by Kelly Erin Gray
When Carly gets in one of her moods, she ruins others’ by giving them fucked up fortunes: black aura, broken heart chakra, and the hanging man card pulled three times over. The reactions vary, but the guests in the cheap plastic corsets start to really squirm in their seats. That’s when Carly will give them her personal business card, so that they can perform a cleanse together. They never do end up calling, but that’s not why she does it.
She wasn’t always like this. When we first started working at Ye Olde Renaissance Faire, things were different. Back then, I still thought I might be the knight and not just his understudy. But it’s been five years now, and John has never missed a single performance. In the dressing trailer before the show, he’s always combing through his long blonde hair and reciting his opening lines. (“Hark! Who goes there?”) His voice is low and full, the timbre of a brass instrument. When the horns play, that’s his cue to go out. And, then, I sit there. I never comb through my blonde wig.
On the drive home, Carly brings it up again. “I think Mark is leaving for real this time.” She says this with a practiced casualness, like the topic just came to her.
“Oh, really?” I’m gripping the steering wheel at ten and two until my knuckles go white.
“Yeah,” she answers. “They’ll have to get a new jester.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, it’s a really good role. Have you ever thought—”
“—I’m not going to play the fool.” I cut her off, already knowing where this conversation was going. “I’m sorry you’re so ashamed of me, but I’m no fucking fool.”
“I never said I was ashamed of you.”
“You didn’t need to.” She’s The Great Carly, and I’m John’s towel boy. Back in the trailer, I’m expected to wait there for him. When he’s done, he then throws his sweat strained rag back in my face before heading back out to greet his adoring fans. I’m worse than a towel boy; I’m Ye Olde Bitch Boy.
We drive home the rest of the way in silence. It’s autumn now, and it’s dark by the time we make it back. The ren faire only runs one more weekend before we all have to part ways again. During the off season, Carly works retail and I string together a series of odd jobs. Last year, I sold Christmas trees through December and then picked back up their decorated remains through February. Selling a dream, then holding its wake.
Before New Year’s, I overheard Carly on the phone with her sister, sharing their resolutions. She was saying something had to give, and that it would. One way or another, things would have to change. And when she said my name, it sounded like a sigh. In our living room now, I stand where I stood then and remember it all, what she said and how I felt. She said she sometimes thought about ending things, and I can’t blame her. “At a certain point,” she told her sister, “you have to take control of your own destiny.”
The next morning, I don my understudy wig early, before we’re even out the door. Carly gives me a look but says nothing. In the traffic outside the faire grounds, I clear my throat. “Today, I’m going to make you proud.”
She raises an eyebrow in response. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I let her think I’m going to ask about Mark’s job, and she seems relieved in a way I haven’t seen in a while. I don’t tell how I’m going to make myself proud, too.
After the morning staff meeting, the artisans go to their stations and the character actors to their positions. Before I go to the dressing room, I stop by the apothecary. Mark’s girlfriend Sarah works here, and I tell her I heard from Carly that he might be really leaving this time. As she sets up shop for the day, she’s happy to brag, “It’s the largest renaissance faire in the world. 55 acres, just north of Houston. You can’t beat that sort of job opportunity.” She’s too busy setting up her healing crystals and medicinal potions to see me slip the vial of cleansing black charcoal into my pocket. And, when I get to the trailer, John’s too busy admiring himself in the mirror to see me slip the contents of the vial into his one free daily glass of mead. Inside the bathroom, I toss the empty bottle but keep its paper fortune: Your new future awaits you.
Come afternoon, John runs to the bathroom and doesn’t come back. The black charcoal is cleansing him from the inside out, expelling his arrogance from both ends. He doesn’t have to tell me. I can hear the trumpets before they sound, and I know it’s my time. But before I head out, I don’t grab the lances. This is my one opportunity, so I grab the swords.
Outside, the crowd is a chorus of cheering drunks. “Hark!” I bellow. “Who goes there?” When the other knight sees me, I watch as a flicker of confusion flashes across his face and then vanishes. He’s a professional, and he accepts the sword I hand him as if he was expecting the weight of it. When I mount my horse, I look out at the faire grounds and find Carly, with her bright eyes and her open grin.
When the trumpet blares again, my horse bucks forward. He’s a professional, too. I yell out another line in my new role as hero, and then we’re racing toward each other. Around us, the crowd coos like children.
As he passes under the faire banner, the other knight calls out, “Dare ye challenge me?”
“I do,” I shout back for everyone to hear. “I dare.”
The crowd roars as we near closer and I toss back my blonde hair over one shoulder. When I lift my sword to catch the sun, the blade winks back at me. This is when we’re supposed to meet in the middle, a duel like a dance. But where the lance bends, the sword holds.
My challenger skewers me with his sword, slicing into my shoulder and knocking me from my saddle. My horse rears like it was him who was struck and kicks up a cloud of dust he leaves where once was as I hit the ground hard, with a thud like a clap. The crowd gasps, not knowing if this is part of the show.
I don’t feel anything beyond their eyes on me.
As the other knight clambers to get to me, the strum of music surrounding us cuts off. Something else is blaring now, a different kind of horn. Carly must have pushed her way through the crowd because she’s all of a sudden there next to me, where I lie on the ground and look up toward her and the blue, open sky.
“Jake? Jake, oh my god.” When she kneels before me, her head eclipses the sun. “Jake, can you hear me? It’s me, baby. Jake, it’s Carly. I’m right here.”
“Fuck, is he okay?” The other knight stands behind her, his head in his hands. “I didn’t mean to. I don’t know what happened. Is he alright?” Someone pulls him away and out of frame. The crying crowd is nothing but white noise to us now.
“Jake, I’m here,” Carly says, tears now streaming down her face. “I’m right here.”
“Carly?” I lift my head from the dirt to see her pressing her hands down on my chest, my shoulder, and my heart. Her touch is warm and radiating, her love pulsing. “Did you see me?”
“I saw, Jake. I saw it all.”
A cloud passes behind her head to frame her like a halo, and I know my future has arrived.
______
Kelly Erin Gray is a writer based in Boston. Her work has appeared in Cleveland Review of Books, Hobart, and Expat, among others, and she can be found online @kelly_erin_.
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