A Midsummer's Nightmare

by Garry Kilworth

Genres: Horror; Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure

Synopsis

Sherwood Forest, home of Oberon, Titania, Puck, Cobweb, Peaseblossom and the rest of the mob, has been whittled away by urban development. It's time to move on, the fairies decide. Sid, their captive, a kindly if gruff young car mechanic, teaches Titania to drive, and on Midsummer's Eve the party sets off in a battered and smelly old bus. They're bound for the New Forest, where they hope to be able to regenerate their magic. The fairies' journey is full of excitement. At a village fair, they show the morris dancers how to cut previously undreamt-of capers. Titania falls in love with a human baby and steals her from her pram, starting a nationwide search for the missing infant. The fairies then link up with a group of New Age travellers on their way to Stonehenge, who befriend them almost without question. Finally, a fight to the death between Titania and the terrifying and sadistic Morgan-le-Fey must take place before everyone can settle down into some form of harmony and peace.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 325

Sample

OBERON, KING OF THE FAIRIES, STOOD IN A GLADE OF Sherwood Forest and stared around him at the discarded Coke cans, sweet wrappers and crisp packets. He sighed deeply. Although he knew that in the morning the litter would be gathered up by cleaners, the sight still depressed him. He hated the intrusion of mortals upon his world. These ugly mortal effects, their property, were tainted with human touch and scent: to a fairy’s sensitive nose the odour of human sweat filled the glade. It could not be more offensive if the area was strewn with human remains, arms and legs, internal organs, toes and fingers, eyes and lips.

‘What untidy creatures these mortals be,’ he murmured to himself.

He sighed again, then spoke to the woodland around him at large, the small creatures who stared at this powerful fairy king in awe.

‘Now is the midsummer when we fairies must depart our ancient woodland home. The lofty colonnade of trees which once supported our entablature the sky, has shrunk and closed about us to become these prison bars; the vast arena of our early years has since become a dungeon cell from which we must escape, or perish. Our magic upon which we do rely, is diminished and so with every passing moon becomes more dim and unpredictable. We can no longer make ourselves invisible at whim, nor cast our spells upon the midnight air to bring unhappy lovers to each other’s arms. We must seek another wood in which the light might filter down, through flickering tresses of high poplar trees, between the widespread cedar’s hands, to fern and mossy floor below, where tread the feet of fairies and their forest friends.’

At that moment the moon was caught in the crazed branches of the Major Oak standing in the centre of the shrivelled forest. As the wind shook the tree it was as if the old oak were trying to shake the moon from its hair. The light from the heavenly body danced upon the forest floor and once more Oberon took heart in nature. The moon looked bright and shiny: untouched by human foot.

‘At least those slipshod mortals cannot soil the moon,’ he said to himself with satisfaction. The moon is safe at least.’

Sid, a young car mechanic captured by the fairies only a week ago, came into the glade and interrupted the musing king at this point.

‘They’ve been there too,’ he said, in a melancholy voice. ‘Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.’

King Oberon, small in stature but a giant in personality, whirled on the only other person in the glade.

‘What?’ he cried. ‘Mortals on the moon?’

Sid nodded his head. ‘Went there and came away. Shouldn’t be surprised if there’s a Coke can on the moon. Or bubble gum stuck to one of the rocks. Even astronauts might be messy. They’re only people.’

Infuriated, Oberon looked up at the moon again. Tainted! Even the very moonbeams in which he was bathed were tainted. He’d better not tell Titania about this. The moon meant more to her than it did to him and goodness knows it was precious enough to a male fairy.

‘Keep that to yourself, Sid,’ Oberon warned the rude mechanical, ‘or there’ll be trouble in fairyland.’

When mortals were present the fairies spoke in modern tongue, in the way an adult who is uncomfortable around children will speak down to the younger generation. It was only on their own, amongst themselves, that they spiced their language with an older form of speech.

By this time the other fairies were beginning to drift into the glade. Puck was one of the first. The most mischievous of fairies looked at Oberon quizzically.

‘Keep what to himself?’ asked the curious Puck.

‘Never mind, you wouldn’t like it if you knew,’ Oberon said.

‘Then don’t tell me,’ Puck said. ‘I hate knowing things I don’t like. There’s too much knowledge in the world already. We would be much happier knowing less. Look at mortals—how much less sad they would be if they didn’t know they were going to die! Look how miserable the knowledge of death makes them. The more they learn, the less they love life.’

King Oberon was hardly listening by this time. Puck, the most worldly of all the fairies, did tend to twitter on like a blackbird once he had a subject. The subject didn’t need to be very substantial either, to keep Puck in full flow.

