Fantasy Faire

We got to the great hall, which looked like something out of that super ancient movie about Robin Hood or something; you know, the one where the bad guy's real name was some kitchen herb or other.  There were two long tables with all the people from the faire sitting at them, and then there was another table that was up on a raised platform where Oberon and Titania were sitting with Baka.  Grampa Olly was sitting beside Baka, but he looked a bit uncomfortable being the only one up there not in garb.  Garb is another word for costumes, by the way.  When we walked in, the whole place went totally quiet for a moment.  Bubbe slipped over to join Zeyde and Davey.  Benji and his family were beside them.  We tried to follow her, but Dad called out to stop us.

"Behold the sons of Oberon," he announced loudly.  "All of you know and love our fair young Robin.  On this day, we welcome to our family and to our hearts a new son, Frodo.  Frodo the strong, the brave, the warrior, the tailor."  I was embarrassed by the cheers from around the room, and I admit that I chuckled along with everyone else at those last two words.  "Mark my words, friends, and heed them well, any that oppose Frodo, oppose Oberon, and more to the point, they oppose Titania, which even I never do.  You have been warned."

There was some more laughter around the room at the look Daia gave Dad for that last bit, but then everyone broke out into these loud cheers of, "Hail, Frodo!"  I blushed and squirmed even worse, and if it weren't for Robin holding my hand, I would have crawled under a table or something to hide.

"Come, my child," Daia called out to me as she motioned me to come and join her at the raised table.  "Break bread with us, and sup with our friends.  Then will you accept their gifts on this day of honor?"

"Gifts for me?" I squeaked.

"Think of this like it's your birthday, Frodo," Robin whispered. 

The food was incredible.  There was turkey and ham and roast beef and all sorts of stuff to go with them.  Bubbe told her family to eat what they wanted and let God sort out their digestion, but to not go overboard.  Zeyde laughed and gave her a big kiss on the cheek right in front of everyone, making her blush, but she was smiling too.

Once the food ended, all the faire folk came up to greet me and give me presents.  At one point, one guy stopped at the table and gave me a really cool decorative dagger to wear with my costume.  He then looked over to Dad and asked, "So he's your son, not your son-in-law?"

Baka answered with a look of love at both me and Daia.  "What is a son or daughter in law, but a child of your heart who holds your child's heart in theirs?"  Several people called out in agreement with that, but then Baka had to get her zinger in as well.  "Best of all, you don't have to diaper them."  Daia and I had both been tearing up at her first statement, and then both blushed and squealed at her for the second.

"What?  There are sometimes many things that we do for those that we love, that we don't love doing," Baka shrugged.  "I never like the music my Mili liked.  But I listen because I love him.  He never wants to garden, but he worked it because he loved me.  You all know how this goes."

"Yes, this is why the blacksmith forge is at the opposite end of the faire grounds from my kitchens," Hank's wife called out.  "All that banging and clanging."

"I thought you loved my smithy," Hank pouted.

"I love how big and strong it makes you, you big lug," she told him as she rubbed his arm lovingly.  "That doesn't mean I love the headache I get from that noise."

"I love my husband's paintings, but that smell of paint thinner, Ewwww," Daia added.

"I love my Sybil more than life, but that incense she always burns in her shop…" an old man added. 

"I do that for the customers, Henry, you know that," the old fortune-teller calls out.

There might have been more discussion by the faire folks, but I had leaned over to Robin to whisper, "Dude, your grandpa was named Millie?"

"Well, his name was Milić, but Baka always called him Mili for short," he whispered back.  He then turned to his mom and asked, "If everyone is through giving Frodo presents, can I help him take them all back to the camper now?"

"Yes, dears, but just keep it all out on one of the beds for now.  Some of it we may want to take home tomorrow, so it doesn't take up space in the camper."

