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Scene 12




A street in Shoreditch, dark and narrow, hemmed by old buildings in dire need of painting. The street is deserted in the early morning hours, before sunrise. Many of the houses are boarded and bear the plague seal. Quicksilver walks in front of the sign for a hostelry: The Golden Lion. His light blue cloak billows in the early morning breeze, but his hair falls limp from the unnatural warmth and humidity of this unhealthy summer.


Quicksilver followed Sylvanus’s magical pattern here. The pattern and marks of Sylvanus’s dark power, which were to an elf’s souls like a signature to men: indelible and unmistakable.

He’d followed it through the dark night of men—the day of elves, feeling and sensing his way, darkly, amid the confusion of human souls and human minds, some vile enough to rival Sylvanus’s.

But he had it now. It was here.

Sylvanus lodged here, or hid here, in the upper floor of this ramshackle building.

Quicksilver pounded on the door. “Holla,” he called. “Awake within.”

For a while nothing answered him, then there was the rumble and knocking of furniture being pushed out of the way, and a low voice that approached while muttering.

“Here’s a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have old turning the key. Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there, i’ the name of Beelzebub? Here’s a farmer, that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty: come in time; have napkins enow about you; here you’ll sweat for’t.”

Quicksilver knocked again, impatient.

“Knock, knock! Who’s there, in the other devil’s name?” The voice on the other side of the door neared very slowly, as if the speaker walked erratically. “Faith, here’s an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven: O, come in, equivocator,” the voice within muttered.

Quicksilver knocked in earnest.

“Knock, knock; never at quiet!” The voice was now right on the other side of the door, and Quicksilver could hear, with it, the sliding and thumping of locks and deadbolts.

The voice muttered still, “What are you? But this place is too cold for hell. I’ll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in some of all professions that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.”

The door started to open, but before it could, a voice called, “Quicksilver.”

Quicksilver looked up at a face that appeared on the window, in the second floor.

It was a face Quicksilver knew and had seen, at Arden revels in the green forest. It was the man from Stratford, the mortal who courted Peaseblossom and often came to join the fairy dance.

He looked like a man of Stratford, and open enough, with a round face and round, pale blue eyes.

But now, superimposed on those familiar features, another face moved, another set of features held sway: sharp, features, lupine in hunger and elongated with ill desire.

“Quicksilver,” Sylvanus said, speaking through the mortal’s mouth.

Quicksilver’s hair stood on end. What was here? What evil was this?

“Milord,” the tavern owner called, finally having thrown open the door. “Milord.” He was a big man, as wide as tall, with a scraggle of red hair on his amiable face. “You’ll pardon me, I didn’t know it was your highness knocking. I thought it would be a ruffian, a cutpurse.” As he spoke, he wiped his hands on the front of his white nightshirt, as no doubt he would wipe them on his apron during the day.

Quicksilver looked at him for a moment.

“Trouble you not about my intent,” Sylvanus’s voice yelled from the window above. “For soon nothing will matter to you.”

And on those words, energy—a bolt, a searing flame of magic—flew past Quicksilver’s face, to singe the door post.

The hosteller stepped back, shocked, while Quicksilver wheeled upon his heels to look up.

Where had Sylvanus got so much power? And if he had it, why misspend it so? Sylvanus could not fail to aim well.

“Canker blossom, dog, bastard,” Sylvanus’s voice yelled from above.

The face retreated within, and beyond the window, a man’s shape twisted and writhed, as if fighting something invisible. He looked like a puppet, ill-commanded by an inexperienced puppeteer.

Quicksilver stepped back, ready to hold the power of the hill as a shield between himself and eminent attack. But no attack came.

“He’s drunk, milord. Just drunk,” the hosteller said. “You there,” he shouted, looking up at the window. “Stop that, and do not defile my premises.”

“You will do as I command,” Sylvanus yelled.

The man at the window turned. His face emerged again. Then, with a violent, writhing twist, he fell from the window.

Quicksilver jumped back as the body hit the hard-packed dirt of the lane with a sickening sound.

Quicksilver’s heart pounding fast, he thought the man would be dead, would he not?

Had Sylvanus killed this man?

But even as he thought it, he heard Sylvanus’s voice, no longer coming from the man’s throat, “It failed this once, little brother. But triumph not, I will be back. And then will you rue the day you were born.”

“Sylvanus?” Quicksilver asked, stepping forward. Charity dictated that Quicksilver see if the man was still alive, that Quicksilver lend what help he could. But what if this was, again, Sylvanus’s trap, as the one back in Arden Woods?

As he neared, the man’s eyes fluttered open. Pale blue eyes, guileless and round.

“I got rid of him, didn’t I?” he asked in a thread of voice.

Quicksilver nodded, amazed, yet shying away from the still body.

“You’re the king,” the man said. He spoke slowly, in a voice little more than breath. His body lay twisted on the pavement, and he moved nothing save his eyes and lips. “The king of my lady’s queen.”

Quicksilver nodded.

“Tell her, tell Peaseblossom that Nick Bottom didn’t kill himself. He jumped from a window, aye, but to kill the bastard who had taken control of his body. Will you tell her that, lord?”

Quicksilver nodded, swallowed. “He took control of you? Sylvanus did?”

“Aye, if that’s his name. If that’s his name, he did. Last night, while I was drunk he approached me and then—he wore me like a doublet, milord.

“But an ill-fitting doublet I proved. I surprised him. I threw myself down. But I didn’t kill him. He ran off. I will die for it.”

Nick Bottom’s words came further spaced, and his eyes had acquired a stillness not likely to be dispelled by reviving life.

When Quicksilver thought he was dead, Nick Bottom yet revived, and taking a noisy breath, he said, “Only tell Peaseblossom, would you, lord?”

“I will tell her,” Quicksilver said.

“And would you have, milord, a bard set my story to music, the story of a weaver who loved an elf lady?” The blue eyes seemed to look onto the distant yonder, a distance even Quicksilver’s immortal eyes couldn’t penetrate. “And it shall be called Bottom’s dream, for it has no bottom.”

A last breath whispered through Nick Bottom’s lips and he lay still.

Quicksilver remained, horror-stricken.

So Sylvanus had learned to take over the bodies of men.

Oh, elven legend spoke of that, of dark elves who did so. The humans called it possession and blamed it on demons.

But it had not been done in millennia, and it had come to be doubted.

Why had Sylvanus chosen this man? How had Bottom managed to rid himself of Sylvanus?

“And now he’s dead,” the hosteller said, wringing his hands upon his nightshirt. “He was drunk and now he’s dead and what am I to do with him?”

Numbly, Quicksilver reached into his belt purse and handed the man coins. “Here is for burial,” he said. “And to send word to his family.”

“Thank you, milord. But will you not stay?”

The last question the hosteller yelled at Quicksilver’s retreating back as the king of elves walked down the street.

Here was an enigma, for which Quicksilver had no answer.

Why would Sylvanus need to take over the bodies of humans to drink the life force of other dying humans?

None of it made sense.

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