Titania made an entrance into the glade next, on the back of her tame screech-owl. Once she alighted, she took on the less comfortable height of four feet from the forest floor, which was exactly the same height as Oberon. The fairies had been practising with this size for some time, knowing that they had to go out into the world of mortals, and recognizing the need not to be too different from its inhabitants. Sid had suggested they might be even taller, but fairy revulsion at big clumsy bodies would not allow them to go above a certain height, though sometimes Oberon sneakily added just half an inch to his stature, in order to be a little loftier than the Queen of the Fairies. It never took long for Titania’s spies to inform her of his deviousness, and she and her favourite fairies would shrink themselves to about two feet high, in order to make him look ridiculously large.

‘How now, my lord?’ Titania said. ‘Time for your speech?’

‘Indeed,’ replied Oberon. T shall need your support tonight, my queen.’

Titania smiled encouragingly, no doubt realizing that Oberon was feeling upset at what he had to do. A smile from the pretty Titania, whose radiance could flood a woodland glade with light, was a precious gift. Oberon was grateful for that smile. He plucked a garland of white bryony from a nearby shrub and hung it about his queen’s pale slender neck.

‘This for the most beautiful of all fairies,’ he murmured, and she smiled again.

Sometimes, when Oberon stared into her small, heart-shaped face, framed by wild, tangled hair as black as the spaces between the stars, a lump formed in his throat. Those times when her gossamer dress glittered like a thousand insects as she stood with the moonlight behind her, and he could see her lithe slim form through the folds, he choked on her beauty. He would look up into the dragonfly-blue eyes and whisper her name, offering his kingship at the altar of her being. His magic was more powerful than hers, but her presence held him in thrall and made him vulnerable.

He shook himself from his reverie. It was time to speak. There was chattering amongst the audience.

‘Cobweb, settle down. You too, Moth,’ ordered Oberon.

The king stood under the massive Major Oak, now weak in limb and bole, supported by poles and wires. The ancient tree was like some old giant endowed with life eternal, gradually coming apart at the joints.

‘I’ve called you here,’ said Oberon, ‘because it’s time to consider leaving Sherwood Forest…’

A murmur went through the gathered fairies.

‘… it’s a sad thing,’ continued the king, ‘but Sherwood has shrunk now to a small wood—a copse—and it will soon be unable to support our magic. As the forest diminishes, so do our powers. We must leave here, or be discovered, for we will soon be unable to hide ourselves away from the eyes of mortals. Four hundred years ago, when we were better known to the outside world, a mortal named William Shakespeare used us in one of his plays—sympathetically, I think—but he aroused for all time an interest in our presence.

‘The bard of Stratford-upon-Avon disguised our where-abouts by putting us in some foreign forest, over the oceans, and his forethought has served to protect our home from common knowledge. Over the centuries Sherwood has been whittled away to almost nothing. Our beloved Major Oak is failing in health. Gone are the mossy banks, the nut-bearing trees. We must go out into the world for a brief time in order to find another forest.’

A fairy called Mist asked in a frightened voice, ‘Where will we go?’

Oberon held up a hand. Tuck, who used to girdle the earth many times a night when his magic was strong, tells us there is a woodland called the New Forest far south of here. The New Forest is larger, surrounded by heathland, and there we shall be able to regenerate our art.’

‘How will we get there?’ asked Peaseblossom. ‘Will our magic carry us through the night?’

Oberon shook his head. ‘It’s too late for that. We must go by road.’

‘Walk?’ cried a horrified Moth. ‘How many leagues?’

Oberon pointed to the enthralled Sid, who was sitting nearby playing with a blade of grass.

‘The youth you see before you is what is termed a “motor mechanic”. Sid is going to get us one of those box things on wheels—what’s it called, Sid?’

‘A bus,’ Sid replied.

‘Yes, a bus. A new shiny bus …’

‘An old, battered bus,’ corrected Sid. I only had my rusty Ford Escort to put in part exchange.’

‘Old, new, it doesn’t matter,’ said Oberon, hastily. ‘So long as it transports us across the English landscape. We shall set out tomorrow evening, which as you all know is midsummer eve, and arrive before the dawn.’

‘We hope,’ said Sid.

Oberon ignored the interruption from the rude mechanical.

‘It will not be a pleasant journey, I’ll grant you, for we will have to cram ourselves into a foul-smelling vehicle of the modern age, but unfortunately it’s necessary. The residue of our magic, weak as it is, we believe will work a little in the outside world. Now, any questions?’