As we started gathering up the stuff, Benji and Davey came up to help, as did little Zondal and Tania.  Zondal and Tania each carried a gift certificate while us four bigger kids took the larger stuff.  Once we got to the camper, knowing we would have to sort the goody haul at some point, we started in on it right away.  The costuming and the gift certificates to the shops got put away in the little room I shared with Robin.  Everything else, we put into the truck to be taken home tomorrow.  When we were all done with that, we all went and sat down outside as Robin started a campfire in the firepit.  We sat there talking for a bit until we noticed that Tania and Zondal had fallen asleep leaning against one another.  It was too precious and adorable for words.  We all made sure that pictures were taken to be shared later on before Robin and Davey picked up Tania and Zondal and brought them into the camper.   They laid them on the fold-out sofa bed that Tania slept in each night and turned to leave. 

"Guys, you can't put them to bed like that," I scolded as I pointed out that both little ones were still in their costumes. 

Benji started working on Zondal, and I helped Tania, while I sent Robin up to our little room for something for Zondal to sleep in.  He got changed into one of my t-shirts, and Tania got her favorite pajamas, a nightgown with a cartoon princess on the front.  Their faces got gently scrubbed free of makeup, and their antlers were carefully taken out of their hair and put onto the counter beside their bed.  As soon as the mostly clean, pajama-wearing tots were in bed again, they scooted toward each other like newborn kittens or puppies cuddling.  Of course, more pictures were taken, and by that time, all the parents had arrived.  After much pleading and puppy-eyed looks, it was decided that Benji, Davey, and Zondal could stay the night with us, while the adults went back to stay with Grampa Olly.

When Zeyde and Bubbe returned to the faire the next morning, they had news.  Davey was now legally their son.  His father had signed away all rights as part of his deal to take over the department store chain from Zeyde Izzy.  As he explained it, Zeyde would give control of the company to his former son, but he retained the primary stockholder position.  He and his lawyer hadn't necessarily made that last bit quite clear to the new Chief Executive Officer.  While it was explained to Shimon Levin that he would own more stock than his father, they conveniently forgot to mention that, as a proxy for his wife's and David's shares in the company, Zeyde Izzy still had voting rights for 51% of the stocks in the company.  They also didn't mention that the family and company lawyers would be doing nothing to keep it out of the news media that Shimon had been arrested for beating a thirteen-year-old gay boy to a pulp.  If the district attorney decided to charge him with a hate crime rather than just assault, well, that was his problem.  They also never mentioned that the board of directors for the company also knew precisely what he had done and to whom.

There was a considerable stink all over the country about the new head of the store chain being a child abuser, and there were boycotts and protests at some of the stores that even included some employees picketing the store in which they worked.  In the end, and as sort of expected, the district attorney did charge Shimon with a hate crime.  He was forced to give up the company and was sentenced to seven years in prison.  His wife divorced him and took all the money, but she wasn't able to take the company.  That reverted back to Zeyde Izzy, who made a statement on national television disowning his son and begging for people to forgive him for somehow raising an idiot.  Of course, then a whole bunch of people who knew Zeyde Izzy got interviewed saying how it had never been his fault, and he was a great guy.  The lawyers wanted to have me interviewed, but Zeyde and Bubbe shot that down really fast.  They said I had enough on my plate as it was.

That was no understatement.  Public outcry against my sperm donor was so bad that the sheriff had to send him to the state prison to await trial.  The idea was that he would be safer in the big prison than in the little jail.  They were wrong.  Malachi Rundle was brutally executed during a fight in prison.  The sheriff said that the prison officials believe the riot was deliberately set up to cover the good reverend's death.  No one in prison saw a thing, so no one could be blamed for his death.  The fact that the letter K in sets of three had been carved, branded, and tattooed into his body in multiple places gave a good clue as to why he was dead, however. 

I was asked about what should be done for his funeral because I was still legal next of kin at the time of his death.  I told Dad and Daia to burn his ass to ashes and then flush him down a toilet.  Daia hugged me tightly while Dad pointed out that we couldn't do that because ashes clog up the drains something terrible.  At the sheriff's suggestion, Malachi's ashes were buried in the middle of the night two counties away with only a tiny little metal marker that said his name was John Doe. That way neither the people who hated him, nor those that still loved him for whatever sick reason, could find him to do anything to the gravesite.

Robin and I spent the rest of the summer working the fair by day, snuggling in our camper bed at night, and having the best time of my life.  Doctor Branstetter told me that I was making significant progress.  I told him it was easy to handle life when you had people around you that showed you that they loved you and supported you, instead of ordering you around and demanding that you live up to their expectations.

