Queen Mab (12 page)

"I never meant to be unkind," Queen Mab whispered.

"Of all that was and ever will be in my life, I know," said Mercutio.  "Indeed, you were the first taste of kindness my heart and soul knew after a long drought, coming to me when harsh words and hard hands had broken my very spirit."

Queen Mab wiped her cheek and leaned upon the stone railing.  "And you I.  A century I have lived with beings mortal and immortal recoiling from my sight, but you saw and did not cringe back with fear."

"How could anyone cringe from you?  How could they fear you, my love?"  He grabbed ahold of the trellis and slowly began to climb to her balcony. "That which caused them to recoil was the reflection of their own soul, to which you hold up a mirror, but any who did not long to give up their lives to live in your arms never saw your true face."

"And what is it you see reflected back at you?" asked Mab.

Mercutio reached the top of the trellis and leaned over the balustrade to take her hand.  "The reflection I see in you is love, and the reflection I give back is the same."  He lay his warm fingers upon her cheek, tracing the lines of her jaw and her lips.  "I see all my dreams reflected in you.  I see my happiness in your eyes.  I hear my joy in your breath.  And I feel peace which can only be granted with your lips." 

And he bent and gently touched his to hers.

She did not disappear or awaken in another place.  Instead, she stayed here with him and something inside her melted, a great glacier slowed in its ever present march as if in spring to feed the pools of life that longed to fill themselves with man's love.

They parted, a breath away.

"My heart has always belonged to you, my queen.  My heart and soul and mind.  I only lived when you joined me those nights.  I did not know that I died when you went away.  Indeed, I had been the walking dead.  Laughing and jesting, but dead as if a thousand years in the ground.  But with the touch of your lips, I feel as if the fountain of youth has restored me.  I feel as if the door to heaven has been opened and once more my lifeless body can spring o'er the hills.  This is the power of but one kiss.  You are the woman I have dreamed of, without knowing it was you.  And now I wake and see the dream is real, that the woman is here, that you are here, and I do not wish to sleep again."

"But you must sleep someday, my mortal love," she whispered, "And it is that eternal sleep which keeps me from your side."

"But what dreams we might have together here and now," he replied, placing his lips aside her ear and brushing them softly with each word.  "Such dreams so that when I must close my eyes, they will make the heavens seem dull.  I was dead without you, but now live knowing that I might look forward to basking in the warmth of your sun."

"I am not the sun," she protested, her hands trying to memorize his face so that when he was taken from her she might never forget.  "I am the moon."

"Then let me be thy sun, let me warm thy days so that thou can reflect back my light with the darkness comes.  Without me, thou shalt be forever in cloaked in black, gently orbiting the earth with no one to see."

"Such loneliness is my duty," she replied.

"But with me, there is one who will illuminate your path, so that those who do choose to gaze on thee can see the beauty thou art to behold."  Parting, he brushed back a tendril of hair that had loosened itself.

Once more their lips met, only this time it was hers that crossed the distance as he stood steady, waiting for her to decide.

Slowly, he lifted one leg and then the other over her balcony rail until he stood beside her, his arms chasing away the chill, wrapped around her like a summer's breeze, warming her to her core.

"M
ercutio..." she murmured, stirring quietly in the silken sheets of her bed.

"Mab," he replied, his lips still swollen from pressing upon hers.

She traced her fingers around his curls, feeling at once like she could disappear into nothingness or explode into creation and all the world would be right.

"What do you think of, dear Mab?" he asked.  His lips formed a smile, slight and secret, and one eye drooped in pleasured exhaustion.

"How strange a name..." she murmured.

"What means you?" he laughed, his chest rumbling the sounds like echoes in a cave against her ears.

"Mab.  A small word with an 'm' and a 'b' and nothing but the sound of sorrow to keep the two apart."

"You may call yourself Gwenyvere and my love for you would not change. You are Mab, my Mab, a small name fit for a mighty queen."

"A queen of a kingdom imagined."

"A queen of my heart and that is not imagined."

"This world that we live in will fade soon, and I will wake to see that I have merely fallen asleep in another place and time."

