Queene of Fairyes
spoken in a voice like wind through silver bells, or the sound a dewdrop makes when it falls into still water, which is no sound at all and yet somehow everything
Hearken.
We do not often speak to mortals directly. It is not, as you might imagine, a matter of pride. It is simply that the last several times we did, things became complicated in ways that took centuries to resolve and we are still, if we are being candid, a little tired from it.
But this.
This we could not let pass without word.
The Boston Magic Lab — those dear and ridiculous and luminous creatures, those brief flickering things who have given so much of their small and precious mortal time to the making of wonder — has completed its season.
And oh.
Oh, what a season.
We watched, you know. We always watch. From the old places, from the spaces between the lights, from the particular darkness at the back of a theatre just before something begins. We were there. We are always there when genuine magic is being attempted, even the mortal kind, perhaps especially the mortal kind, which costs so much more than ours and means so much more for the cost.
We watched and we were —
[a pause here, long enough for a moth to cross the moon]
— pleased.
And now they gather. On the seventeenth day of the month the mortals call May, which we call by an older name that would take too long to explain and would give you a headache besides, at the first hour past midday, at the dwellinge place on Scituate Street — number seventy, in the mortal territory of Arlington — in the garden behind the house.
The rear garden.
[the fairy queene smiles here, and something in the garden moves that wasn’t moving before]
We know that garden. We have always known that garden. There is something in the soil there, something in the way the light falls in the late afternoon of May, something that was there long before the house was built and will be there long after, something that makes it exactly the right place to mark the end of a season of making.
And Jeannine will be at the fire.
[a longer pause here, longer than is strictly comfortable]
We do not speak lightly of mortals. We have known too many of them for too long to be easily impressed. But Jeannine at the fire is —
there is a word in the old language.
There are actually several words. They do not translate. But the nearest equivalent in your tongue is something like: the right person in the right place at the right moment doing the right thing, which your language requires seventeen words to express and ours requires one, and even that one word does not quite capture the shimmer of it.
She does not need our blessing.
She has never needed our blessing.
We give it anyway.
All who are bidden shall come. You are bidden. Bring something to the table — food, drink, whatever your mortal pantry yields — for the table must be full and the fullness of the table is itself a kind of magic, the oldest kind, the kind that was old when we were young.
The coordination of provisions is forthcoming. Felice is handling it. We tried to offer assistance and Felice thanked us very politely and said she had it covered.
She had it covered.
We were impressed. We are not often impressed.
Come then.
Come to the garden at the hour of one on the seventeenth of May and step through the side gate and let the season be finished and let the next season not yet begin and stand for one afternoon in the particular light of that particular garden while Jeannine tends the fire and Felice holds everything together and the Court does what Courts do.
Be mortal in that garden. Be briefly, completely mortal. Beautiful in your decay.
We will be watching.
We are always watching.
But this time, we promise, only with affection.
[something moves through the flowers]
[something laughs, very quietly, like the sound a dewdrop makes. terrifying]
[it is gone]
70 Scituate Street, Arlington. The rear garden. May 17th. One o’clock. Bring something. Come.
— By gracious leave of Her Majesty Titania, Queene of the Fairyes, Soveraigne of the Moonlit Places, She Who Was Old When the World Was Young, and Felice.