Finally, the summer was over, and I was about to start school with Robin at the local public high school.  We would be sophomores, tenth grade, so not at the bottom of the social order, but not far from it.  It didn't quite work out that way, however.  A week before school was to begin, there was an event at the school that our whole family attended.  Robin and I were told nothing about what it was, or why it was, other than being told that we should wear dressy clothes.  Daia absolutely forbid me to wear a tie when she saw the face I made just thinking about it.

"A nice button-down shirt with a pair of black pants will be good enough, son," she told me.  "You never have to dress like he made you ever again unless it's your choice."

"Thanks, Daia," I said as I hugged her tightly.  "I know there will be special occasions where I should dress up like that again, though.  It means more knowing that it would be a special occasion and not every day.  You're right, though.  I don't think I'm ready for it again just yet."

When we got to the school, we discovered that the event was the unveiling of the murals painted by three local artists, including Dad.  Dad had painted the artwork that now adorned the wall outside the English classrooms, and the one by the auditorium as well.  A very nice lady named Alice something had painted the mural in front of the history and government classrooms.  A guy named Alejandro had painted the mural by the science classes.  Alejandro was actually a student at the school, but he was a junior, so a year older than Robin and me.

The art Dad had done for the auditorium was the first one people saw as they entered the building, as the auditorium was right across the entrance hall from the school offices.  Dad had done a fantastic silly job with that mural.  What you saw looking at it was a stage on which a performance was being done, but everywhere you looked, things were going wrong in the picture.  There was a boy caught in the air just as he was falling off the stage into an orchestra pit.  There was a gap in the curtains, and you could see a girl backstage changing her costume.  She was covered from the knees up, of course, with the dress she wore, but her left foot had just ripped through the hose she was trying to put on.  There was a Christmas tree with a cat climbing it onstage, while a student actor was trying to pull the cat away.  The tree was leaning dangerously close to falling over on the kid with the cat, as the cat clearly did not want to let go of the tree.  Just a little way away from the tree fiasco was another student actor who was reading lines from a little book while another kid beside him was doing a facepalm.  Beside the mural was a little framed sign that gave Dad's name and the date he had painted the artwork and also the title: Opening Night.

Everyone that saw it snickered and then giggled and then laughed out loud.  It was definitely the hit of the night.  The history-themed mural was just what one would expect; the progression of settlement across the United States with pilgrims and covered wagons and native people spread across the map.  The science mural was kind of predictable too; it showed students in a laboratory room with bubbling test tubes of stuff all around them.  The math mural showed portraits of famous mathematicians.  Thank you, Aunt Doris, for explaining that, since it was just a bunch of random people to Robin and me.  It was the English department mural that Dad seemed the most nervous about having us see, and once I did see it, I knew why.

The mural Dad had painted for the English classes was very similar to the one in my bedroom at home, but where the one in my room had a little princess, a unicorn, and a castle, this forest featured a high elf that bore a strong resemblance to Robin only with pointed ears, and the other person in the image was me.  It was me, all dressed up in my merchant prince costume from the fair.  The elf was holding my hand and leading me into… well, it couldn't be called a castle, because those were usually stones and towers.  This place looked like something from Rivendell out of Lord of the Rings.  It was like a castle; only it seemed to be made out of living trees.  If I stared at the painting long enough, the sounds of the people around me faded, and I could hear the birds chirping and the little brook splashing over the rocks in the clearing where Robin and Tania had saved my life. 

"Do you not like it, son?" Dad asked quietly, breaking into my thoughts.  "I didn't mean for it to make you cry."

"I love it, Dad, and I love you," I blurted as I spun around and hugged him as if my life counted on it.  That wasn't entirely true, however.  My life didn't count on that hug, because it was like that hug was reaffirming that my life was real, but fantasy as well, and it was all going on despite the way my summer had begun.  Grampa Olly, Baka, Daia, Robin, and even Tania joined the embrace then.  "Thank you all for everything," I whispered as I soaked in what being in a real loving family felt like.