest hurt.

“The sweet and lovely Emmaline Flannery…” Bob sighed. “I made the mistake of passing by her village a second time, not long after Auberon had sent me to fetch you in the first place-”

“You mean steal me.”

“Steal you. Yes.”

Sonny’s earlier conversation with Kelley came rushing back to him.

“I didn’t think much of it at the time,” Bob said. “You were just another piddling human bairn to be cradle-took. Not like I hadn’t done it a dozen times before. More…” The ancient Fae’s timeless features grew contemplative. His pale eyes filled with memory. “But this time…well. After I made the mistake of going back, I couldn’t get the sound of your mother’s cries out of my ears. Hmph-much like the honey now, I suppose.”

Neither of them laughed at the joke.

Bob sighed. “It tore at me. I couldn’t close my own eyes for fear of seeing hers…pretty blue eyes, red with weeping.” The boucca shook his head, memory and regret chasing themselves across his face.

Sonny looked away. His hands, he suddenly noticed, were curled into tight fists.

“Well, time-or what passes for time, at least, in the Faerie realm-moves on,” Bob continued. “You were already toddling about when Auberon went out into the forest one day and brought a wee tiny princess home to Court the next. An heir. But it was not the joyous occasion it might have been, if it had been, say, Titania’s babe as well.”

“Kelley. Whose is she? Who is her mother?”

“Never knew.” Bob lifted a shoulder. “Never asked-not the kind of thing you would ask the good king Auberon. Not and still keep your noggin on top of your shoulders.”

“He never said who her mother was?”

“Could have been a lowly wood nymph for all we knew. Auberon’s dalliances were legendary back then, what with him and Titania always quarreling.”

“Why didn’t he keep the baby hidden, then, I wonder?” Sonny asked.

“Well, that’s the thing about Faerie royalty, boyo,” Bob replied. “They don’t tend to stay inconspicuous for very long. And this tiny thing glowed like a new star. She wouldn’t have stayed hidden-even if Auberon had tried.”

Sonny knew that was the truth from experience. The sight of Kelley, revealed in her glory in the alley, was imprinted on his mind like the afterimage of a flash photograph. “So what happened? How did she wind up hidden in this realm?”

“Because the lord of the Unseelie, in his immeasurable wisdom”-Bob’s voice was heavy with sarcasm-“set me to nursemaid the wee thing. Punishment for some sort of passing wickedness on my part, no doubt. Auberon was not noted for a long supply of affection-paternal or otherwise. And he seemed quite content to spend what little he did have on you.”

“Why?” Sonny had always wondered. He’d just never asked the question out loud before. “Why me?”

The boucca shrugged. “Who knows? Whimsy? The novelty of raising a son who was not an heir? And you were an amusing pet: fearless, stubborn. He doted on you. All while his own daughter lay shut away in the nursery- wailing in the cradle, night after night, alone.”

“You felt sorry for her.”

“Bah! I tell you, I’d already gone pudding-soft by then!” Bob’s face twisted into an expression of disgust. “It drove me near mad. Cries of the babe mewling in my ears, cries of your mother still howling in my mind…The two things just seemed to add up and make a sudden sense.”

“And so you helped my mother steal the heir to the Unseelie kingdom right out from under the Faerie king’s nose.” Sonny knew that he was staring at the boucca with his jaw hanging open, but by that point he couldn’t help it. “By all the gods, that was brave madness!”

“I would have tried for you, but as I say, Auberon barely let you out of his sight. So instead, I stole a charm from a leprechaun, grabbed your mum, and snuck her straight into the palace nursery. Big, cold room full of sharp, pretty things and not even a wee baby rattle in sight. Emmaline takes one look at yon sad little princess and her heart starts to mend right there. I put the clover charm around the baby’s neck to veil her brightness, and that was that. Away we ran!”

Sonny could only gape; the sheer audacity of the thing overwhelmed him.

“Easier than I thought it would be.” Bob grinned sourly. “At least, at first. In, out, off we went…until Auberon got wind of it. There he was shutting the Gates one by one-clang! clang! clang!-as we run. I tumbled out the Beltane Gate, right back in Ireland where we’d started, and over my shoulder I saw Emmaline and the babe caught in between the worlds and just able to leap through the one crack left in the Samhain Gate.”

“A hundred years later in time and an ocean away from her home,” Sonny said quietly, understanding.

“Aye, and that was what mucked up Auberon’s spell. Like sticking your foot in a closing door, it jarred the Gate off its hinges a bit, I suppose. There I was, unable to do a damned thing about it, stuck in the past and fending off a hopping-mad leprechaun.” Bob waved a hand in the air. “Unsuccessfully. That about sums it up.”

“And Auberon never tried to find her or his daughter.”

“Oh, he threw all manner of tantrums, I hear. Issued decrees. Heads rolled. Blah-blah-blah. Put on quite a show of paternal grief, considering he’d never paid the poor wee thing an ounce of attention when she’d been under his own roof. It wasn’t about the girl, you see-it was all about his own wounded pride. And, sadly, it also gave him a convenient excuse to tighten his grip on the rule of the Fair Folk.”

Sonny could hardly argue that point.

Bob sighed. “Well. That’s the last time I get sentimental.”

“And yet, I noticed that you are still keeping an eye out for the well-being of a certain princess.”

“Rule of the Faerie kingdoms is passed only through the direct bloodline; you know that.” Bob cast a shrewd glance at Sonny. “Who knows-our girly might just knock the Unseelie throne out from under her dad’s chilly bum one day. And I’d cheerfully take the job of right-hand sprite to the new Unseelie queen if it’s offered.”

Sonny’s mind was reeling with the implications of Bob’s tale.

“I love this scene,” the boucca murmured, leaning over the pew to watch the stage, his eyes glinting with amusement. “I remember the first time I ever saw them do this… Old Willie himself played Bottom. The man’s timing was flawless.”

Below them, onstage, the Mechanicals were enacting the play within the play. It was a tragicomic story about two lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe, kept apart by their cruel, disapproving parents and forced to whisper their devotion to each other through a crack in the wall that separated their houses. The scene was supposed to be funny, and yet