"But for now, this is truth and for now, think not of the other worlds to be," spoke Mercutio gently, gathering her close.  "Even though this is but a moment in the blink of an eye for you, it shall be something I carry with me for my lifetime.  All that I remember, all that I will be or will not be, you will color it all like a wash from a painter's cup.  In fact, you already do."

"As do you my love."

He stroked her hair, the peace of the early morning upon their union.

“Promise me you will never leave while breath stirs within my lungs,” asked Mercutio.

“I am afraid that is a promise I cannot keep,” replied Mab.

“And why not?” he asked.  “Why must you leave when together the waking is even sweeter than the dreaming?”

Her smile was sad, her heart full of longing as she looked at him and saw he did not remember the tragedy of their dream. “I must disappear with the first light of the sun.  So it has been every morning for one hundred years, and will be every morning for a hundred years beyond.  Sometimes I may cling to those bits of night tucked and hidden in the shadows of day, but I hold little more power than that cool, restful darkness, unless...” Mab let the sentence trail off, not wanting to let him know the price she would have to pay, the cruelty she must rain down upon the House of his friend, to walk in the sun.

"Unless?"

"Perhaps someday, if I have the strength, this shall not always be.  But for now, our time grows short and these precious moments should not be squandered with hopeless musings.  Let us savor, instead, the time we have, even if it melts as a sugar violet in the mouth."

“The thought of parting tears at my soul as if ravens opened my chest and were feasting upon my heart,” he said.

“Nay, gentle Meructio.  Be not saddened that we must part, for parting only makes the reunion sweeter.”

“A sweet reunion is nothing compared to the bliss of never parting.”

She kissed him soundly, with the comfortable familiarity of a long kindred soul.  “This I do swear to you that you and I shall never be parted during the night for as long as you walk this earth.”

“I would gladly give up walking this earth if it meant that I could stay by your side without leaving.”

“Do not wish such things that you do not know the price,” she replied. The chill of her waking tomb called to her as false dawn began its rise.  It told her to open her eyes from this dream and step back into the always waiting winter.  She wept once more as she fought.  Today she would stay on this earth invisible, today she would not leave Mercutio's side whether he could see her or could not.  No matter what the cost to her strength, the passing years with him would be short, and she would not miss a breath.

“Why do you cry?” he asked.

“I must soon go.  Please promise me that you will practice caution, that you will practice an even temper in the things that might cause your anger to rise.”

“I shall,” Mercutio smiled.  “Who am I to vent my spleen when the humors of my blood runs so warm?”

She leaned over and kissed him.  "Do not forget my love.”

And as the first rays of the morning woke the day, she disappeared, her sparkling eyes and brilliant smile the last thing he saw before his eyes opened and found himself not Mab's palace, but his own room, and he was left to wonder if it was real or all just a dream.

T
ybalt sat at his desk, the wax seal pressed against the letter.  He turned and handed it to the servant at his side.

"Deliver this to Romeo.  Tarry not.  Tell not a soul who it came from and to whom you deliver it to.  Your life does depend upon it.  Prince Escales has declared that any who is seen fighting in the street shall die, and I shall not be found a maker of distress to Prince Escales or Lord Capulet."

The servant bowed and left without a word.

Tybalt walked over to his window and stared down at the waking world.  "But that which happens in the unseen streets shall trouble not the prince or my kinsman.  If they only knew what danger lies in letting this insult pass without rebuke.  One half of Faunus's prophecy has come to pass.  A Montague welcomed into the House of Capulet.  I have trained to become the greatest swordsman ever lived.  As my patron Queen Mab advised, I shall rid this world of this boil before this boil festers and rids the world of me."

He stood from his desk and strapped his sword to his side, and prepared to walk out to greet either life or death as it might come.

M
ab watched Mercutio and Benvolio as they lounged in the town square.  Though the sun was not high, the day was already warm, and threatened to be unbearable by the time it reached its height.  She could not speak to Mercutio, she could not more than watch.  She had found a shadow left from the night before and clung there like a shipwrecked sailor to a rock, all the while watching as the tide moved in.