‘Can we take our animals?’ asked Cobweb. ‘I’ve got my weasel to consider.’

‘No animals or birds,’ said Oberon. ‘No room.’

‘Except my owl,’ stated Titania. ‘My owl comes.’

Oberon gritted his teeth. ‘No exceptions. Your owl can fly down to the New Forest.’

Titania’s face set. ‘My owl goes everywhere with me. My owl is coming on the bus.’

Oberon knew better than to do battle with Titania on such issues.

‘Perhaps Queen Titania’s owl is the exception …?’

‘If her owl goes, so does my weasel,’ cried Cobweb.

‘And my rabbit.’

‘And my stoat!’

‘And my fitchew!’

(‘What’s a fitchew?’ asked Sid.)

The cries went up from the band of fairies surrounding the Major Oak. Moonlight filtered through the canopy and washed the faces of the supernatural creatures, making them shine. Oberon studied these faces with annoyance.

‘What? Will we have a menagerie on board? Stoat chasing rabbit, weasel at the throat of mouse? Will we have fitchews stealing Sid’s provisions? I tell you that anyone who tries to smuggle another creature on board, apart from Titania’s owl, will be left behind—banished—is that understood?’

(Sid asked, ‘Puck, what’s a fitchew?’)

This terrible threat had the right effect, though Cobweb still looked resentful. This was no Greek democracy, here in the glade, despite the fact that the playwright had put the fairies in a wood outside Athens. The most powerful fairy ruled virtually absolutely, and that fairy was Oberon. He was lord of the forest, despite his failing magic.

Whether Oberon’s power was right or wrong was not a consideration amongst the fairies, since he had come by it naturally and had possessed it always. Whether he used it corruptly or not was also outside the concern of fairies, since they operated under their own code of morality. It was true he used it to get his own way at times, but any other fairy would have done the same in his position. Oberon was Oberon, there was no other forest fairy king, there never had been, there never would be, and therefore his power was unquestioned.

‘What the hell is a bloody fitchew?’ yelled the frustrated Sid.

‘A polecat!’ several of the fairies yelled back at him. ‘Now be quiet.’

Here was a good example of why the old speech should not be used in front of mortals: their knowledge of language was extremely limited, their vocabulary small, yet their curiosity was as vast as the span of space.

‘This bus thing,’ said Cobweb, attacking on another front, ‘I’ve seen them bring humans to the Visitors’ Centre. Somebody’s got to work them. They need someone in the front seat to make them go.’

‘True,’ replied Oberon. ‘It’s called a driver. You have to drive a bus.’

‘Who’s going to do that? Sid?’ asked Moth.

‘Sid cannot drive us,’ Oberon explained, ‘for we have to do this thing ourselves. What sort of achievement would it be if we allowed a mortal to take control of our movements and carry us to our destination? One of us will drive.’

‘And who will that be?’ asked Cobweb, sarcastically, obviously expecting the answer to be ‘Oberon’, since driving sounded like fun.

Titania,’ replied Oberon, unexpectedly. ‘Sid has been teaching her secretly. Our rude mechanical had to make adjustments to the bus seat, so that Queen Titania’s pretty little feet …’, he beamed at his queen and was rewarded with a reciprocal smile, ‘… could reach the operating parts. Sid says she will make a fine fairy driver.’

Sid looked up and raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

Oberon continued, ‘We shall also need a navigator to help Titania to find the way and I was going to ask Cobweb to do that, but since he’s been so obstructive I’m appointing Moth as the navigator instead. Sid will show you some things called maps, Moth, and instruct you on how to use them.’

Cobweb scowled sulkily, but was wise enough not to argue any further with Oberon on the subject.

‘Now, all the unpleasant bits are over,’ said Oberon, ‘time to get on with the witenagemot.’

A witenagemot was of course once a Saxon parliament, but those political meetings were such riotous affairs that fairies adopted the name for their all-night parties.

Peaseblossom said, ‘Sid, can I drive the vehicle?’

‘That’s already been decided,’ muttered Sid. ‘I’m not driving and nor are you.’

‘Stop chuntering, Sid, and break open the bonny-clabber!’ cried Puck. ‘It’s our last night in the forest.’

Sid was responsible, among other things, for providing the fairies with beer and buttermilk from the outside world, which they mixed together to make their favourite beverage. The motor mechanic was not the first youth to be enchanted and enslaved by the Sherwood fairies: there had been many others over the centuries. And during that time they had developed selected tastes for Outworldly things. One of those desires was for bonny-clabber, a jugful of which an Irish pedlar, who had fallen into a drunken sleep under the Major Oak one night, had by his side when the fairies found him.

