Tamani sighed and shook his head, but he stopped trying to get her to sit down.
Slowly the applause faded and the dancers ran gracefully off the stage, where the scenery had melted into stark whiteness. About twenty faeries in bright green lined up at the back.
“There’s more?” Laurel asked as she and Tamani took their seats again.
“Fire dancers,” Tamani said with a broad smile. “You’ll love these.”
A deep boom from a large kettledrum sounded. At first, it was just a slow, steady beat. The green-clad faeries moved forward as one, taking slow, marching steps in time with the drums. As each line reached the front of the stage, they raised their hands, sending beams of multicolored light skyward. A second later, enormous showers of sparks exploded above the crowd — almost eye level with the balcony — beautiful, vivid colors in rainbow hues that made Laurel blink against their brilliance. It was better than any fireworks display she’d ever seen.
A second drum began to sound in a quicker and more intricate rhythm than the first, and the faeries onstage changed with it. Their dance turned acrobatic, faeries flipping and leaping to the front of the stage instead of walking. A third drum started, then a fourth, and the performers’ pace and motions grew frenetic with the beat.
Laurel watched, transfixed, as the fire dancers performed, twisted, and tumbled with remarkable skill. Each time they reached the front of the stage, they put up another light show. Rays of light fell like raindrops over the audience, and spinning balls of fire careened through the coliseum, trailing bright sparks that faded into glistening jewels before extinguishing themselves. Laurel was torn, watching first the acrobats, then the fireworks, wishing she could watch both at the same time. Then, when the beat of the drums became so fast Laurel couldn’t figure out how the faeries kept up, they all tumbled to the front of the stage, releasing the fireworks from their hands all at once, creating a curtain of sparkles that dazzled almost as brightly as the sun.
With her breath catching in her throat, Laurel rose to her feet, applauding the fire dancers with as much enthusiasm as she had the ballet dancers. Tamani rose silently beside her and didn’t say a word this time about her standing.
The fire dancers took their final bows and the applause began to die away. The Fall faeries in the balcony rose and started making their way to the exit; Laurel could see the Spring faeries below her doing the same thing.
Laurel turned to Tamani with a smile. “Oh, Tam, that was incredible! Thank you so much for making sure I got to come.” She looked back at the empty stage, concealed now behind its heavy silk curtains. “This has been the most amazing day.”
Tamani took Laurel’s hand and laid it on his arm. “The celebration has scarcely begun!”
Laurel looked up at Tamani in surprise. She dug in her small purse for a few seconds, glancing at the watch she’d brought with her. She could spare another hour or so. A smile spread across her face as she looked at the exits again, with eagerness this time. “I’m ready,” she said.
“THAT WAS AMAZING,” LAUREL SAID AGAIN AS she and Tamani lounged on pillows beside low tables heaped with fruits, vegetables, juices, and dishes of honey in a dizzying array of colors. Music filled the air from a dozen directions as faeries across the green lounged, and danced, and socialized. “I had no idea theatre could be like that. And those fireworks at the end! Those guys were incredible.”
Tamani laughed, much more relaxed now that they were spread out in a meadow where the faerie classes mingled a little more freely. “I’m glad you liked it. I haven’t been to a Samhain celebration in several years.”
“Why not?”
Tamani shrugged, his mood turning somber. “I wanted to be with you,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “Coming to festivals didn’t seem as important when it meant leaving you behind the gates. Especially considering the revelries at sundown.”
“What revelries?” Laurel asked, half distracted as she dipped a large strawberry in a dish of bright blue honey.
“Um…well, you’d probably find it rather distasteful.”
Laurel waited, her attention piqued now, then laughed when he didn’t continue. “Keep going,” she prodded.
Tamani shrugged and sighed. “I think I told you last year: Pollination is for reproduction, and sex is for fun.”
“I remember,” Laurel said, unsure how that related.
“So at big festivals like this, most people…have…fun.”
Laurel’s eyes widened and then she laughed. “Really?”
“Come on, don’t people ever do anything like that in the human world?”
Laurel was about to tell him no when she remembered the tradition of kissing at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Though, granted, it wasn’t really the same thing. “I suppose.” She looked at the crowds around her. “So nobody cares? Aren’t most of these people married?”
“For starters, you don’t get married in Avalon. You get handfasted. And no, most of them aren’t. In Avalon, the main reason to get handfasted is to raise seedlings. Typically faeries aren’t ready to do that until they are”—he paused, considering—“eighty, maybe a hundred years old.”
“But—” Laurel cut off her own question and turned her face away.
“But what?” Tamani prodded gently.
After a moment of hesitation she turned to him. “Do faeries ever get handfasted young? Like…like at our age?”
“Almost never.” He seemed to know what she was asking, though she couldn’t bring herself to be completely forthright; his eyes bored into her until she had to turn away. “But that doesn’t mean they aren’t entwined. A lot of people have committed lovers. Not a majority, but it’s common enough. My parents had been entwined for over seventy years before their handfasting. Handfasting is a little different from human marriage. It is not just a sign of a committed romance but an intention to form a family — to create a seedling and become a societal unit.”
Laurel giggled, trying to dissipate the tension that enveloped them. “It’s so weird to think of faeries having kids when they’re a hundred years old.”
“That’s barely middle-aged, here. After we reach adulthood, most of us don’t change much until we’re a hundred and forty, a hundred and fifty. But then you age fairly quickly — at least by faerie standards. You can go from looking like a thirty-year-old human to looking like a sixty-or seventy-year-old human in less than twenty years.”
“Does everyone live to two hundred?” Laurel asked. The thought of living for two centuries was boggling.
“More or less. Some faeries live longer, some shorter, but not usually by much.”
“Don’t they get sick and die?”
“Almost never.” Tamani leaned over and touched the tip of her nose. “That’s what you’re for.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not you specifically — Fall faeries. It’s like having the world’s most perfect…shoot, what do you call them. Hostels?” He sighed. “Help me out; where people go when they’re sick.”
“Hospitals?” Laurel suggested.
“Yeah.” Tamani shook his head. “Wow, it’s been a long time since I lost a human word like that. I mean, we all speak English, but human-only lingo really is like another language sometimes.”
“You weren’t speaking English earlier, to those guards,” Laurel observed.
“You really want another history lesson today?” Tamani teased.
“I don’t mind,” Laurel said, savoring a spear of perfectly ripe nectarine. Harvest time never seemed to end in Avalon.
“Those were Gaelic words. Over the years we’ve had a lot of contact with the human world, through the gates.
“So why
“And in America, lest ye forget,” Tamani said, smiling. “We’ve had some contact with your Native Americans