"Where the devil should Romeo be?" asked Mercutio, looking about the streets.  "Came he not home last night?"

"Not to his father's.  I spoke with his man," replied Benvolio, holding his head steady so that the effects of the revelries might not cause him to be sick.

Mercutio smiled with rueful wisdom.  "Ah, that Rosaline.  She torments him so.  He will surely go mad."

"Did you hear that Tybalt, one of Capulet's kinsman, sent a letter to Romeo's house?"

Mercutio sat up and looked at Benvolio, all artifice of ease gone.  "A challenge, on my life," said Mercutio grimly.

"Romeo will answer it," replied Benvolio, his brutish ways seeing only one course.

"Any man that can write may answer a letter." He spat out a pomegranate seed.  "The boy does not stand a chance against Tybalt's sword.  I curse that I should have allowed you to accompany me to the masque.  That I had kept my friendship with the Capulets confined to my own heart, Tybalt might not be hunting my friend in the streets."

"Nay, Romeo will give answer Tybalt.  He will not back down."

"Alas poor Romeo! He is already dead," said Mercutio. "He is a mere boy destroyed by the foul looks of a woman.  And you think he is a man to encounter Tybalt?"

"Why, what is Tybalt?" asked Benvolio dismissively.

Mercutio shook his head.  "More than prince of cats, I can tell you. Oh, he seems a captain of compliments, but his sword picks up his cutting when his silver tongue is done.  He plays the fop, but his limp wrist thrusts a rapier through the heart just as well as the steel-fisted hand of any bravado. Better, even.  Why, he even introduced a new thrust, naming it the punto reverso, which is quite the rage at court."

"The what?"

"Punto reverso.  Bah.  A curse on him, to make killing the fashionable sport of those refined political dandies, men who will never swipe their blade outside a dueling field.  They make mockery of the soldier as they prance and demand for blood, claiming honor and insult for matters that matter not."

"You sound a bitter man.  Did any at court ever call upon you demanding satisfaction?"

"The only courtly demands for satisfaction that ever caused my sword to rise came from the fairer sex.  While I might raise a legion to bear witness to the skill of my thrust and the punto reverso put to better use, there is some honor I will protect."

Benvolio grabbed his friend's arm.  "Here comes Romeo."

"Oh, look upon his face," groaned Mercutio.  "We shall have to put up with him extolling the virtues of whatever maid he landed.  Be she a troll or a hag, she will seem to him Venus and us reluctant disciples for not making offerings at the foot of this new altar.  How now, Romeo?"

Romeo gave a bow and threw himself upon the steps beside them.  "Good morrow to you both."

"You disappeared last evening.  Glad to see you well," answered Mercutio.

"Ah, if you only knew the depths of my wellness..."

"Speak no more!" said Mercutio, stopping his words before they came.  "I am sure you have dug it deep enough to tap into the spring of love with a raging flow to quench the thirst of all Verona.  Forgive me, I shall drink my wine."

"Chide me not, Mercutio.  This fair lady is different!  Oh, that you could see her!"

"Nay, a friend's eyes are best kept away from such temptations, for what if, upon looking, I see the virtues you extol and make a play to make her mine?  No, no, Romeo.  Keep your council to yourself and both you and I shall be the happier for it."

A rotund woman with chins aplenty waddled into the market square.  She called out loudly in a voice like glass upon a slate, "Romeo?  Is one of you Romeo?"

Mercutio grabbed Romeo by the shoulders.  "Romeo!  Why did you not say?  So lovely! So fair!  And you sought to keep her from me?  For shame.  For shame!  My mistake, indeed.  Dear Romeo, do tell me of the evening you spent together, locked in love's embrace.  Tell me of your passion and how even dying shall not part thee."

"Romeo!" the nurse cried.

"It is not she.  She is the nurse of my love," explained Romeo.

"She nurses your love?  Well, good wishes to you, my friend.  May your love suckle on the teat of her largess and grow stronger day by day."

"Gentlemen, can any of you tell me where I may find the young Romeo?" asked the Nurse coming to pause beside them.

"I am he," spoke Romeo.