‘I brought some lager for me,’ said Sid, opening the box he had by his side. ‘I can’t drink that muck you lot swig down your throats. Too sickly.’

‘You drink what you like, my lad,’ Puck said, reaching for the cans of bitter ale and supermarket full-cream milk, ‘so long as you bring our favourite tipple.’

The dancing began.

As always, Sid became very excited when the fairies danced. And oh, how they loved to dance. They were so fast and furious in their movements he could hardly follow an individual, weaving through the others with his or her tiny feet flashing back and forth. It was truly a miraculous sight, the light playing fanciful games around their delicate bodies, the old leaves swirling in the little whirlwinds they created. It was such a passionate affair, that had the urgency of death about it, as well as enjoyment. It was as if there were an irresistible need to dance, which had to be answered, or some brownie might wither away like a thistle at the end of summer, and vanish on the wind.

The music came from strange little instruments fashioned from pond-water reeds and hollowed wood: flutes, strings and drums. The first time Sid heard it, the sound had chilled his blood, because he knew it to be pre-Christian, pagan music, woven from the eerie tunes of an ancient Otherword’s time. If lizards could sing, thought Sid, they would make such a sound with their blunt mouths and keen nostrils. The wind had never managed to make such shrill tones, nor running water copy the low notes, yet there was something of both the wind and rushing brook within the primitive airs.

The best amongst the musicians was Peaseblossom, on his flute.

‘Come on, Sid, get up and dance,’ cried Titania, breathlessly, taking him by the hand.

Sid could not resist the Queen of the Fairies, any more than Lord Oberon could, and he was soon on his feet and jigging like mad to the swirling sound. He yelled when Puck yelled. He jumped higher than Swallowtail. He threw himself into a frenzied whirl to outspin Oberon.

He fell into an exhausted heap as the garden lettuce and African marigold opened and the night-flowering catch-flys closed.

He awoke as usual to the sound of the birds and remembered that this was the day he was going to the New Forest. On the surface it appeared a simple task, to transport a bus load of little people from Sherwood to the south coast. A few hours driving at the most. But then Sid had lived long enough with Oberon’s fairies to know that no task was simple when it involved fairy planning. The planners were by their very nature quirky, unpredictable beings, given to adding unnecessary elaborate and intricate twists and turns to any scheme, thereby complicating the easiest of plans.

Before they set forth, however, the rebellion occurred.



OBERON WAS AWARE THAT THERE WAS A REBELLION amongst the fairies, with Cobweb at its head. He had heard that Puck was dealing with the situation, so he decided to keep well clear. The fairy king knew that if he intervened he would most probably lose his temper and make things worse. Oberon was aware of his weaknesses: he had the failings of most fairies—doubled. Mainly he owned a quick and terrible temper, an envious nature, and a determination to have his own way.

‘I have many fardels to bear,’ he sighed, ‘but this hugger-mugger must cease if we are to survive.’

It was of course still light and the fairies had only just woken up, having risen disgustingly early in the evening at Oberon’s command in order to be on the road before the closing of the orange day-lily. Disgruntled and irritable, Cobweb had gathered around him others who were afraid of leaving Sherwood.

‘This is our ancient home,’ cried Cobweb, ‘why should we leave it just because Oberon tells us to? He says the wood will shrink to nought. Well I for one don’t believe him. There’s still enough magic around for me …’

‘And what will you eat, Cobweb?’ asked Puck, who had heard the commotion in a small clearing behind a blackberry bush. ‘There are few enough toadstools on the ground, blackberry bushes like that one yonder are being cleared for new paths for the visitors, the elderberries are only in season for a short while and the nuts that get us through the winter are in short supply. I could go on, but I won’t, because I’d just be repeating myself.’

‘We’ll … we’ll grow our own,’ muttered Cobweb, ‘won’t we?’ he appealed to the mob.

The other fairies were not to be drawn in front of the Puck, Robin Goodfellow, whose mischief might be turned on them rather than the mortals he normally harassed.

‘Will you?’ grinned Puck. ‘I’d like to see that—fairies toiling in the meadow. I’ve never yet seen a fairy working for the common weal. We’re lazy creatures, too fond of a petal bed. We would rather play hoodman blind than cut straws in a cornfield. It’s in our certain nature. We’re not humans. We don’t have to sweat and labour to feed ourselves and we don’t want material wealth. In the New Forest there’ll be succulent berries, dry nuts and juicy toadstools for everyone. There’ll be sweet wild honey to steal from hives. There’ll be cuckoo pints in plenty from which to drink before going to bed in some mossy hollow. The New Forest is big enough to keep us all—and it’s growing bigger—while this place is dying.’

There was a lot of sense in what Puck was saying. Fairies didn’t work, couldn’t work, it wasn’t in their make up. A fairy wouldn’t know how to plant a seed, water it, nurture it, harvest its crop. A fairy picked what was on a bush if it was there and if it wasn’t he or she went to another bush. They took mouth-drying sloes, chestnuts, acorns, stinging-nettle flowers. From the ground, or growing out of bark, the delicious toadstools: grisette, dryad’s saddle, fairy ring mushrooms, velvet shank, chanterelle, and many more. A fairy wouldn’t know how to grow a toadstool if the instructions were printed on the top in purple letters.

Mist, another of the rebels, looked at the ground, and said, ‘Puck’s right. Food is getting short. We can send out woodland creatures looking for us, but there’s only so much around and the squirrels and birds need to find food enough for themselves. If they start to starve they’ll move on to other places. We’ve got no choice, really.’

At that moment they heard a roaring sound from the car-park outside the Visitors’ Centre.

‘There’s Sid with our chariot,’ Puck said. ‘So what shall be your answer—are you all to remain incarcerate in this shrunken wood, or shall you join me in an adventure?’

‘Coming,’ cried Mist, without further hesitation, and flew through the shrubbery towards the car-park, her feet barely touching the ground.

Others followed, until only Cobweb and Puck were left standing in the clearing.

Cobweb’s nutmeg-brown face screwed itself in the resemblance of a prune.

‘What say, Cobweb?’ said Puck. ‘It won’t be the same without you.’

‘I’m staying,’ grunted Cobweb. ‘You’ll be back—you’ll see. There’s no place like our fine Sherwood out there. You’ll all be back.’

Puck sighed and turned and left the clearing, heading towards the car-park himself. On the way, Puck found a stone in the roots of a tree. It was shaped roughly like a heart and fitted easily into the palm of his hand. He kept the stone as a kind of talisman and to remind him of Sherwood Forest, which had been his home for six hundred years.

When he reached the car-park, there was Sid’s bus, chugging away through a rusty exhaust, sending out dark choking fumes into the atmosphere. The vehicle had been h and-painted a sort of purply-brown at some time, one of its headlights was cracked, and it seemed loose in all its joints and fittings—but its engine ratded away merrily. Sid was a good mechanic, so Puck understood, and only needed bits of string and tree gum to keep the motor running.

The mortals that ran the Visitors’ Centre had closed up for the night, so there was no-one around to question the presence of the bus.

Titania was already in her driver’s seat. Sid had fitted blocks to the pedals so that her short but shapely legs could reach them. She had been taught well, but Sid had never cured her of the disconcerting habit of releasing the steering-wheel in order to change gear with two hands. Since she was fast—much faster than a human—the operation took but a fleeting moment, but Sid’s heart always skipped when it happened, knowing that it required only a second for the bus to career off course and crash into a brick wall.

Oberon climbed gingerly aboard the bus, clutching his oak knobkerrie tightly: the smooth, worn stick had been fashioned from a branch of the Major Oak. It was the symbol of his kingship and very precious to him.

This was the first time he had been up the steps and entered any kind of bus. It was a frightening experience. His stomach was already queasy with the smell of diesel fumes and the vibrations of the bus were upsetting to him.

‘When does it stop quivering?’ he asked Sid. ‘It seems to be trembling for some reason.’

Sid, occupying the front passenger’s seat, shook his head.

‘Shakes like this all the time,’ he said. ‘Got to put up with it’

Oberon gripped the shiny rail by the door and called out to the fairies.

‘All aboard,’ he shouted. ‘We’re on our way.’

One by one the fairies came up the steps and began to fill the seats in the bus. Like Oberon, none of them had been on a modern vehicle before now. Like Oberon they all clutched some kind of good luck charm: an acorn, a flint, a blackthorn stick. Blewit even had an old bird’s nest.

Mustardseed had his tunic pockets full of wood mice, who kept poking their whiskery noses out for a quick look, then vanishing again. Tails hung like short pieces of string from his pocket flaps. Muffled squealings came from various parts of Mustardseed’s body, as wood mice fought for the most comfortable positions in the dark recesses of his clothing. Clearly Mustardseed had ignored Oberon’s order not to bring any live creatures, but then Oberon knew that the gentle fairy had never been without his mice for more than a few moments the whole of his existence.

‘Ho. . .